No Room for Dreamers in 1883

By Susan Doak

SW Nebraska

Genealogy Society

McCOOK, Nebraska -- My last installment covering the "Illustrated Handbook of Red Willow County" has to begin with some descriptive quotes from the unknown author. I've always said you have to be tough to survive in Southwest Nebraska, but this man takes that attitude even farther!

"High-toned and fine-haired eastern people who come here expecting to put everyone in their shadow, will get the conceit effectually taken out of them in about 60 days. There is no room for dreamers and loungers of the easy-going and sentimental schools, for they will get jostled out of position and lose their bearings in the country of live, advancing, rustling men....every man named in these pages for thrift and business success....the magnitude of his success is generally the measure of his sagacity and working power."

There are few women mentioned within the 34 pages except as social hostesses for their husbands; however, Mrs. N. Burtless, of the Glenwood Ranch (1,700 acres, six miles south of McCook) is noted as "a lady of superior mental, social and business gifts, and owns in her right, a good sized herd of cattle and a charming homestead....a thoroughly practical and intelligent woman of the world..."

Riverside is the home and 640-acre farm of Professor C.L. Nettleton, "the popular county superintendent of schools." Nettleton came to the area in 1875, a native of Massachusetts, with "a yoke of oxen and other effects, amounting to less than $500 and could not be bought out today for $6,000."

In the bend of the Beaver Creek lays the 640-acre Buckeye Ranch, home of B.B. Duckworth, "a live, driving, confident and genial Ohio man." The farm boasts a sod house, stables and sheds and his bottom land yields from 40 to 70 bushels per acre of corn. Duckworth "swears by Red Willow County and with his hospitable and kind-hearted lady and two of the best boys that ever crossed the Missouri hangs out the latch-string and spreads a bountiful board to a big list of warm friends."

Danbury is the location of the relay stables of Messrs.' Sibbitt and Crabtree. Their mail and passenger coaches travel both directions between Oberlin and Indianola each day. Fred Yount keeps the Danbury Post Office plus a general store and owns a 160-acre farm nearby. Yount "may be named among the brightest and liveliest young Buckeyes in the kingdom."

Mr. Henton's 400-acre grassland farm is improved with ample sod stables and sheds plus a sod house. Henton (native of Indiana), came with the pioneers of 1872 and is "one of the best cultivators on the Beaver."

Townhead, John L. Townley's 1120-acre stock farm named in honor of his father's old English homestead, is one of the Beaver Valley's "handsomest estates." Mr. Townley, who came to the area in 1873 from England, is an "earnest, driving, popular and hospitable young gentleman and is universally esteemed for his manly qualities."

This final note from the author: "Farming is done with half the labor required in the older states. The climate is an inspiration; the sun shines upon no fairer landscape....and the need of the hour, is 10,000 more good men and women to aid in developing the manifold latent resources of the country and make destiny for one of the fairest and most inviting regions upon the green earth."

Well said, I believe, for the land and population of Southwest Nebraska!