SUTTON FIRSTS

Sutton is a young town, barely 140 years old and as a consequence, its early history is quite well documented. Diaries of settlers, the Andreas History of Nebraska and other sources describe how the town started and who pioneered many activities.

The Luther French story as Sutton’s first settler in 1870 is well-known. The “first married white woman” to settle in, or near Sutton was Mrs. W. Cunning who arrived with the Gray party on May 4, 1871. One wonders why the writer qualified her as “married” as though some single woman preceded her. But we’ll ignore that.

Sutton’s first business appeared later in the month of May in Mr. McTyge’s “shanty” store next to the house that Homer Gray had already built. Two gents, Kearney and Kelley started a saloon in a tent followed quickly by the second saloon of P. H. Curran and Mart Higgins in a building constructed by Henry Potter, the town’s first builder. A third saloon popped up next. The first “violence” in Sutton occurred when one saloon keeper, Mr. Flynn shot his partner, Mr. Mullen in the face – though it was not a serious injury. Andreas explained, “These fellows were fascinated by the charms of an Omaha belle.” The saloons were only one month earlier than the town’s first church services held by Rev. Mr. Jones in the “grove”, probably today’s park.

The first businesses were along Main Avenue north of the railroad tracks and on Maple Street. The area picked up the nickname of “Whiskey Row” somehow.

The first craftsman was Andrew Sherwood whose forge was in a sod shop just below the French dugout which would put it along School Creek just south of the bridge on Ash Street though today’s School Creek is not quite where it used to be.

Luther French’s dugout served as the first Post Office starting in the summer of 1871 and until A. Burlingame assumed the duties on New Year’s, 1872 at a salary increased from $12 to $400 annually.

John Maltby arrived in the area in June. He talked Luther French into dividing his homestead into town lots and suggested using the name Sutton after his home town in Massachusetts. The town was laid out on August 12, 1871 the same day the railroad arrived. The first train on a regular run rolled into Sutton six days later. Swedish bride Betsy Swanson was the first woman to arrive by train when she came from Lincoln to join her homesteader husband and becoming the township’s first homemaker in a board house.

 

The first lumber yard(s) in Sutton provide a favorite story. Thurlow Weed brought a car load of lumber from Lincoln on the new tracks on August 23, 1871 and gets credit for the first lumber yard. John Gray’s lumber arrived one day later making his yard the second in town.

The first town caucus was in the fall of 1871 in French’s dugout and on October 14, 1871 an election at a farmhouse near Harvard named Sutton the first county seat for Clay County. The court house started in the offices of R. G. Brown, Sutton’s first attorney. Brown’s first case, argued before Probate Judge Maltby, involved a well. Plaintiff James Schermerhorn won the suit over defendant David Jayne. Brown received a $10 fee.

Gray (probably Homer) & Bemis (George) started a nursery on November 1, 1871 with fruit trees, shrubs and ornamental trees.

C. M. Turner opened a general merchandise business and took delivery of the first carload of flour in town on December 9^th, 1871. Thompson & Young’s implement company appeared around New Year’s, 1872, again, the first in town and the county.

William Weed began the first school around the 20^th of January in 1872 with about fourteen students.

The Central Hotel was built in February, 1872 and was located
at the site of today's Cornerstone Bank.

The first hotel was opened in February, 1872 by William Shirley and later expanded into the Central Hotel. It was on the west side of Saunders, north of the depot.

Isaac Newton Clark and his brother Martin Van Buren Clark arrived in Sutton in November, 1871 and purchased all of the unsold town lots from Luther French’s 80 acre homestead for $4000. They built the Clark House, a two-story frame structure on the west side of Saunders Avenue near the north end. Martin Clark was a physician, the county’s first, starting practice on November 1, 1871, and he was a druggist. He and Isaac stocked a drug store and a hardware store in the building in February, 1872; both were the first such enterprises along the Burlington west of Crete.

The Lincoln firm of Houston & Street published the first directory of the town and county in February, 1872 listing three dry goods and grocery stores, two flour and feed stores, a hardware store, a drug store, two lumber yards, a hotel, one implement dealer, a nursery, a livery stable, one store with fur and hides, a meat market, two real estate offices, one doctor, one attorney a Notary Public and one shoemaker. Ten months earlier there had been one wheat farmer in a dugout by the creek.

William Woolman was the shoemaker listed in the directory and was also the first resident minister.

The first birth in Sutton was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. F. A. Gross born on February 15, 1872. The girl died before the 1880 census. The first death was of another little girl, Maude Tracy, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Asa Tracy on April 21, 1872. Accounts of this death indicate that the new, small community was also closely-knit and quite attached to little Maude.

The Sutton Times began publication on Friday, June 20, 1873. L. L. Grimes and J. B. Dinsmore started the Pioneer Bank of Sutton in 1877, both firsts.

I. N. Clark’s Sutton Brick Co. was founded on June 1, 1876 as the town’s first manufacturing endeavor producing 120,000 bricks its first year.

As we’ve mentioned before, Sutton popped up quickly, growing from a single homestead to a thriving community in less than a year. The record of “who got there first” expands our image of those early days in Sutton.

This article first appeared in the April 2011 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. For more information about the magazine contact Jarod Griess at 402-984-4203.

It's Not Just an Old World War I Helmet

William Zimbelman's WWI helmet and the Clay County
book of 1917 registrations for the selective service.

The mission of the Sutton Historical Society is to collect and preserve the artifacts and the information about the history of the Sutton community. A substantial collection of items has been contributed to the museum. It is a challenge to catalogue, analyze and display the collected material. How can we add to information we know about Sutton’s history?

The great source of information about the Sutton community is the newspaper archives of the Clay County News. This series of Sutton Life articles and the society’s weekly newspaper column have been the rationale, maybe excuse for a nearly systematic study of those old yellowed newspapers.

The fastest growing resource for historical study is the online world. Huge databases are indexed and easily located which recently were only in libraries and other remote repositories.

