Two New Photos of DeWitty Emerge: What Message Do They Have For Us?

Courtesy of Sharon Hughes

By STEW MAGNUSON

 Earlier this year, some 200 people gathered on the side of the Highway 83 in Cherry County to dedicate a new roadside historical marker commemorating DeWitty, Nebraska.

DeWitty, also known as Audacious, was the longest lasting and most successful African-American rural settlement in Nebraska, and was spread out in the Sand Hills along the North Loup River west of Highway 83. It lasted from about 1906 to the mid-1930s.

Within its 184 words, the marker mentions the close relationship between the black settlers and their white neighbors, which included the town of Brownlee. (For the complete text of the marker, scroll down to the end of the blog.)

As a result of the publicity surrounding the campaign to install the marker, two previously unpublished photos have emerged that confirm much of what authors such as myself have been saying about life back then in the Sand Hills: despite racial differences that were then plaguing the wider world, pretty much everybody in the Sand Hills got along fine.    

The marker reads: “On Independence Day, residents of DeWitty and nearby Brownlee would come together for a rodeo, baseball game and picnic.”

A few weeks ago, Helen White of Thedford, Nebraska, passed on a photo that a friend Sharon Hughes had found recently in a shoebox full of pictures. Hughes’ family once lived nearby DeWitty, north of Seneca, although she now resides in Grand Island.

The photo says “Ballgame at Brownlee, July 4, ‘14.” (The “4” is cut off on the image but it is also written on back.

For the first time, we have a photograph of one of these Independence Day activities. There are at least two known photos of DeWitty men dressed in their baseball uniforms, but in this photo we actually see a game being played. The DeWitty team was known as the North Loup Sluggers.

There is a lot to be gleaned from this picture.

Courtesy of Catherine Meehan Blount

Ron Lee, a Brownlee resident, whose family has been in the town since its founding, has passed the photo around to other residents, and the consensus is that the game took place on a field northwest of the town, close to where the paved Brownlee road is now. The church steeple near the baseball player’s elbow is a clue, but also caused some confusion. That church was apparently torn down or moved later in the decade and its replacement is configured differently. There is some disagreement among residents, Lee said, however, the spot northwest of town is where the town’s oral history indicates that rodeos and ballgames took place.

With all the backs turned away from the camera, identifying individuals with certainty is nearly impossible. Catherine Meehan Blount thinks the man (second from the left) might be her grandfather, the white Irish-Canadian Charles Meehan, because he  enjoyed smoking a pipe. Meehan, with his black wife, Hester Freeman, were one of DeWitty’s first residents. The tale of this interracial couple is just one of the many fascinating stories about this unique settlement.

Two men down from the man smoking a pipe, another fellow is wearing chaps. Was he participating in the rodeo later? Another charming part of the picture is the horse sticking its nose in the frame on the right — an early example of photobombing!

As for the baseball game itself, the most prominent player, or perhaps a base coach, is holding up two fingers. It’s hard to see him among the crowd, but there appears to be a batter with his hands in at his waist, warming up to hit. Is he reminding the batter that there are two strikes or perhaps two outs? And if he is batting, that sure is a dangerous spot to be a spectator. There appears to be at least two other players in uniform in the crowd, one walking behind the batter and another with his arms crossed. We also see the leg of another player on the far left. Is that a pitcher winding up? There are two white spots in the grass, one close between the two spectators on the left, and another one closer to the edge of the far crowd. It would appear that the closer one is third base and the farther one first base, but then where is the pitcher, first baseman, third baseman and so on for the opposing team? So maybe this interpretation is wrong: those aren’t bases, the man isn’t batting but is a center fielder and the figure on the left is an infielder.

In any case, we have a picture of the North Loup Sluggers playing baseball, and the two communities coming together in celebration of Independence Day.

DeWitty descendants at the marker dedication

The communities coming together is a reminder of what happened on April 11 this year — almost 102 years after this photo was taken — when eighteen descendants of the DeWitty settlers came from six different states to dedicate the historical marker. They flew or drove from Delaware, Virginia, Colorado, California, New York and eastern Nebraska to honor the memory of their ancestors. Descendants of the Meehans, Browns, Rileys, Walkers and even DeWittys, the first postmaster for whom the town was named, traveled to see the marker. There to greet them were some 180 Nebraskans, including two TV crews, a reporter from the Stapleton Enterprise-Thomas County Herald, State Senator Al Davis, and representatives from the Nebraska State Historical Society, and the Cherry and Thomas County Historical Societies. 

