Volume 4, No. 3 Buffalo County Historical Society March, 1981
Ella Doggett Hostetler was the wife of Max A. Hostetler, early merchant and longtime business man of Shelton. Married in Gibbon on September 21, 1880, Mrs. Hostetler was prominent in club, lodge and church circles during all of her life in Buffalo County. In the following story, excerpted from a longer article, she describes the life of Margaret Slattery as the wife of the first section foreman on the Union Pacific Railroad stationed at the point which later became Kearney.A pioneer mother told me the following story of the early life of herself and her husband on the plains. They were the first inhabitants of what is now Kearney. This pioneer mother was born Margaret Markel in Mercer County, Pennsylvania in 1842. She married very young and was a widow with two small children when she married Martin Slattery in the home of her parents on August 18, 1866. Her husband was born in Ireland.
She told me her story in February, 1924 as she was seated in a cozy room of her comfortable cottage in Shelton where she receives many visits from friends who drop in, and when alone she reads her Bible, the daily newspapers, the Shelton Clipper and the current magazines. An accident several years ago necessitates the use of crutches and the employment of a housekeeper. She is a large woman, with a kind face and a wonderful memory. She has a keen sense of humor and laughs heartily as she relates amusing incidents, her eyes twinkling and sparkling as she does so.
Her husband had been a section foreman on a Pennsylvania railroad but heard the call "Go West" and soon after their marriage in 1866 with his wife and her two small children they started for Omaha. There was no bridge across the Missouri River at that point so they went farther south to St. Joseph, Missouri and took boat from there up the river to Omaha where Mr.Slattery was to be employed.
Omaha was then but a scattered village, with boards laid here and there for sidewalks. It was not the dream city she had pictured or expected to find and she refused to remain there, so Mr. Slattery took them back to St. Joseph to stay with friends while he sought the something better she demanded. Soon he was appointed section foreman where the town of Kearney now is. It was five miles west of what was Kearney Station, now Buda.
Kearney Station was the railroad supply depot for Fort Kearny which was situated four miles directly south and on the south bank of the Platte River in Kearney County. It seems to have been the plan of promoters to build a city at Kearney Station, but their dream faded away when it was discovered no clear title could be given to land or lots there as it was within the boundary of the military district known as the Fort Kearney Reservation, which was ten miles square, so all plans were abandoned for making even a town of it. The few buildings that had been erected were moved away and nothing was left late in 1866 except a rude station and section house. Eleven years later Fort Kearny was abandoned and the military tract of land opened to actual settlers, but it was too late to benefit the city of dreams.
The Union Pacific Railroad was completed as far west as Kearney Station in August 1866, and the work was pushed rapidly forward by great "gangs"of workmen. In October of that year the Slatterys were living on the railroad five miles farther west.
Mr. Slattery helped build the section house he was to occupy. It was made of boards placed upright, on end, and when completed it contained three rooms below and a loft above for the hired men. The whole building, except door, windows and roof, was enclosed by blocks of sod and was called a sod house. He dug a well eighteen feet deep and buckets were used for drawing the water.
When all was completed he sent to St. Joseph for his wife and her children. They made the three days journey to Omaha by boat at a cost of $18.00. Many people traveled in that way in those early days and Mrs. Slattery had pleasant congenial company, good food and enjoyed it all.
Mr. Slattery met her at Omaha and they bought the furniture for their new home, of which she knew nothing, neither of the home nor the surroundings. Then they journeyed on, nearly 190 miles, to that something she thought better than Omaha afforded. She was given no idea of what to expect of her home, or of the "city" to which she was going, for her husband preserved strict silence on the subject.
What her feelings were when they arrived she keeps well hidden in the deep recesses of her heart to this day, but she says it was a scene of absolute desolation and barrenness, and the house unlike anything her imagination had ever pictured. She cried, she said, and to comfort her one of the hired men soothingly remarked, "Never mind, lady, I'll grind the coffee for you." Nothing could be done she saw to change conditions but to make the best of it. Her husband was there and his two assistants. They had to have food prepared and be cared for, so she undertook what she believed to be her duty.
Everything was strange, but there was a certain beauty in the tints of color always seen in October. She was not really lonesome at first, for strange people called emigrants, with their queer wagons, passed her door daily on what was then the Old California Trail, now the Lincoln Highway. Sometimes these emigrants passed in companies of ten and twelve wagons, and almost all were drawn by oxen. Occasionally three yoke of oxen would draw one wagon if it were heavily loaded. Oxen were used for several reasons, one being that they had greater endurance and could be sustained by eating grass while horses required grain as food. She had never seen oxen so used before and her heart was saddened when she saw them so tired sometimes that they would drop with their yokes on.
The companies would camp near them. They would form a very close circle with the backs of the wagons out, and while the oxen grazed on the prairiethe emigrants would camp in the center. This was a protection against Indian attacks out on the plains.