Let’s look at a couple of donated items and see how we learn more about them.

One item in our Veteran’s Room is a World War I doughboy’s helmet donated by Sarah Easterly with the name “Zimbleman” painted under the brim. First question: “Doughboy?” We know that was the common name for a U.S. WWI soldier, but where did the name come from? (Your assignment: check out: http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/origindb.htm.)

Did you ever hear the little ditty that was popular at the time?

Kaiser Bill went up the hill to take a look at France;

Kaiser Bill came down the hill with bullets in his pants.

O.K., back to the topic. Another donated item was a small booklet entitled “Complete List of Clay County men Registered for Military Draft” printed in Clay Center on August 17, 1917 containing the names 1237 county men. A little research discloses that there were three registrations efforts, one in 1917 on June 5^th for all men between the ages of 21 and 31. Our little book gives the name and home town of each. The 363^rd name is “Wm. Zimbelman, Sutton.” A little hiccup here; the registration is for “Zimbelman” with an “el” and the name painted in the helmet is “le.” Same guy? Probably, but we can look further.

The genealogy web site, “ancestry.com” (sponsor of the NBC program, “Who do You Think You Are?”) is a worthwhile resource. One of the literally thousands of sections of the site contains the scanned images of those millions of WWI draft registration cards where we find the handwriting of Mr. William Zimbelman, age 23 of Sutton, Nebraska, a farmer in School Creek Precinct. He described himself as a single Caucasian of medium height and medium build with blue eyes and light brown hair. The form is dated 6/5/17.

A quick check of census records finds eight-year old William in Bennett Township of Fillmore County in 1900 with his parents John and Christina and sister Edna. Both parents listed Russia as place of birth. Later censuses show the family in School Creek in 1910 and 1920 and in 1930, William and his bride of six years, Vera were renting a farm in Grafton Township in Fillmore County. Fun fact: In 1910 he was Zimblemann, later Zimbelman.

John, Christina and William are all buried in the Sutton Cemetery, William with a date of death of April 13, 1943.

So, with a little curiosity, a wee bit of know-how and a small effort, we’ve found some background of our helmet. Aren’t you just a little curious about the places where William wore his hat and what he was doing there? I have a suggestion: Give us a call at the Sutton Historical Society (402-773-0222) and help us look for that story and the background stories of other Sutton artifacts and information. Do you enjoy solving puzzles? Are detective stories intriguing? Dig into real puzzles and mysteries with us.

How could we learn more? Among the Clay County News archives is The Sutton News of 1918. Almost weekly, Editor S. A. Fischer printed a letter he’d received from a soldier. On January 4^th, George Barnell described working with the Red Cross and Y.M.C.A. at the Great Lakes training center near Chicago. Niles Miles wrote to his sister in Grafton describing, without telling where, the countryside around him, and that Charlie Chaplin was the American most admired by a local barber.

Zimbelman's draft card completed in 1917

A letter in February described the trip from New York to France with an account of escort ships dropping depth charges nearby as U-boats stalked the convoy and torpedoed a nearby English vessel. John Stertz wrote home about air raids and the wooden shoes he was buying in town to send home to friends. In March, Fischer’s brother Ralph wrote of enjoying letters from home and that he really missed eggs. He later compared an artillery barrage to a Nebraska thunderstorm.

The Sutton News printed the names of local men as they left for service. A late June list was 62 names long and included Suttonites Arthur Hornbacher, Henry Pope, John Peterson, Ernest Salmen, Leo Hughes, Clarence Dahlgren, Jake Kissler, George Stenggle, Frank Ryan, Jacob Roemich, Fred Heinz, Geo. Ioby and William Fleming.

Is that all we know? Not at all, but you get the idea. Now, how should we organize this information and present it so that visitors to the museum can enjoy it and appreciate the service of William Zimbelman and others? We would greatly appreciate your thoughts and assistance. It just might even be fun. (402-773-0222)

This article first appeared in Sutton Life Magazine in the March 2011 issue. Call 402-984-4203 for information about the magazine.

1986 article on Deweese centennial

This article appeared in the June 26, 1986 issue of the Clay County News in observance of the centennial of the village of Deweese.

Plat Maps of Clay County - 1925

1925 Plat Maps for Clay County Townships School Creek and Sutton are posted on the blog. The Sutton Historical Society has similar images for all 16 Clay County Townships that can be made available upon request. We also have plat maps for 1886 (posted online elsewhere), 1907, and several later versions (post 1950)

The Squawker

The Squawker was one of Sutton’s gifts to the town of York. It was the product of Eugene Henry Bemis who was born in Sutton on either the 4^th or the 5^th of July in 1880 – there’s reasonably good evidence for either date. His family moved to York where he was the editor of the weekly York New Teller newspaper for many years. There he entertained himself and his readers with a column that he called “The Squawker” which appeared, as he described it, “any darn time we please or oftener.”

Bemis was from one of Sutton’s founding families. His parents were George W. Bemis and his wife Ada of the Gray family. George Bemis was with his father-in-law Hosea Gray and brother-in-law John Gray on May 4^th, 1871when they approached School Creek from the east and looked down the hill to where Luther French was all alone “holed-up” in his dugout looking forward to a second year of wheat on his homestead.

The Grey-Bemis party filed for homesteads but saw the prospects for a town. Four months later George’s wife Ada (Hosea’s daughter) and John Gray’s wife Emma joined them. George Bemis studied law under his father-in-law and the two of them were among the first attorneys in town. Bemis may have been the town’s best known early poet for a single effort, “Grafton to Sutton” about the shenanigans that went on with the town depot.

Members of the Sutton Historical Society have a special interest in this family as it was Gene’s Uncle John and Aunt Emma (yes, there really was an “Aunt Emma”) who built the two houses on Way Avenue north of the railroad tracks where our museum lives and where Emma was honored in Aunt Emma’s Tea House for nine years.

