In 1854, two men named John A. Singleton and William Roberts took claims on the South Fork of the Nemaha, and one Short took a mill claim at the junction of the Nemahas, where Salem now stands. The other members of the party, William Goolsby, Pharagus Pollard, James Goolsby, Jesse Crook, and John Crook proceeded a short distance up the North branch and staked out claims, but attempted no improvements, and at once started back toward the Missouri River. After getting lost several times, the party at length reached St. Deroin on the bank of the river, and by firing their revolvers, succeeded in attracting the attention of some men on the opposite side, who ferried them across to the Missouri shore. In the spring the party returned, the first of their number being Jesse Crook, father of Mrs. Sarah Wilhite, now living in Falls City at 216 West 16th street, who moved with his family to his claim on the Muddy, April 17, 1955, and started the first prairie farm in the county. At this time the country about him was full of wolves, deer and wild turkeys, and the fish were so plentiful in the streams that they could be killed with clubs.

Ben Frank Leechman, the first male child born in the county, was born here in this year, August 24, 1855, and still resides north of Falls City.

In the summer of 1855, E. H. Johnson, the William Kenceleur, Charles Rouleau, Eli Bedard and Eli Plant left Sioux City for the half-breed tract, in Southeastern Nebraska. Under the treaty of 1831, at Prairie du Chien, the wives of all the members of this party were entitled to a half section of land in the famous section of land in the famous tract, and the chief object of the party was to secure their claims.

On their arrival in the eastern part of the tract, the party found only two white inhabitants, both of whom were living with Indian squaws. One of these was F. X. Dupuis who had married the widow of White Cloud, a famous Iowa chief who had recently departed for the happy hunting-ground and whose body lay in state where Rulo now stands. The other settler was Charles Martin, a wonderful man even among the hardy pioneers of the plains. Martin is described as tall and commanding in figure. Roman nosed, keen-eyed and straight as an Indian. For many years as a trapper and hunter, he had traversed the pathless prairies amid swarms of hostile Indians, and had come unharmed from innumerable dangers. Shortly before 1850 he had come upon a camp which had lost its leader in a recent fight, and was about to propitiate the spirit by the sacrifice of a young girl, who was even then bound on the pyre about to be fired. Martin, after reasoning in vain with the head men of the tribe, resorted to the means which have from time immemorial proved successful with savages, and purchased the girl, paying two tents and two horses for her.

When found by Johnson's party he had just returned from Salt Lake and intended a permanent settlement. This Martin put up one of the first stores in Rulo and was a partner of F. L. Goldsberry. In the summer of 1855 this party located Rulo, and the mill at the mouth of the Muddy owned by Thacker and Davis. At this time the party in an exploring trip of twenty miles northward found no settlers save Stephen Story, who occupied a cabin near the site of his town, laid out later as St. Stephens.

In 1856 the Johnson party, reinforced by Joshua Murray, moved to the mouth of the Muddy and engaged in the construction of a mill, designed for use in getting out lumber for the new town and also for grinding grain. The saw mill was completed and the flouring mill nearly so when the whole structure was destroyed by an incendiary fire. This was specially hard on the settlers, who were forced to pack all their provisions from the river, two miles distant.

The first hotel erected in Falls City was built from parts of an old house which had stood near the bank of the Missouri River at Yancton. This was the property of Jesse Crook, and was put up in the winter of 1857-58. It stood on the corner of Stone street, facing that and the public square where the new Richardson County bank building is being constructed. Three rooms down stairs and two above furnished accommodations for the traveling public. In 1859, before the house was fairly completed, John Minnick purchased it, and soon added to it a house which he moved from Doniphan, Kansas, the building having been bought from Jim Lane. Minnick's opening of the hotel was practically the first, although it had been conducted for a few months in the preceding summer by Henry Warneke. Mrs. J. R. Wilhite and several of the pioneers recollect it. During the long feuds and savage encounters of the county seat contest, it was the theater of many broils, and in 1860 its floors were wet with the blood of Meek and Davis.

