History of Richardson County, Nebraska

Jesse Crook is one of the stalwarts of southeastern Nebraska. Of the nearly eighty years which he has passed over since be came into the world in White county of the old commonwealth of Tennessee, one bright day dated September 12, 1826, fifty of these cycles of time, come August 28, 1904, will have been spent, to the lasting welfare and benefit of the community, in Richardson county, Nebraska. Few, if any men, can claim so long an active career in this county, and none have enjoyed a more prosperous and worthy period of years. When on the date mentioned, he located on his one hundred and sixty acres of land one mile north of Falls City, he made the first farming settlement on the prairie of Richardson county. He had made the journey from his native state with three yoke of oxen, arriving in Andrew county, Missouri, in the fall of 1853, and proceeding the final stage of his migration in the following year. He had two prairie schooners, and during the six weeks and two days of his trip camped out all the time, making a veritable picnic of the affair, and living high on various kinds of wild game. He but sold his land in Tennessee and came to this country with some capital. While in Andrew County, he worked one of his brother’s farm, and on arriving at his place in Nebraska he built a rough log house with a stick and mud chimney, puncheon floor, shook roof, being sixteen by eighteen feet in dimensions, and with a small lean-to for a bedroom. During his first year’s residence he split enough rails to fence in forty acres, which land he broke and raised twenty-five bushels of corn from each acre.

Such was the advent and the first settlement of this venerable old settler. Since those early days he has been the owner of twenty thousand acres of Nebraska soil taken all together. He purchased ten thousand acres of the Sauk reservation, having bought it from the government in sealed bids of from $1.25 to $1.40 per acre. He has disposed of all his farm lands, and his realty property now consists of a block of lots and a business block in Falls City. His life throughout has been marked by thrift, keen and sagacious management and most honorable and upright methods of dealing with his fellow men. His solid ability achieved success regardless of the fact that he was without advantages in his youth, and only six weeks were taken from his years as a farmer boy in Tennessee in attendance at the rudest kind of log schoolhouse, with a dirt floor, beside which the country school of today would seem a palace.

Mr. Crook's Father was John Crook, and for many generations in the history of the family the name John has headed a family. His great grandfather John was Virginian. and died suddenly of heart disease at the age of fifty-five. Grandfather Crook was a Tennessee planter, owning many slaves, and his life was not terminated until he had reached the great age of ninety-seven years. John Crook, the father of Jesse, was born in Virginia in 1779, was reared in North Carolina, and came to Tennessee with his parents in 1807. He was married in 1803 to Miss Mary Lee, a relative of the famous military family of Lees, and she was born in Roan county, North Carolina, in 1784, and was also married in that county. She survived her husband about three years, and both passed away and are interred in White county, Tennessee. She was seventy-eight years old at the time of her death, and her husband was eighty. They were the parents of a large family, and all of the name seem to have been gifted with long lives, for the circle of their children was not broken for many years. The record of the children is as follows: Nancy died in Tennessee in 1852, leaving ten children; John died in White county, Tennessee, at eighty, the father of nine children; Isaac, who was an early northwest Missouri settler and who came to Nebraska in 1856, died at Mineral Springs, Missouri, at the age of seventy-two, and had a family of nine children, one son being a prominent county official; Allen came to Jackson county, Missouri, in 1832, was a resident near Savannah, Missouri, until the Civil war, then moved west to Denver, where he died at the age of eighty-two, leaving two children; Charles, who had a wife and one child, died in Tennessee at the age of sixty-five; William, who was the first of the family to die, passed away in Jackson county, Missouri, in 1835 at the age of twenty-one; Ruth Gillam, a widow, resides in Tennessee and is well on toward her eightieth year; Mary McBroom died in Tennessee at the age of sixty, having been the mother of ten children; Jesse is the next in order of birth; Rebecca Stanton died in Tennessee when about sixty years old, having had seven children; Elizabeth Harper, now a Mrs. Clark, resides near Bonham, Texas, and has five children.

Mr. Jesse Crook was married, February 28, 1847, to Miss Eliza Whittaker, who was born in Orange county, North Carolina, May 3, 1830, a daughter of Isaac and Sally (Clinton) Whittaker, who were born in North Carolina in 1800 and 1802, respectively. Her father was a farmer, and he and his wife moved to Tennessee in 1832. Mrs. Crook was the third of their children, and the others are: Mrs. Melinda Holmes, a widow in Texas, still active at the age of seventy-nine and with six living children; Mrs. Nancy Ramsey died leaving three children; William Preston Whittaker, who came to Nebraska in 1855 and in the following year went to Colorado, still farms in the latter state, and has some eight children; Hickman, born in Tennessee in 1834, came to Nebraska in 1886, and died here in 1894, leaving nine children; James, Burt and Thomas Whittaker.

Mr. and Mrs. Crook have had three children. John, who was born in Tennessee in 1848, died in Nebraska at the age of twenty-one. Sally, born in Tennessee, March 2, 1849, married August Schoenheit, who died leaving two children; she is now the wife of Judge James Wilhite, of Falls City. W. H. Crook, born in Tennessee, May 9, 1851, is a leading hardware merchant of Falls City.

During the fifty years of Mr. Crook’s residence in this county he has spent most of it in Falls City. He moved into town from his farm in 1858, returning to the country three years later, but since 1864 has made his home in the city, although he has moved from one residence to another about six times, and has built, and sold many houses. He built the first hotel, the Crook House, in the county in 1858; conducted it for a time, then sold, and afterwards built another hotel, which he ran for three years. He has been at his present nice residence for the past five years, and expects to meet the final summons at this home. He is a Democrat in politics, but throughout his long and successful career has never sought or accepted office. He and his wife have been of the Methodist faith for forty years, although both come of Baptist households. They are still hale and hearty and fine examples of Nebraska citizenship.

Doctor Crook, who was chancellor of Wesleyan University at Lincoln, Nebraska in the Nineties, states that the Crook family had its beginning in Scotland from which it emigrated to the north of Ireland and from there moved to the west of England.

In the census of 1790 there were Crook families in the valleys of North and South Carolina with the same names that have been given Crooks to this day. When Tennessee was opened for settlement, one of these named John and his wife, a devout Quaker named Hannah Lee, crossed the Great Smokie Mountains when the only way was to let the wagon from one elevation to the lower one with ropes manipulated by husky men. They settled in Middle Tennessee in what was afterward named White County. There they raised a large family consisting of several sons and daughters.

When the Platte Purchase in Northwest Missouri in 1837 was opened for settlement, one of those sons named Allan sold his holdings in Tennessee and with a bride joined a wagon train bound for Missouri where he bought land and established his home.

Allan Crook wrote glowing letters to his family back in Tennessee. Those letters resulted in two of his younger brothers, Isaac and Jesse, converting all their holdings into money and joining a wagon train headed for St. Louis. There the train divided, one part going to the Republic of Texas. A sister, Betty, was in that division. In 1900, then an old woman, she visited her brothers in Falls City. Jesse was the youngest of his family. His wife was Eliza Whitaker and they had one daughter and one son. Isaac was several years older. He had three children, one of them a fifteen year old daughter. Isaac had married a sixteen year old bride, Lucinda Kirby, just before leaving Tennessee. Mrs. Sallie Pollard and her husband, Pharagus Pollard, came in the same wagon train. Nebraska was not yet open for settlement so Isaac and Jesse bought land in Andrews County near Fillmore, Missouri and settled close to their brother Allan. The first thing they did of course was to build themselves a cabin on their new bought land. Next Isaac set out fruit trees. The apple trees had begun to produce apples before Nebraska was opened to settlers.

The wives of these two men were most devoted friends. Jesse did not stay put through these years but did one thing and then another, knowing that Isaac and Lucinda would always look after his family. That is how it happened that Jesse filed on the second and third homesteads in Richardson County.

Jesse Crook in August, 1854 came to Richardson County and took up his claim and in 1855 came over and made other improvements. He crossed the Missouri River at sundown at what was then known as St. Stephens, having his household goods in a wagon drawn by oxen and in driving off the ferry boat, the wagon upset, throwing most of the household effects into the Missouri River.

They stayed overnight in St. Stephens and the next day April 17, 1855 arrived at their new home, one and onehalf miles northeast of Falls City. Their log cabin had no windows, one door, a stick and clay chimney. Cooking was done outside by camp fire until the cabin was completed, the women sleeping inside and the men in the covered wagons. There was nothing to be seen but wolves, Indians and vast prairies. The Indians were very friendly however and came to visit them often. Isaac Crook located with his family April 15, 1856.

When they had disposed of their holdings in Missouri and brought all their moveable property to Archer, Isaac sat down on his wagon tongue and declared he was going back to Missouri the next morning. "Jesse had taken for himself the quarter section that had the timber and the only spring of water in reach, and Isaac's quarter was nothing but prairie grass." The wives did not wish to be separated so they effected a compromise. Each man would take an eighty of timber and each an eighty of prairie, but Jesse was to have the two eighties closest to Archer and the spring, being on the farthest west eighty, Jesse and his family were to have undisputed access to the spring which was just across the line on Isaac's land. Adjoining the spring was a natural amphitheatre. All the pubic meetings of the community were held at that natural assembly ground for years and no one was ever denied the privilege of driving or walking or riding horseback across the Crook land. Jesse's house was built where Clarence Nutter's windmill now stands and Isaac's house was on the present site of the Elmer Wittrock home.

Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Crook on whose homestead was located the campmeeting ground where al the public meetings religious or secular were held through the years until trees in Falls City grew enough to make shade.

That first year Isaac made the gardens for both families and broke prairie sod and grew enough corn to take their stock through the next winter, and probably grew enough tobacco to supply his pipe for a year. They also planted hedge (osage orange seedlings) for a fence between their prairie eighties. When those two eighties were bought years later for the Falls City Airport, those hedge sprouts had become full grown trees and were dug out with powerful bulldozers.

In the Missouri years, Isaac's family had increased by one daughter and four sons. Jesse's youngest son was born in 1851 in the same month that Isaac's son Jack was born. Every farm in those days had a small yoke for breaking calves. In one of those early years there were white twin calves on Isaac's farm and they were brought up in the way young oxen should grow by being hitched to a cottonwood board two feet wide and twenty-four feet long and warped at the ends. On this board all the boys in the neighborhood would ride and the little oxen were driven all over the present site of Falls City which was then covered with blue stem grass which is as slippery as snow.

Isaac's daughter and her husband took land southeast of what is now Humboldt, and his son, John homesteaded northwest of Salem. The land is still in their respective families and their descendants are scattered far and wide. The son, Allan emigrated to Seattle more than two generations ago. In the Nineties there were one hundred and twenty voters in Richardson County who were Crook descendants and their in-laws. Women did not vote in those days. One grandson, Zeno Crook, now of Denver, who was graduated from the Falls City High School, invented the pressure cooker which figures so largely in the operations of the modern kitchen. Descendants have been in the postal service and the teaching profession. One representative is in the legal profession and another one is in the medical profession.

Like the original family who thought that there was a better place farther on, the Crooks have contributed citizens to all the western states.

Descendants of Isaac Crook who presently live in Richardson County, Nebraska, include: Mrs. Paul B. Weaver, Falls City, Miles Crook, Falls City, Ray Crook, Falls City, Carl Crook, Salem, Glenwyn Crook, Humboldt, Mrs. Louis C. Wittwer, Falls City, Mrs. Virgil Emmert, Salem, Mrs. Walter Carlisle, Salem, Mrs. Gordon Goolsby, Salem, Mrs. Forrest Ogle, Salem, Merle Stalder, Salem, Mrs. Inez Marsh, Verdon, Ned Ray, Verdon, Mrs. Carl Windrum, Dawson.

In Sparta, Tennessee to this day there is a tradition that Jesse Crook laid out the town of Cookeville, Tennessee before coming to Nebraska and becoming engaged in establishing Falls City.

Jesse Crook and Eliza Whitaker had two children, Sarah E. Crook Schoenheit, Wilhite and William H. Crook.

William A., deceased. His widow, Marion, lives in the home they built at 23rd and Crook Streets.

Guy, deceased, was in the Monarch Engineering Company with his brother John and later bought out his brother's interest. His widow, Florence Harman Crook, lives at 23rd and Towle Streets, which was the home built by William H. and Lydia Crook.

William Hampton Crook, who was associated in the Monarch Engineering until it was liquidated and named the Crook Construction Company. This was dissolved in January, 1957 when William and his wife, Elizabeth Van Arnam moved to Houston, Texas. They have three daughters: Ann, Mary Elizabeth and Margaret and a son, Thomas William, deceased.

Guy Harman Crook is a Physician and Surgeon, whose office is located on land owned in 1869 by his great-aunt Sarah Crook Schoenheit, daughter of Jesse Crook. Doctor Crook and his wife, Lorraine Lynn Crook live at 24th and Crook Streets with their three sons, Guy Harman, Jr., Robert Lynn and William Andrew.

These family pictures and captions were furnished by Mrs. Paul B Weaver who also contributed most of the article on the Crook family.

WRITTEN BY THE PEOPLE OF RICHARDSON COUNTY NEBRASKA, COMPILED BY THE RICHARDSON COUNTY HISTORY BOOK COMMITTEE

Genealogists have traced the Crook family back to 1636 - back to the Danes via Scotland, Ireland, and England. They immigrated to Virginia in early 1700's. Several had John as surname. The first noted in Virginia as John Crook died there in early 1700's. John Crook Sr., born 1741 in Virginia, died in 1838 in Tennessee. John Crook Jr., born 1779 in Virginia, died 1859 in Tennessee. John Jr. was married to Mary Lee, cousin of famous General Robert E. Lee; they had several children. Two of these, Isaac and Jesse, were pioneer settlers of Richardson County.