The children of the Bemis family made a name for themselves after they left Sutton. Sgt. George W. Bemis, Jr. was one of the first ten soldiers into Manila when the Americans took the city. He was editor of J. Sterling Morton’s publication “Conservative” and later was the first editor of the Lincoln Star.

Gene’s sister Anna Gray Bemis graduated from York College and had a long list of articles and poems published. She was active in the social whirl of York and after a couple of marriages accumulated the name of Anna Gray Bemis Palmer and was the benefactor of the Anna Bemis Palmer Museum in downtown York. An exhibit to the right of the museum entrance recognizes her Sutton connection.

Then there is Gene. His column in the York New Teller attracted a following throughout the state and beyond. His style was folksy, to say the least, and was layered with satire and obscure references that challenged his readers. His friend John Benley of the Lincoln Journal quoted a letter from Bemis in his own column on August 20, 1939 that illustrates the Bemis writing style well:

“With footbawl next on the sports programmy, we’re on the lookout for dope. We can roll our own on the local situation but we’ve been wondering about the Cornhusker prospects and are looking for enlightenment from friend John Bentley of the Journal. Firstly, dear John, we want to know what kind of a band the uni will have this season and what kindda music it will play. As we had it from the experts last year the band played us out of the win column by playing swing – if it goes in for the jitterbug stuff this season, all is lost. How big is it gonna be, and what kind of uniforms? Will it be able to put on a class A performance at half time or will it fumble its drills? How is it fixed for drum majors – got any reserve strength there?”

Gene Bemis published a book of his columns and his poems in 1919 under the title of “The Squawker Book” with a subtitle of “Made with scissors and paste from the files of The World’s Poorest Newspaper.” The dedication line reads, “We ain’t mad at nobody.”

The Squawker columns touched on a wide variety of subjects. Several columns described Bemis’ attempt to raise chickens and economic and personal challenges of that effort. He must have had friends in the fire department as they came in for occasional mention, not always in a good light. There are complaints about the weather, prices and the behavior of people in general. A number of his poems appear in the book. Some reflected his humorous side:

Nellie had a little bell –

She rang it ‘til, goodness sake!

Pa got excited and said, “Nell,

You’ll make that Belly ache.

Others carried little pearls of wisdom:

You may travel all around the earth –

Seek pleasure and renoun –

But the way to get your money’s worth

Is to boost your own home town.

Gene Bemis died in October 17, 1955 and is buried in York’s Greenwood Cemetery (Shout-out to findagrave.com). Perhaps he contributed to the journalism culture of York that today supports the York News-Times, Nebraska’s smallest daily newspaper.

Members of the historical society are grateful to the Houston family for our own prized copy of the Bemis book, hand-tied “binding” and all. There is an amazon.com entry for The Squawker with the note, “Out of Print – Limited Availability.” The entry refers to “Unknown binding” and doesn’t have an image of the book but maybe we can fix that.

The historical society’s major fundraiser is the sale of bricks commemorating Suttonites, especially the early folks. The Gray family was among the more important founding families and like many early families, there aren’t descendants around to ensure they are remembered in our brick walk. Volunteers have come forward to commemorate John and Emma but other Gray and Bemis families remain orphaned. Anyone interested in helping to sponsor a commemorative brick for these folks can contact us for information.

This article first appeared in the February, 2011 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. You can contact the magazine at 510 West Cedar, Sutton, NE 68979 or neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com

Historical Research Made Easy: Just Stumble onto Something

There was a time in the distant past, say, about ten years ago, when serious historical research involved a finely developed skill set, some travel, plus lots of time and effort. Today, maybe not so much. We can stumble onto more pertinent material accidently online any random evening than we used to be able to dig up in months.

The results of one recent study illustrate how information of local interests can pop up for us.

Two researchers, Dr. William G. Thomas III of the University of Nebraska and Dr, Kurt Kinbacher of Spokane Falls Community College produced a publication called “Shaping Nebraska: An Analysis of Railroad and Land Sales, 1870-1880.”⁽¹⁾ These fellows were interested in the role that railroads played in the settlement of the Great Plains, particularly Nebraska. It is impractical to study a huge region in any detail and even if one could there would likely be too much stuff to look at in any timely manner. So the answer is to pick a smaller sample and study it well.

Thomas and Kinbacher chose to concentrate on three specific townships in two Nebraska counties and to extrapolate their conclusions to the region in general. The townships were Olive Branch Township in southwest Lancaster County and Lynn and School Creek townships in Clay County.

It is our good fortune that they chose Clay County as we gain the benefit of their efforts.

The study looked at railroad land sales. The Burlington Railroad came into the state at Plattsmouth in 1869 and connected with the Union Pacific near Kearney. Sutton and Harvard were the early developing communities between Lincoln and Kearney making Clay a candidate for the study. The Burlington received alternate sections of land from the government for ten miles either side of the tracks for each mile of track they laid. That is, 6,400 acres for each 5,280 feet of track for a total of 2,450,000 acres – 5% of the state. Development of the Great Plains was government policy and the 1864 Pacific Railroad act was one of two large 19^th Century “stimulus packages” to further that policy. The other stimulus program was the Homestead Act two years earlier. Both were successful. Nebraska’s population grew from 120,000 in 1870 to 453,000 in 1880 and over one million by 1890.

The railroad needed revenue from freight and passenger service to sustain its operations. Railroads actively recruited settlers. The Burlington spent $500,000 recruiting potential settlers in Europe between April, 1870 and December, 1872. That would have been the gross proceeds from sales of 143 square miles at the average price of $5.47 per acre. They focused on Germans, Czechs and Scandinavians plus two agents worked Great Britain exclusively. But their greater successes came from folks “back east” as large populations, often second generation immigrants came to Nebraska from Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Indiana.

