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gasoline and take it along with him on his route. Five gallons of gasoline was considered a large purchase then and lasted the early automobile owner a long time.

At first gasoline was shipped in fifty gallon barrels and stored in remote places out-of-doors. Gasoline, in 1905, sold for nine cents a gallon and coal oil was ten cents.

Max Gottberg won the Omaha Motor Club run of 1911, a popular sporting event of many years ago. The run consisted of a "drive carefully" contest from Omaha to North Platte and thence to Hastings, Lincoln and back to Omaha.

For years a flying enthusiast, he was instrumental in forming the Gottberg Aviation Corporation in 1929, leasing an eighty acre tract north of Columbus for the company's airport. Both commercial flying and instruction were carried on at the field.

Something of the early zest for motoring may be glimpsed from his early descriptions of the. Platte County Fair auto races, and other similar local events. "To be given a ride in a 'gasoline buggy' was to be in seventh heaven the automobile is considered a necessity now. Maybe that's why it does not thrill people like it used to!"

RAILROAD PIONEER ONCE HAD VISION OF COLUMBUS AS CAPITAL OF UNITED STATES

Once upon a time, a man drove a stake about where the Union Pacific Depot now stands in Columbus, Nebraska, and said, "Some day it will be necessary to move the capital of the United States to the center of the country. This is about where it will stand. You laugh at me, but methods of warfare change like everything else."

George Francis Train was accorded the honor of breaking ground for the Union Pacific Railroad at Omaha on December 2, 1863. (He seems to have foreseen the coming of the airplane and urged that the capital be moved to the center of the country so that it could be defended against attack.)

George Francis Train was born in Boston in 1829, a century and a quarter ago, and the location of the nation's capital at Columbus, Nebraska, was only one of his many great projects. He is said to have laid out what is still called the "Capitol Addition" to Columbus, and had sites chosen there for the capitol building, the White House, and all the other important governmental structures.*

Columbus today, a city of twelve thousand and the largest in the sixth judicial district, is the center of a rich agricultural district, and the power of Nebraska, rather than of world politics.

When George Francis Train was four years old, he was taken to New Orleans. It was at the time of the yellow fever epidemic. Within six months, his father, mother and three sisters were taken. George Francis Train was returned to Massachusetts where he spent his boyhood days on the old homestead near Waltham. His education was a series of hard knocks, but he learned well.

At nineteen, he went to Liverpool to establish the shipping house of Train and Company, and he is credited with organizing the prepaid passenger, and small bills of exchange business throughout Europe and America. Not yet twenty-one, he became one of the principal owners and managers of the Diamond Line of Liverpool and New York Sailing Packets.

The year of 1853 saw him organize the shipping firm of George F. Train and Company at Melbourne, Australia. There he introduced the Chamber of Commerce and Board of Trade. He also built a telegraph line and a railroad.

The first railway in Europe in 1859 was at Birkenhead, a city near Liverpool, England. Copying after the American plan, Train became the first patentee of the American street railway system in the United Kingdom piling up a fortune of several million dollars.

He was lionized by the entire civilized world, and his ability was unquestioned. Then came the Civil War.

One of the finest orators of his day, George Francis Train gave to his country that same golden gift of persuasion and splendid flow of oratory that had already made him millions.

After monumental work in behalf of his government in England, Train returned to the United States in 5862 where he immediately held the famous debate on the war and slavery issues in New York with Cassius M. Clay. It lasted three days and attracted world-wide attention.

The ardent union supporter then launched his "War Policy Tour," and met with his never failing adventure; he was shot out of Missouri by Major General Curtis; he barely escaped assassination at Alton; and he was bayoneted at Davenport.

Finally as if looking for new worlds to conquer, George Francis Train, the wizard, turned his attention to the prairie state of Nebraska. The Union Pacific bill was before congress. Train was a staunch Republican and a strong Lincoln man. By various methods indicative of his ingenuity, the bill's passage was managed with democratic votes.

Train next organized "The Credit Mobilier" with

---

*This has not been authentically established.

ten millions as capital and plunged into the land business. Sensing fabulous profits in this new venture, Train in company with other millionaires got together a second such organization and called it "The Credit Foncier of America." In a speech about this time describing the nature of the two credit corporations, Train stated "The Credit Foncier and the Credit Mobilier are speculative concerns where each partner risks but one thousand dollars and may realize one thousand per cent, the special act requiring no liability beyond the amount subscribed." Putting punch back of his dizzy enterprise, Train in the fall of 1865 purchased five thousand lots in Omaha, one thousand in Council Bluffs and seven thousand* in Columbus, Nebraska.

