Benjamin F. and Cora J. Gentry
A Paradigm for Prairie Western Settlers

by
Willard Gentry

Introduction

With this article, the Journal is departing from its practice of concentrating on the history of the early generations of Gentrys to record the story of a family of recent memory. Benjamin and Cora Gentry, long-time residents of Western Nebraska, typify the sturdy stock that spread westward across the United States, generation after generation to the limits of the country's borders. Only a few of these pioneers achieved state or national prominence but within their home environment, Ben and Cora were outstanding examples of civic achievement and reputation. The author is proud to claim them as grandparents.
 

Summary of Benjamin Gentry ancestry by generation:

Benjamin Gentry - Early Years

Ben never knew his father, William Ellis Gentry. William enlisted in the summer of 1861 in the local Capt. Robinson's Company D, Nodaway County Regiment, Missouri Home Guards militia in Nodaway County, Missouri, during the Civil War, along with two of his brothers when Ben was only 4 months old. William was discharged and paid for a month's active service in September 1861 (his brothers subsequently joined other military units). He died of illness (said to be dysentery contracted during his military service) little over a month later. Records of William are almost entirely limited to land and probate records relating to him in Nodaway County.

Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska Counties

More is known about Ben's mother, the former Rebecca Wiles, daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Hobson Wiles<1>. Ben's mother, Rebecca Wiles Gentry, remained only briefly in Nodaway County, where Ben was born, then moved in the spring of 1862 to Mills County, Iowa, where her father, Thomas Wiles, was living. The Wiles family had moved in about 1840 from Indiana to the neighboring county of Andrew in Missouri where William and Rebecca first met, but had moved to Iowa by 1852, the year William went to Mills County to marry Rebecca and then take her back to Nodaway County with him. In Iowa, Rebecca lived with her parents for 4 years before she met and married her second husband, Mattes Akeson. [His first name is frequently Anglicized to "Mathis" and his last name is found in documentary records spelt in various alternate ways such as "Atkinson" and "Akerson"]. Mattes had immigrated from Sweden before the Civil War along with a son, Peter and a daughter Lena. Soon after Mattes' and Rebecca's marriage in Mills County in July 1866, they left Iowa and Mattes took over a homestead claim near Weeping Water, Cass County, Nebraska. The family, including Benjamin, was listed in the 1870 census, living in the Plattsmouth enumeration district. Mattes' life had a tragic end. In 1894 he was murdered by two horse thieves. The thieves were caught and one of them was hanged -- the first and only legal execution of a criminal in Cass County history.

Children of Rebecca Gentry Akeson:
Nancy Akeson, Rebecca, Catherine Gentry (front)
Thomas Akeson, Ben Gentry, Milton Gentry (rear)

Ben attended early years of school in Weeping Water and wanted to continue through high school<2>. Mattes, however, felt he had had enough education and wanted Ben to work on the farm which led to quarreling between the two which in turn resulted in Ben running away from home when he was 14. In 1878, when Ben was 17, he petitioned the courts for his uncle, Isaac Wiles, to be named as his guardian until he reached the age of majority. This was granted in March 1879<3>. Isaac was an older brother of his mother, and a former close friend of his father, William. Ben moved to nearby Plattsmouth, Cass County, Nebraska, where Isaac was living and graduated from high school there. In the 1880 census, Ben was rooming with a family in Plattsmouth next door to a cousin, Thomas Wiles, another nephew of Isaac Wiles. At the time he was listed "at work" rather than "at school" so presumably had finished high school.

The next stop on Ben's educational trail was at Northern Indiana Business Institute in Valparaiso, Indiana, where he graduated in Aug 1884 after a three-year period of study. (This school opened in 1871 and was renamed Valparaiso College in 1900, then Valparaiso University in 1906. At the height of its enrollment, the university was the second largest university in the United States.) Undoubtedly the choice of this college was influenced by the fact that it was in Porter County, Indiana, adjacent to Lake County where the Wiles family lived for many years before moving to Missouri. To pay for his college expenses, Ben sold land in Nodaway County, Missouri, that he had inherited from his father. [When the college's predecessor, Valparaiso Male and Female College, first opened in 1859, the expenses were $8 for tuition per trimester plus outside board and room of about $2 per week.] Following graduation from the Business Institute, Ben remained for a short time in Valparaiso to take a class in Plain and Ornamental Penmanship at the Northern Indiana Normal School, receiving a Penmanship Certificate in November 1884. Spencerian penmanship was very popular at the time and a number of examples of his very flowery penmanship survive. The sketch shown below has deteriorated with time but gives a sense of the very finely-drawn details required in student assignments.

