I had never heard of the Bandit War(s) or Camp Llano Grande until I was reading the Bartley Inter-Ocean paper from August 1916. “The boys at Camp Llano had their first big tramp last week when they indulged in an eight-mile practice march. Every man in the service at Camp Llano carried a cord around his neck with his name and rank in company stamped on it as an identification card. ...

In an 1888 article promoting Red Willow County that appeared on the front page of the McCook Tribune, the following comments were made about Lebanon: “Lebanon is most beautifully located on Beaver valley, is a yearling, and a most promising yearling it is. There is one bank, a live weekly newspaper, a fine hotel and the different branches of merchandise represented with full stores. This town is surrounded by a rich agricultural country that is being developed rapidly.”...

In 1904-1905 editions of the McCook Tribune there are columns entitled “ Items From Stringtown.” I’m going to share a few of the postings in hopes that someone, somewhere will tell me exactly where Stringtown was! It seems in my foggy memory that I knew once but the information has escaped me. ...

Once again I have been digging into old newspapers. Several years ago, I expanded my Ancestry membership to include Fold 3 and Newspapers.Com. It was mostly a money saving move since I had three memberships and when Ancestry bought the other two they offered a deal I couldn’t resist. Newspapers.com has some newspapers on it that aren’t available through Chronicling America, one of which, The Cambridge Clarion, covers well past 1935...

It doesn’t hurt anyone to eat a little crow once in a while and it is apparently my turn to savor the dish. This column is going to center around McCook in the year 1909 which thankfully, is very well documented, through a Sanborn Map and the McCook High School 1909 class annual. Both of these are available for you to research on our website, www.swngs.org. The website is free for anyone to use!...

Imagine that you live during a time that there are no TVs, phones or radios. Where do you get your news? Newspapers! McCook was lucky to have newspapers and they sprang to life almost immediately when the town was born. Many issues of the Weekly McCook Tribune from 1883 are available to research online at www.chroniclingamerica.gov...

There’s one in every generation, the child that snoops. No corner, drawer, trunk, cupboard, desk, box or closet is safe from the family snooper. They give themselves away, unknowingly, when one of their parents is trying to remember where some object was placed for safekeeping and a little voice says: “it’s in the upstairs closet.”...

130 years ago, the United States was preparing to take the eleventh census of the population. In the McCook Tribune, May 30, 1890 there was an explanation of what would be covered in the census questions. Genealogically speaking, the expanded questions were quite handy for those doing research...

Due to the increase of personal requests I’ve received in the last couple of weeks, I am assuming that everyone is over with reorganizing their closets and looking for another project to attempt. Family history/genealogy will keep your mind off COVID-19 as you sit at home...

Mornings find the refrain “nobody told me there would-be days like these” playing in my mind. I’m certain somebody did tell me, but I’m not always a good listener. My Christmas letter is not done yet, the Christmas bouquets for the gravesites I decorate are sitting in my living room, the front porch still has Fall décor, and it is December 8th for Pete’s sake. Guarantee we aren’t going to be baking Christmas cookies this year and the grandkids aren’t going to be happy about that...

Before this was printed in an unknown newspaper in 1927, it was clipped and saved by John Irwin when printed in the Danbury news. It is attributed to G. T. Plumb of Marion noted as “one of our most interesting pioneers”. “Come, all you enterprising tenderfeet. If you will listen to my song, I will try and not be tedious, nor will I detain you long: while I tell you how we used to do, way back in seventy-three, when we wore buffalo hocks for moccasins, skill off above the knee...

As always when Bill and Lynda Baumbach leave bits of history at my door, I find treasures. Among the pieces is a newspaper clipping written by Mrs. A. Martin Anderson that touches on her life as an early settler. You might wonder why I would reprint these things, but aside from this clipping so carefully saved, there is nothing online available to recall this...

Genealogy seems to lead me to interesting people. This week I found I had a message from a woman thought to be a distant relative on my Davison side. Davison, Davidson, Davisson…just like many surnames from our migrant past, the spelling doesn’t always mean you are or are not related. ...

It seems that every generation believes they are the first to recognize social problems and therefore the first to have good ideas on how to deal with them. Call it what you want but social inequity wasn’t invented today and ways to solve that problem has plagued Red Willow County since the late 1800s. ...

One of the best parts of writing this little column is the people I get to meet and the stories I get to share with my readers. Bette Rice touched base with me about a pioneer story by Ethel Lawton Cole, Pete Rice’s grandmother, which was printed in the Palisade Times, September 24, 1937. Bette gave me a copy of the story to share...

One of the services our society provides is researching historical people or places. Michael Simmonds, our new Red Willow/Furnas County Veteran Service Officer, contacted Chris Christensen concerning an area in Memorial Park cemetery where a flag pole exists...

Sometimes you just have to go back in time for a bit of comic relief. I found this article entitled “Married and Skipped” in the 1898 McCook Tribune, May 6th edition and I had to share it before I lost it again! “Samuel Mellen was up before Squire Berry, Tuesday night, charged with being responsible for the unfortunate condition of a young woman named Bertha Dubarko. ...

Whenever I have a free moment, I have been working on the Hayes county papers gifted to the genealogy library by Sharon Lytle. I have found myself straying from the job at hand and reading selections of news articles, this last group from 1999. One of the columns, the Swan Lake News, has tweaked my curiosity as to the location and reason behind the “Swan Lake” personals. ...

I finally broke down and bought a replacement phone for our house. My answering machine/phone combo had given up the ghost several months ago so that even though the calls got answered, I couldn’t talk to anyone or recover any messages. The ringer had broken even before that resulting in blessed silence since 99 per cent of the calls were those robo, steal someone else’s number to disguise your true self, calls. ...

The push to make education of our young people (compulsory public education) started with the Smith-Towner bill in 1920. My mother was 8 years old by then. Imagine that! Red Willow county began to be settled in 1871, 39 years prior, and yet one year after Red Willow County was officially organized in 1873, nine school districts had been formed...

These paragraphs have been taken from the three-ring notebook labeled H.P. Waite and donated to our library by the estate of Zolona Chinn, one of the founders of our society. Because there is a mixture of information contained within this notebook, I can’t determine if all of it came from H.P., but the stories are too good to not share. ...

There’s a reason why our Genealogical Society is called Southwest Nebraska. Perhaps it should cast an even wider net, but the majority of our state records are related to the region it is named after. It seems logical to me that in order for any of our towns, including McCook, to survive, we have to include regional populations from our rural areas, across the border into NW Kansas and no doubt reaching into the corner of NE Colorado when we proclaim the benefits of living here. ...

My first Christmas present was a puppy, a cocker spaniel named Duke. Duke was a great dog that was allowed in the house only to the landing at the back entrance. Dogs were dogs, not pseudo people, back then. Duke did share one thing with his people family and that was a love of mom’s cooking. ...

Loving books started at home, my parents both loved to read and therefore, out on the acreage I also found books to be the best of entertainment! Writing came a bit later. When I was in sixth grade, my teacher was Mrs. Jenkins. Now Mrs. Jenkins loved to read also and the first of the year she challenged us with a reading requirement that we had to fill in the name of each book we had read over the year. ...

