Part II from Mr. Wood's book, "Experiences and Activities of a Lifetime," covers his life story from 1888 to 1915 as a farmer and a minister in Buffalo County and the surrounding area.

        On the first of March I took my team and wagon, moved the family and furniture and took possession of the farm. The next six weeks were really hard times. I continued to work at the hotel from 5 to 8 o’clock in the morning. I received 50 cents an hour and my breakfast. I confess I ate enough to last me all day. Sometimes I got work there in the evening.

        I had to have some farm tools, a plow and a cultivator to begin with. I started out to find some second-hand ones. That was the most homesick day I ever experienced. A stranger in a strange land, wondering how I was to provide for my family. No implements to work with and not cash enough to buy them. No second-hand ones were to be found. As I drove through the town on my way home I saw fine plows and cultivators in front of a large hardware store. I stopped to look and a young man came out and asked me if I was interested in buying them. I told him I needed both a plow and cultivator. He invited me to come into the store and then asked me where I lived. I told him and he said he knew that farm very well. He offered to give me time on what I needed until November. He made out the notes, never asking for security. I signed them and he helped me put these two implements in the wagon. I drove away from there in a different frame of mind. Surely our Heavenly Father guided me, and 'tis only another example of how He takes care of His own.

        In a few days I went to town to meet Lorenzo Smith who was going to loan me $40.00 to buy seed oats. While I was waiting for him I went to the post office and received a letter from wife's father. In the letter was $40.00 with which he told me to buy a cow. Just then I met a money lender who had a team of horses and two cows that had been turned back to him and he did not know what to do with them. After I had gone home and asked wife about it I bought them for the $40.00 and a mortgage on a field of oats. We got them home and that night one of the cows had a little calf. I traded this calf for two little pigs which grew to be fine hogs.

        We had begun putting in our spring crop. I had fifty acres of oats and seventy acres of corn. A man that I had known when I worked at the hotel wanted me to put in a large field of corn. He had hired thirty acres of oats put in and he would let me have them for one-third delivered downtown, and give me all the hay on the farm that I could use if I would put in this field of corn and deliver one-third in town. This corn field was next to the road and while I was listing a man asked me what I was going to grow there, and I said, "corn." His reply was, "No, you won't, you will grow sunflowers." However, I planted the whole field and the corn came up very strong and the sunflowers came strong also. I determined to try to conquer them. I began to cultivate the corn as soon as I could see the rows, and had the children pull up all the sunflowers that the cultivator missed. We went over that cornfield three times and did not allow a sunflower to grow. I will have something more to say about this later on.

        We soon began harvesting our oats crop. We had a neighbor who exchanged work with us. We cut his oats and ours and when they were dry enough we stacked them in big stacks. While the corn grew, the oats got dry enough to thresh. My crop was threshed in a day and a half. We put them on the ground in great piles as we had no granary. I hauled 1,500 bushels of oats to town and sold them for 25 cents per bushel.

        I shall now refer back to that cornfield that used to grow sunflowers; that cornfield made my reputation as a farmer. One day in September Judge Hamer, a District Judge, was riding by that field with a neighbor of mine. The Judge noticed it and said, "What a beautiful field of corn." It surely was beautiful. Stalks twelve feet high and great ears of corn hanging down. My neighbor replied, "That man came from the East and had scarcely anything to start with but that is the kind of a crop he has raised." The Judge said, "That is the man I want to take charge of my ranch." He came and had a talk with me and asked me to come to his home in the evening. I went, as requested, and rented his ranch for three years.

        The Hamer ranch consisted of 800 acres. About 300 acres was tillable land. Adjoining the ranch was 1,000 acres of prairie grassland, unoccupied, so we used it to herd our cattle on. We kept from 80 to 100 head of cattle, from 50 to 100 head of hogs. Our field crops were corn, oats and fodder for the cattle. I was to furnish the machinery and do the work, Judge Hamer was to furnish everything else, horses, etc. He also was to furnish the money to buy feed and more cattle when needed. I was to repay half when the cattle were sold. I was to have half of everything sold, meat for my family, milk as many cows as I chose (usually about ten), and make butter; keep all the money we got for what we sold except to keep his family supplied with butter. This fund almost kept our family. We fattened from 40 to 50 steers each winter. Our principal sales were fat cattle and 50 or 60 hogs. The whole family worked very hard.

        At the end of three years my lease expired. Judge Hamer wanted me to remain longer, but I had bought a fine farm of 160 acres six miles east of Kearney, one mile from the Platte River. A nice large farm house was on it, so we moved to our own place. 120 acres were fine hay land. I sold 100 tons of baled hay each year for $6.00 a ton, besides having a great deal of loose hay. On this farm, wife and I had the easiest and most enjoyable time of our married life. The boys had grown old enough to do most of the farm work, and wife had help for her housework. We kept two teams of horses, six cows and lots of chickens. We were quite prosperous and I had time to study. I had never forgotten Gods call to His work. Fifteen years had passed and during that time I had tried to fit myself for it.