A cozy and substantial house at Sixteenth and Chase streets in Falls City is the dwelling place of Mrs. Sarah Crook (J. R.) Wilhite who came to these parts in the year 1855 when she was a little girl six years of age and has resided here continuously through the sixty-four and one-half years that have followed. Mrs. Wilhite is a living witness to the development and all that has taken place in this part of Southeastern Nebraska since the vast stretch of country lying between the Missouri river and the Rocky Mountains, and from the lower line of the state of Kansas to the Canadian border, was thrown open to settlement by the operation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. There are women now living in Richardson who are older in years than is Mrs. Wilhite, but few whom we know can claim a longer period of residence here than she. She is now in her seventy-first year and her hair is tinged with gray, but her mind is clear and vigorous. Looking back through the vista of years to the beginning of civilization here in Nebraska she finds it a joy to dwell on the memory of the experiences and adventures of her long and busy life of service and sacrifice. There are few stories of pioneer life which contain more of the charm of real romance than would be contained in the stories that might be written into a biographical sketch of this remarkable woman of Falls City who was a little girl in short dresses among the first settlers.

The top of the Cumberland Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, a region made famous by the writings of Charles Egbert Craddock (Miss Mary N. Murfree) suggests a romantic beginning for Sarah Crook, now the Mrs. Wilhite of Falls City, Nebraska. She was born there on March 2, 1849. Her parents, Jesse and Eliza Crook, were plain people of the mountains, both descended from pioneer families who had come from across the sea to establish homes in this land of the free. Mrs. Wilhite's grandmother on her father's side was Mary E. Lee, a cousin of General Robert E. Lee of Revolutionary fame.

Civilization in the early 1850 had spread westward across the mountains to and even beyond the Mississippi river. The quest of gold was luring many across the plains and the Rocky Mountains to California. But the mountain people were tillers of the soil. Their eyes were turned westward - looking longingly toward the almost limitless stretches of rich rolling prairies which, they were told, was only awaiting the touch of the white settler's hands to blossom and bring forth crops in abundance.

Thus it happened that Jesse and Eliza Crook and their family consisting of two sons, John C., now deceased, and William H., now a resident of Falls City, and their one daughter, now Mrs. Wilhite, were numbered among the emigrants to the "land of promise." They journeyed for days until they reached the then little settlement of Fillmore in Northwestern Missouri. Here the family remained while Jesse Crook went on to explore the country west of the Missouri river and to "prospect" for the farm home that was to be theirs for the remainder of their lives. He crossed the river and set foot on Nebraska soil August 4, 1854, and after selecting the place he most desired, he built a cabin and then returned to Missouri late in the year to "fetch" his family in time for the early spring planting.

"That was a wonderful trip." Mrs. Wilhite said recently. "Our outfit consisted of three yoke of oxen, two wagons, bedding, clothing, a few utensils, two cows and about twenty-five chickens. There were other families from Tennessee on the way to the Nebraska Territory - the families of Samuel Howard, Elias Mitchell, Pharagus Pollard and John Crook. There were no roads, no fords, and the men had to hold on to the wagon beds to keep them from slipping forward on to the oxen. The men all carried guns and killed prairie chickens, quail, wild turkeys, squirrels, now and then a deer, as the caravan moved westward to the Missouri river. It was an experience of travel one could never forget. One of the saddest of our family experiences came with the accidental overturning of one of our wagons which resulted in the breaking of a thirty gallon iron kettle mother used for making hominy and soap and rendering lard. It was an irrepairable loss, for the time, and it caused us great sorrow and inconvenience."

The Jesse Crook family and outfit arrived at St. Stephen's Landing on the Missouri river, fifteen miles northeast of the site on the present Falls City, on April 16, 1855. They rested there overnight and the next day, April 17, they reached their cabin about one mile north of Falls City. They had reached the end of their long, long journey, and they were glad. They had found a home in "the land of promise."

The first person whom the subject of this sketch remembers of meeting, on their arrival in the Territory, was Mrs. Levinia Van Valkenberg, who is now a resident of Rulo. Her step father, Stephan Story, was operating the ferry at the Missouri river crossing, and this lady was a bare-foot, six year old girl, who has since witnessed the changing of this country from its wild untamed state to that of one of the best farming countries in the middle west.

The emigrants on their way out had passed through hundreds of miles of lands in varying processes of development, but what were their impressions of the new country in which they had cast their lot? Except the families of Ambrose Shelly, Benjamin Leachman and John Hubank, who lived along Muddy Creek, a small stream running through the county, there were no other settlers within fifteen miles. The other families had settled along the Missouri river farther north, or south, but to the west there was no vistige of civilization so far as they knew. Plenty of Sac and Fox Indians lived in their wigwams in their village. They were peaceable Indians and the young bucks would come and stand around watching Mrs. Crook making soap or attending to her flocks near the cabin.