My first memory of going fishing was at the Medicine Creek lake when the water level wasn’t even close to full. Dad, who grew up fishing every creek and river in the area, loved fishing for catfish and though I’m not really sure why he took me along (it may be that mom wanted a break), off we went with worms, poles, bobbers and net. ...

You might have noticed in my articles that I use words like “presumed”, “highly likely”, and do not imply that anything historic is an absolute fact. History, even as it was created yesterday, is only a compilation of human interpretations of events that occurred, or, maybe even didn’t occur. It’s kind of like eyewitnesses at a crime scene, everyone saw something, but no one saw the whole...

While we have grown up thinking that the United States was created by the landing of the Puritans in 1620, a vast portion of what makes up our country today was actually claimed by Spain after the exploratory voyage of Christopher Columbus (an Italian ship’s captain) who sailed because of the monetary contribution of Queen Isabella of Spain in 1492...

I have been working for a couple of weeks on a story about the Spanish influence on our area, but as I sat down to finish that work, I realized that tomorrow our mother, Rhoby (Davison Bridenstein) Coady, was born 108 years ago and I felt the need to re-visit all the things that helped to shape her life and the calm with which she met each storm...

You will have to bear with me if you’ve heard this story before but 1963 was a banner year for me. After all, one only turns 13 once and becoming a teenager was on the schedule for not only myself, but my best friends, Judy and Donna. Back in those days there was a lot of angst about when our mothers were going to allow us to do certain things and at the time those “things” seemed like just about the most important thing in the world, right after watching Little Joe on Bonanza each week...

Last week my final note was about an advertisement I found for the McCook General Hospital created by Dr. Reid and located one block west of the courthouse. Lo and behold, Ron Allen contacted me with a complete booklet on the McCook General Hospital that was in a scrapbook from one of his Grandmother Allen’s sisters! What a find. ...

One way to learn more about an era that your ancestors lived in is to check out the advertisements in the paper. As I have mentioned before, www.chroniclingamerica.gov has several years of the McCook Tribune and the McCook Weekly Tribune that can be researched online using the Advanced Search tab and then selecting the McCook Tribune and placing the word or words in the search boxes below. ...

I am certain there are other things I could be doing but then again, it is beautiful outside and my front porch beckons! Front porch sitting is back in vogue! Plop a comfy chair down, and I don’t mean your leftover couch no matter how comfy it is, and watch the world go by. ...

Some days I have to continually remind myself that not everyone appreciates my sense of humor. Even I, at times, wonder if I really said what just flew out of my mouth. In these days of “political correctness” I find the term self-isolating to just be ridiculous. ...

The common phrase used lately seems to suggest that this world will never return to “normal” or what was considered normal after Covid 19, but, as those of us who have an abundance of gray hair these days knows, it will, just as it did after the pandemics of 1918, 1957 and 1968. ...

The basement is cleaned, the garage too and so in an attempt to forget what a mess my genealogy files are, I headed to the flower gardens. While I am not particularly grieving about the “social distancing”, my flower beds have always had a mind of their own and to decide to attack them is folly at its best. ...

I used to have an abundance of tea towels…..you know, those wonderful white kitchen towels that often were embroidered with cute little “days of the week” sunbonnet girls. I always felt sorry for Wednesday’s girl: Full of Woe. While I never became a needlework expert, the void was filled by many others in the family, the last, my sister-in-law’s mother, Dora Wissler, who is no doubt stitching for the angels now. ...

There’s nothing more important than getting your mail, even today. Years ago, there were post offices in places such as private homes or general stores and they were located so that all the rural areas didn’t have to travel by wagon to town just to get their mail. ...

Is there anyone else out there that detests “catch phrases” as much as I do? Probably not, but in this day and age we are subjected to them on a minute by minute barrage from every news channel. It makes you think that someone, sitting at home as an “abundance of caution”, is writing the captions for all newscasters and sending them out in an email each day...

Before delving into my article, the SWNGS board has determined that the library will not be open for the time being. You may still do an amazing amount of research for free on our web site: www.swngs.org. We will keep you posted as to when the library will re-open and if an April meeting will be held...

In 1963 there were three funeral homes in McCook: Breland Funeral Chapel at 1001 Norris Ave., Carpenter Funeral Home at 305 West C and Herrmann’s Funeral Home at 607 Norris Ave. What you may not remember about both the Breland and Carpenter businesses is that they also provided ambulance service for McCook...

1963 was a sad year for my family as we lost two very precious family members just a few months apart. As I was entering my teenage years, these were the first losses that I faced with full knowledge the finality of death. Then, with the assassination of President Kennedy, I grasped the concept of true evil in the form of man. ...

I written about the Omaha Daily Bee newspaper and its influence in Nebraska. If you go to www.chroniclingamerica.gov and bring up the Omaha Bee in the advanced search box, by entering McCook in the phrase box, you will find around 7,000 pages of results. ...

I’m going to digress a bit from genealogy for a moment. When I was growing up, my mother saved bacon grease in a holder that sat on the back of the stove and yes, she used that grease to cook fried potatoes, hominy or other wonderful foods. A spoon full was always added to the pancake batter to make them richly brown. ...

A “Hall of Fame” contest was held in 1976 by the Red Willow County Bicentennial Committee as part of the celebration. Committee members, Lester Harsh, Bob Paschall, John McDowell, and Donna Cheney (Mrs. Wendell Cheney) announced that the purpose of the contest was to select names of individuals who would be permanently recorded as part of the history of Red Willow County...

In past columns I have written about my father-in-law’s quest to uncover the details of his birth parents. Never was his curiosity driven by a desire to deny the loving family that he grew up in, the parents who were the only ones he knew, the brothers and sisters whom he loved, but rather a completion of the circle of his life. ...

When my parents moved us to McCook from Indianola, I found myself in the middle of a “neighborhood”. Of course, we had neighbors down the lane when we lived on the acreage out of town, 2 families to be exact, but living on Sunset Road meant we had neighbors everywhere. It was a new experience for my brother and I, actually having people our own age within a few steps and for myself the girl on the block ended up being my lifelong best friend...

I traveled east of Marion this week to re-visit the town of Lebanon. Lebanon’s society writer was prolific in his (or her) coverage of the goings on. Reading though the weekly column, one would be fully informed of who, what, when and where of the town residents...

The many schools that existed when I was young have joined into few, and as the schools left, the glue that held the community together dissipated. The school building was often the largest building available and served many functions beyond educating the precious children each family sent off to be taught the three “R’s” ; reading, writing, arithmetic...

Corporal punishment didn’t even have a name when I was in school. It was known as being sent to the principal for a swat, but it actually existed in many classrooms, no need for the principal to be bothered. Our classrooms were crowded by today’s standards because the “baby boom” of the 1950’s was in full swing. ...