The bands of emigrants were not the only people who passed her door. The red faced Indians came and went in great numbers and many of them, as well as the emigrants, sought her aid and found it, for as the Good Samaritan she is and always has been, she could not refuse it. She said she never turned a hungry person from her door if it were possible to provide for him. Helping others brought her the contentment she could not otherwise have found. Her nearest neighbors were at Kearney Station, the station agent and his wife, young people by the name of Wilson. They had a small child.
There was not a tree in sight except along the streams of water, particularly the Platte River to which they walked sometimes. The land all about them was covered with tall grass and the wind which was usually in motion rolled it along as ocean billows. Distances were deceiving. What seemed near was usually very far off. She saw objects sometimes in a mirage and often when the air was very clear and still she heard the band playing at Fort Kearny about seven miles away.
There were herds of buffalo to be seen, as many as two hundred often in a herd. They would go to the Platte for water, then back into the hills at the north. She would watch them as they came and went over the hills but they did not molest her dwelling. She watched the Indians crossing the hills in the same way, as they came up from the other side there would be first a head, then a body and then the full form of the Indian. There were a great many antelope and she had one as a pet. There were deer, too. She did not see any, but they had venison to eat.
| Margaret Slattery and granddaughter Thelma Peterson |
The Slatterys never knew the pinch of poverty experienced by most of the early settlers, for Mr. Slattery was well paid by the railroad company. Their supplies were sent out to them from Omaha, freight free, and they were given free transportation to Omaha and Grand Island as occasion demanded. They always had plenty of food and necessary clothing.
They had a prairie dog as a pet. They called him "Jim" and he responded to his name, following Mrs. Slattery about. He wore a watch chain about his neck and would hunt in Mr. Slattery's pockets for kernels of corn that had been picked up for him in the wake of the emigrant wagons.
One night Mrs. Slattery discovered a large animal going around and around the house. She awakened her husband, who took his gun, went outside the house and killed a very large timber wolf, such as often had been known to carry away young calves. Another time he killed a silver fox, the fur being beautiful. He also killed during their residence there thirty-six coyotes (prairie wolves).
The section house was located in what was known as a "prairie dog town." There were "rattlers" there of heroic size, and they had their experiences with them. Many passengers on the trains carried firearms and entertained themselves by shooting from the car windows at prairie dogs and other small game. They forgot usually to remove their hats when doing so and a gust of wind often sent them speeding over the prairie. The Slatterys had a large collection of hats they picked up; one was a very fine tall silk hat with a silver buckle on it.
In May of 1867 the section foreman at Wood River Center (present Shelton) named O'Brien was killed by accident in falling backward from a hand car, and Mr. Slattery was offered the position. Mrs. Slattery, with heart hunger for people of her kind and neighbors, had heard there were settlers around that place and was anxious to make the change. The roadmaster implored them to remain where they were for he had implicit faith that within a short time a town of importance would be located right there. He gave them his reasons for his belief, but the desire for that something better at once decided the pioneer mother to move.
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They found in Wood River Center about the same conditions they had left - a sod house of the same proportion and number of rooms. There were a few settlers, but very little land had been broken for farming. There was no railroad station, no post office, no school, no church and no store. Her work in Wood River Center was much heavier than it had been before, for here it was necessary for her husband to have six helpers instead of two, and the Slatterys boarded and roomed them all, doing the laundry work as well. Her many duties did not deter her, however, from lending a hand whenever she could.
Many of the Indians to whom she had been kind at her first home now stopped at the new home and pointed west signifying they had known her there, and called her "Good Squaw."
The Indians and buffalo disappeared as the flood of settlers poured into the state. Many of these arrived empty-handed and here again the pioneer mother maintained her helpful ministrations, never murmuring as she did so, but always happy that she could. As time went on children arrived in their home and with these to love and her household, and the needy ones outside of it to care for, she could not be unhappy.
Mr. Slattery remained section foreman for eleven years and dignified the work and calling. At the end of that time he retired to a farm of eighty acres of land he had bought two miles west of Shelton on the Union Pacific Railroad and on the California or Overland Trail. He added to the eighty acres from time to time until he possessed in his home farm in one body of land, five hundred acres, and in another location, two hundred fifty acres.
Mr. Slattery died in 1896. They were the parents of seven children: Tom N., Elizabeth (Mrs. I. K. Henninger), Lavina, George, John, Martin and Anna (Mrs. I. T. Petersen). Mrs. Slattery's daughter Lulu became a teacher in Shelton and later married the editor of the Shelton Clarion, H. C. McNew. Her son Albert died in 1884, age 24 years.
These first inhabitants and pioneers gained from their experiences not only material comforts, but the respect and confidence of the whole community, which is the reward for honorable living and the adherence to the Golden Rule.Ye pioneers, it is to you
The debt of gratitude is due;
Ye builded wiser than he knew.
The broad foundation
On which our superstructure stands.
Your honest effort still commands
Our veneration. - Pearre
Proofread 1-26-2004
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