The country, as the Crook family found it, was a wild waste of rolling hills and valley and plain. Geographers had labeled it on the maps as the "Great American Desert," but little did the geographers know about the rich soil and its adaptability to agriculture, fruit growing and live stock raising. There were no cultivated fields, or farm houses or barns, just these few cabins of settlers built close to the stream which afforded shelter, wood, water for the stock and a prolific growth of grass and beautiful wild flowers. There were no open highways, no railroads, nothing save a beaten trail here and there over which the Indians had traveled back and forth between their villages and the Missouri river, or else traveled by settlers and exploring parties going out toward the plains and the stamping grounds of thousands of Indians, some friendly but most of them hostile and well enough to let alone. There were the old trails over which freighters in great caravans crossed the plains carrying merchandise to the trading posts or at the time laden gold seekers on their way to the California fields.

But everywhere was beauty. Mrs. Wilhite insists that no one in those days could paint a picture, write a book, or with the gift of speech describe what she saw or in any way give an impression of the wondrous beauty of this country when it was in its wild state. There was a riot of beauty, which can never be effaced from the memory of one who beheld it.

The cabin which Jesse Crook built for their first home in Nebraska was a one-room affair built of logs with puncheon floor, clap-boards roof, and a chimney at one end made of sticks and clay. It was a neat and respectable little home and they were all as proud of it as if it had been a palace. The first year the father and his sons broke forty-two acres for their crops, and this is believed to have been the first soil of Richardson county that was ever turned by a plow. Forty acres were planted to corn and a good sod crop was raised. On the other two acres they raised pumpkins, squashes, onions and a large variety of vegetables. The thick growth of small trees and vines and shrubs along the streams provided them with plums, crab apples, grapes, walnuts and hazel nuts. Wild bees supplied an abundance of honey, and always there was plenty of wild game. The streams were well stocked with fish and it was no trick at all for one of the boys to catch a good "string" in an hour's time. The Crook family ate corn bread except on Sundays when Mrs. Crook made biscuits. Cracklin corn bread with mush and milk were of the New Orleans variety, brought up the river in hogsheads and unloaded from boats into the trading posts. The pioneer settlers raised practically everything they had to eat and little did they have to buy, which was fortunate for them, with the nearest trading posts or stores many miles distant.

The schools of the pioneer days were primitive and in keeping with the living conditions of that period, but somehow a good many persons got a good deal of education out of those schools. The first school Mrs. Wilhite attended was conducted in a log cabin about a mile and a half from the Crook cabin. The school house cabin had one large room and a great big fire place in which logs were burned in winter. In that school there were only a few children, some of them coming several miles to get an education. The first school teacher in the county was Mrs. Samuels and the second teacher was David Hooper, who is still very much alive and resides near Ogalalla Valley. The course of study was confined to spelling, reading, writing and ciphering. Webster's speller was used as a text book. The teacher and pupils wrote with goose quill pens. An old copy book of that period was used as a guide to writing, the old Spencerian system being then the only writing system known in the country schools of the West. Mrs. Wilhite remembers a sentence Mrs. Samuels wrote as copy for the "scholars." It was, "Do Your Best You Old Rip, By Jingos!" And the children usually did - or suffered the consequences.

They had good times in those days, even with neighbors few and far between. Neighbors all were friends and they visited together, traded experiences and borrowed from each other. They each had their peculiarities, as people have them nowadays, but they were bound together by ties of friendship and the good luck or bad luck of one was the concern of all. They had camp meetings in the groves, spelling schools in the log school house, taffy pulling for the young and corn shelling for all in the homes in the evenings by the glowing light from the big fire places. The boys and girls played "Sister Phoebe" at their parties, and they kissed in that good old fashioned way when a kiss was a resounding smack. The first preacher who came to Richardson county was the Rev. Mr. Hart. He was a Methodist circuit rider and he rode into the community on a horse with bulging saddlebags on the sides. He ate dinner at the Crook home and it goes without saying that the meal that was spread by Mrs. Crook was fit for any company. The preacher held a meeting in the grove on the creek, and all the settlers and their families for miles around were there. This was in the fall of 1855. Mrs. Wilhite attended the memorable first meeting and in later years she attended services in town, usually riding horseback.

