My Genealogy Hound

O. E. THOMPSON, of Shelton township, is one of the oldest settlers of Buffalo county and one of its most intelligent and best informed citizens. He accompanied his parents to Nebraska in October, 1857, being then a mere lad. For two years and a half they resided at the village of Genoa, at the mouth of Beaver creek on Pawnee Reservation, coming in March 1860 to what is now Buffalo county, and settling on Wood river, one mile west of the present town of Shelton, since which time he has resided in that vicinity excepting temporary absence when he was away in the United States service or scouting among the Indians on the plains. Thirty years in Buffalo county, Nebr., and the West! Let the reader take up a state map bearing the above date and one of the present time, and after refreshing his memory on the historical incidents connected with the making of this portion of the great West, let him reflect for a moment what a world of observation and an unlimited wealth of experience a man must have had who has lived for the last thirty years as far west as Buffalo county, this state. The bare mention of the fact suggests to the imagination an historical perspective seldom met with even in the lives of the oldest pioneers. Thirty years ago Nebraska had been but recently organized as a territory. The permanent settlements were confined to the Missouri river trading posts and a few inland points, while the vast territory comprised within the central and western part of the state was one unbroken prairie, threaded by a few streams and dominated by the aboriginal red man and roaming herds of buffalo. The county of Buffalo had not then been marked on the map. All that was known of its geological boundaries and physical features was known of it as part of the great valley of the Platte, which in turn formed a part of the great plains over which the persecuted Mormon and the venturous gold-seeker, bound for the Pacific slope or Pike’s Peak, toiled their weary way, long before the railroads had belted the continent with their glittering bands of steel, or even the lumbering stage-coach had developed into the institution which it subsequently proved to be. “Life on the Plains!” What memories are awakened by these words. The literature of the country has been flooded for the last quarter of a century with descriptive articles, personal recollections, incidents of travel, poems and novels, all seeking to portray some phase of the pioneer’s life in the West. But who yet knows what it was save the pioneer himself? “I came on the plains in the fifties or sixties,” are words which when spoken by the sturdy old pioneer mean a vast deal more than the man of this day can understand. When Mr. Thompson settled on Wood river there was a stage station at Shelton, a few families scattered along the river in that vicinity. To the west, north, south and one might almost say to the east, the country was simply part of the unknown world so far at least as the abodes of white men were concerned. The Union Pacific railroad had not then been projected, this part of the great public domain had not then been surveyed, and the country at large was considered worthless except as a hunting-ground for the Indians. These were present in great numbers and comprised some of the most powerful and warlike tribes on the continent. The Cheyennes, Sioux and Pawnees roamed over this part of the country then, and they not unfrequently left the evidences of their savagery in murdered men and women and in desolated homes. To people of a later generation, not one in ten of whom, probably, ever saw a “painted red devil,” it is hard to convey an adequate idea of the terror these prowling bands of savages spread through the country, and the constant strain under which the settlers labored in consequence. Not the Indians, however, nor their free-booting white brothers of the plains formed the greatest impediment to the settlement of this country nor scattered the greatest desolation, suffering and death among the early pioneers. The invisible forces of nature and the hardships and privations almost inseparably connected with the opening of a new country formed the greatest obstacles to the advance of civilization, and called for the exercise of more heroic qualities than did the warding off of Indian forays and the attacks of pillaging bands of free-booters. Little do the people of this day know of the want, suffering and heart-aches which the first settlers were called on to endure. And what is here said of the old settler in general applies with special force and significance to the subject of this sketch. All that others saw and endured he saw and endured. He was among the first and he has stuck steadfastly to the home of his adoption even up to the present time.

As noted above, when Mr. Thompson came to Nebraska he was small and came with his parents. Let us take up his history and give its brief outlines.