Overflow crowd at the Brownlee Community Hall

When the baseball picture was taken, Brownlee had about 100 residents. Today, a sign says “Population, 20, or so.” But the tiny community, which includes nearby ranchers, went all out to welcome anyone who came, inviting them to a potluck lunch at the town’s community hall. More than 100 people came to eat the lunch and hear a presentation from Humanities Nebraska speaker Vicki Harris, an expert on Nebraska’s black settlers, traveled from Arizona just for the presentation. It was a homecoming as well for Brownlee descendants such as the White family, whose old family general store still stands.

Later, Don Hanna, a local rancher, who now owns most of the property where DeWitty residents once lived, was gracious enough to take descendants on a tour to the remote DeWitty sites, which are inaccessible to the public. Part of the tour was a stop at a small graveyard, where about eight DeWitty pioneers are resting.     

The second unpublished photo was passed on to me about a year ago from Ron Lee. It

Courtesy of Ron Lee

portrays two boys, Merrill “Jim” Lee and Claude Conrad of DeWitty, sitting on the porch of the Lee ranch house in 1918.

They were by all accounts good buddies. Several of the one-room schoolhouses west of Brownlee were integrated and schoolmates ended up being lifelong friends. One of the DeWitty descendants, Goldie Walker-Hayes, remained in Cherry County long after the DeWitty settlement disappeared, and taught in these schools.

When it comes to race relations in America, the nation has endured much pain along with many triumphs in the years after these two photos were taken. It would take more than three decades before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the major leagues. Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, which lead to desegregation of schools, didn’t happen for another 40 years. Loving v. Virginia, which struck down laws forbidding interracial marriage, came only in 1967.  

No one can say that the residents of DeWitty never encountered prejudice while living there, it’s just that we have very little evidence of it in the historical record. Instead, we have in the depths of the Sand Hills — a land back then mostly cut off from the wider world — the story of DeWitty and Brownlee, people getting along fine and leaning on each other when needed, an interracial couple, desegregated schools and folks coming together to enjoy a holiday celebration.

These people, now just images frozen in time, kept shoe boxes for a century, have come back to deliver a message to us. Let’s listen to them.

Stew Magnuson will give a presentation about Highway 83 and DeWitty, Thursday, Sept. 29 at 6:30 p.m. at the Great Plains Black History Museum in Omaha, located in Crossroads Mall. Free and open to the public!

 Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, and  The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition, which has a chapter about DeWitty. Both are available online or in museums, bookstores and gift shops on Hwy 83.

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

Victory! We have Raised $5,100 to Build a Roadside Historical Marker for DeWitty, Nebraska!

By STEW MAGNUSON

I’m happy to report that after about two months, we have managed to raise the $5,100 required to install a historical marker on Highway 83 for DeWitty, the longest lasting and most successful rural black settlement in Nebraska!

Back in the spring of 2009, I had an idea pop into my head to write a book about U.S. Highway 83 and some of the forgotten history one finds alongside it. Not more than a few seconds later, the words “Like that black town near Brownlee” came to mind.

I had known about an African-American settlement in the heart of the Sand Hills since reading an article about it in high school in Nebraskaland Magazine. I had been fascinated that such a place once existed 80 miles north of where my grandparents lived in Stapleton, but didn’t know much about it.

After doing some research into the town at the Library of Congress, I realized that there was lot more to the settlement known as DeWitty than the curiosity of a black community in a land settled mostly by whites. This was truly a remarkable community with a remarkable story and people. 

So the chapter, “A Place Called Audacious” in what would become The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: Nebraska-Kansas-Oklahoma was a special one for me.

Years later, I was driving by the Brownlee Road turnoff, and thought: “Why isn’t there one of those historical markers somewhere near here to tell folks about DeWitty?” Then I let that thought go, like so many miles on the road.

