George Randel becomes a landowner, gets married, and takes in a Buffalo Bill show

Pulling carrots and freezing them, canning tomatoes, digging potatoes, gardens are finally paying off. Of course, I have more yellow squash than a person has a right to have. Like zucchini, if it is happy where it is planted, you’ve got the mother lode!

I will continue George F. Randel’s story from where I left off as he made his way to North Platte to pay up on his pre-emption. The Preemption Act of 1841 permitted first settlers, or “squatters,” on public lands to purchase up to 160 acres of that land from the government.

Pre-emption land sold for around $1.25 an acre thus the $250.00 George was carrying with him. The 160 acres would cost him $200.00. This story is in George’s own words as written in 1939 in a booklet entitled “Pioneer Happenings in Nebraska”.

George had spent the night near Medicine Creek southwest of Stockville at a ranch when a rainstorm delayed his travels. The second day he stopped at the Scheek ranch for the night. He started out early on July 4th and seeing a town, stopped and asked the only occupants, two women, what the place was. They said, Fort McPherson, but no soldiers were left there and that he was still 16 or 18 miles south of North Platte.

“Six or seven miles west of the Fort they were having a big picnic at a creek grove and Buffalo Bill Cody was passing out treats to the kids, as I came up to mix with the crowd a while. Drove on to North Platte and the next day did my business and left town a land owner. At that time there were only about four ranches between Indianola and Fort McPherson.”

“You know I had left a lady friend in Indiana and after having paid out on my pre-emption, I bought Ona Kiler’s homestead right, which joined me on the east, so I had to establish a home, don’t you see. Well, I packed up my suit case with a few clothes and plenty of dried meat and went to Indianola, the railroad had gotten there that fall, so bummed my way to Hastings. You know we had to go by way of Red Cloud then.”

“I spent some time visiting around Indiana that winter, and on March 23, 1881, my “lady friend” and I were married and a few days later started for Nebraska, landing in Indianola the first day of April. We moved into my dug-out which was about 600 feet south of Harley Lofton’s present home. I started building a sod house on the homestead in the late Spring. It stood just a few feet east of the big two-story house we built twelve years later, where my son Elmer now lives.”

“The soddy was quite a house. We had a cellar under part of it and water piped from the mill into a barrel in the bedroom, and a pipe to the kitchen, and an overflow pipe to the stock tank by the stable. Crops, what few there were, started out fine that year (1881), but hot winds cooked about everything. I did have some dandy late melons, which I sold in Indianola.”

“The year 1881 was a busy one for me. I built my new house and stable on the homestead, hauled ties and tiling for the railroad, and in the fall, Frees and Hocknell of Indianola, were paying $5.00 a load for buffalo bones, delivered at the mouth of Chief Creek, just west of where Wray, Colorado, is; that also was on the new railroad fill. So I started out. I took a load of corn from the end of the railroad at the county line to Collinsville, now Benkelman. Some days I could get a load of bones in three or four hours; other days it would take a long day. H.H. Mitchell and Charley Boyle, later a lawyer in McCook, were there from Fair View, too. Charley got kicked in the face by a mule and boy did he have a fourth of July nose!”

The final installment from George’s booklet will be next week. Remember you can always do research on line at www.swngs.org or visit our library at 322 Norris Ave, Ste. 2-7.