North Omaha Business Advertisement Collage (2)
This collage features a number of advertisements from Black-owned businesses in North Omaha. The collage demonstrates the variety of businesses that thrived in North Omaha in the 1950s. The advertisements include restaurants, bars, realtors, and pharmacies., among others. These advertisements stand in stark contrast to the economic state of the decades that followed. For interviews and oral histories of this and other items please visit the History Harvest YouTube Channel.
Native Omaha Days, North Omaha History Harvest, 2011
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Flato Commission Company Cattle Sales Account, March 30, 1899
This account acknowledges the sale of 40 steers to a party F.J. Nelson, Ms Wilberger's grandfather, was a drover for. This document is evidence of Omaha's stockyards and livestock market growth at the end of the 19th century as well as cattle prices at that time. Thus, F. J. Nelson paid $1835.39 (about $47,000 today) for 40 cattle, almost $100 out of which were freight and back charges, yardage, inspection, commission, and hay. For interviews and oral histories of this and other items please visit the History Harvest YouTube Channel.
Betty Wilberger, Nebraska City History Harvest, 2010
Flato Commission Company Cattle Sales Account, August 17, 1898
This account acknowledges the sale of 53 cows and 1 cow and calf to a party F.J. Nelson, Ms Wilberger's grandfather, was a drover for. This document is evidence of Omaha's stockyards and livestock market growth at the end of the 19th century as well as cattle prices at that time. Thus, F. J. Nelson paid $1469.06 (more than $37,000 today) for 54 cattle, almost $60 out of which were freight and back charges, commission, and hay for the cows. For interviews and oral histories of this and other items please visit the History Harvest YouTube Channel.
Timber Claim Receipt And Cover Letter, July 15, 1898
The Timber Claim Receipt sent to A.H. Hauptmann on July 16, 1898 certified that he paid the $4.00 (about a $100 today) for the 160 acres of land he had to use to plant trees on. Passed in 1873, The Timber Culture Act provided up to 160 acres of land to farmers for planting trees to better the land for cultivation and increase the rainfall in the western parts of the Great Plains. Most often, however, the Timber Claim allowed homesteaders to secure another section of land, leading to the repeal of the act in 1891. Yet the amendments allowed the act to survive into the 1898, as these documents testify. For interviews and oral histories of this and other items please visit the History Harvest YouTube Channel.
A note from his grandaunt accompanies the folding cup brought in by Mr. Taylor. This is his great-grandmother’s folding cup that she used in the field while enslaved in Mississippi. This artifact would have been essential to his great-grandmother, who would not have been allowed to share the same utensils as her slavemaster, and needed to drink while at work in the fields all day. For interviews and oral histories of this and other items please visit the History Harvest YouTube Channel.
Warren Taylor, North Omaha History Harvest, 2011
Mr. Taylor brought in this penny to the History Harvest to share with us, accompanied by a note from his grandaunt. This penny is a 'braided hair coronet'-style penny, dated 1840, and Mr. Taylor informed us that his great-great-grandmother held on to this penny until she passed away. He said it was a highly treasured object for his great-great-grandmother, as slaves were not allowed to have money of their own. For interviews and oral histories of this and other items please visit the History Harvest YouTube Channel.
Russel Taylor's Letter to the Secretary of the Interior, September 19, 1913
Russel Taylor wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, explaining his inability to build a house and make the proper improvements to his homestead land by the proper date, as required by law. Russel was a school teacher, as well as a farmer, and when his wife fell ill he was unable to keep up with all the tasks of homesteading. He wrote to the Secretary of the Interior inquiring if he could use the new law extending the improvement time to 12 months instead of six months, as he would have time once school was out of session. For interviews and oral histories of this and other items please visit the History Harvest YouTube Channel.
Russel Taylor's Homestead Application, May 20, 1913
Mr. Warren Taylor provided some homesteading documentation from his paternal grandfather, Russel Taylor. This is Russel Taylor's homestead application, approved for 160 acres of land near Cheyenne, Wyoming on May 20th, 1913. Wyoming had a large community of African American homesteaders, which was a motivation of Russel's to move. He hoped to farm the land, while also working as a school teacher. The land proved poor for farming, and Russel and his wife Henrietta later migrated to Omaha with a large portion of the African American community from Wyoming. For interviews and oral histories of this and other items please visit the History Harvest YouTube Channel.
F.J. Nelson's Drover's Ticket for Omaha to Axtell Passage, March 24, 1903
Issued to a drover overseeing transportation of cattle from the Omaha market to Axtell, this ticket is one of the rare documents of the turn of the 20th century railroad operations. Unlike a passenger ticket, the drover's ticket featured a list of physical descriptions to be marked, so that no random person riding in the cattle car could appropriate it. Thus we learn that F. J. Nelson (Ms Wilberger's grandfather) was of medium size and height with light hair and a moustache. Unlike modern descriptions that usually feature eye-color, this one provides for the description of the facial hair, a more prominent characteristic. It also tells historians that all cattle drovers were men. In 1903 Omaha had already established its reputation of one of the major livestock exchange and stockyard site west of Chicago, the location largest stockyards in the world at the time. This ticket is for the Burlington Route of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad, a branch of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company. Built in the 1850s to cross Iowa the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad initially had a terminus at Council Bluffs, but later the railroad extended a line from Omaha all the way to Denver. It is not clear whether Axtell, Nebraska is now a small town not far from the Kearney Junction of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad in Nebraska. For interviews and oral histories of this and other items please visit the History Harvest YouTube Channel.
Axtell (Neb.); Kearney (Neb.); Omaha (Neb);
Texas-Colorado Chautauqua Auditorium Event Admission Tickets, August 3, 1899, Denver, Colorado
These two admission tickets a Chautauqua event, organized by a recently established (1898) Texas-Colorado Chautauqua Association belonged to F.J. Nelson of Axtell, Nebraska. Chautauqua is an institute of short two-three week schools for popular adult Christian education a Sunday School organizer John Heyl Vincent and businessman Lewis Miller started in 1874 on the shores of lake Chautauqua in New York. As its popularity grew, other educators and benefactors established independent or daughter Chautauquas in other parts of the country, usually in the picturesque scenic places on the outskirts of a larger town within an easy trip from the railroad station. Lectures, music, and other arts always occupied a central role in a Chautauqua experience attracting a large number of patrons from rural areas with few other opportunities to access education and quality entertainment. This, no doubt, was a major event for Betty Wilberger's grandfather F. J. Nelson who came to the August 3 1899 event in Denver from Axtell, Nebraska. A link between Texas and Colorado in 1899, Colorado and Southern Railway became a part of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad in 1908. For interviews and oral histories of this and other items please visit the History Harvest YouTube Channel.