Degman-Edmondson Family

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Brief Genealogy

• Jacob Akles-Dicey Chaffin (Brown Co Ohio)

• Peter Akles-Amanda Morford-Cochran (Brown Co)

• Melinda Akles-Howard Degman (Brownville)

  • Muriel Degman (m.) George W. Edmondson (Brownville)

  • Bess Degman (m.) Richard Ponn

  • Alice Degman (m.) Omer Van Ness.

  • Grace Degman

"Memorial Memories" by Muriel Edmondson

"Today, I climbed the hill where once my mother walked. It is a steep hill, so I often stop to regain my breath.  I sit down in the deep grass to dream of faces I knew long ago. But I should not tarry long, so I hurry on.

"Already in this lonely walk, I have difficulty remembering that the year is 1965 - not 1900; until a car whizzes by on the road far below. Life in the early 1900s was so different. My mother's life seemed remote as if in another century people were not quite the same in their thoughts and feelings. For her there had been no cars, not even a horse and buggy. She must have climbed this hill as I climb today, laboriously on tired feet until she reached the gate to enter as I am entering to walk among the stones of the dead.

"Often, too, she stopped as I do, to read the markers and muse over the old names or poignant rhymes in loving memory of those departed. For this is the beautiful cemetery overlooking the small river town of Brownville, Nebraska one of the oldest towns in that state. Once the home of the first governor of the state as well as other prominent men and women among the early settlers.

"From this high and quiet spot, I can see the little village drowsing in the sun, surrounded even as Rome by its beautiful hills.

"To the east I can see beyond the town, the Missouri River quite often grey and mysterious, but now winding gently like a silver thread on its proud journey to the sea. Closer at hand and below where I stand lie other smaller hills, their terraced slopes covered with vineyards which gradually level off into fields now being cultivated for the fall harvest of golden corn. Far beyond, the smiling orchards add their pastel blossoms to the scene with ample promise of abundance. The winds move gently through the trees planted by pioneer fathers, telling the branches to courtesy while nodding and beaconing they hold up their sheaves of offering from those who have gone before to those who must follow.

"In the older section, I pass among the graves of my own family. Here my mother had paused to rest and meditate, for here lay her own. Her mother and infant son. The tall pines growing here she had planted. Peonies, iris, spirea, ferns and numerous others, she had lovingly placed near the sleeping place of her loved ones. These still grew here and to me they whispered of the care she had once given them.

"Does all this seem morbid and depressing? I hope it seems not so. For over all there is a peaceful quietness that forbids sorrow for these who sleep. Birds flit through the pines with a happy nesting song as lovers sing at twilight in the garden of a new home. Flowers spring up everywhere adding their wild beauty to the over-all fragrance of cultured planting.

"I sit at the foot of a great pine. Nearby an impudent branch of a lilac bush reaches out saucy hands to touch me. It is easy to dream as I sit here while faces of my youth rise up to haunt me.

"The memory phantoms are largely happy ones. A laughing girl's face dares me with roguish eyes, across the years.  I meet again the audacious glance of a freckled face boy who loved to tease, a boy who tried to catch you in the games of blackman and run sheep run, who pelted you with snowballs in the winter or helped you find the largest strawberries in the spring. Again you wander in your fantasies down the main street lined with oak, stretching onward to the river. Once a little red depot stood by the tracks where the youth came to watch the train puff slowly by. Here was adventure wafted in on the arms of steam, for who knew what far off places this iron rogue had passed, or what glamorous creatures he might bring to add zest to the life of our little town.

"Still smiling with thoughts of those happy days, I pause by the mound of one who had died during the dark days of the Civil War while my thoughts go back to my young grandfather who died in a foul southern prison that other men of dark skin might possess their souls and that of their children in the freedom we take for granted. Over there I see the stones that mark the place where lie the boys who died to end war, or so it was said. Those of my schoolmates who had laughed and sung in the brick school house. The last night at home they had danced in the old town hall, then in the bright sun the next day had marched away while the bands played to small groups of cheering townsmen. Marched smiling to their rendezvous with destiny in far away places of the world to make safe a home for others.

"Even as I look down on the old village, I am glad that of all the changing world, it seems to have changed the least. Here I seem out of touch with the great outside world yet I know full well that this small town has contributed its full share in the lives of its boys to the life of a great nation. For always here the destiny of man rolls ever on with out ceasing, life that of the restless waves of Old Muddy River, herself." by Muriel Degman Edmondson

My grandmother, Muriel Edmondson (1899-1987), wrote this about Brownville while reflecting on her ancestors.
submitted by Marci Evans

Muriel DEGMAN EDMONDSON (1899-1987).  She shares a Walnut Grove burial plot with her infant daughter, Zenna, her mother, Melinda Melvina AKLES DEGMAN,and her grandmother, Amanda M. MORFORD AKLES.  Her sister, Bess DEGMAN POND and her sister, Alice DEGMAN VAN NESS are also interred in Walnut Grove Cemetery, Brownville, NE
Submitted by George Edmondson