Example of penmanship exercise by B. F. Gentry

In a brief biography of Ben, his wife Cora Gentry comments on his activities after finishing college:
"After graduation from Valparaiso in 1884, Ben returned to Plattsmouth taking a job as tax collector in Cass County until his cousin, Will Adam's term as County Treasurer expired. Ben then took a job with Newell & Company of Plattsmouth buying grain. During his period of time between college and leaving Cass County, Ben lived with Will Adam's mother and family and was listed with them in Plattsmouth in an 1885 Nebraska state census. His aunt, Rachel Adams, was an older sister of his mother who had married Jacob Adams and then been widowed."

It is of passing interest that in 1880, Ben's brother, Milton Gentry, lived next door to one of Rachel's daughters in Plattsmouth, but by 1885, Milton had left Plattsmouth and was living upriver along the Platte at Louisville, Nebraska (still in Cass County).

It is of further interest that Ben's son, Dr. Bill Gentry, recalls his father telling him that during his time in Cass County, Ben had worked for a time as a bookkeeper and flour mill-hand for his later father-in-law, Daniel D. Johnson in Weeping Water. Dan had traded a farm outside Weeping Water for a mill in town in 1874 which was run by Dan and family members until 1881 when he traded the mill for farmland between Weeping Water and Elmwood. Ben ran away from his home in Weeping Water in about 1875 and lived in Plattsmouth thereafter, but it is possible that this mill-work that Dr. Bill recalls was while Ben was still in school in Weeping Water.

During the 1870's and early 1880's, the land on the south side of the North Platte River was occupied by a few large cattle outfits and the north side was an Indian reservation where no white man was allowed to settle. When the Federal Government opened land in the spring of 1886 in the North Platte Valley for homesteading, Ben with a friend John Hall decided to homestead there. John Hall owned a wagon and team of mules which they drove across the state, camping at night along the way. An early settler named George Fairfield, who had first homesteaded in the North Platte Valley in 1885, had an office in Sidney where he met newcomers and directed them to possible available sites. To the dismay of many, Ben included, most of the good land had already been filed for. It was not until after Ben had paid his filing fee and started plowing the land that he found out Fairfield had made a mistake and a man by the name of Thomas Reeves had filed on his land earlier.

Cora Johnson - Early Years

Before following Ben Gentry in his initial trials and tribulations in the North Platte Valley, it will be convenient to review the early life of his future wife, Cora Johnson as described in her autobiography. Cora was the daughter of Daniel Dean Johnson and Elizabeth Adelade Lathrop. Cora's father, Daniel Johnson, arrived in February 1868 in Cass County, Nebraska, where the land had just been opened up for homestead filing, intent on exercising his rights to land as a Civil War veteran. He moved from St. Johns, Pottawattamie County, Iowa, where he had been a carpenter and where he kept a small store. He bought from the original owner, the rights to land on Weeping Water Creek about 6 miles west of Weeping Water near the present community of Wabash. He rebuilt the first homestead in a better location and ventured into farming, receiving title to the land in 1873.

Cora was born a year after the move, the fifth of a family that eventually numbered fourteen children, eleven of whom were girls. Cora's childhood life might be described as somewhat chaotic. In 1875 Dan traded his farm for a flour mill run by a water wheel at the Falls of Weeping Water Creek in the town of Weeping Water. This was precipitated by losing all his crops to a scourge of grasshoppers. He was also influenced in this move by the fact that due to Civil War wounds he lacked the strength for farming and all of his older children were girls. The Johnson family temporarily lived until 1876 with their maternal grandmother Catherine Preston and husband Jacob Preston in Harkers Corner, Illinois while Dan Johnson was purchasing the mill in Weeping Water and building a house for the family. [When the family returned home, Grandmother Preston asked to keep one of the children to raise, and two-year-old Nelle was left behind. Nelle's entire upbringing was by her grandparents and she lived with them until her marriage to Paul Scoles in 1900.]