How often do you use a facility, travel a road or enter a building and really appreciate the fact that someone in the past looked to the future and created a perfect solution to a need that still exists today? Have you ever given thought to the fact that the City of McCook has zero at grade railroad crossings? Can you name even one town in Nebraska that has that claim to fame? Probably not because I don’t believe that any other exists...

Probate records are predominately records concerning wills or lack thereof. The word probate comes from Latin and means “to prove” which in the case of wills means to prove to the court that the will provided is authentic and is the last testament of the person who has died. If there is a will and it is authentic, the probate is called testate. If there is no will it is intestate...

When I was growing up in Indianola, we attended the Methodist Church. Mom taught Sunday School and when I was older, I sang in the choir and taught the younger grades in Sunday School, but it is the Christmas celebrations at church that I remember so vividly...

Among the many items held in the SWNGS library is a section of wedding, obituary & anniversary clippings taken from the McCook Gazette, McCook Democrat, McCook Republican and the McCook Tribune dating from 1885 through 2018. The early newspaper clippings have been transcribed and are available to research online. ...

Before I get to the point, I want to clear up something I wrote about a while back. When McCook became the county seat of Red Willow County, the courthouse had not been built yet, but the records had to go somewhere. I thought that they were housed in the building on the corner of Norris and West C Street, but when researching an entirely different subject, I referred back to the 1889 Sanborn Map of McCook and found that the Phillips-Meeker building was what I now refer to as the Hansen bldg., and has also been known as the Kelly bldg., now housing in the north section, McCook Abstract. ...

Let’s start down memory lane with a request for your memories. Robert (Bob) and Susan Ihrig, both SW Nebraska natives, are compiling a book about area bands and musicians. They are asking for any band or musician recollections or connections you might have so that they don’t miss one of our many talented artists. You can reach them on Facebook or contact me at sdoak@swnebr.net and I will pass your contact info along...

Quite often on the Facebook page, Remember When in McCook, Nebraska, people post vintage pictures of McCook businesses or buildings. You are allowed to comment on those posts, give opinions as to where you think the building was located or what store is in that building now...

When I was a little girl and my dad got called to work, I would tell him that I wanted to work for the railroad and go “earn the beans”, as he always said he had to do. That wish came true some 40 years later but another of my occupational wishes never did, and that was to be a teacher...

Often, I have to take a few moments to say thank you to the people who remember our society or my columns. In this case, I have to play catch up, because I’m really behind on that list. First, Wendy Mefford Brown gifted a Natural History book from 1817 to the society a couple of months ago complete with a clipped article concerning its’ owner, C. W. Barnes, an early news paper publisher in McCook. It joins other books we have that give a researcher a bird’s eye view of life in centuries past...

Susan Doak Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society There are many things we might say this wonderful country doesn’t always get right, but after visiting Washington D.C. again after several years, I will say with some sadness that we get our memorials right. Since I had last visited D.C., which was prior to 911, several more had been built, but I want to mention the two which actually took my breath away...

Charles Meeker, whom, if you are aware of the name at all, is recognized with an irrigation ditch southwest of McCook being named after him; the Meeker Canal. Charles was brought in as a civil engineer to help the farmers attempting to design the best locations for the future canal and ended up being an advocate for the eventual financing and approval of the canal at a time when emotions were running high concerning land acquisition and costs...

As I noted before, our pioneer woman was educated and refined. When asked to write about the “society” of the frontier, she mentioned the surprise the soldiers expressed to find that these settlers had dictionaries, could read and write and were not the “dime novel style of the west”. ...

Perhaps our mystery pioneer woman did not reveal her name because at times in her reminiscing she is brutally honest in her misgivings; but, no matter what, she stayed, certainly not because their life was filled with earthly riches of the monetary kind. I’ll resume her story, which as you remember from last week, with their setting up housekeeping in a tent with a dugout kitchen resplendent with pots and griddles hung on the post...

As you all know, my nose is often buried in the newspapers of the past searching out tidbits of information that will help us understand how very tough and resilient our ancestors were as they settled this corner of southwest Nebraska. I knew that some of the early publishers had featured columns by “Old Settlers” but never could settle on one no matter what I put in the search engine box...

The hoosegow, slammer, calaboose, pokey, stoney lonesome, greybar hotel, stockade, no matter what the name, jail was meant to hold those ordered there. In the early 1900’s however, being placed in jail did not necessarily mean you were going to stay there!...

Our little genealogy library has been blessed in many ways lately. We have received some fantastic donations from families who were clearing homes out. It’s hard to say goodbye to the things that our parents or grandparents loved, but rest assured, by gifting items to our library, they will be shared and appreciated by many...

Let me begin by saying I have never been a fan of beets. Consequently, my family, including my husband who loves beets, has seen them only on buffets or other people’s tables. It is very strange that I did not learn to like beets, I am a veggie lover from way back having a mother who introduced me to things like artichokes and asparagus and a father who grew the best kohlrabi around...

If anyone is expecting an organized article from me this week, they will be sorely disappointed. This time of year, I am trying to put up produce and act like I know what I am doing which is often glaringly not so. This week is corn on the cob, pasta sauce, salsa and pickled corn relish, a new addition to my pantry after reading an article on pickling in Mother Earth News...

Imagine you are back in time and it is 1886. You don’t turn on a faucet to fill your sink, but you might, as my aunt did, have a hand pump that brings water up to cook and clean with. You might, but then again, all the water you have to use could be sitting in barrels hauled up from the creek by the oxen team that pulled your covered wagon into Nebraska. ...

As is always true, families that live miles apart get together for funerals and last week as we said goodbye to Steve, we had people from Virginia, California, Arkansas, Colorado gathered together for what became a determined goal of making a family reunion a yearly occurrence. Since McCook is the halfway point for most, and the lake, which Steve loved to visit, a draw for all, we will gladly welcome them all back each year for a celebration of family...

I like the adage: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” No idea who coined that phrase, but sometimes it is refreshing to look back to the “good ole days” and find that they were probably only good because we were too young to understand what was going on in the world...

I have written before about Red Willow County taking exhibits to the Nebraska State Fair of farm products. Quite often the Burlington would offer a free train ride to those exhibits and the people accompanying them. There were even pictures of the exhibits in the Tribune when Red Willow placed well at the state level, but I never quite understood what was behind the exuberance in a county, rather than individuals participating...

The gifts of items expanded last month when we received several issues of the Red Willow Zephyr, the earliest of which was the 1939 annual. Since I grew up in Indianola, I am very familiar with the Red Willow School. The two high schools were competitors in sports, and I sat in the original building’s gymnasium for basketball games. ...

The 1935 Flood has been extensively covered over the years, but I was always curious about what happened afterwards. A wonderful morning spent with Clara (Lebsack) Adams and her gift of a scrapbook to the genealogical society helped fill in some of those blanks...

It seems many people no longer subscribe to a newspaper. Perhaps they purchase one only when a front page grabs their attention as they stand in line at the grocery or I am sure there are some who take it on-line as I do for the Lincoln Star Journal. No reason to cut down a tree so I can read a distant newsprint, but, then again, I love holding books, magazines, and newspapers rather than reading on a screen...