As I was putting the final touches on the book in 2014, I was fortunate enough to get in contact with Catherine Meehan Blount, a granddaughter of two of the early DeWitty settlers. At one point in our correspondence, I brought up the idea of a roadside marker. She was all for it. The next question became “What do you gotta do to get one of those things installed?”

Short answer: You have to apply. Specifically, with the Nebraska State Historical Society. So I put together the materials and sent them in along with letters of endorsement from the Cherry County Historical Society and The Great Plains Black History Museum in Omaha.

The acceptance of the applications was a shoe-in. One, because there is no doubt about the community’s historical significance. And two, it turns out the NSHS historian who approves the applications had already tried to get a marker for DeWitty and three other sites in Nebraska, but couldn’t get the Unicameral to fund them.

And therein was the catch. The Historical Society approves the markers, but applicants have to pay for them. The full-size marker is $5,100. Fundraising was something I had never done before, so that sum was a bit daunting.

The most satisfying part of the whole endeavor was the many communities who contributed.

There are many we would like to thank. I say “we” because many contributed to the cause.

First and foremost, were the descendants of DeWitty — now spread out all over the country — who chipped in to acknowledge the sacrifices their forbearers made carving out better lives for themselves in that harsh land. One descendant who prefers to remain anonymous donated $500. Albert Riley Jr., who grew up in Valentine after his family moved off the homestead and into town, stopped by the bank while in town for his 50th high school reunion, to chip in. Joyceann Gray and Marcia Thompkins,

Goldie Hayes in her Classroom. Courtesy of Joyceann Gray

relatives of Goldie Walker Hayes, a DeWitty schoolteacher and principal who remained in Cherry County to teach, were avid supporters. There were many others.

The Cherry County Historical Society, especially Joyce Muirhead, were enthusiastic about the idea, and helped set up the bank account, along with a monetary contributions. Cherry County and Valentine residents stopped in the bank to put their money in the pot as well. A big thank you to the staff of the First Security Bank in Valentine for taking the donations.

The North Platte Bulletin, North Platte Telegraph, Valentine Midland News, Stapleton Enterprise, Lincoln Journal Star and KVSH in Valentine all helped get the word out in the media, which garnered donations from throughout the state.

Many of my friends and family contributed just because I asked them to. It’s great to have such wonderful cousins, parents and friendships that go back years. I took $300

Maurice Brown. Courtesy of Catherin Meehan.

out of the profits from The Last American Highway books for the cause.

Members of the Fans of U.S. Route 83 page on Facebook also donated amounts small and large. These are people who love the backroads of America and all the history found alongside it, especially U.S. Route 83, the border to border highway. The biggest donation from this group came from member Bruce Hoffman and his wife Debbie, owners of the Common Scents greenhouse and nursery on Highway 83 south of McCook. They mailed in $500! Stop in and thank them the next time you’re in McCook.

What’s next? It is all in the hands of the state of Nebraska. The Nebraska State Historical Society will coordinate the purchase and installation of the marker and the Department of Roads will decide the best spot to place it — keeping in the mind the safety of motorists.

Look on the Fans of U.S. Route 83 facebook page for updates. And thank you all again.

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. And The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition.

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

Group Raising Funds for Nebraska Historical Marker on Highway 83

Spot near North Loup River on Hwy 83 in where the marker may be placed.

Note: It appears that we have reached our goal, or are very close to it! No need to send donations now. Thank you to all who contributed!

 Descendants of a legendary Sand Hills settlement, the Cherry County Historical Society and a Nebraska-born author are teaming up to have a historical marker placed along Highway 83.

The Nebraska State Historical Society recently approved a roadside historical marker for DeWitty, the longest lasting, most successful African-American rural settlement in Nebraska.

DeWitty — in later years called Audacious — was first settled in the early 1900s by a group of homesteaders along the North Loup River in Cherry County, just west of present-day Brownlee. They were taking advantage of the Kinkaid Act of 1904, which allowed settlers to claim 640 acres of land, or one square mile, in the 37 counties that comprised the Sand Hills.

Now that the marker has been approved, the group is trying to raise the $5,100 the state historical society requires to pay for it.