From 1879 to 1881, Dan leased another mill in Blair, Nebraska, farther north on the Missouri River, but retained his home in Weeping Water. Anna, Dan's oldest daughter, and Cora kept house for him in Blair while at the same time Daniel's wife, Elizabeth, took care of the rest of the family in Weeping Water. In 1881, Cora moved back to Weeping Water with her father and the family was united again. Two years later, Cora's mother died unexpectedly of puerperal fever as a result of a miscarriage.

In spite of all the moves, Cora had been able to attend school and in 1884 she graduated from high school in Weeping Water. That year her Grandmother Preston visited Weeping Water en route from her former home in Illinois to a new home at Ada, a college town in Ohio. She extended an offer to have one of her granddaughters move to Ohio with her and attend college there. The privilege fell to Cora and in the fall of 1884 Cora moved to Ada to live with her Preston grandparents and enrolled in Ohio Normal College (now Ohio Northern). After three years, Cora graduated and went back to Nebraska to find that her father had moved the family from Weeping Water westward to the North Platte Valley.

After his wife, Elizabeth's death, Dan moved to property just west of town where there was room for following his dream of breeding and raising thoroughbred horses and cattle. Because of his success with livestock, he was appointed to the state Livestock Sanitation Commission (where he acquired the honorary title of "Colonel" which he frequently used). While traveling the state in this capacity, in 1885, he visited the North Platte Valley in western Nebraska and decided this was a spot for a new home. Dan filed in October 1885 for 160 acres of land in Winters Creek Canyon in what is now Scotts Bluff County (close to the location of the present Scottsbluff Airport). He filed a tree claim in order to start the process of acquiring the land without the requirement of cultivating it immediately and building a house.<4>

The next year, Dan took his oldest daughter Anna and son Merle back to the North Platte Valley. Anna, writing years later, recalled:

They went on to Winters Creek where Dan had arranged in advance for a small frame cabin to be built on the property. Dan went back to Weeping Water and left Anna and Merle alone for the spring and summer in order for her to establish occupancy on the property claim. She managed to make-do with the help of neighbors including two brothers Will and Jap Ripley, who had been schoolmates of Anna in Weeping Water. The Ripleys had recently arrived with a number of others from Cass County. (Anna married Will three years later).

Dan and Anna followed a carefully choreographed schedule to "work the system" and make the most of residency timing requirements for claims. Bcause of Anna completing six months occupation on Dan's claim in October, he was able to convert to a preemption claim and receive title by paying $1.25 per acre ($200 total). They visited the land office in Sidney before leaving the valley and filed on two more claims, one each for Dan and Anna. While at the land office they learned that there was vacant land available next to the homestead claim for which Anna was filing, so she filed for a tree claim as well after which they returned to Weeping Water. Anna had to begin residency on her new claim within six months, so Dan sold his home and business in Weeping Water, and in April 1887, he and Anna went back to Winters Creek. Dan built a sod house large enough to accommodate everyone and in June, moved his entire family (with the exception of Cora who was at college) to their new home. In addition to engaging in farming, Dan brought west with him his thoroughbred Whiteface cattle and his blooded Hambletonian horses.

Homestead, Preemption and Tree Claims by Johnsons

Benjamin Gentry - in Western Nebraska

We will leave the Johnson family at this point and return to Ben Gentry. The area of Nebraska to which Ben moved had for over 60 years been only a travel route, never a place to settle down and live. It was located on the Great Platte River Trail, the principal route for travelers between the Eastern States and the West Coast. This was a collection of trails with a series of scattered starting points that funneled down to basically a "south of the river" trail popularly called the Oregon Trail with multiple starting points in Missouri and Kansas, and a "north of the river" trail used by groups such as the Mormons with starting points primarily in Omaha and Council Bluffs. Beyond Fort Laramie in Wyoming, the trails split again depending on their eventual destinations. The route following the northern fork of the Platte River was the most direct and the easiest in terms have water availability and gentle grade. There was an obstacle in Western Nebraska for the south of the river trail in the form of Scotts Bluff. After miles of trail with tree-covered bluffs paralleling the trail to the south, abruptly one was faced with a spur ending in a formidable promontory rising some 800 feet above the valley floor at right angles to the trail. (The Indian name for the bluff was "Ma-a-pa-te", meaning "The hill that is hard to go around".) The way past Scotts Bluff was blocked on the north by impassable badlands between the bluff and the river. Mitchell Pass, immediately next to Scotts Bluff was for many years impassable for wagons and not until travelers and Army troops filled in canyons and improved the grade through the pass could it be used. This became useable in about 1850. Before that time, all travel was by way of Roubadoux (or Roubidoux) Pass some 5 miles to the south where there was more gentle terrain and there was a spring providing water, but a longer distance to travel..