Life events often draw us to go back and try to imagine what life was like at that time. This week with the 75th Anniversary of D-Day plus some personal losses, I was curious about what life was like after the war ended and before I was born so I grabbed the 1947 MHS Annual to look back...

Since this Sunday is the Riverview Cemetery Tour as part of the Buffalo Commons celebration and we are honoring 10 of our numerous Civil War Veterans, I thought I would continue with John Cordeal’s saga concerning the beginning of McCook and the end of Fairview...

The McCook Daily Gazette produced a 50th Anniversary Souvenir Edition in 1932 entitled “The Pioneer’s Dream in 1882”. SWNGS library has both an original and a photocopy of the book which is 82 pages packed full of pictures and stories from the early days. None of us were around to see it, but the original town, Fairview, sat on the bank of the Republican River. I’m going to excerpt the early story of McCook’s development in this column...

Last year over Memorial Day my cousin and aunt came from Colorado to be joined with my father’s cousin and myself to decorate somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 graves throughout southwest Nebraska and northwest Kansas. It was a special day, mapped out so that we could visit as many gravesites as possible in one day. ...

Shades of Russian interference, you can’t believe everything you read! For as long as I’ve done this column, I’ve said: “ Documentation, always get documentation!” Aunt Mae may remember it one way, Uncle John another, and neither may be right! So, of all things, even though a little voice in my head (and I have lots of those voices) was harping at me to not take everything as the truth in that little book that Lois and Bob wrote, I went ahead and wrote that Stonewall Jackson’s daughter lived briefly in McCook. ...

The trouble with doing research, let me rephrase that, the trouble with “MY” doing research is that I hunt for what answers my question and ignore the other things contained within a paper or a book. That is exactly what I had done with Trails West to Red Willow County by Robert T. Ray and Lois Rutledge. I should have understood the treasures they preserved for us all...

The war between the north and south was the bloodiest war the United States ever fought as far as loss of life. The battle of Antietam was the bloodiest battle of the war according to historical records. Commanders of the War, George McClellan for the Union and Robert E. Lee for the Confederate army, oversaw the engagement of 132,000 soldiers: 87,000 for the North and 45,000 for the South...

A source of information that I often omit writing about is the National Archives. If you go to www.archives.gov, you will find an enormous listing of available records, some of which are online. Just pulling from their genealogy section you find applications for enrollment in Native American Tribes, court records, fugitive slave cases, land records, military personnel records, naturalization records and federal employee records (historical)...

By the time you are reading this we have either had a spring blizzard or a dusting of snow but we have at least had a warning of what may occur. That warning gives us time to prepare, to remember to fill our cars with gas, bring our early planted pots into shelter, try to protect the newly born calves or test the snow blower one last (we hope) time before the peach trees start to blossom. We do, after all, live in Nebraska and our environment is always predictably unpredictable...

Zolona Chinn, a driving force behind creating the genealogy society, had many items covering the history of Southwest Nebraska in her collection and our little genealogy library was the grateful recipient of many of those books. One such book was a compilation of the Pioneer Stories printed in the Beaver City Times-Tribune reprinted in book form in 1914. ...

Over the past few years of columns I have talked about my gg- grandfather, William Joseph Coady, who in an effort to prove his service in the Civil War and thereby obtain a stipend for his wife (who was much younger than he) and children, walked from the Alma, Nebraska area to Shelby, Indiana to complete his quest. ...

The SWNGS library has a large accumulation of McCook High School Annuals which I often go to for stories. Some of the annuals are very detailed and provide pictures of all the classes in McCook from Kindergarten on up. Others have pictures, but no names attached to them other than generic “Choir” or “Wrestling” underneath. ...

I’m always on the lookout for a good story and they seem to appear in the strangest places! On a trip I met a man whose family had owned part of the huge Cattle Baron, I.P. “Print” Olive land after he had left to resettle in Kansas. The large spread was in an area around where Calloway is today...

All this DNA information that people are gathering at times can be more confusing than helpful. How do you get to be fourth cousins, let alone cousins once removed? I must continually go back to a chart to figure it out, so maybe this column will help you with those questions!...

Several posts on Remember When in McCook Nebraska were memories of learning to swim at the old YMCA building on Norris. For those who grew up in McCook, they will remember that “way back when,” swimming lessons at the Y were split with boys in one group and girls in another. It seems, and I have no way of proving this, that the boys got to swim without the constraints of a swimming suit!...

If you’re like me, a little bit of information just makes you want to know more. In genealogy, knowing more is sometimes like a horseless wagon, you either hitch those ponies up or you’re not going anywhere. I’ve done a lot of sitting in that wagon looking at the harnesses and not knowing what the next step is lately...

The war between the north and south was the bloodiest war the United States ever fought as far as loss of life. The battle of Antietam was the bloodiest battle of the war according to historical records. Commanders of the War, George McClellan for the Union and Robert E. Lee for the Confederate army, oversaw the engagement of 132,000 soldiers: 87,000 for the North and 45,000 for the South...

How many remember that there used to be two school buildings on the block that now holds Central Elementary? The beginning was the East building facing West 1st street built to house the senior high classes. The second building was erected in the fall of 1922 and built for the junior high and set to the west of the senior high building...

The 1921 MHS annual contains many advertisements for local business throughout. The first one that caught my eye was for the J.J. Gragg Auto Company which was located on East B Street. Gragg was a distributor for Hupmobile Cars. Now I’ve been to a lot of car museums and shows and I couldn’t remember having seen a Hupmobile, so as you all know, I just had to do some more research!...

To finish up with the 1950 McCook-Culbertson Telephone Directory, I thought I would stir some memories for those who are a bit older than me. My last article mentioned the Coney Island at 501 West B Street and I got an immediate response from someone who had worked there...

If you have ever had to pack up a loved one’s home, especially if you lived in that home with them, you will understand the difficulty in letting go of memories by letting go of stuff. When it gets too difficult, out come the totes and in goes everything you just can’t deal with at the time. Fast forward a few years and those totes sit untouched. Were those things really that important?...

Well the mid-term elections are over, and it seems that finally people decided that voting was an important thing. Personally, I would like to see our voter turn out nearer the 90 per centile, but that is probably an illogical dream. In case you are still operating in the dark ages, as I do sometimes, I will tell you that names are no longer removed from the registered voters list because you didn’t vote in the last general election. ...

One of my very dear friends posted a photo of a car buried in snow with a remark asking for 6 feet of snow this winter. With the same joviality, I answered that would be fine, 3 inches at a time. Not everyone found either funny of course, but after all, the wooly caterpillars are boasting a fine coat this year and they are at least as reliable as the weatherman...

Perhaps you are a crafter who buys a frame to use in a project and a photo is still in the frame. Maybe you rehab homes and find photos as you remodel. At an auction you buy an old trunk and find a collection of pictures in it. What do you do with the photos? They mean nothing to you, but it is very possible they would mean the world to someone else...

