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Published: September 19th 2014
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GEORGE SYLVESTER PLACE
This is a Google Earth image showing the location of George Sylvester's homestead in Custer County and it's proximity to New Helena. The land is now owned by the Loup River Ranch and is being used to graze cattle on. The ground is too sandy to hold much water so crops do not do well. AUGUST 28, 2014 I stopped by Buffalo Bill’s ranch in North Platte this morning but it wasn’t open yet so all I got was a picture of the house. If I ever finally win the lottery I would like to build one just like it somewhere else. The gas station that I stopped at in North Platte had two kinds of gas; regular and super. Both were 87 octane but the regular was $3.499 and the super was $3.299. Over in Broken Bow I was able to run down the location of Great Grampa George Sylvester’s homestead and obtain a copy of the land patent and a plat map showing where it was. I called the present owners, but did not reach them so did not get access to the land. It was about 11.5 miles northwest of town on the Loup River. I stopped for lunch at Taco John’s in Broken Bow. Two taco bravos cost $4.69, but I could not get a drink. Some workers nearby cut the water line yesterday and fixed it, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t do it again this morning and the rest rooms and drink machinery were all out of order.
CUSTER COUNTY COURTHOUSE I BROKEN BOW
Land for the court house was donated by Jesse Gandy in 1882 when Broken Bow was made the county seat. The court house was not completed until 1889. George would have had to have filed his homestead application in the temporary offices, but the transfer of his title was done here in 1890. Drove through some downright nasty weather this afternoon and have come as far as The Westerner Motel in Chadron, NE. This is a fine little mom and pop motel that costs $50.40 per night to stay in. The rooms all have metal core doors that are all dented up from hail damage. Chadron has three good museums so I may not get far from here tomorrow. Cobb Salad for supper tonight at Helen’s Café. They used real bacon. The bleu cheese dressing was pretty drippy though. Iced tea was not fresh brewed. Friendly waitress.
CAROLYN SYLVESTER When Gramma’s folks, George Sylvester and his wife Sarah, moved to Custer County, Nebraska in 1888 Sarah was almost exactly seven months pregnant. George filed on a 160 acre homestead 19 miles northwest of Broken Bow near the Middle Loup River and about 4 miles northeast of the community of New Helena. Broken Bow is the still the county seat of Custer County and is where George filed the claim for his land patent on August 10. New Helena has never been much of a community. It boasts of a lovely artesian spring that is now a county park but
BROKEN BOW SIGN
Just for laughs. in earlier days would have been a pleasant gathering spot for Plains Indians. George would have been rushed to build the sod house that Gramma was born in on October 10, 1888. He would also have needed a shelter for his livestock and would have needed to put in hay enough to feed them through the winter. It is not likely he had time to put in much of a garden or sow a crop in his fields. It must have been a difficult winter for the family there, and it must have used up about all of their savings. When George started out farming in the spring of 1889 he was already pretty used up financially. He did well enough to get through another winter barely, put in another crop and then in the summer of 1890 he sold the place and moved his family to College View, Nebraska over near Lincoln. Strangely enough George was issued a land patent on his homestead signed by the secretary of President Benjamin Harrison in 1899. It is on file in the court house in Broken Bow and is all that remains of the Sylvester Family’s brief existence there. That homestead is a hardscrabble looking outfit to this day. George was kind of a rake and a rambling man and did not stay long anywhere. One the best of the Robert Service poems is called
The Men Who Don’t Fit In and it may well apply to George Sylvester. College View probably was a place that had decent schools but Gramma was still too young to go to school while they lived there. In later years she was always vexed about how hard it was for her get any schooling at all. Her little brother, Ben, was born in College View on August 18, 1892. The family next moved by covered wagon from College View to Lamar, MO. Ben got whooping cough along the way and died on November 22. George settled his family near the little community of Bushnell about 7 miles west of Lamar. The last member of the family, Ray Sylvester was born in Bushnell on June 14, 1895 so once again Sarah was pregnant as she bounced along in the wagon. Of Gramma’s many siblings Uncle Ray was a favorite. He had a wonderful sense of humor and was full of good stories. During WWI Ray was a farrier behind the trenches in France. After the war he moved to Los Angeles and became a farrier for many years at Santa Anita Racetrack. He tacked the shoes onto both War Admiral and Seabiscuit for their famous match race. He shooed racing greats such as Citation and Man of War, but he also put shoes on hundreds of genuine plugs. In his later years Ray moved to a little place just south of Reno and became a “professor of horse shooing” at the University of Nevada. Gramma fell out of a tree in Bushnell and broke her arm when she was 7 years old. It hurt like the devil but it was properly set and splinted up. She had to run around like a robot until her arm knitted back. Sometime around age 90 she fell in her basement in Spokane and broke a hip. We all went to see her in the hospital and what she said was this, “Oh dear, it’s just one darn thing after another; first my arm and now my hip.” George was soon enough dissatisfied with his prospects in Bushnell and moved on to Columbus, KS. Down there he learned that farming was just as full of chance and peril as it was anywhere else no matter hard you worked the land. In1899 he moved up to Omaha and found himself a town job. Gramma was 11 years old and for the first time had access to regular schooling. Town life suited her fine. She got her education and went to business school and in 1906 at the age of 18 moved with Ray, another brother named Chester, and her mom, Sarah to Portland, OR. In 1910 she married Glen Oliver and started up a noisy family of her own. Gramma lived long enough to have crossed the prairie in a covered wagon and fly to Europe on the Concorde. She passed away in Spokane on March 17, 1982 at age 93. It was St Paddy’s Day.
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