Albert D. Richardson in his book "Beyond the Mississippi," writes, "Here was George Francis Train at the head of a great company called the Credit Foncier, organized for dealing in lands and stocks for building cities along the railway from the Missouri to Salt Lake City.

"This corporation had been clothed by the Nebraska legislature with nearly every power imaginable save that of reconstructing the late rebel states. It was erecting neat cottages in Omaha and at other points west.

"Mr. Train personally owned about five hundred acres in Omaha which cost him only one hundred seventy-five dollars per acre a most promising investment. He is a noticeable, original American." The town of Cleveland, Nebraska, elaborately laid out in 1857 three miles northwest of Columbus by George W. Stevens, William H. Stevens and Michael Sweeney, was becoming a commercial menace to the Columbus dreams of Train.

The promoter settled the scare by purchasing the whole of Cleveland and moving it into Columbus. The Cleveland Hotel was reconditioned and named "The Credit Foncier Hotel."

Train's hotel was likened unto its queer owner. It reserved a room for the president of the United States, one for the president of the Union Pacific Railroad (and one for Train). They were the two best rooms in the hotel and the story goes that while Train was proprietor no one entered the rooms except to keep them spotlessly clean.

David Anderson, of Platte County, wrote of George Francis Train's activities in Columbus as follows: "George Francis Train did much to advertise Omaha and the Platte Valley. But the sequel shows that Train, like many others has had his existence among men, to all present appearances, at least fifty years too soon.

"The much he did was just too much. He spent his prophetic zeal for the Union Pacific and the whole Platte Valley, but chiefly for Omaha and Columbus. Hundreds, nay thousands, rushed to these points, thinking to invest in his city lots. But Train's lots were never in the market.

"Train was seized with the one idea that the capitol of the United States might, could, would, and should be on the Transcontinental international highway, and

*This has not been authentically established. as nearly as possible to the geographical center of the Union. So he measured the maps in all directions of earth, heaven and hell.

"On the map of the United States, he found Columbus within ten miles of the center (on the map of the world within one mile of the center of the world). It was moreover directly on the perpendicular line twixt the upper and the nether world, exactly under the Zenith and over the Nadir on which heavenly light could fall on the next president of America from which all corrupt congressmen who loved cards and wine and women might drop into the pit below.

"So he bargained for eight hundred acres of land and laid out the Capitol Addition and began to locate the capstan, ropes and pulleys which would move the gubernatorial mansion of Nebraska and the executive mansion of the Union, to Columbus.

"But they did not move worth a cent and are not an inch advanced on their long journey, for as we said, George set his machinery at least fifty years too soon."

In his own book "My Life in Many States," Train spoke of the building of the Union Pacific railway as a beginning. "I looked upon it only as the launching of a hundred other projects which if I had been able to carry them to completion would have transformed the west in a few years, and anticipated its present state of wealth and power by more than a full generation," he boasted.

"One of my plans was the creation of a chain of great towns across the continent, connecting Boston with San Francisco by a magnificent highway of cities. That this is not an idle dream is shown by the rapid growth of Chicago, which owes its greatness to its situation upon this natural highway of trade; and to the development of Omaha which owes its prosperity directly to the Union Pacific Railway and to the other enterprises that I organized in the west.

"Most of these plans were defeated by a financial panic, by the lack of cooperation on the part of the very people who were most interested in their success, and a combination of events. Some of them succeeded, however, and I was able to accomplish a great deal of work that has gone into the winning and making of the West."

Train tells of the Cozzens Hotel in Omaha as follows: "I had invited a number of prominent men to take breakfast with me in the Herndon House, as I desired to present to them some of my plans.

"The breakfast was a characteristic western meal, with prairie chicken and Nebraska trout. While we were seated, one of those sudden and unexpected cyclones of the plains came up, and the hotel shook like a leaf in the terrible storm. Our table was very near a window in which were large panes of glass, which I feared could not withstand the tremendous force of the wind.

"They were quivering under the stress of the weather, and I called a strapping colored waiter at our table to stand with his broad back against the window. This proved a security against the storm without, but precipitated a storm within.

"Allen, the manager of the Herndon, and a man with

a political turn of mind, saw in the incident an assault on the rights of the negroes. He hurried over to the table and protested against this act as an outrage. I could not afford to enter into a quarrel with him at the time, so I merely said, 'I am about the size of the negro; I will take his place!' I then ordered the fellow away from the window, took his post, and stayed there until the fury of the storm abated. Then I was ready for Allen.

