In about 1855, Gage County was created from Otoe land. By treaty, the Otoes in the vicinity agreed to move to the Otoe (Big Blue) Reservation. Their reserved land measured 25 miles in length east to west and 10 miles north to south, about 160,000 acres. It stretched all the way across southern Gage County, Nebraska, and it extended west into Jefferson County, Nebraska, and south across the state line into Washington and Marshall counties in Kansas.
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| Map from Wikipedia showing location of Gage County |
Algernon Paddock, a Nebraska senator, then persuaded the U.S. Congress to allow the sale of some of the Otoe lands in 1876. (Read more in the History of Gage County, Nebraska.) By 1883, all of the reservation was open for settlement, and the Otoes who had lived there had moved (or had been removed) to Oklahoma.
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| Odell, Nebraska, as shown on the1897 Galbraith's Mail Service Map of Nebraska |
The Clarks were among hundreds of families who moved into the area after the Otoes were removed. Many of John and Mary Jane's neighbors in southern Gage County were immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. I don't know if they ever thought about the people who had previously owned the land or wondered how they were doing in Oklahoma. Perhaps they only thought of their hope that Gage County would be a good home for them, a better place than where they came from.
John and Mary Jane were senior citizens when they came to Gage County (69 and 65 years old.) I am surprised that they wanted to tackle the hard work of starting over again, after more than 20 years in Cass County, Iowa. In the absence of family letters or other records, one can only imagine their thoughts. They left children in Cass County and came to Gage County with Thomas Jefferson Clark, their youngest son. Maybe Tom had wanderlust. John and Mary Jane had lost six (or perhaps seven) children by 1881. Maybe they couldn't bear the thought of their youngest son going off alone.
On 20 Nov 1881, soon after the Clarks arrived in Paddock Precinct, Thomas married Mary Elizabeth Mayhew, an English girl who had lived on Otoe Reservation lands for several years with her widowed mother and her brothers. The young couple spent several years in Paddock Precinct, Gage County, probably on the farm with John and Mary. Then, in 1889 when the “Unassigned Lands” in Oklahoma were opened to settlement, Tom was a participant in the Land Run. He obtained property west of Orlando, Oklahoma, and built a log cabin there (information from Ron Porter, a Clark cousin.)
After it was surveyed in 1880, Odell quickly became a thriving prairie village. The Sanborne Fire Insurance map of 1885 shows a variety of buildings along several streets. Here's a list from the map of what John and Mary would have seen when they hitched their horses to the wagon and drove to Odell for supplies. Nearly all of the buildings in Odell at that time were frame structures.
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| The United Methodist Church built in 1885, Odell, Nebraska. Public Domain photo from Wikimedia Commons by Ammodramus |
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Bank built in 1885 with native stone, Odell, Nebraska. Public Domain photo from Wikimedia Commons by Ammodramus |
Lumber yard
Cribs near the railroad tracks (for grain?)
Black Smith and Wagon Shop
Feed Mill
Saw Mill (so it appears) with Circular Saw, 25 HP Engine, Force Pump and a Well in the Engine Room
Livery Stable and Feed Store with Crib in back
A large Ware House
Meat Market
Grocery Store
Bank
Hotel
Post office
Offices (maybe lawyers, doctors, or dentists?)
Millinery Shop
Hardware Store
Drug Store
General Store
Another Hotel with a Well in front of it
Barber Shop
Furniture Store
Cobbler
Sewing Machine Store
2 more grocery stores
Paints and Oil Store
Drug Store
General Store with Watches and Jewelry
Harness Shop
Another Meat Market
Livery, Feed & Sales Barn with a large Corral in back
Ice House
Smoke House
School
Photographer
Another Grocery Store
Another large lumber yard
Another Black Smith and Wagon Shop
Well in front of the Black Smith and Wagon Shop
More Cribs
Coal, Lime, and more Coal storage
Saloon with a Hall on the second floor
Several dozen Dwellings and Stables
John and Mary Jane's second youngest son, John Henry Clay Clark, committed suicide in Cass County, Iowa, in 1882, and their daughter, Ruth, died in Cass County in early November of 1890. These losses were surely hard for parents who had already lost so many children!
Mary Jane died on 23 Dec 1890, probably in her Gage County home, just a month and a half after Ruth's death. Some have suggested that she died in the Thomas Jefferson Clark home in Marshall County, Kansas, but Tom and his family were surely still living in Oklahoma in late 1890.
Samuel Harrison Clark, another of the Clark sons (and my great-great grandfather,) then moved his family to Gage County from Sherman County, Nebraska, where they had been living. He helped John sell the Gage County farm in 1891. After the sale was accomplished, Samuel moved to Oklahoma and spent a short time there before moving to Weld County, Colorado. (Information from cousin Melvin Clark.) Samuel had consumption (TB,) and he and his family were seeking a dryer climate that might help him. He died in Colorado in 1895. John Clark then had only three children still living – his oldest daughter Nancy and his oldest son, Joshua who were both in Cass County, Iowa, and his youngest son, Thomas Jefferson Clark.
I don't know where John moved after he sold the farm. Maybe he built a little house in one of the little prairie towns (I am only guessing.) By 1895, Thomas Jefferson Clark and his family came back from Oklahoma and began farming in northern Marshall County Kansas, near Oketo, just a few miles southeast of Odell. It is likely that John moved to Marshall County around that time and spent his last years with (or near) Tom and his family.
John Clark died on 1 Feb 1899 in Marshall County. Both John and Mary Jane are buried in Deer Creek cemetery, about 7 miles southwest of Oketo in northern Marshall County, Kansas.
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This blog post about the final years of John Clark and Mary Jane (Kendall) Clark was written by Genevieve L. Netz. Copyright © 2019. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use this document for family tree enrichment only. It may be attached to online Clark family trees. This note about your permission to use this document must remain attached. Any other re-publishing requires written permission. I am always grateful for additions, corrections, and new information. Please contact me at gnetz51@gmail.com
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I love history! Reading about your family in NE is very interesting. Seeing that long list of buildings really allows my imagination to picture what it would have looked like. I can almost see the wooden walkways in front of the shops, hear the neighs from the horses as they are tied up in front of buildings. The many sounds from the blacksmiths shop. So much to take in. It's funny that tomb stones have a start date and an end date (which is of course, is proper, but there is so much living in between those dates that goes unrecorded...and you have helped to fill in some of that information with this post about your family. Well done. Looking forward to more of your posts. Wishing you a lovely day.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Stitchy. I hope I finally am finished with this thing. I have been working on it all week, and still found some more things to add today when I had already published it, so I had to do an update. I do feel closer to these ancestors after really thinking about and studying the facts that we do know about their lives. They lived in the early era of photography, but I don't know of any photos of them.
ReplyDeleteWhew, who am I kidding? I've probably updated this post a dozen times trying to get it and the PDF copy of it exactly the same. The problem is that the formatting does not copy and paste well between the two of them. Every time I think it's finally right ... it's not. I hope I've got it now, and I hope it hasn't been sending any subscribers an update every time!
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