Mother Nature always wins and she’s not always a fair fighter! Since I have taken on the mantle of “Thistle Queen” as far as keeping the “noxious weeds” off our land, I have determined there is no such thing as elimination when it comes to weeds. It’s not that I don’t try and because I don’t blanket spray our pastures, I have graduated from a 3-gallon hand held sprayer to a 5 gallon back pack sprayer to a 25-gallon sprayer that sits on my golf cart and has a 15’ hose. ...

About the time I think this column has run its course, someone like Larry Richards stops in the office with an answer to a question posed some time ago. If you remember, I wrote about the Lebanon Girls Baseball team and their games against the Sunflower girls of Kansas in 1904. In the article, I mentioned how great it would be to see a picture of these girls and here months later, Larry stops by with just that thing!...

The G.A.R. emblems you see next to several cemetery plots signify the burial of a soldier that served in the Civil War. While estimates vary, the death toll from the Civil War certainly exceeds 600,000 soldiers and may well have gone beyond 800,000 people. Since the war was fought between 1861 and 1865 and youngsters barely in their teens fought along side men long in the tooth, there were still many of them alive into the 1900’s...

It seems the older I get the more I resist change. This is comfortable; it works doesn’t it; why mess with things? The problem is, if we don’t welcome change, we don’t open ourselves to the opportunities that come with walking down a different path!...

As the final plans are falling into place for my MHS 50th Class Reunion, I find my mind wandering back to those days, not to relive them necessarily, just to remember all the details that wrap around the wonderful people who were in my life then and have left this world...

I’ve reached the age where I have “long time ago” memories; I just need check them to make sure they are correct! When asked if I remembered Chef LaLanne’s restaurant being in McCook, I did, at the location of the former Chief Restaurant, now VK Electronics, back in the 60’s. ...

I’ve been wandering around in old newspapers again using www.chroniclingamerica.gov a free website provided by the Library of Congress, and I was looking at early schools in McCook finding a reference to the Tully building on Main (Norris) Street being used for grade school classes...

It does not pay to be too sanctimonious about your ancestors when you are researching them. They were after all, humans, just like all of us. As a point, I got a kick out of some early history of Iowa and the Catholic-Irish settlement that my great-great grandparents were a part of when I read that because clergymen were usually circuit priests (traveling between sparsely populated “towns”) scheduled to be only in an area for a short time and then returning a few months later, there were times when the birth of a child proceeded it’s parents’ marriage. ...

Several stories have been written about the infamous train wreck of 1911 but Mike Fidler’s search for answers concerning the Feekins led me to do a little more digging. Mike’s family lore had the Feekins as newlyweds killed on their wedding day in the wreck, but we found that they had been married for two years...

If you enjoy this column or the columns by Walt Sehnert and past ones by Linda Hein, then you have benefited from the efforts of one man, Harry D. Strunk, who made the saving of McCook newspapers from the past a priority. It doesn’t matter what the reasons were for his gift to us, what matters is that he made sure they were saved...

Before I journey into the past, I need to correct my article last week about Gen Wagner. Gen’s location on Norris Ave did change before she retired when she moved to a storefront on West C Street. I didn’t remember that at all, but her grandson tells me they moved into a smaller one level store in the 80’s...

I stopped down at the office the other day and Mike Baumfalk handed me a donation for the genealogical library that he had found among his grandmother’s things. His grandmother, Gen (Ike) Wagner, was better known to us all as the proprietor of Gen’s Bridal Shop, a cornerstone of McCook’s retail stores for years...

I asked once if some observations I had made were appropriate for the column and the answer was, within reason, it is my column. This week, genealogy aside, I’m going to mention a few things that bother me so it’s your choice if you want to follow along...

These news items came from the Omaha Daily Bee, a large amount having been written by the “correspondent” I mentioned in my last article. He apparently rode the train to it’s final stop, which in the beginning was Indianola. “The B & M line was finished to Indianola on May 1. A station house, terminal facilities, and stock yards are now being erected, and trains will be begin running to Indianola over the extension about the 25th.” May 15, 1880...

Edward Rosewater was born in Bohemia in 1841, the son of a Jewish family, immigrating to the United States at the age of 13. He attended a commercial college and went to work for Southwestern Telegraph Company, the precursor of Western Union. Southwestern was in Alabama and Edward became caught up in the South during the Civil War only able to escape the clutches of the confederacy when transferred to Nashville which was captured by the Union Army in 1862. ...

I was going through some of the Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society's library books the other day and came across “The Red Willow County Bicentennial Hall of Fame,” which was compiled by a committee of Mr. Bob Paschall, Mr. John B. McDowell and Mrs. Wendell P. Cheney in 1976. They had solicited nominations with short bios from the area and ended up with 47 people that they included in the booklet...

Last week we made a quick trip out to Colorado and I got to spend time with my aunt and uncle, Stan and Erna Martin. We had a grand time, laughed a lot and reminisced about when my uncle moved to McCook from Oxford, working for the C B & Q Railroad. ...

The Cemetery Tour was a hot success in more ways than one! We certainly didn’t have to worry about being rained out this time though a few clouds would have been a welcomed addition. Kuddos to the actors and the audience for braving the heat. One of the persons portrayed was Cora (French) Evans who was suggested by Candy Crosby. Candy had discovered Cora, developed her story, and when the portrayer was ill Sunday, stepped in and told Cora’s story sans costume...

Last week I wrote briefly about searching news items for R.F.D Route personal items in the McCook Tribune. Prior to R.F.D., persons living outside of a settlement that had a post office had to either travel to a post office or pay a private carrier to bring their mail to them. ...

Before I delve into North McCook, I have a couple of things I would like to share. Friday my Aunt and cousins joined me in decorating graves throughout SW Nebraska and NW Kansas which was a 200-mile circle encompassing 9 cemeteries and over 50 of our relatives. ...

I don’t write much about Lebanon, that lays along Highway 89 in Red Willow County and was in the early 1900’s petitioning to become an incorporated town. Their first attempt, according to the McCook Tribune, encompassed so much land proposed to be within their city limits, that 7 bridges would become the responsibility of the town. They quickly withdrew their petition for reconsideration...

When I look back at the blessings in my life, and there are many, one that comes to mind over and over is the fact that I grew up surrounded by strong women: my mother, grandmothers, aunts, cousins and my sister didn’t just talk the talk, they walked it every day...

If Densel O’dea’s hard work comes to fruition, there will be a new Historical Marker in Red Willow County located at the site of the town of Red Willow. I had always thought that the town lay around the school house located on the highway between Indianola and McCook, that is, I always believed that until Densel approached me with the information about the actual site south the old school near the railroad tracks...

In 1940, the Nebraska Press Association published a book entitled: Who’s Who in Nebraska 1940. You can view the listings in this collection by going to: www.usgennet.org. The beginning of the publication covers what the editors called: 1867-1940 True Story of Nebraska and then provides a searchable list of Nebraska Counties and the people who were considered to be important enough to make the cut. ...

