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Charles Hubert Jeffords

The Price Girls Go Pioneering

March 11, 2013 By Wade 2 Comments

By Mrs. Mary Price Jeffords

In the fall of 1881, I taught the home school in Ohio and in the meantime I read all the homestead laws I could get. I did not see why a girl could not do anything a boy could. School closed the middle of March, it being only a seven months terms.

Start For Nebraska

My sister, Agnes, later Mrs. D.O. Brown, and I, later Mrs. C.H. Jeffords, after many talks, decided to go to Nebraska.

We spent the entire summer in Lincoln and after the fall election went to Seward where Agnes and I secured schools to teach near that town. I had a three and Agnes a four months term.

After finishing my term of school, I went to Westerville where we had some old friends. I looked over the country there but found nothing that looked good. The next week Mr. Longfellow, John, Ed and Mary came along and I arranged to go back to Seward with them.

Bought Team and Outfit.

Agnes had finished her school at Seward and we decided to buy a team and wagon for $350.00 and drive to Custer county.

We bought our outfit from a man named Brock. When we got started west, we went along nicely until our wagon began to scream. I did not know what that meant. A man was coming toward us, and he up with his whip and demanded us to stop. He said, “Do you know you are ruining that wagon? It needs grease.” I asked what we would do as we were a long way from Grand Island. He spoke quite sharply and said, “One of you get out and hold my team and I will grease it for you.” When that was done, he said, “The next town is Grand Island. Get a box of grease and use it.” When we got to Grand Island, I made for a shop that sold grease, and Agnes went to look for a stove.

We got a hundred pounds of flour, a sack of cornmeal, a sack of graham flour, a slab of bacon, fifty pounds of sugar and spices of all kinds, a tub, an ax, a hammer, a saw which the boys said was no good–dishes, a hoe, rake, bucket and everything we could think of that we might need.

After we got all our things loaded we started for Broken Bow. The first night we stopped at Fletchers, in Sherman county. The next night we spent at the home of a family named Jenkins in Lee Park — the man was called “Polecat” Jenkins. I asked why he was called “Polecat” and they told us that during the hard winter he killed polecats to make a living. Mrs. Jenkins was a mother I was proud to know. She doctored me for a sore throat and did all she could to help us.

The next morning Lem Gandy came along. He took me to Westerville and we stopped at Dunlaps for two days, resting our team. When we got to the Charley Jeffords place my father, J.R. Price, brother, John, and uncle, Wood Price, were there. They wanted to know how we had thought of so much stuff when neither one of us had ever used an ax at all and a hoe very little.

One Sod House on Two Claims

Agnes and I filed on claims adjoining and we had the boys build a house across the line for us so that we could each eat on our own land. I did not take a homestead, but took a pre-emption and told my brother, John, he could have it when he was old enough. He was nineteen then.

Taught New Helena School

Agnes and I began looking for work. Preacher Jackson came and offered Charley Jeffords $40.00 a month to teach. Jeffords was going to Iowa for the winter, and later Mr. Jackson offered me $30.00 to do the same work. I told him no, that I could do just as well as Jeffords. Then Mr. Bathrick came and offered me $30.00 and I found that to be one of the nicest neighborhoods in the county, near New Helena. I stayed there five months.

The first of October, Agnes and I took our team and went to Mason City to see County Superintendent Amsberry. We found their home to be a lovely one and made friends with Mrs. Amsberry, Minnie, Amy and the rest of the family. We still look forward each year to going to the Home Coming to meet our many friends there.

On our way home from Mason City, we stopped at the home of a man by the name of Shaw. He had a nice lot of potatoes, and I asked if he would sell us ten or fifteen bushels of them. He sold us fifteen bushels at thirty cents per bushel. We also got some cabbage and squashes, in all spending $5.00.

Got Lost and Camped for the Night

It was dark by the time we got started on our way again, and we got onto the Ash Creek road and became lost, so we decided to camp for the night. We let the horses pick around. About 4:00 a.m. I told Agnes I would take the back track and that way we could find where we were. When I finally found my way, I was at the Dan Lewis place near Broken Bow, then I started home. When the sun cam up, Agnes started out and found the Boss Neth place. I got home about one o’clock. After that we were very careful when we went out on the prairie with no roads to follow.