Donations can be mailed to or dropped off at:

Security First Bank

PO Box 480

Valentine, Nebraska 69201

Make checks payable to: “DeWitty Historical Marker Fund.”

The first group of DeWitty settlers came from Overton, Nebraska, in Dawson County. But they were originally from Kent County, Ontario, where many escaped slaves and free people of color resided. One of the first to claim land near the North Loup was the family of Charles and Hester Meehan, an interracial couple, who had met and fell in love in Canada. Charles was a first-generation Irish-American, and Hester Freeman, of African decent. Others from different parts of the country joined them. The barber, Robert Hannahs, had been born into slavery. DeWitty had a baseball team and band. Both played all over the Sand Hills. The settlement placed a high value on educating its children, an ethos they had brought from Canada. More than 100 families lived in the settlement during its roughly 20 years of existence.

“The homesteaders of DeWitty were just that —Audacious,” says Catherine Meehan Blount, one of the Meehans’ last two living grandchildren. “They were Audacious for believing that the American dream belonged to them, too, and they were Audacious for committing all they had to attain that dream.  Remembering DeWitty pays homage to those who confronted barriers in the pre-civil war United States, in Canada and in the Nebraska Sand Hills with a ‘we can’ attitude. Remembering DeWitty gives anyone who knows their story a reminder that they can, too.”

Joyceann Gray, great granddaughter of DeWitty homesteaders William Walker and Charlotte Hatter, says:

“When we can clearly mark where our ancestors have been — and by name — we can ensure the full story will be told and we can then better understand the purpose of our journey.”

Example of Nebraska State Historical Society marker

“This is really the tale of two communities: DeWitty and Brownlee,” says Stew Magnuson, former Nebraska nonfiction book of the year winner, and author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: Nebraska-Kansas-Oklahoma, which has a chapter on DeWitty. “Relations between the two communities were by all known accounts, excellent. The mostly Danish settlers of Brownlee and the African-Americans in DeWitty held a July 4^th picnic together every year. Some of the one-room schoolhouses were integrated. There is a photograph in history books that shows the Brownlee residents on the day they came to help build the DeWitty church. People had to depend on each other in that remote, harsh land,” says Magnuson.

Blount added: “My dad, Bill Meehan, was born in Overton but spent most of his youth in DeWitty.  He told the story of DeWitty’s renaming to Audacious with much prideful laughter because, he we certain, it had been renamed for him when he was about 12 years old.”

Magnuson first encountered the DeWitty story in a Nebraskaland Magazine article he found in his grandparent’s home in Stapleton, Nebraska, when he was a teenager.

“The thought that there was a black settlement in the Sand Hills blew my mind because I had been raised on a diet of Hollywood westerns and TV shows that portrayed the American West as populated only by white folks and Indians. The towns and homesteads were in fact far more multi-cultural and racially integrated than the media and history textbooks have portrayed. I hope the sign does a little to dispel that myth,” he says.

Asian-Americans in Valentine, Nebraska: New Stories of the 'Prairie Mosaic'

By STEW MAGNUSON

For Sale at Plains Trading Co, Valentine, NE

Readers who have finished my two Highway 83 books may have picked up on a running theme. It’s best summed up in the words: the “Prairie Mosiac,” a term that speaks to all the different cultures that contributed to the development of the Great Plains. In The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, there was the story of the Negro League's Satchel Paige and integrated baseball being played in Bismarck years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the major leagues; the Jewish settler Harry Turnoy and his homestead east of Wilton; the German-Russian Welk family; the founder of Minot, Norwegian Erik Ramstad, as well as the story of the Brulé Lakotas who reside at Rosebud.

In the The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition, there is the story of the African-American DeWitty/Audacious settlement in the Sand Hills. And Garden City, Kansas, today, which has invited and absorbed waves of immigrants from all over the world to work in its meatpacking plants.

Hollywood in the 20th century largely brainwashed us into thinking the West was lily white. In fact, census records show there were Native American, black, Asian, mixed-race families in towns all over the Plains, especially in railroad towns. A typical "cowboy" on the cattle trail was more likely to speak Spanish or Swedish than English. 