"I walked out in front of the house, and pointing to a large vacant square facing it, asked who owned it. I was told the owner's name and immediately sent a messenger for him post haste. He arrived in a short time and I asked his price. It was five thousand dollars. I wrote out and handed him a check for the amount and took from him on the spot, a deed for the property. Then I asked for a contractor who could build a hotel. A man named Richmond was brought to me. 'Can you build a three-story hotel in sixty days on this plot?' asked I. After some hesitation he said it would be merely a question of money.

"'How much'? I asked.

"'One thousand dollars a day!'

"'Show me that you are responsible for sixty thousand dollars.'

"He did so and I took out an envelope and sketched on the back of it a rough plan of the hotel. 'I am going into the mountains,' I said, 'and I shall want this hotel, with one hundred twenty rooms, complete when I return in sixty days.'

"When I got back, the hotel was finished. I immediately rented it to Cozzens of West Point, New York, for ten thousand dollars a year."

The hotel was a triumph, but at Columbus when his big idea, his giant scheme of capital moving, fell through, he cleared out.

He was by no means done with fighting his eccentric way through the world, however, and was an independent candidate for the presidency of the United States in 1872. He polled several thousand votes in various parts of the country, probably from labor circles and communistic and radical quarters, as he was ever the guardian angel of such factions.

The same fall, he was summoned by the authorities in New York for a risque picture in a literary publication, but was freed when he was legally adjudged mentally ill.

The last years of Train's life were spent in New York where he acquired the queer habit of speaking only to children.

While his thirty million dollar property in Omaha was dragging a weary way through the courts the great wizard lived in a cheap Gotham hotel for many years.

He died there January 18, 1904, in his seventy-sixth year.

George Francis Train was a famous Nebraskan. Despite his rainbows of gold, he probably did more than any other individual to bring eastern capital and thousands of homeseekers to the broad Nebraska prairies. He was a big man and did things in a big way, and even if he died forgotten, to this very year, 1949,

George Francis Train still has Nebraska lawyers stumped in trying to figure out his tangled land promotion schemes!

UNFINISHED SAGA OF PIONEER DAYS FROM THE MEMOIRS OF JAMES E. NORTH

An unfinished saga of pioneer life on Nebraska's prairies was found in the hitherto unpublished memoirs of James E. North, the original manuscript of which is a prized family heirloom in the possession of his grandson, Doctor James North Evans.

Chronicling the experience of its author for a period of only a few years following his arrival in Nebraska Territory in 1856, written in long-hand in a simple style without embellishment but containing all the elements of adventure, struggle against adversity, stark tragedy, a measure of success, and a great love-it is an unfinished saga because the death of his beloved wife, occurring shortly after he had begun his writing, left him without incentive to continue.

Of the three illustrious North brothers, whose lives and work figured so prominently in the early history of Columbus, the name of James North is perhaps not so well known to many of the younger generation, probably because he did not emblazon it on the field of battle as did his celebrated brothers, Major Frank J. North and Captain Luther H. North, but chose, instead the less glamorous career of a farmer and land dealer.

Born September ii, 1838, in Richland County, Ohio, to which some of the North family had come from their ancestral home in Tompkins County, New York, James was the eldest son of Thomas J. and Jane Townley North. Knowledge gained from the experience of the father who served as surveyor of Richland County for several years, was destined to play an important part in the future life of the son.

After a scattered schooling in Ohio and New York, followed by labor as a farm hand and experiences in driving horses and sheep throughout the East, James North, a young man of seventeen, came West from his boyhood home. The story in his own words, as quoted from his Memoirs, written prior to 1895:

UNFINISHED MEMOIRS OF JAMES E. NORTH

"During the fall of that year (1855) some parties I had formerly known came back on a visit from Central, Iowa, and talking with them about the opportunities in the great West satisfied me that it was the best place for the family to go. I therefore made my arrangements and the 26th of December, 1855, left my native state

with about enough money to pay my fare to Monroe, Iowa, where I arrived on New Year's morning, 1856, coming by stage from Burlington, Iowa.

This was a hard trip and rough introduction to frontier life to me, but I had hope of a better future and a companion, John Smith, who was always cheerful and with his encouragement I kept up a brave appearance, at least.

When we arrived at Monroe, Iowa, there was deep snow on the ground. The weather was bitter cold and I started out to find my old friends. Was told when I found them that no work could be had until spring and, with only money enough to pay about one week's board, this looked discouraging enough.

Smith and I were stopping at the hotel that kept the stage drivers and their horses. Besides, numerous freighting teams hauling from the Mississippi River to Des Moines and intermediate points, made this place quite an important hotel stand.