Agnes A Good Shot

Agnes was good with a gun. She could kill a prairie chicken or any other wild thing, and in fact, did. I could not hit anything so she kept meat in the house while I did the washing and baking, for we could not run to the bakery as we do now.

They called Mr. Jeffords the “Lone Man” for he was the only one between Callaway, Arnold, and Broken Bow. That winter, 1883, Wood and John Price and Charley Jeffords spent the winter together. They got wood out of the canyons for fuel. Agnes and I taught school but we came home for Christmas.

That winter I inquired who in the district had a hog for sale, and Jim Forsyth wrote me that he had one he would sell for six cents a pound, dressed. I agreed to take it and when Wood Price came for me he asked if I planned to feed the entire county. When I asked his reason for thinking that, he told me I had bought five hundred pounds of meat and the man had dumped it into his wagon and left. What could I do? I had to spend my month’s wages for meat, and fat meat at that. The boys never got through guying me about my hog. My uncle and brother and Agnes and I were gone most of the time. We sold $12.00 worth of the meat and the rest we fried down and made sausage and lard.

Mary and Charley Get Married

After Christmas I did not get back until the first of March. Wood came after me about April 10 and Mr. Jeffords took me back April 16. He said we would go by way of Broken Bow. We did and were married by Judge Benjamin. Mr. Jeffords took me on to school and then went back home to work. We thought we were very smart and and would not let anyone know of the marriage until school closed. I did not see him again until the last week of May when he came for me.

Early Wedding Presents

The neighbors had some gifts for me: Mrs. Frank Cozad, a Newfoundland pup which I called “Bingo”; Mrs. Bob Farritor, three blooded chicks; Mrs. Jacobs, a hen and twelve chicks; Mrs. Ross, twelve chicks; Mrs. Isaac Merchant, a jar of plum butter; Mrs. J.H. Bathrick, two sheets and Mrs. W.O. Bowley a jar of butter. Mr. Jeffords wanted to know what all this meant, and I told him that everything was useful and I would far rather have these things than something I must put up and look at.

Jeffords Gave Writing Lessons.

During the year, 1883, Mr. Jeffords gave writing lessons to a number of people who came to his home for instruction. Among them was Boss Neth, who could write in German but not one word in English. In a few evenings he mastered the art well enough to write to his wife in Illinois, telling her to come out west where he had found a home. The wife, Alice, came with their two children, and we formed a friendship that lasts until this day.

During the year, I had my first experience in laying out the dead. Our neighbor’s child, Belle Hill, a young child, passed away, and when I went to the home and took an inventory things looked very discouraging. However, we sent for some of the neighbors, who came and brought food and aided. Hers was the first grave in the Broken Bow cemetery, as you will learn if you look up the history of the cemetery.

The first county fair in Broken Bow was held just east of the courthouse. People from all parts of the county came and enjoyed the fair and ate their dinners in the shade of the wagons.

In the fall of 1884 the Finch-Hatton boys brought me a dog. They were going back to England and were determined to leave the dog in a good home. They had invested some thirty or forty thousand dollars in cattle, but had lost it all and were returning to their native land. I asked them why the names were joined and they said it was because the Finch-Hatton estates had been joined.

During the fall of 1886, John Price and his wife moved into the Loup country. Their home was partly a dug-out and partly sod. The snakes were very bad, and one night Mrs. Price felt something crawling on the bed. She thought it was a mouse but next morning was greatly surprised to find a big bull snake curled up asleep on the bed. She did not stay long in that place.

Emerson Purcell, a Wild Little Devil

In the fall of 1886 Dad Price came home and said, “Jeffords, there’s a nineteen year old kid starting a paper at Merna. He is Emerson Purcell, George Purcell’s boy, and his paper is called the Merna Record. He is a bright kid but they tell me he is a wild little devil and I don’t believe he can make it go.”

Well, you all know what Emerson Purcell has accomplished in Custer county and that his Custer County Chief is widely known. I guess you can’t tell what is in a boy when he first starts out.

What a time we had when the first train came to Broken Bow! We were very proud of our county and the people in it. I do not believe you will find a place where the people were as loyal as they were in Custer county at that time.