John Crook Family-Front: William, John, Martha, Mary. Rear: Douglas, Albert, Andrew, Benjamin.

Jesse and Isaac and John Crook, son of Isaac, came from White County, Tennessee, to Filmore County, Missouri, after disposing of their landholdings and slaves. After a few years in Missouri, they decided to explore southeast Nebraska.

In 1854, Isaac, Jesse, and John Crook, along with William Goolsby, William Roberts, Faragus Pollard, James Goolsby, a Singleton, Short and Simerly crossed the Missouri into Nebraska to explore. They followed the Nemaha from the mouth up to what is now Salem, naming streams they encountered along the way. They staked claims which they found suitable to develop. John Crook followed the Nemaha northwest from Salem up to a stream they called Deer Creek. He staked his claim about one mile north. They returned to their homes in Missouri

In 1855, Isaac and Jesse came back and settled in Archer, northeast of the Falls City airport on April 17. Here they built their homes and broke the sod at about the same time as other families such as the Harkendorffs, Maddoxes, Stumbos. The first corn grown in the county was grown by Jesse Crook at Archer.

After just a few years, this settlement moved because it was located on half-breed land. In 1858, most of the families moved into Falls City. Here they helped in the development of the city. They built homes and were active in community affairs. Jesse Crook built the first hotel, which was located where the old Richardson County Bank now stands. Isaac served several years as the first County Treasurer. The first newspaper of Falls City, The Broad Axe, was printed at about this time.

In 1856, John went up to the claim he had staked out a couple years earlier. He got possession of 160 acres of bounty land that had been awarded to a soldier of the War of 1812. His widow, Mrs. Clara McCallan, the owner, probably never saw the land because only the Indians and a few pioneers had been in this area. John and Martha built a log cabin, broke twenty acres the first year, and planted some crops, garden, and fruit trees.

John was called into military service to help squelch Indian uprisings in North Dakota. He mustered out in 1863.

The John Crooks had several children: Mary, Benjamin, Andrew, William, Albert, and Douglas. (See photo) At the passing of John in 1904, his son Benjamin bought 120 acres where he built a home. Forty acres of the original 160 acres was purchased by Paul Weaver several years later.

Benjamin F. Crook Family - Front: Fay, Eva, Una. Middle: Ola, Benjamin, Ray, Alzada, Ina, Guy. Rear: May, Roy, Ira, Ora.

Benjamin and Alzada Crook had seven daughters and four sons. (See photo) Benjamin was a farmer and also taught school in several districts in the county- teaching some of his own children in District 45. Several of them taught school in the county also.

In his later years, Benjamin moved to Plattsmouth, then on to Lincoln, where he passed away in 1932.

Benjamin's son Ira purchased the farm about 1929. Ira Crook was co-founder of Lincoln Liberty Life Insurance Company. He had been president and chairman of the board at his death. Another son Guy was also an officer in the same company.

Ray Crook, a third son, farmed the land shortly after Benjamin left it until 1940, when Leo Crook, Ray's son, started farming.

At the passing of Ira Crook, the farm was inherited by his brother Ray and Ray's sons-Don and Leo.

Leo farmed until 1981, when the farm was sold to Mrs. Rodney Vandeberg, wife of a Falls City banker. The farm had belonged to Crooks for 125 years.

In 1956, this farm, with several others in the county, received the Pioneer Award for having been in possession of the same family for one hundred years. Walnut plaques and metal markers with names and dates for farm entrances were presented at the Richardson County Fair by the AK-SarBen and State Fair Board Association managers.

Among Jesse Crook's descendents were W.H. Crook and W.R. Crook, hardware merchants; J. A. Crook, Monarch Engineering Company; Guy Crook, former doctor in more recent years

Descendents of Isaac Crook and great-grandchildren of John Crook, residing in the county, are Martha Snethen, Martha Ogle, Maxine Bogess, Kenneth Wittwer, and Merle Stalder. Some of these have children and grandchildren also in county.

Anna Crook Weaver, mother of L.M. Weaver and Archibald Weaver, was also descended from Isaac Crook.

Crooks residing in the county are David and Charles Crook of Humboldt, (Mr. And Mrs. David Crook have one son and one daughter); Mrs. Glenwin Crook, mother of David and Charles Crook; Mr. and Mrs. Leo Crook.

