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NORTHWEST NEBRASKA, BUFFALO AND CATTLE TRAIL

By Addison E. Sheldon

In this issue of Nebraska History Magazine chief interest is directed toward the settlement of northwest Nebraska, the cattle trail period and the buffalo days of the seventies. Each of the articles upon these subjects is the story of a man familiar to a high degree with events narrated. The stories are told with that personal interest arising from actual contact. The illustrations which accompany them are largely bona fide photographs taken in the pioneering period. As a whole this issue presents a picture of a society and a period in Nebraska now forever past, whose memories yet linger in the minds of men who had active part in that frontier life.

Chaplain Frady's narrative is an intimate relation of a phase of frontier life which often escapes the attention of the historian and novelist. Yet it is of the most vital importance to an understanding of the pioneer period. The work of the missionary, the church and the Sunday School in a frontier society are full of dramatic color. Among a people whose main interest is laying the foundation of fortune, amidst the excitement of life separated from the old home influences, comes the prophet of religion and culture. He must make his way in the rough and tumble life into which he penetrates. He must find a hearing largely by his grasp upon human nature and not upon the religious message which he brings. Chaplain Frady filled the bill for the Nebraska of early days. He is a true spiritual descendant of other frontier gospel bearers such as Lorenzo Dow and Peter Cartwright.

The address of Mayor Dahlman of Omaha has one serious fault. It is too brief. Mr. Dahlman could have told us a great deal more of his own personal experience as a cowboy and a traveller on the Texas Cattle Trail. His story is like a stirring short speech. It calls for "more." And its fine, distinctive, presentation of the discovery of the sand hills as a region where cattle could flourish without

any help from man makes it a real Iliad in the history of the cattle business of the West.

Captain J. H. Cook of Agate Springs has published thru Yale University a real book of his life on the frontier since this short address was given before the State Historical Society. Captain Cook combines in a rare degree the experience of cowboy, military scout, friend of the Indian, scientist, successful business man and story teller. If any more high qualities have been embodied in one man in the history of Nebraska the editor of this magazine is not informed of the fact.

The story of Dr. W. F. Carver is the only one of these four narratives not written by the chief actor. It has the merit of being told by a close friend. It carries the sympathetic touch of admiration and personal contact. Mr. Charles R. Nordin did not participate in the early events of Nebraska life which he tells in such an attractive way. But he has the real spirit of the frontier days and has given to the collection of the material of those days a devotion rarely found. Certainly Dr. Carver could find no more sympathetic interpreter of his career than Mr. Nordin who came to know him late in that career. The many rare personal mementoes gives by Dr. Carver to Mr. Nordin, testimonials from European princes and noted people in distant lands, form one of the most valuable historical collections in Nebraska, and testify to the affection and confidence felt by Dr. Carver for the man who tells his story so well.

The editor of this magazine has a special personal interest in each of the articles which follow. I met Dr. Carver forty years ago at Omaha where I saw him shoot glass balls with a rifle against Captain A. H. Bogardus with a shotgun. Dr. Carver won the contest. No marksman, ancient or modern, in my opinion, ever equalled Dr. Carver. I first knew Captain Cook in the period of the Sioux Indian War during the years 1890�-91. I visited at his ranch. I think one of the finest things in his whole life is the personal friendship he maintained with the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, who were for so many years hostile to the white men on the frontier. It was my fortune to live nine years in Chadron as a neighbor to James C. Dahlman, who for a

The Sheldon Residences and Printing Offices on Bordeaux Street, Chadron, Nebraska. (Chadron Advocate; Chadron Signal.)
Upper: Built 1889� -- Birthplace of Philip Lisle Sheldon and Ruth Sheldon.
Lower: Built 1892� -- Three lots north of upper. Both Photos taken 1916.

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great part of that time was the democratic sheriff of a republican, later a populist, county. When Mayor Dahlman goes to the national democratic convention at Houston, Texas, in June, 1928, he will be the central figure in the contact of the West with the South. It will be a homecoming for a Texas cowboy, developed in the atmosphere of Nebraska, the great central state of the west.

The most interesting part of Chaplain Frady's narrative to me is the number of times his trail crossed mine in the period 1881�-1901. It was my fortune in those years to be an editor in Madison, Antelope and Dawes counties, to be a homesteader in Cherry county; to have forded and swam the Elkhorn and the Niobrara rivers; to have slept alone in the sand hills; to have crossed the great wilderness between Norfolk and the Wyoming line many times. I have travelled  in the great sand hill region south of the Snake river for a week without seeing a white man or a settler's cabin. I have known personally Troy Hale, R. H. Clopton; Doc. Middleton was four years my neighbor; the Sioux and Cheyenne chiefs have visited in my printing office and the battlefield of Wounded Knee is still familiar in memory after all these years. So I welcome Chaplain Frady, with all his varied experiences of homesteader, legislator and Sunday School missionary to the Nebraska History Magazine. His contribution will be treasured and read long after all our voices are silent.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF
REV. C. H. FRADY

2509 East Broadway
Long Beach, California
May 2, 1928

Addison E. Sheldon,
Sec. and Supt, of the Nebraska State Historical Society
Lincoln, Nebraska

Dear Sir:

Complying to your request, I herewith submit a sketch of my life, to-wit:

1. Name: Charles Henry Frady.
2. Residence: Long Beach, California.
3. Date and place of birth: July 24, 1847, near Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
4. Names of parents, etc.:

My father, Calvin Frady. was born September 22, 1826 in AshvilIe, North Carolina. His ancestors were Germans, members of the Moravian Church, a colony of which emigrated to America in 1735 and located at Salem, North Carolina, among whom were my ancestors, one Carl Frady and wife. During the year 1775, a son of said Carl Frady went with Daniel Boone into the wilds of Kentucky; two other sons, William and Charles, moved to Ashville, N. C., and there married. My father was the sixth child of Charles Frady and his wife Nancy. In 1843 Charles Frady and family emigrated to Indiana.

