Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas — John Locke — John Shaqi
Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas
John Locke · en
It may be of interest here, especially in Nemaha and Jackson counties
and possibly throughout all Northeast Kansas, to know that, later,
through an unprotected brokerage partnership in the National Capitol
with that wizard of finance, a former resident of Wetmore township,
Green Campbell, who had come into local and national prominence by
reason of his sensational rise to affluence as principal owner of the
famous Horn Silver mine at Frisco, Utah, dropped a cool million of his
mine-made dollars in the aftermath of that failure.
After he had failed, Jay Cooke, still the promoter par-excellence,
secured a railroad for Green Campbell’s mine. Later, after he had sold
his mine, Campbell went to Washington as delegate to Congress from Utah.
Still later Campbell joined Cooke there in the brokerage business. With
new money in the firm, Cooke’s old creditors swooped down upon Campbell
like a swarm of bees. And they stung him hard. His first check was drawn
for nine hundred thousand dollars! However, there was no time after
selling the Horn Silver mine that Green Campbell was not a rich man.
Green Campbell endowed a college at Holton, Kansas, bearing his name. His
old homestead was in the southwest part of Wetmore township. It is now
owned and occupied by August Krotzinger.
Then there was the year 1874—a blank year with its train of blighted
hopes that socked the whole populace still deeper down into the slough
of despond. Following a season of scanty production, the crops that
year, in the spring and up to mid-summer, showed signs of fulfillment.
Then came the usual anxious period—dry, windy, scorching days, And hope,
that had sprung in the tired hearts of the farmers commenced to die as
they looked with anxiety on the drooping crops. The people prayed for
rain. They watched for clouds. Then, out of the northwest there came a
cloud—a black cloud, a menacing cloud, that was to blot out all renaming
hope.
It was a rain of pests—a deluge of grasshoppers! Like the plagues of
old they descended upon us. And they greedily devoured every growing
thing—corn, grass, weeds, foliage of the trees—leaving in their wake a
barren waste and a woefully impoverished lot of people. After devouring
every edible thing, and gnawing on pitchfork handles and axe handles —
for salt deposited by sweaty hands — the hoppers deposited eggs in the
ground, and then perished with the coming of cold weather. The
young hoppers in the spring of 1875 cleaned up the farmer’s first
plantings—but on a day, at noon, late in June they rose up as a cloud
blotting out the sun from the earth as they winged their way to greener
pastures—where, nobody here knew.