We all tend to remember things from 50 years ago better than we remember 10 years ago. I’m not sure why that is true, but it tends to be as exhibited by the Facebook page: Remember When in McCook Nebraska. Someone will post a picture or ask a question and 180 responses later you’ve got a history book full of information...

We have always been a giving town and proof of that generosity stands right before our eyes if we just look for it. When I attended the public hearing at the City Council chambers last night, I wondered if we had not forgotten our history of giving and instead look to government to provide all forms of services...

“An Act Appropriating the receipts from the sale and disposal of public lands in certain States and Territories to the construction of irrigation works for the reclamation of arid lands,” more commonly known as the Reclamation Act of 1902, came about after several states had suffered through severe drought conditions. ...

Mike Manker, who brought the Enright Collection to the Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society library, that was returned to a very grateful family, has again gifted the library with several historical books. Two copies of the booklet “One hundred years of living: Indianola Nebraska” were among these gifts. ...

My normal reading preferences are books that can be read in a day or two between trying to check off a daily list of “to-dos”. This last two weeks, having a bit more time on my hands, I tackled a book that I bought at a garage sale two years ago while on a trip in Utah. ...

Norris Park, so named after Senator George Norris, began its life as the Water Works location or more specifically, the location of the first “water tower” built to bring water to the homes and businesses of McCook. Many readers will remember the old water tower that stood on the north side of, as it was known then, City Park, but the story and costs are worthy of mention...

As promised, Agnes (Clark) Young caught up with many of her fellow 1913 classmates and reported in her journal on their progress in life. What a lot of readers don’t realize is that many towns did not have high schools at that time and so if you wanted to further your education, you had to attend in a town that did...

Sometimes you just must be in the right place at the right time, and today was jackpot day for me at the McCook Public Library. I had stopped by to talk business with Jody Crocker, Library Director, when she presented me with a Commencement Journal written by Agnes H. ...

I was reading a list of “arrangements” that my dear friend’s grand-daughters had proposed to their parents, five things that they thought should be allowed such as more I-pad time and a later bedtime! It reminded me of the first bargain I struck with my parents, probably the last one too! My mother struggled to turn me into a “lady” and I fought just as hard to stay the tomboy she was strapped with. ...

The portions of this story I am using today come from a paper available in the Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society’s library for further research. This is a perfect example of what I requested in my last article and that is why I am sharing it now. ...

It may not be Friday but with this cold weather the Friday night soup bag came out of the freezer today and I’ve got a nice pot of vegetable beef soup going for dinner! It has been cold here, but only on rare occasions is it colder (or hotter) in Lincoln than good ole McCook...

Often I get so wrapped up in history that I forget what the true mission of Southwest Nebraska Genealogical Society is. Yes, we preserve the written history of our tri-state corner of the world, but we do much, much more! Within the last few weeks we have returned a family document collection to the Enright family, that they were able to share together with all the relatives that gathered for Alice Enright’s son’s funeral. ...

When my house was quiet again, I went back to the Dalton newspaper which is available online at dalton.advantagepreservation.com to search for my mother, aunts, uncles, etc., which all lived in that vicinity at one time. Not many years are on the site for Dalton, there are far more papers copied for Yuma, Colorado, it just depends how many newspapers were actually available to be scanned. ...

The 75th Anniversary celebration for McCook was an event that captured the support and hard work of a large majority of McCook citizens. The steering committee, consisting of John T Harris, Nellie Petty, Harold Larmon, Fred Marsh and Ralph Miller, did not have to labor alone to provide entertainment during the four day extravaganza in June of 1957...

While I hate dragging the boxes up from the basement, I truly love my Christmas decorations so it’s worth the trouble. When I was placing each ornament on the tree, I kept thinking: “Wow, this is really old!” Whoa there, Susan, that ornament isn’t as old as you are! I’m not sure how it happened but I moved from “Classic” to “Vintage” to plain old “Antique” in the blink of an eye. ...

I picked up one of the booklets held in the SWNGS library. It was entitled “100 Year of Living-Indianola Nebraska 1873-1973”. There is a large amount of history contained within, most of which, according to a note within the book, came from Mrs. Asa Wolf’s personal collection. It seemed fitting that I found a story of the Christmas celebration of 1872 as told by E. S. Hill when he was 93...

We’re having fresh broccoli for dinner so as I was cleaning it, I didn’t throw the stems away but rather peeled them, sliced them and threw them in my soup bag in the freezer. I think you can probably guess my age by the fact I have a soup bag, or maybe you don’t even know what that is! Well, a soup bag is where you store all the bits and pieces of veggies left over from a meal. ...

A genealogist appears to be a person interested in their family tree who researches only information that pertains to themselves or their ancestors. In Southwest Nebraska, they are much, much more. The library maintained by Southwest Nebraska Nebraska Genealogical Society is a written memory bank for area records, plus a research facility for DAR, Mayflower Descendants and many of the 50 United States census, family history, and state history books...

We all learned about the Mayflower, the pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving when we were growing up. Somehow the famous voyage seemed exotic and adventurous in the history books, which of course it was, along with dangerous and without a doubt more uncomfortable than most modern day people would be able to endure...

Once in a while I need a real belly laugh just to get through the day and the McCook Tribune, back in the time where “editorial comment” was on the front page, never fails to provide one. The publisher would probably be sued today for this kind of coverage...

In one of my earlier articles I wrote about my GG Grandfather, John C. Eckert, sending peach leather to his homesteading children in Nebraska who quite obviously had no fruit trees at the time. Peach or any other kind of fruit leather was made by boiling down the fruit to a thick concentrate. ...

Walter N. Rogers was a Hereford man, convinced that breed of cattle would be best suited to the plains of southwest Nebraska. True to his vision, Walters secured a large farm site east of McCook and began building the story of Shadeland Park Ranch Herefords...

If you remember in March I wrote about the Enright family and our search to return family photos and memorabilia to them. Now, 6 months later, I had not one, but two responses to that column. One was from Tim Garry, Jr., who just happened to be the great-nephew of Col. (Rev) Neil F. Enright, O.M.I., or as Tim knew him, “Uncle Bud”...

A few house-cleaning things first before I cover some of the things I learned at our Exposition last week. The Heritage Cemetery Tour which was to take place over Heritage Days has been rescheduled for the Sunday of Buffalo Commons next year. We are excited to be able to still present this and to join with the Buffalo Commons group’s great weekend...

Before I delve into the pranks and parties of Halloween’s past, or All Saints Day as it used to be known, I must do a “shout out” to the McCook/Red Willow County Visitors Bureau for their continued support of all things good going on in our wonderful SW Nebraska communities. ...

I’ve taken a DNA test. Don’t be impressed because I might as well not have taken it for what I understand about the results. Yes, I’ve got all these DNA matches through Ancestry and yes, one woman whom I was certain was a relative turned out to be so, but at this point it all just looks impressive on paper...

