Chase County, NE

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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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John Yost, Sr.

John Yost, Sr. came to Chase County in 1886 and filed on his homestead in the Champion Valley.   He returned there with his family in 1887.  At one time when the crops were especially poor the family went to Missouri to live with his sister, but soon returned to the homestead.  The family rode in a covered wagon, and John Yost, Jr. rode a burrow back to Chase County.   The Yosts lived in a sod house.  The children once entertained themselves by tying a thistle to a string and flying it as a kite.  One time when John, Jr. picked up a thistle a little snake was beneath it and he picked it up and took it to his mother.   It  was a tiny rattler, but his family considered him lucky, none the less, not to have been bitten.
(Information provided to the Historical Society by Clifford Yost.)

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