MORRIS, LOUIS AND OLIVE

by Mary Morris Haney

Entry F298 from the History of Hooker County Nebraska
with permission of the Hooker County Historical Society

Olive and Louis Morris 60th Anniversary September 1957

               My Parents

In the Fall of 1905, my father, Louis O.
Morris, came to the Sandhills in an emigrant
car with his farm implements, a team and
wagon, tools, a Jersey cow, and grain in one
end of the car and household goods in the
other. He had bought a relinquishment from
Mother's cousin, Edward Crawford, and filed
on the land. My mother, Olive Moore Morris,
and my sisters, Ruth and Flossie, spent the
winter with Mother's parents at Winterset,
Iowa, and came by train to Seneca in April
1906. They arrived in a blizzard but were able
to go to their homestead the next day. This
homestead was in the Northeast corner of
Hooker County about five and one-half miles
from Seneca, which was a division point for
the Burlington Railroad. They lived in a one-
room sod house for some time, later adding
a second room and here I was born three years
later.

Dad worked for an uncle, Robert Crawford,
and earned six heifers calves to start his herd.
Mother raised a garden, dried corn, and
picked wild fruit for canning and making jam.
The life on a homestead was not easy.

Their first barn was made of hay, weeds,
and wire but lightning struck and burned it.
The next year they built a frame barn.

They received their homestead patent in
1911 and soon built their second house which
was made of cement blocks. Dad made the
blocks and built the house with the help of
friends and neighbors. Five rooms which
seemed like a mansion after the two-room
soddy.

As people moved into the area there was a
need for a school and Dad said it could be
built on our land, so Wild Rose School was
built. Some of the teachers who taught there
were: Mabel Anthony (Florence Haney's
mother), Clara Edwards, a Miss Russell, and
Roy Daggett. Children attending were from
the Pete Jacobsen, Jim Clary, Felix Posten,
Pier Jacobsen, families, as well as Christine
Larsen, my cousin Earl Moore, and my sisters
Ruth and Flossie Morris. I went there my first
year and then Dad sold the place and we
moved to town.

Dad worked at many jobs through the
years, always with horses, grading roads,
cutting ice for the railroad, and planting trees
at the Halsey Forest Reserve. It was while
grading roads that he was struck by lightning.
Doctors said the heavy rain which followed
saved his life. He never completely recovered
and was left deaf which was hard for him as
he had always enjoyed good health.

Mother and Dad moved in and out of
Seneca several times - at one time, living on
what is now the Cooley place south of Mullen.
While they lived there my brother Paul,
graduated from Mullen High School.

During the years we all married and went
to homes of our own. My brothers Robert,
and Paul served in the Army during World
War II. Paul, in the European theater and
Robert in the Pacific, from 1941 to 1945.
Flossie's son Jack Elwood served in the
Marines during the same time. We were so
fortunate they all returned to us.

After the war Mother and Dad bought a
home in Seneca and lived to celebrate their
sixtieth wedding anniversary there on Sep-
tember 30, 1957. Dad passed away two
months later. Mother made her home here
until she passed away in the Broken Bow
Hospital. January second 1971. Both are
buried in the Seneca Cemetery. Sister Flossie
passed away in 1972 and is buried in Casper,
Wyoming where she lived.