Source:
Pioneer Stories of Custer County, Nebraska
Pages 74-76

Filed Under: Family History, Gibson, Jeffords Tagged With: Charles Hubert Jeffords, Mary Elizabeth (Price) Jeffords, Pioneer Stories of Custer County Nebraska

Last Rites for C.H. Jeffords Held Friday

July 8, 2012 By Wade Leave a Comment

Judge A.R. Humphrey Gives Address Commendatory of Late Friend

A gathering which filled the Stockham-Seger funeral home with many unable to gain admission during the services Friday afternoon attested the measure of public esteem felt for the late C.H. Jeffords.

Musical numbers were given…

The obituary, all of which except the conclusion had been prepared by Mr. Jeffords, was very brief, stating that he had been born in Washington county, Ohio, February 27, 1858. In November 1875 he went to Iowa, then in February, 1879, to Polk County, Nebraska. In April, 1880, he came to Custer county with J.D. Ream. He had a common school education and had spent nine months at Penn college at Oskaloosa, Iowa. He was married on April 16, 1883, to Miss Mary E. Price. He passed away April 11, aged 76 years, one month and fifteen days.

He leaves his wife and four children: Mrs. Clara Humphrey, Carl Jeffords and Mrs. Lucy Gibson of Mullen and John M. Jeffords of Brule, Neb.

Following is the address given by Judge A.R. Humphrey at the service:

I appear here at this time to carry out a compact made by our deceased brother with his boyhood friend, his pioneer companion, and his associate of later years, James D. Ream. Between these two men there existed a friendship akin to that between David and Jonathan of Bible days. This friendship had its origin in Iowa. They both attended public school there. They were of the farm and the farm life has always attracted them and held them to the soil. In their boyhood days they talked of owning a farm in the west. At that time our part of the state was a part of the great public domain. Having finished the course of study prescribed by the public school system of Iowa, Brother Jeffords elected to take a course in college. The Quaker college at Oskaloosa being the nearest institution of learning above the common school grades, he registered there for a course of study in this Quaker college. In the meantime, Brother Ream moved to Nebraska.

College days over, Brother Jeffords sought his friend in Nebraska. He found him near Osceola in Polk county. Jeffords met him there in the spring of 1879 engaged in farming. Jeffords taught a term of school in Polk county and in the summer of that year he and Ream, came to Custer county to look over the prospects of homesteading here.

In that year, 1879, Custer county was practically all open to homestead entries. These two pioneers drove through in a wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen. It took them nine days to make the trip from Osceola here. After looking over the country they returned to Polk county and Jeffords taught another term of school.

In March, 1880, they again returned to Custer county. By this time they had resolved to make this new country their future home. They selected their respective homesteads and made settlement thereon preparatory to making entry there. But the entry was another proposition. The homestead affidavit had to be sworn to before the county clerk under the federal law governing homestead entries. To make their entries they must go to the county seat of the new county and the county seat was located far to the southwest on what was then known as the Young ranch. On the morning of April 20,1880, he and Ream walked to the Young ranch and offered their entries to the land they had selected for their homesteads. After they made their entries Charley always said they walked back for exercise. They made the round trip in a day. The distance by section lines is 21 miles from the Ream homestead to the Young ranch.

They returned to the wagon and used it for cover during the first few days on their homesteads. They were now owners of 160 acres of government land. Working together these two young men with oxen and plow built on their homesteads their sod houses and established residence therein. It was a slow, dreary, job. But the stamina that induced them to locate in a seemingly wild country, almost outside the pale of civilization, held them to their purpose to make real homes out of the lands they had selected for their venture in farming for themselves. The houses they built were of necessity sod, small and inconvenient. Every board had to be hauled in from the outside. It was 82 miles to the nearest railroad station. The scanty furnishings they had brought with them sufficed to accommodate them the first year oftheir homesteading here. Rain and storm swept over them, their shelter was meager, but they were not discouraged.

Their first concern was to break the sod and get out a crop. Their sad corn grew readily and by fall of their first year they were satisfied with their venture in a new country. When we remember that the work of that day was all done by hand we can more readily understand the handicap under which the pioneers of this county labored. But to them it was not a hardship-it was all in the day’s work.

It was during these pioneer days that the compact I spoke of was made between them. They knew the uncertainty of life even though they were strong, vigorous young men, and it was mutually agreed between them that in the event death overtook one by accident or sickness the other should officiate and conduct a Christian burial for his friend. Each within the last year has repeated to me this compact between them … Brother Ream received the first call. At the date of his death his friend was incapacitated from performing the obligation he had undertaken. And at his request I am recounting the story of his life. Together they underwent all the inconveniences, hardships, and difficulties that confront any pioneer in the settlement of a new country, isolated as this was from the instrumentalities of civilization. What they needed to improve their homestead entries they hauled in from the nearest railroad point. What they had to sell to get the means to further improve their homesteads they hauled out. It was a long, tiresome journey each way.

