FILLMORE COUNTY IN THE SEVENTIES
By William Spade
We came to Nebraska in October of 1870 by wagon and wintered a mile east of what now is the Red Lion mill. We made several trips to Lincoln during the fall and winter and one to Nebraska City, where brother Dan and I shucked corn for a farmer for a dollar a day with team.
I moved on the William Bussard claim, later the Elof Lindgren farm, in March, 1871, and raised a crop, then moved on our homestead in section 24, town 8, range 3 west. We built part dugout and part sodup for a house and slept in it the first night with only the blue sky for a roof. Then we put on poles, brush, hay, dirt, and sod for a roof. This was in October, and we lived in this dugout until 1874, then built a sod house.
In April, 1873, we had a three days' snow storm called a blizzard. In the spring of 1871 I attended the election for the organization of the county of Fillmore. I followed farming as an occupation and in the fall of 1872 William Howell and I bought a threshing machine, which we ran for four seasons. Some of the accounts are still due and unpaid. Our lodging place generally was the straw stack or under the machine and our teams were tied to a wagon, but the meals we got were good. Aside from farming and threshing I put in some of the time at carpentry, walking sometimes six miles back and forth, night and morning.
In July or August, 1874, we had a visit from the grasshoppers, the like of which had never been seen before nor since. They came in black clouds and dropped down by the bushel and ate every green thing on earth and some things in the earth. We had visits from the Indians too but they mostly wanted "hogy" meat or something to fill their empty stomachs. Well, I said we built a sodup of two rooms with a board floor and three windows and two doors, plastered with Nebraska mud. We thought it a palace, for some time, and were comfortable.
In June, 1877, I took a foolish notion to make a fortune and in company with ten others, supplied with six months' provisions, started for the Black Hills. We drove ox teams and were nearly all summer on the road; at least we did not reach the mining places till August. In the meantime the water had played out in the placer mining district so there was "nothing doing." We prospected for quartz but that did not pan out satisfactorily, so we traded our grub that we did not need for gold dust and returned to our homes no richer than when we left. However, we had all of the fresh venison we could use both coming and going, besides seeing a good many Indians and lots of wild country that now is mostly settled up.