Crooks living outside the county - those underlined reaching the tenth generation - are as follows:

Mr. and Mrs. Roger (son of Leo) Crook; Red Cloud, Nebraska; one daughter (Kelly Ann) and one son (Bryan Ray).

Mr. and Mrs. (Bonnie, daughter of Leo) Charles J. Arnold of Nebraska City, Nebraska have one daughter, Heather Lynn, and one son, Brendan Jay. They are also part of the tenth generation. Information by Mrs. Jack Crook and Mrs. Leo Crook

Guy Harman Crook was born September 10, 1914, in Minnesota, the son of Florence Harman and Guy Crook and the great-grandson of Eliza Whitaker and Jesse Crook who filed claims on the second and third homesteads in Richardson County.

Guy graduated from Falls City High School in 1932 and attended Kemper Military School, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Cornell University. He received his medical degree in 1941 from the University of Nebraska.

Guy married Lorraine Lynn, daughter of William A. Lynn and Martha Louise Jagnow, in 1940. Lorraine graduated from Falls City High School in 1936 and attended the University of Nebraska. Guy and Lorraine were members of the St. Thomas Episcopal Church.

During World War II Guy served with the 44th Division Medical Corps in the European theater and was awarded the Bronze Star.

Guy Harman Crook, Jr. who is a minister in Azle, Texas where he lives with his wife Lois Tighe and his children, Amy Lynn and William Hampton Crook III. Guy attended Washington State University and served in the Air Force.

Robert Lynn Crook is a financial manager with Battelle Memorial Institute in Richland, Washington. Robert received his M.B.A. from the University of Washington and served in the Army. Robert and his wife Lynn Murphy, whose grandfather was born in Tecumseh, have two children, Jenny Lorraine and Joseph Lynn.

William Andrew Crook lives in Kennewick and is employed by the J.A. Jones Construction Company as a purchasing agent. William received his degree from Eastern Washington University and serves in the Air Force National Guard. William and his wife Robin Bishop have four children: Richard Alan, Janene Robin, Kristene Marie and Philip William who lives with his wife Bridget Bell and son Todd in Kennewick.

After World War 11, Guy maintained a medical practice in Grand Junction, Colorado until 1952 when he moved to Falls City where he built a medical clinic on Chase Street. In 1957 he moved his family to Kennewick, Washington to join the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation.

Guy died September 30, 1974, and was preceded in death by his parents, a brother, William Hampton Crook; and a sister, Florence Crook. Lorraine lives in Kennewick, Washington.

It happened long before the advent of the tractor combine, and milking machine, but after the invention of wheel, cradle, scythe, and steam engine. In fact, it was nearly a century and a half ago.

A phenomenon of great magnitude was sweeping across our land east of the Mississippi River. It was the migration of people moving westward. They wanted to plant their roots, own their farm, home, or business, and have a part in developing this great wilderness.

In their push westward, they crossed the Father of Waters to locate in Iowa and Missouri. Some of them pushed ever onward and westward across the wide Missouri River into the Nebraska Territory. Two or more of these very early families will be mentioned in order to establish a place in the Nebraska sun.

The hearty pioneers stopped. They looked-and liked what they saw. They were in the valley of the North Fork of the Big Nemaha River in what is now Richardson County, Nebraska. Salem was later founded only several miles from their farm.

John Crook and family came to Richardson County on or about the eighteen hundred forties or fifties. The boy members of this family were named for United States presidents.

Much of the following has been handed down through the generations. Time has not allowed more research into the family.

Nebraska was a huge territory. Statehood was a long ways off, and life was difficult in those early years.

The Crooks lived near what is now Salem. Mrs. Crook was taken by wagon and oxen team to Fortescue, Missouri. They had to wait for the Missouri River to freeze in order to make a safe crossing. A baby boy was born on February 29,1852, in or near Fortescue. He was christened William Alexander Crook. He lived eighty-four years and celebrated twenty-one birthdays. This leap year baby went with his parents back to Nebraska to their home where he grew to manhood. He helped out working on their farm.

William was a young man and wanted to settle down. He met, fell in love, and married Ida June Arnold. Six children were born to this union. They were Lillie (Mrs. Walter Carlisle), Emerson, Mable, Myrtle (Mrs. Luther Stanley), Letha (Mrs. Virgil L. Emmert), and Ethel (Mrs. George H. Harlan, Sr.)

Letha Bells Crook was born September 14, 1889. After graduating from Salem, she went to Peru State Normal College. She taught school in Richardson County, Nebraska, in Kansas, and in South Dakota.