There are no pictures of this train wreck splashed across the front page, only a vivid description of what happened. From the June 7, 1905 McCook Tribune: “A Community Mourns The Tragedy: On last Sunday evening at 8:44 o’clock, just a few hundred feet beyond the Turkey Creek Bridge, and almost midway between Oxford and Edison stations, took place the most appalling, heart-rending and fatal accident in the history of railroading on the Western Division of the great Burlington Route, and in a twinkling of an eye, without a moments warning, four lives were hurled into eternity, and one was saved as by a miracle, though severely injured.. ...

I once more want to remind everyone of two events that I think you might enjoy. This Sunday, as part of the Heritage Days Celebration (Nebraska’s 150th birthday and McCook’s 135th), we are hosting a Heritage Cemetery Tour that includes people in Riverview, Memorial Park, and Calvary Cemeteries. ...

I’ve mentioned the fact that we are hosting our Third Annual Genealogy Expo on Oct 14 here in McCook and now I’m going to give you a rundown on what will be covered. First up at 9 a.m. will be Megan Harwager from the Nebraska Children’s Home Society. ...

Ok I admit it; I’ve been going through old newspapers again. My husband might be right, it could be an addiction, but then again, I don’t know any re-hab program for it so I guess we will both have to live with it! So several of you got a kick out of football being Foot Ball and now I’ve found a new one, Bath Rooms. Here’s a couple of examples from early days and then some other bits of information that I just couldn’t pass up!...

I’ve written about the fact that McCook held a “Normal School” but not really covered what that type of school was. I’ve also written about my maternal grandmother, Flora Goding, who taught school at age 15, carrying a 7 shot revolver with her as she traveled between the school house and home...

The Ford Motor Company announces eight hour work days and $5 per day wages! U.S. Warships occupy Veracruz, Mexico for 6 months! Wrigley Field opens in Chicago and Babe Ruth makes his major league debut with the Boston Red Sox. Colorado National Guard attacks a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado killing 24! New York stock exchange closes for nearly four months due to war in Europe. ...

The boys of summer have put their bats away and exchanged them for pads and helmets. One of the things that small towns do is support their teams and McCook is no exception. One of the things that small town boys do is play multiple sports which leads to a cohesive group...

The following passages were taken from extractions available to research at our Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society library or online at www.swngs.org. All of these were from print in various McCook Tribune papers. Amy A Daniels was born in Logan County, Ill., January 21, 1871. ...

The sad thing about old newspapers is that a good portion of them were lost to time. Some that were saved had articles clipped from the paper leaving blanks, others were so damaged that it is hard to read what is written, and the McCook papers are no exception to that rule. Consequently, when you are researching McCook and the surrounding area, you need to broaden your search in Nebraska newspapers rather than clicking on a McCook Tribune tab when you are using www.chroniclingamerica.gov ...

A little story first about one of my children’s great grandfathers, Adam Baker, as told to me by his daughter, Dorothy (Baker) Roth: Adam immigrated over to the United States with his father and step-mother. Apparently the relationship between Adam and his father’s second wife was strained and as soon as they disembarked from the ship and passed through customs, Adam approached a police officer on the street and inquired as to whether he had to go with his father to Michigan or if he could refuse. ...

Whenever I mention to my grandchildren that I only wore dresses, never any type of slacks or jeans to school from kindergarten through graduation, they give me a look that kind of suggests I should have my mind examined. It didn’t matter if it was a blizzard and 20 below zero when every young woman left for grade school in the morning; she had a skirt or a dress on. ...

I’ve wanted to review one particular book that my good friend, Brenda Ulery brought to me because she thought I would find it interesting. Boy did I! “Out with the Kansas Hillbillies” by Dorothy “Sunflower Sue” Kelly got my attention immediately and I read it, cover to cover, that day...

While I keep mentioning www.chroniclingamerica.gov for newspaper references, I fail to remind people that our genealogy society has transcriptions of weddings and obituaries on our web page, www.swngs.org. We also have in our library copies clipped from newspapers of those same items plus anniversaries. An index of names available in these reference books spanning 1960-2000 is on the same webpage...

If you are a fan of old photography from the McCook area, you have no doubt seen the name Fearn with a notation of copyright on a picture or two. William Brooks Fearn was apparently the go to photographer in McCook during the early 1900s and according to his advertisements in the McCook Tribune, he had a studio at 110 Main Avenue (Norris) from which he operated. That building would today be the south door into Fuller’s Family Restaurant and also housed the Olympia during my childhood...

Before I cover some of the activities that McCook celebrated for Decoration Day (now Memorial Day), I want to thank everyone that got in touch with me concerning the Franklin home. Even though I have not confirmed it by going to the Courthouse to search records, we all are in accord that the home still stands directly south of Norris Park. ...

Last week we made a quick trip out to Colorado and I got to spend time with my Aunt and Uncle, Stan and Erna Martin. We had a grand time, laughed a lot and reminisced about when my Uncle moved to McCook from Oxford, working for the C B & Q Railroad. ...

Continuing the saga of one of McCook’s earliest doctors, the letters of Dr. Byron B. Davis written to his fiancé were compiled and printed in book form by his son, Dr. John B. Davis. A portion of this book is available at the Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society’s library for research covering the years from 1885 – 1887...

I have been sharing excerpts of Athlene Clemons Martin’s book on the development of Marion, Neb., for the last two weeks. This is the last installment and I wanted to mention that some of the names she covers include: Nilsson, Powell, Pew, Galusha, Weyeneth, Miller, Sims, Sanders, Field, Gatewood, Huff, Stilgebouer, Newberry, Angel, Eifert, Ruby and Hendricks, just to list a few. ...

Susan Doak SW Nebraska Genealogical Society Athlene Clemons Martin’s booklet about Marion and the area surrounding it was donated to our library quite some time ago. I’m going to share some more excerpts from it that paint a picture of how life was in the late 1800 and early 1900’s in Southwest Nebraska...

Susan Doak Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society Every time I go to the genealogy library here in McCook, I am astounded by the amount of researchable items our bookshelves hold. We are constantly receiving, thankfully, new books, family histories, maps, etc., as gifts from estates!...

My great-grandmother, Mary Eckert Davison, ran the stage coach stop in Ickes, Nebraska. When the telephone was invented, the driver would call ahead to her home (where the Post Office also existed) to let her know how many riders he was carrying so she knew how much lunch to prepare...

Most of the time I try to find more information on someone featured in a story, but with this one, the history contained within the story speaks for its self. Taken from the June 14, 1895 issue of the McCook Tribune comes the following memories of William Springer and his hand in settling Red Willow County...

Thanks to Marilyn Anderjaska, I have more information about the Enright family in McCook. Apparently one child, Neil F., became a priest which was why within the small trunk there was a picture of a very handsome young priest. In February 1952, there was a picture and article featuring Chaplain (Captain) Neil F. ...

If you wonder how I got started on the love story I did last week, it came about from a donation given to the Genealogy Library by Mike Manker, which included several pictures and news clippings from a home that had been auctioned off years ago. The home, which if my story is correct, was next door to where his aunt and uncle lived and they had purchased it after the gentleman who owned it passed away. ...