        There was a school house near our farm and in it church services were held on Sunday and prayer meeting on Wednesday evening. I began attending these services and during a revival meeting I united with the Evangelical Church. I was elected an Exhorter. My duties were to help the minister and to hold the Wednesday evening meetings. After helping with two revivals and other services, the Superintendent of the West District of our Conference asked our minister to get up a recommendation for me to become a minister. He did so and every member of the church signed it. Now came the hardest thing of all to do - to leave the farm that meant so much to us. Now "opportunity again knocked at my door" and I had the chance that I had waited for so long. I felt I must go.

        My first appointment was fifty-five miles northwest of Kearney on the Kearney & Black Hills Railroad. The town was Oconto. Wife and I drove in our buggy. The children and the furniture came by train. My work consisted of three small new towns, about eight miles apart: Oconto, Lomax and Lodi. I afterward added another town, Eddyville. The field was called Lomax Circuit. There was a church organization at Lomax; they used the schoolhouse as a place to worship in. There had been a church between Oconto and Lodi before the railroad was built. Afterward the church was moved to Lodi and the parsonage to Oconto. It had to be repaired before we could live in it and the church was still on the rollers that moved it.

        I preached three times on Sunday and worked every day repairing the parsonage. That winter I held four revival meetings, preaching every evening through the week and three times on Sunday for three months. Large crowds came and there were many conversions at each meeting. At the annual Conference I was able to report seventy conversions.

        I served another year in this field, then was moved to another field. This was very difficult to serve because the appointments were so far apart. They were Mascot, Mt. Zion and Bethel, sixty-five miles south of Kearney on the border between Nebraska and Kansas. I preached once at each church every Sunday, making a drive of about thirty miles. When my term of service was out in this field I had completed my Conference studies. After my examination I was declared to have passed every study and was ordained Elder in the ministry.

        From this time on I had better fields, better pay and not so much work. My next charge was Columbia Mission, five miles north of Hastings -- Columbia and Rosedale, five miles apart. I preached once on Sunday in each church. It was beautiful country and I enjoyed my work with these good folks.

        The Conference sent me back to Oconto. We found a great change from when we first went there. Then the people were poor, many of them lived in sod houses. Now they had nice new homes. Two churches had been built. Our return was hailed with delight. I now had Oconto, Lomax and Eddyville. At each place was a railroad station and these were small flourishing towns. I preached at Oconto Sunday morning, at Lomax at three o'clock, and Eddyville in the evening. The next Sunday I reversed them. It made a very hard day's work to drive that distance, take care of my team and preach three sermons. I received good pay besides having many things given to me - chickens, eggs, corn for the team. During both of the times that I served in that field I only bought one sack of flour. It was all given to me by the farmers.

        This proved to be the very best charge I ever had. My congregations were large all of the time. At the morning service parents with their children filled the church, and in the evening the young people came. Many of them drove long distances because west of this church, for many miles, there were no towns or any place for young people to go, so I had a congregation of about 200 young folks and I made a special effort to interest them. I held revival meetings the first winter and had great success. At the close of the meetings I took twenty-five new members into the church at one time and several more later on. The church already had a large membership, and at the end of my first year it was the largest one in the Conference.

        In the spring my health began to fail. At the end of the Conference year the superintendent said I had better quit for a while for health reasons. I went to Kearney and bought a nice home, sold my team and buggy, packed our household goods, sending them by freight to Kearney. It was hard to say "goodbye" to those people who had been so kind to us. It was one of the shadows that cross life's pathway.

        When I began to get better I preached for ministers on vacation and helped in the church at Kearney. The next spring I began to preach at Amherst, a town eighteen miles from Kearney on the Kearney & Black Hills railroad. The congregations were small at first, but how they did grow. Businessmen came and I soon had the largest congregation in town. There were three other churches there. I went by train Saturday afternoon, stayed with a friend and returned home Monday morning. How we did enjoy it. Wife had the easiest time of her life. I preached at Amherst for two years.

        After the death of his wife Lida, Henry Hilton Wood spent a short time in California where his son Harry lived. He returned to Kearney and later rnarried a lady from Hastings. They first made their home in Kearney where he again received a call to preach in Shelton. He accepted and moved to Shelton where he remained for two and one-half years. He and his wife then returned to their home in Kearney. In 1915, at age 70, he retired from active service as an Itinerant Elder of the Evangelical Church.

 
Proofread 5-18-2002
Edited 3/14/2003

Back to: Buffalo Tales Homepage

Back to: Buffalo County Historical Society home page