Where the heck was Prospect Park?

Susan Doak

Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society

I already have thought of what my New Year's resolution should be: No more old newspapers! Browsing through the McCook Tribune on www.chroniclingamerica.loc.gov never seems to solve a mystery without bringing a new mystery to mind.

I was searching the Bondville district news items and found a death notice that said the gentleman had been buried in Prospect cemetery. As usual, that factoid couldn't just be stored in my already bursting mind; I had to find out more about the Prospect cemetery which of course led me to the "news items" listed under Prospect Park.

As it is, when I am searching this kind of stuff, I often have to rely on family names to try and decipher where locations might be. When it came to Prospect Park, the most reoccurring names were: Tirrill, Wade, Croker and Cain. The Tirrill turned out to be useless in tracking down Prospect Park because he was a traveling minister to the church but did not live there which I discovered in a 1898 where Rev. J. E. Tirrill was mentioned as having stayed with the J. H. Wade family due to a storm.

News items from this little burg started appearing in 1886 newspapers. Often when I am trying to trace a location, I go to precinct maps. Red Willow County has twenty precincts: Coleman, Box Elder, Fritsch, Alliance, North Valley, Perry, Willow Grove, Red Willow, Indianola, East Valley, Driftwood, Valley Grange, Bondville, Missouri Ridge, Tyrone, Grant, Gerver, Danbury, Beaver and Lebanon. The 1905 Standard Atlas of Red Willow County (available at our library) has these broken down and lists landowners. When I have even a hint of what area something is located in, I will search landowners till I find appropriate matches but in this case going through twenty precincts didn't appeal.

Instead, since a school was referenced several times, I went to a map of original Red Willow County Schools (also in the Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society library) and there it was! Prospect Park School No. 48 is located in the Driftwood Precinct southwest of McCook.

Today we have very few schools in Red Willow County due to consolidation and the fact that families are smaller. When this map was done, over 60 schools existed in Red Willow County and some of the names were unique: Mt. Vernon, Dublin, Zion Hill, Flat Center, Golden Rod (I'm not sure that was referring to the flower), Rising Sun, Hamburg, Pea Ridge, Fair Hope and School Creek. If the map of schools is any indication, substantial brick schools existed at McCook, Red Willow, Indianola, Danbury, Marion, Bartley and Lebanon which I suspect means that they were schools that had students from preparatory (kindergarten) through high school.

I learned that the school had not yet been built in early 1886 but, according to a news item in the Sept. 23, 1886 McCook Tribune, School District No. 48 (Prospect Park), purchased the Brewer house and would be moving it onto the school house site, "at once." This may have been the Bert Brewer house since he was named in the same news column as having a new wind-mill up on his place.

Prospect Park residents apparently used the school house for their Sunday services according to the information I gleaned from different columns. From the late 1880's through the very early 1900s the little settlement seemed to be holding its own but suddenly the only Prospect Park news was of people being laid to rest or families moving and children growing up and traveling away from the area. By 1911 the news column disappeared and Prospect Park rarely appeared in the paper.

The Christmas Letter is written but not mailed, the cookies aren't baked and I am wondering where November went, let alone December. Merry Christmas to everyone and may 2016 be a year of blessing for you all. Southwest Nebraska Genealogy Society's next meeting will be Jan. 9, 2016.