Early Settlers
The Chase County Historical Society, located in Champion, Nebraska, has since it's inception in 1938 collected personal histories of residents of Chase County, Nebraska. These oral histories provides a history of Chase County that goes beyond facts and information about the state. Listed on these pages are transcripts of interviews of many early settlers of Chase County, Nebraska. I am grateful to the Historical Society for the work it's researchers did in preserving these stories, and for permission to share them here with other researchers. These stories and other important historical information about Chase County can be found in their published Histories of Chase County, copies which can be purchased from the Society or viewed in the Imperial Republican Library. The Society welcomes any additional stories about early settlers that you may wish to contribute to their files.
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Moses Hedges
Moses
Hedges came to Chase County in 1888 and homesteaded in Section 23-7-40. For a time
he worked at a blacksmith shop in Chase. The family, which consisted of 8 boys,
lived in a four-room sod house until 1912 with their parents. The roof was covered
with heavy tar paper and covered with sod. It was a comfortable home with plastered
walls and wood floors. Hedges raised mules and had as many as 30 at one time.
Roy, the third son, told researchers that it
fell to his lot to make bread and pies for the family because his mother was frail and
allergic to flour dust. He baked 15 loaves every other day. "I always
made round loaves and baked them in pie tins, he said. It was hard work to be cook
at threshing time when we had to feed 20 men for as long as a week."
(Information provided to the Historical Society
by Roy Hedges.)
email Linda Banks at: FlorenceEm@AOL.com