This is the year of Nebraska's 150th birthday and McCook's 135th and plans are already going strong for several special celebrations during the year to acknowledge these two landmarks! SWNGS is no exception when it comes to wanting to provide the public with both entertainment and enlightenment covering the early years of our state and hometown...

Every time I go to the store to get eggs, I'm astounded by the fact that there are at least 4 types of eggs to choose from: Eggs, Large Eggs, Extra Large Eggs and JUMBO Eggs each appropriately a little more expensive by the dozen than the first. My personal opinion is that the "Eggs" classification is made up of a product that a normal pullet would have been embarrassed to leave in a nest when I was growing up. ...

When after 146 years of operation the Ringling Brothers circus announced their decision to close their business, I was thrown back into childhood memories. The one circus I remember seeing as a child was held in, of all places, the City Auditorium. I remember being there sitting in the upper seats watching the performance below. ...

I think I wrote a while back of going to the Dalton Museum and finding a book of photographs, one of which was a snapshot of my mother when she was expecting my sister. To my knowledge there isn't another picture portraying my mom as an expectant mother, and of course I didn't have my hand scanner with me that day nor did my phone camera do the photograph justice...

When settlers first came to McCook they had dugouts on the banks of the Republican. Whoever came up with the name Fairview for the early McCook settlement must have been talking about the view from those banks, a view that is drastically different today. ...

Whew! I don't know about all of you, but when the day after New Year's comes, I'm ready for a break. So much for reflecting on the past year and making resolutions for the next....I just want all the left overs in my fridge gone, the Christmas decorations put away and clean sheets on all the spare beds so I can shut those bedroom doors and forget about them for another 10 months! Heaven forbid I am going to open a drawer in the fridge in May and find leftover turkey in it....that's my resolution: Empty out, throw out!. ...

So that our volunteer members can enjoy time with their families, the Genealogy Library will be closed until after the New Year's Weekend. Our wishes for a blessed Christmas and Happy New Year go out to everyone! David Stanzel has shared on the Facebook site, Remember When in McCook Nebraska, a fabulous picture that is inscribed at the bottom: "Birds Eye View from the Keystone, McCook, Nebraska."...

This time of year always reminds me of Grandma's houses in Dalton. The country home which holds my earliest memories and the town home which reminds me that a bunch of pre-teens in a little house can think of a lot of things to get them in trouble! It was that way at Grandmas because there were actually two sets of cousins; the first group, which my sister belonged to and were nearly a generation older than the second group, which my brother and I belonged to. ...

Social Security did not exist until 1935 and it was a 30 year break before Medicare and Medicaid were signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. The State Department of Public Welfare was created in Nebraska in 1919. Prior to those enactments, it fell to the states and counties to care for the poor (paupers) of their region...

The genealogy library is getting a new look as members move the DAR and miscellaneous state reference library information into a separate space to better utilize the footprint of our rooms. Again, we are deeply indebted to McCook National Bank for the area they have allowed us to occupy in the Merit Building. ...

As you all know, I am big on everyone voting. Last Tuesday, I'm proud to say that Red Willow County registered voters did an outstanding job of living up to the privilege that our veterans have defended for us in the last 260 plus years. You all responded to that honor with an over 70 percent voter turnout and each of you deserves a pat on the back for doing so. Congratulations for being involved in the process!...

The Order of the Owls, founded in South Bend, Ind. by John W. Talbot, stated as its' purpose "to assist each other in business, to help each other in obtaining employment, to assist the widows and orphans of our brother, to give aid to our brother in any way that they may need, and to assemble for mutual pleasure and entertainment." Built around the central bird, the organizations' local groups were called nests, one of which existed in McCook during 1909...

Before I get started on some items from the Red Willow County Directory, I wanted to share some ways that you can help us preserve information about Southwest Nebraska without actually gifting things such as maps, directories, or family photos to our society. ...

We took a Harley circling trip through some central Sandhills communities this last weekend and I can state for a fact that rural Nebraska is alive and well! I saw towns that I had never visited and with the exception of Kearney, all were smaller in population than McCook but just as vibrant and dedicated to preserving a lifestyle that we all enjoy here on the western side of the state...

Heritage Days appeared to be quite the success this year, the participation and audience seemed higher. McCook has hosted many parades in its' downtown area and because I love parades, I'm always there. I miss Band Day though, when all the bands would show up and march, followed by competition at Weiland Field. It would be nice to see it back again...

Football is one of my sports to watch and home town football games are the best. Homecoming was last week and as I watched the Bison game it reminded me of being in high school, the hoopla and excitement that played out before the big game. Spirit hasn't changed, but the way that the kids show it has. ...

Nebraska is the home of an exquisite National Park Service monument commemorating the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862. Four miles west of Beatrice in Gage County, situated on 211 acres of land, part of which are some of the first acres that were claimed under the act, the monument was included in the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966...

The sweetcorn is now in the freezer and I am beginning to feel as if I have accomplished something. Peaches are next and I expect that tomatoes and salsa will follow shortly though if the cicadas are to be believed, my tomato season will be cut short long before I want it to! In my book, there is no better sandwich than fresh tomatoes on toast with liberal salt and pepper and the season I get to enjoy that in is way too short for me...

The apple butter is "in the books" as they say, seven gallons of apples, two days of cooking and a frantic push to get it all canned before Friday night turned into Saturday morning! Again, it is not my mother's apple butter but then how do you make something just like someone else does anyway?...

Getting to swim at the sandpits was the ultimate when I was young. An ultimate that I got to experience only once since my mother had an extreme aversion to allowing her child to swim in something filled with dangerous areas. I didn't do much better with getting to swim in the river since my dad was fully aware of how many pitfalls existed in the (at that time) mighty Republican...

Everyone who has worked for the railroad knows that danger lies just around the corner even in today's work environment. It was even more true 100 years ago when all the safety practices in place now did not exist. January 1916 did not start off well for the railroad community when two car inspectors, Samuel Simons and Oliver Charlet were crushed while inspecting a car on one of the Coal Chute Tracks in the McCook yard when "the breaking of the coupling on a car of coal that was being hauled up the steep incline to the coal chute when half way up, letting the heavily loaded car run down, and an automatic switch turned it on to the track on which the empty cars were the two unfortunate men were inspecting". ...

In a previous column, I mentioned that early McCook had a female doctor. Unfortunately, I let that factoid slip from my mind until I was browsing through the wedding announcements from the McCook Republican, June 1916. There it was the marriage of Elizabeth Mason and Harrison L. Hohl, held in Omaha at the Lowe Avenue Presbyterian church...

To answer my own question, which I seem to be doing more and more as I get older, the Water Works Park is today our Norris Park. How, you might ask, do I know this tidbit of history? No, I am not THAT old! I know it because the Genealogy library has Sanborn Maps for 1889, 1897, 1909 and 1921. The 1909 map shows the water works park location...

These hot sticky days make me yearn for the cool white sheets right off the clothes line that I slept on through my childhood. Those sheets never died, never got thin, didn't bunch up on the bed and when they finally frayed at the edges, they became the base for my grandmother's quilts. ...