Brigham Young made trip after trip with foreign people of all kinds but blacks. Most of these could not speak English, and I don't think Brigham bought any water for them, as they were filthy dirty. Brigham was a great big fat man, and he kept himself pretty neat. He made just about one trip a year. One company of these immigrants was walking through, and the train was a couple of miles long. They went south of the river on the Oregon trail. There was no other road then.
On August 8, 1864, the Sioux people killed eleven men at 11:00 o'clock in the morning, on Elm creek. I was afraid to stay on our ranch, so I took the children and started to Fort Kearny. On the way we came to the place of the massacre. The dead men were lying side by side in a long trench, their faces were covered with blood and their boots were on. Three women were taken prisoners. I heard that there were two children in the party, and that they were thrown in the grass, but I looked all around for them and didn't find any signs of them. Friends of these people wrote to Mr. E. M. F. Leflang, to know if he could locate them. The Indians never troubled us except to take one team during this war, but I was always afraid when I saw the soldiers coming. They would come in the store and help themselves to tobacco, cookies, or anything. Then the teamsters would swing their long black-snake whips and bring them down across my chicken's heads, then pick them up and carry them to camp. I think the officers were the most to blame, for they sold the soldiers' rations, and the men were hungry.
When the Union Pacific railroad was first built we lived on our homestead north of the river and the town was started on our land. We had the contract to supply the wood for the engines. They didn't use any other fuel then. We hired men to cut the wood on Wood river where Eddyville and Sumner are now. I boarded the men in our new big house across from the depot in old Plum Creek. The store was below and there was an outside stairway for the men to go up. That summer Mr. Freeman was in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York talking up this country. Mr. Freeman was the first county clerk and his office was upstairs over the store. We rented some of the rooms to newcomers. We did a big business until the railroad moved the town to their section, a mile west. Mr. Freeman kept on trapping, and finally was drowned near Deadwood, South Dakota. I stayed by Dawson county and raised my family and they all are settled near me and have good homes.
EARLY DAYS IN DAWSON COUNTY
By Lucy R. Hewitt
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas J. Hewitt, in June, 1873, journeyed from Forreston, Illinois, to Plum Creek, Nebraska. Their object was to take advantage of the offer the government was making to civil war soldiers, whereby each soldier could obtain one hundred and sixty acres of land. They stopped at Grand Island and Kearney, but at neither place could they find two adjoining quarter sections, not yet filed on. They wanted two, for my grandfather, Rockwood, who lived with us was also a soldier. At Plum Creek, now Lexington, they were able to obtain what they wanted but it was six miles northwest of the station.
Plum Creek at that early date consisted of the depot. The town was a mile east and when my parents arrived at Plum Creek, they were obliged to walk back to the town, in order to find lodging for the night. Rooms seem to have been scarce for they had to share theirs with another man and his wife. They found a place to eat in the restaurant owned by Mr. and Mrs. E. D. Johnson.
In August of the same year, they made a second trip to Nebraska, this time with wagon and carriage, bringing with others a carpenter who built their house upon the dividing line of the two homesteads. This house had the distinction of being the first two-story house in the neighborhood. All the others were one-story, because the settlers feared the high winds that occasionally swept over the prairies. For a few months it was the farthest away from town.
In the three months between the two trips the town had moved to the depot, and had grown from nothing to a village of sixty houses and stores. The Johnsons had brought their restaurant and placed it upon the site where a little later they built a hotel called the Johnson house. Mr. T. Martin had built the first hotel which he named the Alhambra. I have a very faint recollection of being in this hotel when the third trip brought the household goods and the family to the new home. It was in December when this last journey was taken, and great was the astonishment of the older members of the family to see the ground covered with a foot of snow. They had been told that there was practically no winter in Nebraska, and they had believed the statement. They found that the thermometer could drop almost out of sight with the cold, and yet the greater part of many winters was very pleasant.