Soon after our arrival a traveler driving a single horse stopped for the night. His horse was taken sick and Smith, having had a great deal of experience with horses, offered his services to treat the sick animal, which he succeeded in curing the next day and received five dollars for the job, of which I shared. I mention this circumstance to show the first money I ever had an interest in earning west of the Mississippi River.

The next job we undertook was digging a cellar under part of the hotel for ten dollars and board. About the first of February, I hired for three months to drive a team at ten dollars per month and had a hard experience.

JOINS SURVEYING CREW

During April, my father came from Ohio by way of Iowa City, where he met an acquaintance from New York by the name of Charles Lamb. Mr. Lamb had a team of horses and wagon and was going to Council Bluffs. Father and I came with him. After a few days in the city of Council Bluffs, we hired out to a Mr. Everett for a surveying trip in Nebraska, he having a contract for ten townships of government land, commencing a few miles west of Omaha and running west across the Platte River, to subdivide into sections.

The lot of carrying chain was assigned to myself and father and when we started out from Omaha with our wagon loaded with provisions and drawn by one team of oxen, it seemed a dangerous trip to me, on account of the Indians. The Pawnees were then living on the south side of the Platte River, a few miles below where the thriving city of Fremont is now built.

This work was very hard on my father, who was in poor health, and I did all in my power to lighten his burden. It was a very wet season and in the rank growth of vegetation, there were myriads of mosquitoes, which made it almost impossible to get any rest at night, except by keeping a dense smoke to drive them away, and many nights, I sat up nearly all night, keeping a fire and smoke to drive away the varmints that the others might sleep.

I hardly understand now how I endured such loss of sleep and hard work through the day, as it lasted from sunrise until dark, yet I seemed to enjoy it at that time.

Just about the time we were through with the surveying, mother came to Council Bluffs with the other four children, John W. Beckman, a dear friend of the family, coming with her from Ohio. While here he secured for me a situation as clerk in a dry goods store at Florence, at a salary of fifty dollars per month, where I went to work as soon as I had been to Council Bluffs to see my dear mother and brothers and sisters. This position I held until the spring of 1857.

FATHER MEETS TRAGIC DEATH

In the fall of 1856, father built a two room house in the timber near Omaha, where he superintended the cutting of logs and wood until spring. In March, 1857, he went out on the prairie northwest of Omaha about ten or twelve miles with three other men to take up claims on some land. They were detained longer than expected, having left the team at McArdles and in returning, they became separated. Father got lost and perished before morning. His body was found about nine o'clock on the next morning, March 12, 1857. What was the feeling of the wife and mother when his body was brought home to her, cold in death, among a community of strangers with no relative within a week's journey, would be powerless to describe.

How utterly lonely we all felt. But we found numerous warm friends among the residents of Omaha, chief of whom was Doctor George L. Miller, whose kindness in that trying ordeal will always be remembered with gratitude.

It seemed necessary after this that I must earn more than a monthly salary and I soon formed a partnership with a man named Steel to engage in the land business, locating claims for land-seekers. This partnership, I think, continued for about six months, and I had made enough to build a comfortable house in Florence where I moved mother with the children in the Fall of 1857.

About this time, the panic of that year seemed to have reached the Missouri River and business that had been flourishing in all branches up to this time was utterly demoralized.

I went to work chopping wood in the timber north of Florence and Brother Frank hauled it to market with the ox team we had during this fall.

MEETS FUTURE WIFE

Miss Nellie Arnold arrived in Florence and I became acquainted with her soon after her arrival. The first time I met her was at a card party, when I was completely captivated. Thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever met. Little did I think then that I would have the pleasure of calling her wife, but fate seemed to favor me, although she had many admirers who, it seemed to me, were my superiors intellectually.

In the spring of 1858, mother, Luther and the two girls went back to Ohio to settle up some business and brother Frank, Al Arnold, Franer Van Zandt, George Duncan, myself and Miss Arnold moved to Cleveland, which was a town that had been laid out two miles west of Columbus, on the banks of the Loup River.

We lived in a building erected for a hotel by the company that laid out the town. We took with us to Cleveland seven yoke of cattle with plows for breaking prairie. Brother Frank and Van Zandt broke prairie until the first of July on claims taken up by members of our little colony.

RUN FERRY ACROSS LOUP

Arnold ran a sawmill for John Rickly, in Columbus. Franer and myself ran the ferry across the Loup River, taking immigrants across, bound for California and Utah the early part of the season, but later in the fall, news came to Omaha of rich discoveries of gold in the Rocky Mountains near Pike's Peak, which started a great many people for the new Eldorado, even though late in the season, with a trip of five hundred miles before them over a barren prairie and no shelter or food at their destination except such as they were able to carry with them.