By 1869, the year that the transcontinental railway was completed, it is estimated that more than 350,000 migrants had passed through the North Platte Valley. In the year 1849 roughly 30,000 people traveled the route and in 1850, a high-water mark of 55,000 are estimated to have gone through. Initially used by fur trappers and explorers, then by the military, emigrant traffic started in 1843 with an effort to settle Oregon and wrest it from Great Britain. The Pony Express was the route's swan song, its replacement by the railroad farther to the south in Nebraska, ended the period of heavy cross-country traffic. In 1868, the Fort Laramie Treaty set aside land on the north side of the North Platte River for Indian use only and the Red Cloud Agency was established in 1871 at the location of present- day Henry, Nebraska, on the Nebraska-Wyoming border. In 1873, the agency was moved north and a new reservation was established based at a new Army base at Fort Robinson in 1874. From the time of the removal of the Indians until 1885, herds of cattle and attendant cowboys were all that could be found along the North Platte River. Surveying of land nation-wide began in 1854, but it was not until 1883 that it was completed in Nebraska. The land which Ben Gentry eventually claimed was surveyed in 1877. [The survey markers in the North Platte area consisted of a wooden stake at each section corner into which 4 holes were bored. At the center of each section a mound of earth was topped by a rock on which the section number was marked.]

The Great Platte River Trail
(Note location of Cheyenne County in the west and Cass County in the east)

In 1886, the Federal Government opened up western Nebraska for settlement under the Homestead Act. The North Platte Valley which was Ben Gentry's destination, was at that time a part of Cheyenne County which made up almost half of the panhandle of Nebraska. It was virgin farming land, but had been used for cattle ranching beginning in the 1870's. Cattlemen in Texas were attracted by the rich native grasses, the many streams and the free range and drove their cattle north to Nebraska. At the time of the first cattle roundup in May 1877, as many as 60,000 head of cattle had been brought in. The cattle were owned by a few large companies who filed for land ownership where they could locate their home ranches. From there, the cattle were left to roam at will over government lands nearby over great distances. It was necessary to have a roundup of cattle twice a year. Branding of newborn cattle to establish ownership was generally done at the fall roundup when the calves would be at their mother's sides. In 1887, a Nebraska Herd Law was passed which restricted the movement of cattle and made the cattle companies liable for damages to homesteader lands. As a consequence, all of the cattle companies moved their bases of operation across the state line into Wyoming where there were no restrictions. They also hired itinerant cowboys as "line-riders" to patrol the North Platte River and turn back any cattle that strayed back to their old range.

When Ben arrived in the Valley he filed for a homestead claim close to the river on land to the south of the preemption claim that Dan Johnson had initially purchased and which was supplemented by additional Johnson family claims in the following years. As we have already said, Ben started breaking land and building a house only to find that a Thomas Reeves had already entered a claim for the site he had selected. Ben had to start over again and selected a spot next to Nine-Mile Creek, not far from the town of Tabor (which soon after was renamed Minatare) where he filed for 160 acres.

Pioneer trails along the North Platte River near Scott's Bluff
and location of Gentry and Johnson land claims

In the meantime, he borrowed a team of horses and a plow from his future father-in-law, Dan Johnson, to break ground in the tough prairie sod for new settlers, many of whom had no horses of their own. In return he plowed the Johnson land for Dan. It was during his first years of farming, in 1887, that Ben and his future brother- in-law, Will Ripley, could claim the first successful irrigation of farmland in the North Platte Valley. They observed that a five-acre plot of millet they had planted on Dan Johnson's land started very well but began to wilt from lack of moisture. At that time few if any North Platte valley settlers had even dreamed of irrigation. Ben and Will hitched a plow to a horse and Ben describes what followed next:

By the next year, canals began springing up everywhere and before many years, the entire North Platte Valley was covered for miles by irrigation canals that made the area a fertile bread basket for all of Western Nebraska.

