Putting Down Roots

This next part of the trip is something I have really been looking forward to. On our first trip in Wolf back in 2016, we spent some time in Encampment, Wyoming, where my grandmother (my father's mother) Willa Haggarty was born. This trip was cut short the very next day when our windshield was pelted with rocks.

Willa Haggarty's mother, Edith Crow, was born in Howard County, Nebraska, in 1878. Just five years before that her grandfather Mathias Crow had come to Nebraska with his family including his son Jonathan to homestead, claiming free land from the government. Well, not quite free as there were fees involved in the process but basically you moved on to the land, did improvements like a house, barn, fences, and then lived on and farmed the land for five years, less for Union veterans such as Jonathan, and then file your Final Proof and obtain title to the land.

Mathias and Jonathan started in Ohio and moved first to Illinois and then Iowa before coming to Spring Creek in Howard County, Nebraska, to try their hand at homesteading. Mathias, his son Jonathan, and Dillon Haworth, husband of Mathias's daughter Jane, all began the process of claiming homesteads. In April of 1873 a late and unexpected blizzard set in and Dillon, Jane, and their two little girls, Gracie and Eva Pearl, tried to reach better shelter than their unfinished dugout. Only little Eva survived.

The area in which the Crow families homesteaded is north of present day Grand Island which itself is north of I-80. We weren't headed for Spring Creek but were trying to find places in central Nebraska that would give us the feel for what homesteading there would have been like. I had found several potential museums starting in Gothenburg, west of Grand Island, which listed the Gothenburg Historical Museum as well as a Pony Express Station and a Sod House Museum although the latter was listed as closed and for sale.

Although we spotted where the Sod House Museum was right as we got off the interstate, we headed first for the Gothenburg Historical Museum. Although small and clearly run just by volunteers, the ladies were friendly and helpful including getting me and the walker up the stairs. This is a sweet little museum focused primarily on the history of the immediate area. It is just around the corner from the Pony Express Station and both can be visited in one stop.

By the time we were done at the historical museum, it was lunch time so we stopped at a local fast food chain called Runza. It looked different than the usual, the parking lot was big enough for Wolf and we were hungry - a trifecta. They carried the usual burgers and chicken and salads and also their specialty, the Runza, a cocoon of dough enveloping a cooked mixture of ground beef and cabbage. I had to try that! Mine also had swiss cheese and mushroom. Excellent! Florida should have some of these places!

From there we headed back to the interstate and the Sod House Museum. Tucked behind a gas station there at the exit was a big red barn and a for sale sign. But if you get out of your vehicle and walk over to the side of the barn, in a meadow back behind it is an old sod house. It's definitely showing the signs of age and neglect but I suppose in some ways that makes it more real.

I would have liked to have been able to go inside it and gotten a feel for the size ... in his homestead filings Jonathan describes the home he has built as being 16 x 20 feet in size with one door and two windows and that it has been his exclusive home and that of his family of a wife and five children from the 22nd of April in 1873 through the 26th of October 1874. He states he has cultivated about 15 acres of the land and built a sod stable 12 x 20 feet and set out and has growing about 250 fruit and 50 forest trees.

Imagine seven people living in 320 square feet! Even though five of them were children and much time was spent outdoors, try blocking out a space that size, then imagine beds, table, chairs or benches, a stove, a fireplace and seven people! And then remember that this is not unusual, many families lived in spaces this size, some in less.

Some were larger, Jonathan's father Mathias says his house was dugout and lumber, 14 x 45 feet with 4 rooms, 2 doors, and 6 windows, although remember that Mathias' family was on the whole young adults and teenagers with the youngest being Laura, known as Dallas, born in 1865. Older children meaning more help in building and more need for space. The home probably had a room for the boys, a room for the girls and one for the parents.

From here we headed for Lexington, Nebraska, and the Dawson County Historical Museum, a larger building with more room to grow. They have taken a large space and built movable dividing walls to  make a hallway of three walled rooms displaying different groupings of objects ... hard to explain but excellent results. With the movable walls they can adjust the size of each 'room' to suit the display.

Here in their gift shop I picked up a book title "Sod House Memories" and flipped it open right to a page about the blizzard that had killed Dillon, Jane, and little Gracie. A definite keeper, besides, every purchase in a gift shop helps support the place.

Next on our list was Pioneer Village in Minden which is heavily advertised and online looked quite interesting but when we got there (not such a short drive off the interstate as advertised) it looked neglected and dilapidated. The parking was minimal and not RV friendly or paved and the buildings looked small and difficult for mobility impaired access. It's possible we missed something good but we were tired and annoyed at what we saw so far so we said f--- it and headed back north towards the interstate.

When we got there the entrance to I-80 eastbound was closed! We had to take the back roads back to the last exit, Kearney, to find somewhere to stay the night. We stayed at the Kearney RV Park, a nice little park just off the interstate. We later found out there had been a fiery accident closing the eastbound side of the interstate between two exits. The accident involved five cars and two semi's killing at least three people. If we had not made the otherwise wasted digression to Pioneer Village, we might have been in the middle of it!

News photo of accident we might have been in!