This is no imaginary story. It is cold facts chiseled from the pioneer life of these two men who laid the foundation for the future of Custer county, a county in which each made his home from March, 1880, to the day death called him. They saw the new country unfold and develop before them. They saw the valleys first, dotted with the light in the sodhouse of the settler, and when the valleys were entered, settlement moved to the hills and the tablelands of our county. They were not idle lookers on at this advent of civilization to this community, but real actors among the few men in the past years who have had a part in reclaiming the raw prairie from its native sod to the now highly developed agricultural and stock country we know.

I wish I might be able to make you envision and understand this country as Brother Jeffords saw it when he and his friend walked the 21 miles to make homestead entries. Between what we now know as the Ream farm and the county seat at the Young. ranch, not a vestige of settlement was to be seen. The country belonged to the great outdoors. Not a house or evidence of settlement was along the way. From Muddy creek valley to the South Loup river the hills and dales were as nature had left them. The possibilities of this new land for agricultural purposes were unknown. The latent power of undisturbed soil to produce crops of any kind was problematical. Whether the country would ever be other than the cattle country it then was, was a mooted question. But Jeffords was something of a soil expert He has told me many times that he examined the soil and found it full of legumes phosphorus and nitrates and from that fact deduced that it was a crop producing soil. Time has proven his conclusions correct and on his own homestead he demonstrated that any crop that could be produced on the farms of Iowa could be produced here, and as he frequently said, with less hard labor because the soil was not impregnated with weed seed.

The terms spent by Brother Jeffords at the Quaker College at Oskaloosa, Iowa, unconsciously to him perhaps, affected his whole after life. The tenets and dogmas of the Quaker religion, its principles and precepts, learned during his years at this institution of learning, probably without his knowing it, became the rule and guide to his after life. Truth, and honesty and justice as taught him by his preceptors, were to him the cardinal virtues, and this coupled with a firm belief in a First Great Cause, constituted his religious belief. He loved his neighbor as himself. His neighbor was near to him. He could see and understand and render him a service, and this he freely did as any neighbor will willingly testify. Fellowship was his purpose in the mainspring of his life. He made and retained friends, and if friendship was taken from him, his whole life would have become desolate and dreary and without purpose. Go where he would about the county he was always met by the friendly salutation “Hello Charlie”, from men and women in all walks of life. And this to him was the real purpose of living. This fellowship with all people was to him the soul of existence-the major purpose of his life. He was companionable and he sought to so conduct himself that his friendly greeting would be merited as in it he saw the whole duty to his neighbor. And in serving his neighbor he felt that he was serving the Greater Power that controls human emotions and human purposes.

Nature had endowed Brother Jeffords with a keen, alert, and reasoning mind. He had a philosophy of his own-part pagan, part Christian. He believed the truths taught by Aristotle and Plato as readily as he did the truths of Sts. Peter and Paul. He was a devoted and pertinent student of sociology. Having seen the society of the frontier days of our community, and having passed with it through its varying stages to our present day status although he never conceded that society in the abstract as it is today, aside from its conveniences in its present form, was any better than that enjoyed and maintained by the pioneer life of the men and women of that frontier day, he cheerfully accepted its changes as a part of the progress and development that improved conditions had brought about. And knowing the past from actually living it, he wondered what law or system of laws would control the structure of society of the future. He was a humanitarian. He wanted to see the greatest good come to the greatest number of human beings without injury to anyone. He had a high regard for the rights of man and he believed that selfishness and greed was the principal cause of all human woes.

It is a wonderful experience to be one of the first in the settlement and development of a new country, to observe the early settler as he drives in in his covered wagon and selects from the unentered lands of the public domain the particular tract he desires to enter and reclaim from its wild state and make of it his home in the truest sense of the word. And this act of settlement and development Mr. Jeffords observed and has been a part of as the years sped by. When we recall that Broken Bow did not exist until June, 1882, it is easier to understand the unfolding and development of the valley where he made his entry.