In addition to sod-breaking, Ben took on odd jobs wherever he could find them, including working briefly in 1887 for the Bay State Cattle Company as a line-rider. In 1888, in another part-time job, Ben was filling in temporarily in Minatare for a store clerk who was sick when one of his neighbors by the name of Arnold shot and killed a fellow settler, George Burton, with whom he had quarreled and for whom he was working. Ben loaned a rifle to the Justice of the Peace and joined the posse to apprehend the perpetrator. Ben was the first to enter Arnold's home, but fortunately Arnold came along peaceably and was taken to the county seat at Sidney, Nebraska, where he was jailed. For some reason, the corpse of George Burton had to be left outdoors before being transported elsewhere the next day and Ben was asked to sit up with the corpse. He remarked later that he nearly froze, the weather being very cold.

Ben had another brush with danger that earned him considerable notoriety in 1890 after he had assumed the job of County Clerk. The weekly Gering Courier newspaper in a November 28th article, wrote:

The newspaper makes no mention of two further items of human interest. Sheriff Byal was scheduled to be married the next day but the wedding had to be postponed because of his absence. A second wedding was scheduled for that next day, namely that of Ben Gentry and his deputy clerk, Cora Johnson (more on that later). The deputy was out of the office the day of the incident so she could be home doing some necessary sewing.
 

When Ben moved west, the entire panhandle of Nebraska consisted of two large counties. In November 1888, the southern of these, Cheyenne County, by popular election was divided and three new counties, Kimball, Banner and Scotts Bluff were carved out of it. Party conventions were held the following January to nominate county officers. At the Republican convention, Ben Gentry defeated a rival by a margin of 17 votes to 11. Before the election two weeks later on 16 Jan 1889, the Weekly Courier newspaper, published by an unabashedly Republican editor, wrote an article describing the candidates:

Ben was elected Clerk by a total vote of 257, 47% of the total vote, over a Democratic opponent and a Peoples party opponent. Among other candidates, Dan Johnson was elected one of three county commissioners. Part of the election included a selection of the location for the county seat. This barely failed to achieve a clear majority for Gering. Three weeks later, another election was held to choose between the two top contenders, namely Gering and Mitchell (upriver from Gering). Gering won decisively aided by a promise to build a bridge across the river. This would avoid the frequently hazardous necessity of fording the North Platte (there was insufficient depth or definition of river channels to allow a ferry). The closest existing bridge was a toll bridge some 40 miles east by road from Gering at Camp Clark (later to become the site of Bridgeport which was established when the first railroad line came through). This bridge had been built in 1875 for the Black Hills gold rush to the north in South Dakota. Gering came through as promised, starting a bridge soon after the 1889 election was over, building a bridge over 3000 feet long, single-lane, with two strategically placed wider spots for passing. During the spring flood while building was underway, the river filled the entire width under the bridge, from one end to the other. The bridge was finally finished in August of 1889.
 

Cora Johnson - Western Nebraska

We return now to Cora Johnson and her early years in the North Platte Valley. It will be recalled that in 1887 when Cora returned from college to her former home in Weeping Water, the family had left. Cora took the train from Omaha to Sidney, where her sister, Anna, met her, bought supplies to be taken back home, and then traveled by horse-drawn wagon the approximately 70 mile, 2-day trip from Sidney to the new Johnson home at Winters Creek.

Dan had arranged for his daughter to teach that fall at a school located in Minatare, then called Tabor, so named for one of the early settlers. While Cora and Anna were in Sidney, they called upon the county superintendent of schools, Mrs. Julia Shelton, about obtaining a certificate to teach. Rather than stay in town longer to take the required examination, the girls prevailed upon her to give Cora an emergency certificate based upon her college diploma. Cora was hired to teach the Minatare school for six months that year for $25 per month, with the privilege of two of Cora's sisters, Maud and Alice, being allowed to attend.

During the school year Cora and her sisters lived in the home of a Mrs. Wynkoop in Minatare. The schoolhouse had sod walls and a timbered roof, about 20 feet by 32 feet in size, and with 2 windows each on the east and west sides. Cora described the interior as follows: