A seemingly innocent question posed by my sister led me to spend a day at the county records office in Stockville, Nebraska. “Do you think our grandfather was born in Frontier County, like his older brother?”
Our maternal great-grandfather met his wife, married and started a family on a farm near Stockville in 1899. As I departed Missouri, I realized I was never going to be closer to their story with a van and a dog than I was at that moment. I headed north into the land of corn and sky.
Connie, second from left, took the lead, finding my great-grandfather Thomas Arnold in county census records. In the safe room, she cracked open cumbersome ledgers: deeds, mortgages and sales records, searching through hand-written entries. While she worked, I heard about Stockville’s aspirations back in 1899 when my great-grandparents married: it was to be on a main transportation route, with a large stockyard for cattle. Neither happened. Over the years, it became a whisper of a town at the end of a road, today, population 36, tucked in beside Medicine Creek.
There are lots of Medicine Creeks and Rivers in the west. Most often, this is an indigenous reference to healing arts – either through plants or spiritual means – found near the water. At one time, before farming settlement, the land owned by my great-grandfather had been inhabited by ranging buffalo and indigenous tribes, people unrightfully pushed west by the U.S. government.
By 4 p.m., I had dug up just about every deed possible. With portions of a county map and detailed instructions in hand (“turn right at the blue house“; “his sections start when you reach this grain silo“. Soon, I arrived at the road that borders the four sections of land (each section equals 640 acres) once owned in part or whole by my grandfather. Today, it’s planted with winter wheat and corn.
I drove the length of the road past the sections until I saw an old wind mill and well in a cluster of cottonwood trees. Five or 10 years after they started a family, my grandparents stepped out of their own safe room following a tornado to find that the neighbor’s barn was gone. That final straw sent them packing, west to Pozo, California.
I listened for the voices of my ancestors, but heard only the ghostly whine of wind catching the whirling blades.
Thank you to the staff at the Frontier County Records office for bringing history to life.
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