My mother, Emily Jane, born September 27, 1828 in Marion County, Indiana, was the daughter of George W. Tibbetts, a descendant of Henry Tibbetts, a Welshman, born in 1596 in England, who with his family sailed from London in the ship ''James'' July 13, 1635 for New England, and settled at Dover, New Hampshire, and from thence moved to Bangor, Maine. My mother's father was born in Bangor, November 2, 1798. He emigrated to the territory of Indiana in 1818 and located near the place where Indianapolis now is.

Father and Mother were married June 4, 1844; that same year they emigrated from Indiana to Iowa. They had six children; I was the second. My Father was a United Brethren minister. He died in Urbana, Iowa  April, 1855. Mother, in her later years was a Christian missionary at Fort Scott, Kansas and San Diego, California. She died in 1899 in my own home at Neligh, Nebraska.

5. Genealogical records, etc.:

"THE MAYFLOWER"

"Bradford's History: "�Among the passengers in the ship ''Mayflower'' sailing from England for America in 1620 were Steven Hopkins and his daughter Constance, age eighteen. In 1623, one Nicholas Snow came to America from England in the ship ''Ann'' and located at Plymouth. He married said Constance Hopkins. Among the descendants of said Nicholas Snow and wife was one John Snow, who was, born July 25, 1734 in Truro, Massachusetts. Massachusetts Records, Volume 14, page 614:� -- Among the soldiers and sailors in the war of the Revolution from that colony said John Snow received a commission as Captain in the Cumberland County regiment.

 Hannah, a daughter of said Captain John Snow, married one Benjamin Tibbetts, born May 17, 1769. of said Tibbetts ancestry. Thus through the families Snow, Tibbetts, and Frady, I am connected with the "Plymouth Pilgrims''.

Then also among the Massachusetts soldiers and sailors (Massachusetts Records, Volume 15, Page 726) was one William Tibbetts, a descendant of the said

Henry Tibbetts, emigrant from England in 1635. He enlisted in Captain Francis Shaw's Company on September 11, 1775. Thus through the services of Captain John Snow and William Tibbetts in the Revolutionary War, I am constituted a member of the "Sons of the Revolution" in California.

6. Where Educated:

Up to and including my fifteenth year, I attended country day schools. After the Civil War I received an academic degree.

7. Business and professions:

For some time I engaged in surveying and Civil Engineering.

8. Date and place of settlement in Nebraska:

In 1870 I settled in Pierce county, Nebraska.

9. Public offices held, etc.:

In 1872 1 was elected County Surveyor and County Superintendent of Public Instruction. In said offices I served five years in Pierce County, Nebraska. In April, 1875 1 was elected a member of the Nebraska State Constitutional Convention. In 1876 I was elected representative of the forty�-second district, consisting of the counties of Stanton, Wayne, and Pierce, for the Nebraska State Legislature and served in both bodies as the state records show.

10. Military record:

At the age of sixteen I enlisted at Cedar Rapids, Iowa in the Ninth Iowa Cavalry. I served in the regiment west of the Mississippi River in Missouri and Arkansas, and was honorably discharged at Little Rock March 23, 1866.

11. Political Affiliations, past and present: Republican.

12. Church Membership, etc.:

I am a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and am an ordained minister of the said denomination. From 1881 to 1905 1 was annually commissioned missionary of the American Sunday School Union of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

13. Membership in patriotic or fraternal organizations, etc.:

I am a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, and have served that Organization forty years as Chaplain both in Posts, and of the State Organization of Montana. I also was chosen National Chaplain�-in�-Chief at Boston, Massachusetts, Encampment in 1917.

14. Date and place of marriage, etc.:

On June 1, 1869 I married Miss Mary Elizabeth Van Dorn in Clarkesville, Iowa. She died at Plainview, Nebraska on June 20, 1881. On March 19, 1883 I married Miss Clara Elizabeth Lusted of Clarksville, Iowa.

15. Names and dates of birth of children:

By My First Wife

Charles Edgar -- born April 1, 1870, Waverly, Iowa, deaeased.
Mabel Elizabeth -‑ born Nov. 15, 1871, Pierce, Neb., deceased.
Claribel -- born April 1, 1876, Pierce, Neb., deceased.
George Henry -- born Feb. 4, 1879, Ponca, Neb.

By My Second Wife

Mary Emily -- born April 17, 1884, Neligh, Neb.
Clara Frances -- born April 5, 1886, Neligh, Neb.
Florence Mildred -- born April 15, 1888, Neligh, Neb.
L. Milton -- born March 7, 1890, Neligh, Neb., deceased
William Ensign -- born December 14, 1891, Neligh, Neb.
Fannie Fern ‑- born March 26, 1894, Neligh, Neb.
Jennie Pearl -‑ born October 27, 1895, Neligh, Neb.
Cuba Hope -- born March 21, 1898, Neligh, Neb., deceased.
Suzanna Ruth -- born January 24, 1901, Chadron, Neb.
Crowell Harold -- born August 31, 1902, Billings, Mont.
Calvin Luther -‑ born September 25, 1904, Billings, Mont.

16. References for material, etc.: Date, etc. obtained from family Bibles and official records of counties and states where the Frady and the Tibbetts generations have lived.

Yours truly,                                    
CHAPLAIN C. H. FRADY

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