There was a high level of sophistication in the recruitment literature. Material aimed at English speaking prospects used maps and timetables to illustrate the maturity of the rail system. The focus was on business prospects with graphs charting growth in commodity production and income levels. Materials aimed at non-English speaking immigrants were much more textural. Europeans were worried about water and wood so brochures told of rivers and streams with abundant flowing water. Wood represented more of a problem for the advertisers who had to acknowledge the near complete absence of trees, but instead told of ready access to cheap coal and the advantage of easily clearing land with no trees.

Settlements often developed into ethic islands or clusters of like-immigrants. German language literature pointed out the numerous German communities on the plains. Meanwhile, English language material told of honest, hard-working English, Scots and Scandinavians. The Burlington claimed that one half of southern Lancaster County was made up of German communities. The actual figures were between one-fourth and a third. Close. Few immigrants self-identified as Germans as Germany had only became a nation in 1871. They were more likely to call themselves Prussians or Bavarians or Hanoverians, etc. Olive Branch Township “Germans” self-identified with at least nineteen different principalities.

Lynn Township in Clay County illustrated another aspect of settlement. Seventy-eight percent of Nebraskans in the 1880 census were native born. Forty percent of Lynn Township sales of railroad land went to Ohioans with early arrivals from the town of Newburgh near Cleveland.

School Creek Township hosted the closest to an actual “colony” of any area in the study. Black Sea Germans from Russia with the Grosshans, Griess & Company purchased 5 ¾ sections of railroad land in School Creek Township on September 4^th, 1873.

There were several considerations when settlers had to choose between homesteading and purchase of railroad land. Homesteaders filed a claim, spent five years developing the land then took title. Railroad land was purchased but ownership was immediate. Homesteaders stuck it out for the five years forty percent of the time. A total of 270 million acres passed into private hands under the Homestead Act. Railroad land lent itself to speculators to a greater degree. But other factors seemed to play into longevity.

Olive Branch and Lynn township purchasers of railroad land tended to move on within a few years. The School Creek Township settlement of Germans from Russia was far more stable. Forty of the fifty-nine sales contracts to Germans from Russia in the county were in School Creek with the other nineteen, primarily from the Volga region, in the three adjacent townships. As land came available, members of the Germans from Russia community purchased that land sustaining the community.

This study of railroad land sales was good for our selfish needs here in Sutton in that it tells us something about local settlement. If there is a flaw in the study it may be that it did concentrate on railroad land sales. Railroad land was only one half of the story. Interspersed between sections of railroad land were sections of homesteads often settled by different groups with significantly different motivations. 

But overall, this study is a good illustration of the type of scholarly work that was largely inaccessible to us just a few years ago. We are fortunate that the researchers choose Clay County for their study giving us further insight to what happened here, back then.

(1)   The study is at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=historyfacpub

This article first appeared in Sutton Life Magazine, December 2010 issue. Contact Sutton Life Magazine at 510 West Cedar, Sutton, NE 68979 or at neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com

Researching the West with Light Reading

Historical research produces two types of information. First, we learn a bunch of specific facts about our topic, in our case, what happened in Sutton, who did what and when. Quite different from that we find either general information or specific things about other places which give us some idea of what kind of the world our predecessors lived in and a clue as to the kinds of things that might have happened here.

Years ago Time-Life Corporation produced a series of 26 books in its “The Old West” series. There are such titles as “The Cowboys”, “The Indians”, “The Miners”, “The Women”, and of interest here, “The Townsmen” written by Keith Wheeler. I don’t believe Sutton is ever mentioned in any of the 26 volumes, but these books provide a feel for life in “The Old West” that early folks of Sutton shared with other westerners.

Well before Sutton’s birth Congress passed the Townsite Act in 1844 enabling westerners to stake out 320 acres, define lots of 125 by 25 feet and peddle those lots for whatever the market would bear. Speculators were quick to call their site a city. A New York Tribune correspondent visiting Colorado in 1866 complained, “I only wish that the vulgar, snobbish custom of attaching ‘City’ to every place with more than three houses could be stopped.”

One such group of fast-talking speculators in 1857 persuaded 30 settlers in Davenport, Iowa, mostly Germans, to come to their newly formed town of Grand Island on the banks of the Platte River. One enticement was a suggestion that someday the nation’s capital would be moved from Washington to Grand Island’s more central location. The financial panic of 1857 cost the Grand Island promoters dearly and two years later a fellow heading to the gold fields set fire to Grand Island burning down all but one house. His reason was that he hated Germans. The town was quickly rebuilt but in 1866 the Union Pacific railroad came through Hall County, two miles from Grand Island. The townspeople moved the buildings to trackside and the town was off and running.

Towns were quick to start schools, seen as a necessary step to credibility. Finding a school teacher was often difficult as wages of $35 a month were common. The practice of having the school teacher, nearly always a single, young woman, “board around” was common. She lived for a period of time with each of the families with school children. It seemed fair that the families with the most children in school should bear the brunt of this school support. Of course, that meant the teacher was always living in the most crowded houses in town. Many teachers saw this job as a stepping stone to someplace else or to a different line of work.

Early townspeople were quick to demonstrate their cultural sophistication. Lecture circuits, traveling acting troupes, circuses and the like prospered. Shakespearian Theater was very popular with Junius Brutus Booth Jr. and his brother Edwin among the actors who made their names in the west. Edwin Booth earned as much as $25,000 a month with his portrayal of Hamlet. The third Booth brother, John also made his name in the theater though in a much different context.

Clay County towns sported their own Opera Houses which were busy with some form of entertainment most evenings. Swedish dialect comedies were especially popular with different ones making the rounds every month or so. Sutton had numerous lodges and other social and cultural groups and found excuses for festivals and other celebrations throughout the year. Boxing and wrestling were popular throughout the west including in Sutton and Clay County.

