Red Willow County elections

Susan Doak

Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society

It pays to do housekeeping for other than the obvious reasons!

Lately the Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society members have been cataloguing our library reference materials, updating the files to reflect what we have available for research. Several donations had been received and not all had been added as permanent records due to the volume of information they contained. We knew there was good stuff in those boxes; we just weren't sure what they were!

Imagine finding the original Certificate of Nominations of Election Officers for Red Willow County from the fall of 1900! Twenty-one of these certificates, all signed by Red Willow County Judge G.S. Bishop, rescued from the Indianola land fill and gifted by an anonymous donor. These had been in a private collection for several years and then passed on to us!

One such certificate was from the caucus held by the Populist electors of Driftwood Precinct. In it, E.C. Goehring, E. S. Dutcher and J. W. Randal had been appointed Judges of Election, while A. W. Dutcher and L.F. Waker were appointed Clerks of Election. (You can be assured that none of these were women. In 1900 women were not allowed to vote.) The paperwork goes on to say: " We further certify that each of the above named persons is of good character, approved integrity, well informed, can read, write and speak the English language, has resided in said Precinct for one year next preceding the date of this Certificate, is entitled to vote in said Precinct, is not a candidate to be voted for at the Election to be held November, 1900, and to the best of our knowledge and belief has nothing bet or waged on the result of such Election." Both George F. King, secretary of the caucus and E. C. Goehring, caucus chairman, signed off on that statement!

The Danbury precinct Republicans met at the Shiloh school house and elected the following: Samuel Ball, G. W. Cooley, and Charles Herr as judges; H. E. Woods and F. F. Ball as clerks. O. B. Woods was their chairman.

The Beaver precinct had a group of voters belonging to the Peoples Independent party. John Wintjen, William Stilgebauer and Otto Treltz were appointed to represent their party.

Both John Wesch and Albert Weeks, representatives of the Populist electors in the Grant Precinct listed Banksville as their post office address and noted that the caucus was also held at Banksville. (Banksville was a settlement approximately 26 miles southwest of McCook. Its peak population in 1910 was 19.)

John Colling's place was the site of the Bondville precinct caucus for the Independent party. William Karp, Martin Kennedy, C. Ebert, William Uerling and Michael Esh were appointed as judges and clerks for the party. N. Dutcher was the chairman for the precinct.

These five are representative of the now catalogued and preserved certificates. They are housed in protective sheets and encased in book form so that they can be viewed without being damaged. Even touching paper with bare hands can eventually destroy the fibers so we try to either protect or provide copies for researchers so that the originals won't be harmed.

Join SWNGS members this Saturday, Nov. 7, for an open house celebrating our society's 40th anniversary. We will hold a business meeting at 1 p.m. and then the open house from 2-4 p.m., 110 West C Street, Suite M-3.