On November 7, 1859, Mrs. Wilhite attended the wedding of Matilda Taylor and John P. Welty. It was an event of the neighborhood never to be forgotten. It was the days of the big hoop skirt. Mrs. Wilhite, then a girl of ten, wore a hoop skirt that was about four feet across at the bottom. The bride, it seems, did not possess such an article of feminine finery, so for the occasion Mrs. Wilhite lent her hoop skirt to Miss Taylor. It was returned after the wedding and the owner wore it home. The entire wedding party, which included about everybody living within a circle of fifteen miles, accompained the happy pair to their new home nine miles distant for the "infair," which was something of a house warming. The bride and groom rode in a wagon drawn by oxen. With them were a number of their close friends, the girls wearing blanket shawls, calico dresses and sun bonnets. Several of the young guests rode horseback, the girl riding behind her young man. Everybody was happy.

The first wedding for which there is a record in the Richardson county court was that of Margaret Miller and Wilson M. Maddox, and Mrs. Wilhite attended that wedding. The groom was from Archer, one of the dead and almost forgotten towns of this section, organized in October, 1855, and located about three miles northeast of Falls City.

The early residents of Richardson county were without railroad transportation and the rough roads made traveling slow. Mr. Crook on one occasion journeyed back to Fillmore, Missouri, where his family stopped on the way out from Tennessee. There he bought six hogs and butchered them. He loaded the meat in his wagon and with Samuel Howard along to help him, started for home. Just after crossing the Missouri river - it was December 2, 1855 - a blizzard swept down from the prairies bringing with it a terrible snow storm. Mr. Crook went ahead of the wagon to break the road and was soon lost in the blinding storm. Left alone with the oxen and further progress against such a raging storm Howard unhitched the oxen and found his way to an Indian camp where he was taken in and royally treated. His feet were frozen badly and he required a great deal of care. The next day the storm subsided but the mercury was down to 20 degrees below zero. Mr. Howard was taken to his home by neighbors who had gone out searching for him, and Mr. Crook, who had somehow found shelter from the storm, went back after his wagon, ox team and load of meat. By this time the meat was frozen hard. On reaching his cabin home he had no place to store the meat, so he stood the pieces up to the side of his cabin covering them with some old linsey-woolsey. There the meat remained all winter frozen hard, the family cutting off chunks of it as the necessities required. In March, however, the meat was thawed and they fried it and put it away for the family use. That year nobody went hungry about the Crook place. They had hominy, corn bread and pork in plenty to spare.

There were stirring scenes in that part of Nebraska Territory in those early times. Settlers were pouring in from the states of the East and South. Neighbors were more numerous and not so far between. They were a sturdy and patriotic people with definite ideas of right and to an extent profoundly religious. They were grateful to Uncle Sam for having given them cheap homes in a land as rich as the sun had ever shone upon. They desired that everybody should know how they felt, so the Fourth of July celebrations were rip-roaring demonstrations such as have not been seen since those Territorial times. Mrs. Wilhite recalls the celebration of July 4, 1858, when Old John Brown and Senator Jim Lane of Kansas made the eagle scream by their matchless oratory. It was the last time the people of this section ever saw those two Kansas free men. Soon John Brown's body was smoldering in the tomb while his soul was marching on, and not long after that Senator Lane died by his own hand.

The story of Mrs. Wilhite's life of service and of usefulness is one that should win the admiration of the people of this day, who know little of the hardships privations and struggles that were the lot of the pioneer women of Nebraska. These were some of her experiences told out of her memory. She could go on and on relating incidents of history and of the development of this country until a thick volume would not hold them all. But the story of the years that have followed the Territorial times is left for others to tell.

To have been here in this part of Nebraska when it was in its wild state just as the Indians left it when civilization forced them back toward the mountains; to have witnessed the process of development under the magic wand of civilization, from the wild state to a veritable garden blossoming as a rose; to see so many neat and well kept farms, so many peaceful and happy homes in country, town and city, so many schools and churches and modern conveniences - and every thing that is worth while! What a joy it must be for Mrs. Wilhite, the little girl settler of the long ago, to feel that she has been a part of it all! Her life is woven into the history of Richardson county.

