This hail-storm was a general calamity. The whole country suffered and many families returned, disheartened, to friends in the East.
The Baptist church was so shattered that, for its few members, it was no easy task to repair it. But they soon put it in good condition, only to see it utterly wrecked by a small cyclone the following October.
The income that year from a forty-acre cornfield was one small "nubbin" less than three inches in length.
All these things served to emphasize the heart-rending stories we had heard of sufferings of early pioneers. The nervous shock sustained by the writer was so great that a year elapsed before she was able to see clearly, or to read. As she was engaged on the four years' post-graduate course of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, her eldest son read aloud to her during that year and her work was completed at the same time as he and his younger sister graduated with the class of 1887.
Some time later the writer organized a Chautauqua Circle, Ord's first literary society. Its president was a Mr. King and its secretary E. J. Clements, now of Lincoln, Nebraska.
During our second winter in Nebraska the writer did not see a woman to speak to after her daughters went to their schools in Lincoln, where one was teaching and the other a University pupil.
Of the "Minnie Freeman Storm" in January, 1888, all our readers have doubtless heard. Our two youngest boys were at school a mile away; but fortunately we lived south of town and they reached home in safety.
In 1881 Fort Hartsuff, twelve miles away, had been abandoned. The building of this fort had been the salvation of pioneers, giving them work and wages after the terrible scourge of locusts in 1874. It was still the pride of those who had been enabled to remain in the desolated country and we heard much about it. So, when a brother came from New England to visit an only sister on the "Great American Desert," we took an early start one morning and visited "The Fort." The buildings, at that time, were in fairly good condition. Officers' quarters, barracks, commissary buildings, stables, and other structures were of concrete, so arranged as to form a hollow square; and, near by on a hill, was a circular stockade, which was said to be connected with the fort by an underground passage.
A prominent figure in Ord in 1884 was an attractive young lady who later married Dr. F. D. Haldeman. In 1904 Mrs. Haldeman organized Coronado chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution. Her sister, Dr. Minerva Newbecker, has practiced medicine in Ord for many years. Another sister, Clara Newbecker, has long been a teacher in the public schools of Chicago. These three sisters, who descended from Lieutenant Philip Newbecker, of Revolutionary fame, and Mrs. Nellie Coombs, are the only living charter members of Coronado chapter. The chapter was named in honor of that governor of New Galicia in Mexico who is supposed to have passed through some portion of our territory in 1540 when he fitted out an expedition to seek and christianize the people of that wonderful region where "golden bells and dishes of solid gold" hung thick upon the trees.
About all that is definitely known is that he set up a cross at the big river, with the inscription: "Thus far came Francisco de Coronado, General of an expedition."