In “The Townsmen” Mr. Wheeler included dozens of stories of western towns. Guthrie, Oklahoma had a claim as the fastest town, going from a railroad watering stop to 10,000 residents in 24 hours. Hastings, Nebraska must have won some kind of award for attracting five major and minor railroads while running up municipal debt of over $250,000. Ottawa, Kansas and Ottawa College received those names as partial payment to the Ottawa Indians from the notorious confidence man Isaac Kallock for 20,000 acres.

Time-Life’s book business ended with the AOL purchase of Time but not before 177 series of books had been published with such titles as Collector’s Library of the Civil War, Cookery Around the World, Home Repair and Improvement, The Great Cities, etc. Sales were by subscription, a book a month for from about five to nine dollars each. Series had as few as three or as many as 109 books. Yours truly has all or parts of five of those series (only 77 of those 109 in the “Reading Program”) but my favorites are “The Old West” and “Classics of the Old West” (26 of the 31 printed on the shelf). The web site  http://www.volumelists.com/ has the inventory.  There is an active secondary market for individual books and complete sets.

Are the Time-Life books definitive and authoritative historical texts? Definitely not. They are interesting and entertaining but not even decent secondary sources with no footnotes or references at all. But did I mention they are interesting and entertaining? The Sutton Library has the complete set of “The Old West”, north wall, bottom shelf. Take a look.

Fairfield's Carnegie Library

The Fairfield Auxiliary newspaper carried this story about the town's Carnegie Library in the December 19th, 1935 issue. The library was dedicated in January 1914.

History of Fairfield Schools

This history of the Fairfield schools appeared in the Fairfield Auxiliary newspaper on November 21, 1935.

Sutton Park Story

The Sutton Park has always been an important part of the community, even before there was a community. Today’s park ground was part of the Luther French homestead in March, 1870, the town’s first real estate. The site of French’s first home, his dugout on the banks of School Creek is within the park. Though we credit French as Sutton’s founder, it is unlikely the prospect of a town was involved in Mr. French’s land decisions, much less the prospect of a park. He appears to have been a farmer just looking for a place to plant wheat.

John Maltby arrived early the next year to claim a homestead to the south of French’s and soon convinced Luther to subdivide his homestead into 600 lots for the town of Sutton which French immediately began to sell off to newly arriving townspeople. In the fall of 1871, French sold the last 400 un-sold lots to the Clark brothers, moved further down School Creek into Fillmore County acquiring another plot of ground for his wheat and resumed farming.

French’s sale of his homestead became central to the dispute that Sutton had with the Burlington Railroad when French fumbled the proper legal sequence involving recording land sales negating a deal railroad officials believed they’d completed.

Sutton's Population & Business Story

Sutton is an agricultural community. No surprise there. The dependence of our community on the surrounding farming activity dictated how the town grew and then declined and the nature of the town over its 140 years.

Sutton blossomed quickly after 1871 to about 1000 people in just ten years and to a peak population of near 2000 around 1900. Then a decline in population began that has stabilized at just less than 1500.

The population trends of the area are better illustrated by the population of Clay County as shown in census figures:

1860 - 165

1870 - 54

1880 – 11294

1890 – 16310

1900 – 15735

1910 – 15729

1920 – 14486

1930 – 13571

1940 – 10445

1950 – 8700

1960 – 8717

1970 – 8266

1980 – 8106

1990 – 7123

2000 – 7039

The current county population is about 43% of the peak population while Sutton has declined to about 75% of its peak. Other county communities have also generally declined at a rate closer to the Sutton rate than the county as a whole confirming our suspicion that the loss of farm population has been the driving factor in the decline. Farms got bigger; people got fewer.

My common comment when describing this area while I was living elsewhere was that it took twice as much farmland to raise a family each generation. That’s probably understated. It may be closer to two and a half to three times as much land to raise a family each succeeding generation. It was not unusual for five or six farm families to live in a section at one time. What’s that number today? One?

The peak farm population required robust communities to provide goods and services locally and county towns grew accordingly. Travel to Hastings or Grand Island to buy shoes and groceries wasn’t practical by horse and buggy or by Model A.

Fortunately we have two comprehensive lists of businesses in Sutton to help understand the business activity of our community. The Nebraska State Gazetteer of 1890 - 91 (found at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~neclay/claybus.html) gives us a list of the town’s businesses in 1891. Dale Stough’s History of Hamilton and Clay Counties has a similar list for 1921.

From the 1891 list we learn that Sutton had five general merchandise stores, six dry goods and clothing stores, four grocery stores, four confectionaries, three meat markets, three druggists, two shoemakers, a jeweler and a tailor. There were four livery stables, three ag implement stores, four blacksmiths, two grain elevators and a lumber yard. There were two hotels, three banks, four attorneys, four physicians and a dentist.

These statistics are a little suspicious. From newspaper ads it seems that generally there were more than the single dentist or barber and more than just two saloons. But generally, we have an idea that Sutton was a thriving commercial center. Overall, there were almost 75 businesses in town.

By 1921 the business profile had shifted some. There were still eight stores of various kinds, still three meat markets, four grain elevators, six physicians, two dentists, two mills and two lumber yards. The livery stables had been transformed in to six garages. Sutton was down to a single confectionary shop and one hotel at that time. There was still a harness maker and three creameries were on the list.

Many of us remember well the creamery business. Most farmers milked cows and kept a sizable flock of laying hens. Saturday nights found farmers lined up at the creameries delivering their five-gallon cans of cream and those 15 and 30 dozen egg crates. After an appropriate wait in the car for the cream to be tested and the eggs counted, they returned to the creamery to collect their payment, maybe six to eight dollars but enough to buy the week’s groceries.

Filling stations are another indicator of past activity. We believe there were 17 locations of stations in Sutton with as many as a dozen operating at one time.

These businesses provided employment for a sizable work force of town’s people including many single men besides local families. Boarders were listed in several homes with various occupations. The 1880 census includes one of the hotels in which more than 40 people were listed as residents, only a few of which were members of families. Most were listed as laborers but specific occupations included saloon keeper, painter, tailor, and furniture dealer. The hotel itself provided employment for the manager, his wife, four resident servants and a clerk.

