Hall County NEGenWeb
Reminiscences & Narratives of Pioneers
OUR EARLY NEIGHBORS

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Transcribed from
the ©1920 "History of Hall County," by Buechler, Barr, and Stough

As I said, it was in 1862 that father located there. He first built a sod-house by the side of the public road. After we lived about three years in the sod house we got a better place. I well remember that I planted one little tree which was then about seven or eight inches in height. It still stands there, a remarkable large tree, after its thirty years vigil on the prairie. The other boys planted a couple others, which are still there, probably thirty feet west of the larger one. They may be about a third of the thickness of this first tree I mentioned, but they were planted at the same time. This one had a better chance to spread out and make a good growth.

When we built the second house we built a log structure, using cottonwoods off the island above us.

During the early days my father was there neighbors were rather scarce articles. A man by name of Nabin, who figured in the buffalo hunt story narrated by Mr. Binfield in his story of our family and beginnings of Martin township, lived about four miles from father's location. Bissell was a ranchkeeper on west there, near Dobetown in Buffalo County, about 22 miles on. There was nobody on west there in our locality and on that side of the river. There was no one living east, when father first came there, until you got down in the York vicinity. A Mr. Foucks lived down in there. The O. K. Store and the Geman settlements of 1857-1858 and so forth were to the north and northeast of us.

There was an old man by name of George Brown had a claim down in there near us. Charles Jerome came about 1867 and bought out his rights. W. J. Burger came to the Doniphan vicinity in 1864, and homesteaded. Of course the country gradually settled up after that.