His life covers a span of 76 years-55 of them spent in Custer county. He has seen the ox-cart superseded by the railroad train; the train by the auto, and the auto by the airplane-from 120 miles in eight days to twice that many in an hour. He has seen the electric lights in the valley come into the homes where the sod house was, to displace the tallow candle and the coal oil lamp. He has seen the telephone take the place of the broncho [sic] as a means of quick communication between neighbors. He has seen the auto displace the horse and buggy as a means of easy going from place to place. He has seen the power truck displace the lumber wagon as a means of getting the products of the farm to market. He has seen the radio take the place of the daily paper in diffusing information from the remotest parts of the earth. And he has seen the airship glide overhead carrying the mail from port to port and outdistancing the fastest mail train.

He has seen our country pass from a steam age to an electric age, then to a machine age to mass production of farm and factory surpassing the needs of the nation when production runs at normal speed. And he need not to have moved from his original homestead to view all these changes.

All these material changes have passed like a panorama before him. He has observed these changes as civilization advanced and progress became the accomplished fact. From the days of the scythe and cradle to that of the self binder and combine marks an era of development that includes all modem improvements in agriculture and commercial life. And he approved every change because in it he saw a greater production of the material things the human family needed and could acquire, and use to its advantage. The last four years bore heavily upon him. He felt a deep sympathy for his friends and acquaintances who were caught in the mesh of falling prices where change from former methods of living to abject ruin seemed their fate. And when a friend went down under the crush of adverse circumstances he felt the strain keenly and his heart went out to his friend in his misfortune.

He will be missed by his many friends because of his wholehearted sympathy for them. He has been a part of every forward movement that had for its purpose the advancement and upbuilding of the community wherein he has lived and made his home for more than a half century. Formerly his time and his means were given freely to advance any movement that held a promise of helping his neighbors to better living conditions and a better outlook for advancing the education of his children. He has seen such endeavors meet with fair success, and he felt the pleasure such success brings. His was not an ordinary mind. Keen, alert, analytical and logical, he reached conclusions from facts presented that made him a leader in the community in matters of public interest and of public concern. But his great hold on his community, and on his acquaintances, old and new, was his fervid, unbiased, honest friendship he held for all.

As I study the life of our deceased brother and friend, his relation to society-his acts of kindness to his neighbors-his willingness to always render aid in times of distress-his activities for the common good-his public spirit-his cheerful disposition under all conditions of life-and the heroic manner in which he met the disease that finally terminated his, earthly existence, I recall a tribute by an unknown author to a departed friend on an occasion like this. It is as follows:

“He was a friend of Truth, a soul sincere,
In action faithful, in honor clear,
Who broke no promise, served no private end,
Sought no title, and forsook no Friend.”

Source:
Custer County Chief
April 19, 1934

Filed Under: Family History, Gibson, Jeffords Tagged With: Charles Hubert Jeffords, Custer County Chief

1900 Census – Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska

July 7, 2012 By Wade Leave a Comment

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Filed Under: Family History, Gibson, Jeffords Tagged With: Carl Jeffords, Census, Charles Hubert Jeffords, Clara (Jeffords) Humphrey, John "Jack" Jeffords, Lucy M. (Jeffords) Gibson, Mary Elizabeth (Price) Jeffords

Early Settlers West of Broken Bow

January 14, 2012 By Wade Leave a Comment

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Source:
S.D. Butcher’s Pioneer History of Custer County
Published 1901
Pages 323-324

Note:
The photos in the story are labeled incorrectly as “E. Jeffords & Mrs. E. Jeffords” when it should be C.H. Jeffords.

Filed Under: Family History, Gibson, Jeffords Tagged With: Charles Hubert Jeffords, Mary Elizabeth (Price) Jeffords, Pioneer History of Custer County

Jeffords Family Picture

July 3, 2011 By Wade Leave a Comment

Bottrom Row (L to R): Charles Hubert Jeffords, Lucy Martha Jeffords, Mary Elizabeth Price Top Row (L to R): John "Jack" Mahoney Jeffords, Clara Charlotte Jeffords, Carl Price Jeffords

Filed Under: Family History, Gibson, Jeffords Tagged With: Carl Jeffords, Charles Hubert Jeffords, Clara (Jeffords) Humphrey, John "Jack" Jeffords, Lucy M. (Jeffords) Gibson, Mary Elizabeth (Price) Jeffords, Picture

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