“And really I don’t know as my furniture and surroundings made one bit of difference in my welcome to Council Bluffs society. I afterwards learned that many others were little better off, and that there were no furniture and carpet stores in the city. Nevertheless, I was more than glad when word was brought us, on the morning of July 4th, that a steamer had arrived with our household goods. I was glad to get carpets down and my rooms made more comfortable, for our own sakes. On that Fourth of July the citizens were so patriotic as to have a celebration. The oration was delivered in ‘Hang Hollow,’ so called because an emigrant murderer had been hung there, but by later citizens named Glendale. We attended this celebration and had pointed out to us the tree from a limb of which the man was hung. The reader and orator for the day I do not remember. “EARLY OMAHA. “Having joined the people of Council Bluffs in celebrating in the forenoon of this Fourth of July, 1855, we took a carriage and drove over to Omaha about noon, crossing the Missouri on a ferry-boat. This being the first Independence Day in Nebraska since it had become a territory, the people of Omaha showed their patriotism in common with the rest of the country by celebrating. It was the first time, too, that I had stepped foot on Nebraska soil, so the day possessed more than usual interest. We found that an oration had been delivered by Secretary Cuming, then acting governor. This had been followed by the usual reading of the Declaration of Independence. The exercises were over when we reached the Douglass House, then the only hotel in Omaha. Across the road from this place a speaker’s stand had been erected. A dinner table was placed on the east side of the house and covered with boughs cut from trees for shade. Liquor flowed freely. “Council Bluffs was then a city of 2,000 or 3,000 inhabitants. The buildings were mostly of logs. There were no sidewalks. The streets were not opened, beaten paths through fields of sunflowers answering for thoroughfares in many places. The place was well supplied with hotels. Besides the Pacific House there was the City Hotel, a little low log building on the corner of Broadway and Glen Avenue, kept by Mrs. Dunn; and farther up on Broadway, where the blue barn now stands, the Robinson House kept by G. A. Robinson. This was also an old log building covered with cottonwood boards on the outside and lined with muslin tacked to the logs on the inside. “PLASTERED HOUSES WERE SCARCE. “I think there were but two or three plastered houses in the city at that time, and no greater number built of lumber. Nearly all were of logs covered outside on the front with cottonwood boards and on the inside, both walls and ceiling, with unbleached muslin sewed together and nailed on.