Thus was the first settlement made at the base of the Rocky Mountains, on the spot where the city of Denver now stands as the capital of what, in my mind, is destined to be one of the wealthiest states in this Union.

During the winter of 1858-59, some irregular communication was kept up with the few settlers who had gone out there in the fall.

This winter was an extremely hard one for all settlers in Nebraska. Very little had been raised the summer before except corn, and no hogs were in the county and very few cattle. As a consequence, most of the people had nothing for food but corn. We had, however, raised ten acres of buckwheat, which gave an enormous yield. We threshed it on the frozen ground with flails and, as the Mormons who had settled at Genoa had a mill for grinding corn, we took some of the buckwheat up there and had it ground without bolting, then sifted it through a wire sieve, and lived principally on buckwheat cakes and potatoes during the winter, with a portion of the time some venison killed by Arnold.

HAUL CORN TO KEARNEY

Frank went in December with two other men to Elm Creek to poison wolves for the hides. He had raised about six hundred bushels of corn from sod planting, some of it having good quality. The Overland Stage Company, having a line established from Saint Joseph, Missouri, to Salt Lake City, sent an agent to Columbus to buy corn to be delivered at Kearney. We contracted to take them what we could haul and deliver on the north bank of the Platte River, at one dollar per bushel.

The corn had to be shelled by hand, which took several days. Van Zandt and I took two teams of three yoke oxen to the wagon on which we loaded about one hundred bushels. Franer had a team belonging to the estate of a man named Kelly on which he took a load. Pat Murray and Adam Smith each took a load and early in January, we started.

The weather was very cold but little snow on the ground until the day we arrived on the bank of the Platte River opposite old Fort Kearney, where we camped by some hay stacks. It snowed all day and at night, the wind came from the northwest in a regular blizzard. We chained the oxen to the wagons and took our bedding across to the Island, where, from the protection of a grove of cedar trees, we managed by keeping up a big fire with dry logs to keep from freezing to death.

The next morning was bitter cold and we were compelled to go across the river to get sacks for the corn. In going over, I broke through the ice where it was covered with snow and got wet nearly to my arms. We then had over a mile to go to reach a house and my clothes froze stiff on me as soon as I got out of the river, which made it very tedious and slow to get along. 1, however, managed to get to the stage station where I dried my clothes as best I could, then went back to the north side where the teams were left and delivered the corn, getting our pay in gold.

HIS FEET FROZEN

This night we drove to the ranch of J. E. Boyd on Wood River, where we found shelter for our cattle. Here I discovered, when going to the fire in the house, that my feet were frozen. I applied cold water as soon as I could get my boots off and succeeded in getting the frost out so well that my feet were safe except the large toe on each foot.

I bought a pair of moccasins made from buffalo skin with the hair on, which I could wear, but was not able to walk for several weeks. Nothing of importance happened on the trip after this.

About the middle of February, the balance of the men at the house, Arnold, Van Zandt, George Duncan, and Franer, were preparing for a trip up the Loup and Cedar Valleys on a hunt for deer and elk, leaving myself and Miss Arnold to keep house. I was not able to hunt and suggested to Arnold that it would not be just the proper thing to do for him to go away and leave his sister without a natural protector, when he said:

'Well, d---n it, get married. If you are going to, you might as well now as any time.'

MARRIED TO MISS ARNOLD

Then, after consulting with the party interested and getting a favorable reply, we went to Columbus on horseback on the morning of February 17, 1859, and were married by C. B. Stiliman, acting county judge, while sitting on our horses, in the presence of John Browner, Peter Meyer and wife.

Thus a new life began with the pleasure of calling the only woman I ever loved by the sacred name of wife.

The men all started on their hunt the same day and in three days thereafter, I was taken with the typhoid fever, which came near proving fatal, and no doubt would, only for the constant nursing of a devoted wife

This year I devoted entirely to farming. Raised a good crop of wheat and secured some young cattle, besides two cows.

Mother came back from Ohio this spring and Frank came from his wolf hunt, having been quite successful. The family all lived in the Cleveland hotel this year.

In the fall, about October 1st, my wife received word that her oldest sister was dying with consumption in North Vernon, Indiana. Frank had traded the oxen for a horse team and I took the wife to Omaha, where she embarked on a Missouri River steamer for St. Joe,

© 2005 for the NEGenWeb Project by Ted & Carole Miller