Frontier County, Nebraska

Julia Tibbets with her youngest daughter, Flossie Edward Tibbetts Farner in 1925.

Part Two

When the Tibbetts family finally arrived in Plum Creek, the first person Julia met was a woman at the hotel who gave her the lurid details of a local murder and told her she came to a “horrible place.” Julia urged William to immediately buy tickets directly back to England while they had life and money, but William insisted on going on out to Frontier County. William’s cousin, Benjamin Kirby, rode into Plum Creek to pick them up and take them to his homestead. During the 25 mile trip southwest they passed only one other sod home with very little sod turned under for farming. They arrived at Kirby’s home to find a three room dug-out built back into a hill, with little one-foot windows letting light into the two back rooms.

For two weeks, Julia cried and never ceased to wish they had immediately returned to England and to civilization. But life went on and she had to care for her four children, so she did what she could to survive. She moved into their first sod and log home before the roof was completed. When it rained, they would sit pans around to catch the water that came through the roof, but often the rains made her home a mud hole in which children and furniture were mixed. In addition, Julia had to deal with poisonous centipedes on the sod walls that kept her always vigilant and worried. After the Battle of the Little Big Horn and Custer’s massacre, Sioux Indians marched through Frontier County and caused many people to fear trouble, but this was the one thing that didn’t distress Julia. She was never frightened of them and she always told those around her that they should have never taken the country away from them.

The nearest towns were Lexington and Kearney and William Tibbetts hauled cut wood there in exchange for necessities. Before selling wood, the children picked up buffalo bones and skulls that were sold by the ton. The supply was unlimited and eventually others began collecting the bones causing the demand to collapse. The only sugar available on the frontier was “brown” (unrefined) sugar. Julia had to make her own soap, vinegar and she roasted her own coffee. Sometimes coffee beans were not available and “coffee” was made with bran and molasses. In the midst of all this, Julia gave birth to more children, including quadruplets. In one memory from Carl Farner, he suggests that six of the sixteen children died in England before they came to Frontier County, Nebraska with four children. At the very least, Julia gave birth to six children in the wilderness of Nebraska, including my great-grandmother, Flossie Edwards. Julia was 40 years old when her last born child, Flossie, was born.