William C. Goolsby, who died on his farm not far from Falls City in the winter of 1881 or 1882, was a companion of Jesse Crook on his first trip be made in Richardson County before finally settling. While Crook took a claim in the eastern Part of the county, Goolsby went on to a point above Salem, but became sick and returned to Missouri with the firm conviction that the had seen more than enough of Nebraska territory. The return of spring seems to have modified his views, for on Crook's return to Nebraska on April 17th, 1855, Goolsby was again his companion, and in October took possession of the farm on which he lived until the time of his death. The winter of 1855-56 was an exceptionally severe one, and precluded the idea of any kind of farm work, while the vast amount of game in constant view from his cabin door was a constant incentive to the hunt. The idea of turning this supply to his advantage, save in supplying his immediate wants, does not seem to have at first occurred to Goolsby, for he sent to a Doctor Impey, of Missouri an invitation to bring his dogs and see fine sport. The sporting Dr. pleaded a press of other business and finally Goolsby went to Missouri and returning with a pair of dogs, began the style of life which earned him the sobriquet of "the old wolf-hunter" In this winter deer were so plentiful that droves of from fifteen to twenty were constantly in sight from his cabin door, and frequently as many as five separate gangs were to be seen at one time. Aided by his dogs. Goolsby brought down as many as seven deer in a single half day, and then desisted simply from inability to find a use for more meat. At this time Goolsby had a cabin twelve or fourteen feet, which was stored full of meat and supplied all the neighboring settlers. For two years he continued the hunt as a means of living and, In the intervals of the search for larger game succeeded In at once earning the gratitude of the settlers for the wholesale destruction of the thieving wolves and obtaining the name already mentioned. With the disappearance of the wild animals, Goolsby's occupation was destroyed and he returned to the peaceful life of a farmer, which he pursued until his death.

William H. Crook, the celebrated hardware merchant of Falls City, was born May 9, 1851, in Tennessee, and came with his parents to Richardson County in 1855, where he has resided since. In 1874 he was married to Lydia Worley, who is a native of Illinois, and to this union five children were born - John, who is engaged in the contracting business; William who is connected with the hardware store; Guy, who is also a contractor; Mrs. Edna Hurst, whose husband is identified with her brothers in the contracting business, and Miss Eliza, who graduated from Falls City High School in 1917, and is at home with her parents.

Cathryn (Mrs. B. F. Poteet), came to Richardson County, settling at Rulo in 1855 when only a small girl. Married July 12, 1866. She is the mother of thirteen children, and is spending her declining years in a comfortable home at Twenty-first and Schoenheit streets.

Mrs. Sarah (J. R.) Wilhite, was born on top of Cumberland Mountain, March 2, 1849, near Crossville, Tenn. Came to Richardson County, April 17, 1855. Was first married to August Schoenheit, a lawyer, September 7, 1864. To this union was born who is now Mrs. Sallie McKee - was married to J. R. Wilhite in Falls City, October 12, 1898, and their residence is at Sixteenth and Chase streets.

Chris. Hall Wamsley, born February 9, 1854, on a farm near Hillsboro, Ohio, and came to Richardson County, March 12, 1857. Resides two miles west of Falls City on a farm where he moved in 1903. Married to Miss Elizabeth Crawford in April 1876, by Rev. Fairchild at his home in Barada Township. Six children have been born to this union - Mary Delilah, June 26, 1878; William Ashbury, November 1, 1879; Charles Daniel, July 6, 1883; George Augusta, deceased, July 22, 1884; Harry Wilson, October 21, 1886; Carrie Maud, March 8, 1889.

John Allen Cook was born at Mount Vernon, Knox County, Ohio, and always boasts of the Buckeye State. Came to Richardson County, May 18, 1860, and expects to spend his declining years in the town he loves so much, Falls City. He was married to Miss Sarah Corbitt at Princeton, Illinois, May 3, 1860. They have six sons living and two daughters deceased.

One of the sturdy pioneers who saw Richardson County develop from its wild, untamed state to that of a good farming and fruit producing county, was Isaac Crook, who was distinguished by serving as the first county treasurer of Richardson County. He was a capable man and one who manifested an interest in politics and county affairs. Two of his sons, William R. and Glenwin J. Crook served as postmaster in Falls City. The former receiving his appointment March 1st, 1883, and serving until March 8, 1887. The latter receiving his appointment April 27, 1904, serving until March 30th, 1911. The subject of this sketch was one of the first white settlers in the county and his name was interwoven with much of the early history.