The town of Sutton was a robust community in its day, as were most of the neighboring towns. Sutton is holding its own today - much of those neighboring towns, not so much.

This article appeared in the June, 2010 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. For information about the magazine contact neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com or Mustang Inc., 510 West Cedar, Sutton, NE 68979.

Sutton's Pioneer Gray Family

Emma Gray

Visitors to the Sutton Museum are familiar with the Gray family. Displays include Emma’s dress from 1871 and a calendar picture from the J. M. Gray Lumber and Building Material business. Both houses at the museum were built by John and Emma Gray and their dining room set has returned. Emma inspired the name of Aunt Emma’s Tea House.

So who were the Gray’s?

Hosea Gray, his son John M., son-in-law George W. Bemis, Wilson Cunning and his wife came by covered wagon to School Creek on May 4, 1871 where only Luther French lived in his dugout.

P. McTighe built a shanty for a store next to the Gray’s first dwelling within a few days and Curran, Higgins and Kearney & Kelley opened their saloons. The School Creek settlement was underway.

Hosea Gray was born in Pennsylvania in 1816, lived in Indiana and Illinois and made it to Iowa in 1839. He served as Linn County sheriff for four terms, practiced law, and was Clerk of the District Court retiring in 1850. He then bought a 640 acre stock farm and in 1856 was a member of the state’s Constitutional Convention. In April, 1861 he formed a company in the Sixth Iowa Infantry serving two years before a serious illness forced him from the front lines. He finished the war as a Lieutenant Colonel recruiting and training troops.

Col. Gray returned from the war to his farm and family. His wife died in 1869 and two years later he headed west to the banks of School Creek.

Hosea and John started a lumber yard on August 24^th of 1871 the day after Thurlow Weed’s carload of lumber arrived from Lincoln. The Gray lumber yard was on the west side of Way Avenue, north of the tracks.

John’s wife Emma and Ada Augusta Bemis joined their husbands early that summer. Emma Wolcott was born in 1850 in Elizabeth, Illinois. Her father died of injuries in the Civil War.

Ada Bemis was the daughter of Hosea Gray and wife of George W. Bemis. Her accounts of pioneer days in Sutton can be found online. A search using “Ada Bemis Sutton Nebraska” returns “Nebraska Trailblazer #5” and “The Easter Blizzard” at nebraskahistory.org. Hers was the first piano in the area and her performances were in great demand.

George and Ada Bemis moved their family to York where she helped organize the first branch of the WCTU west of Lincoln. Daughter Anna Gray Bemis married first a Mr. Cutler and later a Mr. Palmer. She contributed her name and funding for the Anna Bemis Palmer Museum in York. A display honoring Anna is to the right of the door as you enter.

Two sons of George and Ada Bemis entered the publishing business. George Jr. edited J. Sterling Morton’s “Conservative” and was the first editor of the Lincoln Star. As a member of the First Nebraska Infantry in the Spanish-American War, George Bemis, Jr. was one of the first ten men into Manila after it was taken. His brother Eugene was editor and columnist with “The New Teller” in York from 1911 until 1949. The family of his wife, Kate Houston generously contributed a copy of Eugene’s book, “The Squawker Book” to the Sutton Museum. The book is a collection of the humorist’s poems and columns and gets off to a great start with the dedication: “We ain’t mad at nobody”.

Back in Sutton, Eugenia Maria Gray, another daughter of Homer Gray married Samuel Carney in 1878. Carney came to Sutton from Pennsylvania and worked in I. N. Clark’s hardware store. He purchased the business from I. N. and later passed it on to his son Samuel Gray Carney. The younger Sam Carney hired a young fellow named Les Bauer to work in the hardware store. Les carried that lineage of Sutton hardware businesses into the memory of many of us.

Many of the Sutton pioneers played their part and moved on with little trace of the families remaining. The Gray family name may have faded but the extended Gray family left some distinguished tracks.

This article appeared in the May, 2010 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. For information about the magazine contact neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com or Mustang Inc., 510 West Cedar, Sutton, NE 68979.

Sutton Street Names or "Why Saunders Avenue?"

The first settlers on the Great Plains faced open territory and a blank map. One of their chores as they filled the territory was to also fill the map with names for physical features they found and created. Sutton has about 40 named streets and avenues. Where did those names come from; that is, who or what is a Saunders?

Our east-west thoroughfares are streets and avenues run north and south. We can account for most of the streets very quickly with the “Tree Theme”. From the township line north of the park we have an almost alphabetical list of tree-related names to the south: Ash, Beech, Cedar, Maple (Wrong! Why not Dogwood?), Elm, Forest and Grove (not kinds of trees, but OK), Hickory, Ivy (once was “Joy Street”), Laurel and Myrtle. (No “K”. Can you think of one?).

But why trees? If there was one thing early explorers, Oregon Trail Diarists and settlers all agreed upon, it was that THERE WERE NO TREES. The township southwest of Clay Center is even named “Lone Tree”.

South of the tree section are three streets between Myrtle and Highway 6. A banker by the name of Fowler developed that addition and named Helen, Anna and George streets. Betty and Roger Sheridan gave the historical society several photos collected over the years and one is labeled “Fowler girls, Helen, Anna, Madge, Geo. Fowler” - Madge didn’t get her street.

Crossing back to the north of the park the first little street north of Ash Street is Lake Street. Let’s call names like this a “descriptive name.” Such descriptive names are the second major category and reflect some feature that struck the founder’s fancy. Was there a lake or a pond north of Ash where the little creek comes from the west? Don’t know. Just north of Lake is Ridge Street. Sounds like another descriptive name and barring discovering a Mr. Lake or a Mr. Ridge somewhere in Sutton’s past, let’s picture a ridge over a lake here, or someone’s imagination of them.