Oliver Edwin Thompson was born in Warwickshire, England, September 16, 1846, and is the second of three children — Hannah, Oliver Edwin, and Johnnie, born to William and Jane (Matthews) Thompson, natives of the same place. His parents immigrated to America in the spring of 1850, and settled in St. Louis, Mo., where the father died, August 4th, that year, followed later by the youngest child. The mother was re-married in 1855, being married to a countryman of hers, Henry Dugdale, now remembered by the old settlers of Buffalo county as one of the pioneers of central Nebraska. The family came to Nebraska, settling, after a temporary residence on the Pawnee reservation, in Buffalo county, where the subject of this sketch was reared and began the race of life. His earlier years were spent on the old home-place west of Shelton, and he grew up as a boy on the frontier might be expected to, alternately engaged in the stirring sports of the field with the stern contest for bread and butter. He traveled extensively, being out with freighters and scouts, and ranged all the way from central Nebraska to the Rocky mountains. December 26, 1862, being then in his seventeenth year, he entered the United States army, enlisting in Company K, Third California infantry, at Camp Douglas, Utah. He served in Utah, Colorado and Idaho, being in the frontier service and engaged in keeping down Indian and Mormon troubles. It was his command that fought the famous battle at Bear river, Idaho, on the 29th of January, 1863, where the United States troops, one hundred and fifty cavalry and ninety infantry, fought the Indians and Mormons, killing three hundred Indians out of three hundred and six engaged. Mr. Thompson gives an interesting description of that battle, fought, as it was, amid the mountains, with the snows two feet deep and hundreds of miles from civilization. He gives the Indians credit for having displayed a vast deal more courage and manhood than the Mormons; for, he says, the former fought bravely, even the squaws, old men and children bearing a part in the battle, while the latter, after having instigated the Indians to the contest, refused to give them aid. Mr. Thompson was in the United States service on the frontier till October 31, 1865, being mustered out at that date at Denver, Colo. He served as a private, entering as a fifer, but after two months taking a gun, which he carried till the expiration of the term of his enlistment.

Returning to Buffalo county in the fall of 1865, he settled down to farming and stock-raising, and followed the uneventful life of a frontier bachelor till 1871, when on the 6th day of August that year, he married Miss Clara Lew, a young lady who had come to the county that spring with the Gibbon colony. Having previously taken a homestead in Shelton township, two and a half miles south and east of the budding town of Gibbon, Mr. Thompson settled there, and began the serious duties of life in earnest. He began on limited means, as did all the old settlers, and, although he had previously seen much hardship, all his ways were not ways of pleasantness, nor were his paths all paths of peace. He had his struggles with the grasshoppers, drouth, hail and hard times, and he had his courage and endurance tested to their utmost stretch, like all his neighbors who remained through all those dreary years. Mr. Thompson, however, remained steadfastly by the home of his adoption, and the gradual improvement of the country witnessed a gradual improvement in his condition. He is to-day one of the best fixed and most prosperous farmers in the county. He owns four hundred acres of land lying in Shelton township, all of which is susceptible of cultivation, and most of which he has improved and well stocked. He is one of the few men of the township who never gave a mortgage, who is out of debt, and whose paper is good in any bank in the county without collateral security.

It could hardly happen that a man who has resided in the county as long as Mr. Thompson has, and who possesses the sound intelligence and business qualifications that he does, should not have been called on to fill some positions of a public nature. He was appointed sheriff of Buffalo and Dawson counties, in February, 1870; served out an unexpired term, and was elected in the fall of 1871, and served two years, during which time he served also as register of the county having received the appointment to that office in the meantime. He has never aspired to anything like a public life, being content to pursue his own personal affairs, in which he finds his greatest pleasure, as well as his highest reward.

This sketch, long as it is, would not be complete without further mention than has been made of the excellent lady whom Mr. Thompson selected to share his life’s fortunes. Like himself, she is something of a historical character in Buffalo county. She came to the county in April, 1871, as a member of the old Soldiers’ Free-Homestead Colony, being one of the two unmarried ladies of that colony. She came from West Farmington, Ohio, where she was born and reared, accompanying to this state some old friends and neighbors. She is descended from pioneer ancestry, and is, in every essential, a pioneer herself. Her father, Joseph Lew, was a native of New York, having been born near the present city of Rochester. He immigrated to Ohio, and settled on the Western Reserve, in 1832, where he some years afterwards married a lady, Miss Martha Hatch, and there lived till his death. Mrs. Thompson’s mother, who is still living, being a member now of her daughter’s household, is a native of Vermont, and a descendant of New England ancestors. Her father moved to Ohio in 1834, and settled on the Western Reserve. Mrs. Thompson was the only child born to her parents. She grew up in her native place, and received a good common school training; also attended the Western Reserve seminary, West Farmington, Ohio, taking a three years’ course; commenced teaching at the age of fifteen, closing her twenty-third term of school the day before starting for Nebraska; so that when she came to Nebraska, in the general division of labor among the colonists, the position of teacher naturally fell to her. She taught the first school in the county, taking it in the summer of 1871. She taught in a sod school-house, one mile west of the present town of Shelton, her district embracing all the surrounding country, she even having pupils from Hall county and old Fort Kearney, across the Platte river. She only taught one session, marrying, as already noted, in the summer of 1871, after which she joined her husband on the farm.

Mr. and Mrs. Thompson have a pleasant home, to which they welcome friend and stranger with that warmth, hospitality and tender touch of nature that makes all the world akin. They both possess intelligence and culture, and their home, conduct and conversation, give evidence of refinement not met with among all of the “old timers.” Their friends are numbered by their acquaintances, and even the casual visitor retains a happy recollection of them.