Next is Lincoln Street. Perhaps more time and effort would uncover whether this street is officially named for President Lincoln or the state capitol city. A research projects like this is a “work in progress.” Suggestions welcome. The west end of Lincoln Street becomes Crestridge Circle Drive – another descriptive name.

Next is North Street and it is “in the north part of town”, yet another descriptive name. Then we have Ada Street. This section of town was once owned by Hosea Gray and George Bemis. Col. Gray’s daughter Ada was married to George Bemis. Ada was a gracious host and a fine musician with Sutton’s first piano. And with her own street.

North of the school and in line with the entrance to the cemetery is N. Silver Street Richard S. Silver arrived in Sutton in April, 1878 and owned 400 acres on the north edge of town. Silver was an important name in early Sutton but that name disappeared with the death of Cessna Silver in 1966.

That’s the streets; now for the avenues.

To the east of the middle of town are Maltby, Way, Main and French Avenues. Main Avenue was supposed to be the “main” street of Sutton and the first businesses were built on Main Avenue north of the Burlington tracks. Within just a few months, businesses began to migrate three blocks west to build on Saunders Avenue leading to the ambiguity and confusion that we are still dealing with today. Luther French, John Maltby and William Way were the three homesteaders of the three eighties that make up Sutton Original Town and the First Addition (about Ash to Helen and James to French).

Our project here takes an “incomplete” east of Route 6. Calvert, Phillips, Dorr, Owen and Dennis Avenues all appear to be named after people. Thomas Calvert was a Burlington railroad engineer in 1871 who worked on the Crete-Kearney section of track just as it was built. The state historical society has a story about him in its web site. That might be where this name came from – might be.

Dr. Charles Phillips was a dentist in Sutton but only from about 1905 until 1908. He is unlikely to be the source of this name, but possible – raise your hand if you know better.

There were Dorr’s in early Nebraska but none appear to have a any Sutton Connection, likewise Owen’s, though Mr. Owen Miles built the first school house and it was to the east of the main part of town, but that isn’t likely either. We can do better with Dennis Street. The Dennis family owned property to the east of town in the vicinity of Dennis Street (should have been an avenue). There is a Burlington Avenue out on the east edge  of town – did you know that?

Two descriptive names complete the east end of town, Terrace and Crestview Drives and Commercial Avenue is appropriate for its role along the highway to the southeast.

Near the north end of town is the one-block Gray Avenue – clearly named for the Gray family which owned this property. Horseshoe Avenue is recent and someone surely remembers the rationale for it. Was it descriptive of the intended shape or to recognize a horse pasture or something else?

Now, back downtown where we come to the governors. Alvin Saunders was Nebraska’s last territorial Governor serving from 1861-1867 and was later a senator from the state. Our founders saw fit to recognize the gentleman though they did not intend for the honor to be associated with the “main street” of the town. To the west are Butler and James Avenues named for David Christy Butler and William Hartford James, the first two governors of the State of Nebraska.

The west end of Sutton was developed by a very early businessman, I. N. Clark and his brother Dr. Martin V. B. Clark, the first doctor in town. Immediately west of James Avenue is …. Clark Avenue – no mystery there. Next is Glen Avenue. Clark’s Pond was first named Glen Lake, hence the name Glen Avenue. O.K., that begs the question of where did “Glen” come from? There doesn’t seem to have been anyone in the Clark family by that name. Perhaps the area of the lake/pond reminded someone of a little glen, suppose?

The rest of the avenues to the west are Park, Myra, Grand, Roy and Euclid. Park Avenue is on the west side of the Clark’s Pond and looks like a park even today. And the Clark’s must have thought that the town should have a Grand Avenue. Myra and Roy were two of I. N. Clark’s children so we only have Euclid left.

Why is an avenue in Sutton named after a Greek mathematician from 300 BCE? This is my favorite guess in the project. Euclid Avenue is in the Clark Additions so one of the brothers probably named it avenue. Isaac named two avenues after his kids so Euclid may be brother Martin’s contribution.

The Clark’s grew up in Parma, Ohio, now a south suburb of Cleveland. Off to the east is another suburb, Euclid. But what would be the connection? Dr. Martin Clark went to medical school at Western Reserve University, now Case Western. The main street of the Case Western University campus is also the major street that connects downtown Cleveland to the distant suburb of Euclid and is called ... Euclid Avenue. This guess is that Dr. Clark must have had some fond memories of that street that bisected his medical college. Maybe he lived on that street, or someone special did.

Dr. Clark also had a reputation as a serious student of science. He organized a local science club and once engaged in early “C.S.I.-type” work in a criminal investigation. It fits that he might recognize a man of science from over 2,000 years ago given the chance.

That concludes our mental trip across town north and south, east and west. There may be some literature buried about town where someone indentified all of the sources of street and avenue names and they may have found better answers that these. But until that literature surfaces we’ll declare this a first draft of a continuing effort. We’ll continue to look for Dorr and Phillips and the rest. Suggestions welcome.

This article appeared in the March and April issues of Sutton Life Magazine. For information about the magazine contact neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com or Mustang Inc., 510 West Cedar, Sutton, NE 68979.

Sutton in the Census

From the U. S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2: “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.” That is the only specific tasking the founders gave us and it is time for the Twenty-Third Census of the United States.

The purpose of the census is to provide population statistics to adjust the boundaries of Congressional districts but data collection has grown as has the usefulness of the information.

Sutton’s first appeared in the 1880 census having just missed the prior edition. Enumerator James E. Marsh found 1631 people in Sutton Township. Mr. Jacob Steinmetz counted noses in School Creek Township.

Each census has asked a different set of questions beginning with early years when little more than the name of the head of the household and the number of persons was asked. By the beginning of the twentieth century the census bureau was collecting a wealth of information including age, place of birth, immigration date, number of years married, parents’ birthplace, literacy, occupation, etc. Recent forms have shrunk. The 2010 form has only 10 questions asking for name, sex, age, date of birth, racial and home ownership information.

Analysts use census data to learn how the country has grown and developed but no group has benefited from this resource more than genealogists. Great-grandparents seem to come to life as you see their family listed in the census and imagine the interview with the local enumerator. There are surprises lurking in these records: children who died young and were not remembered, in-laws who lived in the house, servants, boarders and gaps – people who should be there but aren’t.

We can’t fully trust everything found in the census. My great-grandparent’s family appears on the first page of the 1880 School Creek census where we’re led to believe that Anna Johnson gave birth to twins in Sweden at the age of 14. Possible, but her achievement probably would have been part of our family folklore. Family records indicate Anna was born in 1841 and would have been 38 years old when she met with the census taker, not 28 as he recorded. Curiously, he also listed his own wife as being 28 years old that year with 18 and 13 year old daughters. He might have had trouble with arithmetic, or maybe he was married twice – the census provides clues, not always complete answers.

Mr. Steinmetz illustrated another point in his own entry. He tried to record his wife’s birthplace and that of her parents but he re-wrote it a couple of times making a mess of the page. It appears he wrote “Prussia” and he clearly wrote “Hesser Castle”, probably meaning the Prussian province of Hesse-Kassel. Again, clues, not always complete answers.

I learned two things about my great-grandmother in the 1900 census. It reports that she had seven children but only six were living. My grandfather must have had a brother or sister who likely died in Sweden before the family emigrated. Also, the enumerator recorded that Anna could read and write, but did not speak English. Quite a number of older people, especially women were getting along just fine in their native language according to the 1900 and 1910 census.

Did you notice that I skipped over the 1890 census? If you research census records, you will too. That census was lost in a fire. So our Sutton research begins in 1880, then skips twenty whole years to the 1900 records followed by 1910, 1920 and you are finished at 1930, for now. Census records are “closed” for 72 years as a privacy consideration. The 1940 census will become public in just a couple more years. I am anticipating that one as my father was the School Creek enumerator starting the task on April 2^nd and finishing on April 17^th. It will be in his handwriting – and a good hand it was. That was not always the case.

Just a few years ago census records were available on microfilm at Mormon libraries at temples and in the largest stakes. Many of us spent hours and hours in darkened rooms at the library just west of Temple Square in Salt Lake City poring over film after film. Now, it is almost too easy. Census records are online and indexed. What used to take multiple sessions can be done in minutes. The genealogy web site www.ancestry.com is a robust and easily accessible repository. There is a modest subscription fee, but when compared to traveling to spend hours or days in a library, it’s a fair price.

This article appeared in the February, 2010 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. For information about Sutton Life contact neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com or Mustang, Inc., 510 West Cedar, Sutton, NE 68979. 

Betsy Swanson - A Little Story Behind a Small Gravestone

Her name was Betsy and a gravestone in the Saronville Lutheran Cemetery tells us she died in 1944 at the age of 90. Odds are that few people today know anything of this woman. Oh, there may be a relative or two who lists her in their family tree, or maybe her name would trigger a long lost memory for someone. But for the most part, Betsy, like so many others left few tracks as clues to lives lived, either well or ill.

For many of us History is the story of people and a small item stumbled upon, a little perseverance and some luck just might uncover a story worth telling.

A photo of Betsy and her spinning wheel appeared in the Hastings Tribune and Sutton Register in 1935 with an article about her demonstration of spinning skills at a Hastings College craft exhibit. Fortunately for us, the author saw fit to tell some of Betsy’s story.

Many of the immigrants to Sutton came as groups who shared a common story. Others arrived as the main character in their own little story. Betsy was in the second category. She remembered her childhood home in Sweden and leaving with her parents and others to seek the land of Zion described by an agent of Brigham Young.

They crossed the Atlantic and a third of the continent to St. Louis. A riverboat took them up the Missouri River to the village of Florence just north of Omaha. They left Florence by ox cart in June, 1863 concluding this long trek in the desert village of Salt Lake City in October. But life in Zion did not match the promises made in Sweden.

Betsy began as a “nurse girl” and at age 13 was earning $1.50 a week carding wool and spinning from 5 a.m. until 11 p.m. Four years of autocratic life wore thin on the Hakanson family. They joined a wagon train bound east to Julesburg, Colorado at the west end of the Union Pacific railroad. This wagon train was attacked by Indians with one man in their party killed and another injured. A much safer train ride brought Betsy and her parents to Council Bluffs, Iowa where her father became a railroad section foreman and Betsy a domestic servant in a private home.

Betsy married Oscar Swanson in 1870 and the newly-weds moved to their eighty acre homestead on School Creek. The 17-year-old bride found herself the Lady of the House in the first lumber dwelling built in the Sutton precinct. There were few settlers in the area and the town at the time featured three saloons but no stores.

This young lady had packed a lot of living into her first 17 years. The very next year she became a small footnote to our local history when she boarded the Burlington train in Lincoln at 6 a.m. one October morning in 1871 and became the first woman to ride the train from Lincoln to Sutton – a ten-hour trip.

Oscar and Betsy lived on the homestead until 1900 when they moved to Sutton for four years before building a new home in Saronville. They raised two sons, Charles and John who farmed in the Sutton area. A short biography of Oscar appeared in the History of Hamilton and Clay Counties published in 1921.

Betsy’s spinning wheel traveled with her on this adventure that was her life. She resurrected it out of her attic after Oscar died as she became active in reviving interest in handcraft work. That interest led to the small item in the paper preserving her story for us.

Betsy Hakanson Swanson is only one of the thousands of pioneers and settlers whose stories are steadily dimming as time goes by. Is it critically important that we save each and every one of these stories? Probably not critically important, but our lives seem much richer if we include them in our collective memory. And Betsy, like so many others, deserves no less.

This article appeared in the January, 2010 Sutton Life Magazine. Information about the magazine is available at neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com or Mustang, Inc., 510 West Cedar, Sutton, NE 68979.