When I passed through Valentine, Nebraska, in 2009, I encountered two Asian-Americans, one by design, one by accident. The vignettes show that the idea of a "Prairie Mosaic" is not part of history. It's part of life there today.

The first was the Korean-American Bum Song, who was selling bonsai plants by the side of the road. His life story is in the book. 

Bum Song, 2009

The second was an encounter I had planned. Years before, I ate at a Chinese restaurant on the south side of Valentine. I returned there in 2009 on my research trip to find out more about the family. I was curious as to how they coped in a town where there were few, if any other Asian families. When I arrived, I discovered that the first Chinese family had moved on. The Guans had taken their places.

This is a “cutting room” floor blog. I decided not to run a picture of Bum Song in the new book because it didn’t meet my standards for composition. For those who would like to see him, here is a picture!

I cut the story of Fei Guan out of the manuscript for pacing reasons. I felt the narrative was lingering too long in Valentine, and I had to move on. But I’m posting it here:

The China Cafe

The last stop on Highway 83 leaving Valentine is the town’s only Chinese restaurant, which is simply named the China Cafe.

There’s nothing fancy about the brown, square building made of corrugated steel. The interior is plain as well, with a few Asian knickknacks, posters and booths upholstered in cracking vinyl.

Fei Guan works the wok while his wife Sui waits on tables.

China Cafe, Valentine, NE, 2009. All photos by Stew Magnuson

The Guans are the town’s only Chinese family.

For Fei, it was a long journey from Hong Kong to the middle the prairie. The 40-year-old with a medium build and dark hair sticking out the back of his baseball cap left the former British colony shortly before the Chinese took the territory back in 1997. As many Chinese emigrants have since the Gold Rush days of the 1840s, he ended up in San Francisco, where he bought a restaurant. He ran it for thirteen years until his landlord just about put him out of business. Every year, he raised the rent until it came to about $6,000 a month.

It was about that time he saw an ad in a Chinese language newspaper offering a restaurant for sale in Valentine, Nebraska. Of course, he had never heard of the town, and never been to the nation’s vast interior. He had lived in two of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, but had no experience in small towns. But he was intrigued. First, there was no competition. Drive 100 miles in any direction and there are no other Chinese restaurants. Hell, in San Francisco, you can’t walk five minutes without finding Chinese food. And not only was the business for sale, so was the property. No longer could a landlord put the squeeze on him when it came time to renew the lease.

So he bought the restaurant from the Chinese family who had owned it for seven years and moved his family to the town on the edge of the Sand Hills.

That was two years ago, and he hasn’t taken a day off since.

He closes for a half day on Christmas, but otherwise works seven days a week, including Thanksgiving.

“I want my customers to know that I’m always here.”

He gets up in the morning, brings his kids to school, and then has about two hours to fish the Niobrara River.

“I meet a lot of people when I’m fishing,” he says.

Fei Guan, 2009

The exterior and interior are plain, but the food is not. The chicken and black mushrooms is delicious and tastes more like the authentic Chinese meals one finds in San Francisco than the oily congealed food one finds in most rural Chinese restaurants. Fei doesn’t believe in the ubiquitous “Chinese buffet” that one finds in about every town nowadays. He does one on Fridays for lunch, but that’s the only concession he makes.

I tell him that the 1910 census that I had read at the historical museum shows that there was one Chinese family living in Valentine. The Cahotas ran a boarding house. Later, the family ran a five and dime store downtown. Fei is genuinely surprised, although we both agree that the name sounds more Japanese than Chinese.

Has it worked out? I ask him.

“The economy is slow, and business is down a little bit. But I can still make a living,” he says.

The End

Addendum: The fall of 2012, three years after this encounter, I had a chance to make a quick trip down Highway 83 from the Rosebud Reservation to Oakley, Kansas. I stopped in to say hello to Fei Guan and get a bite to eat. The sign was still up, but when I walked in the restaurant, it had been totally gutted. A woman came out of the kitchen and informed me that she and her husband had bought the building a few months ago, and they were going to open a gun shop in its place. The Guans had left town. She didn’t know where they went. I wonder how the Guans and Bum Song are doing, and where life has taken them five years after our paths crossed.  

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. And The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition. Both are for sale at Plains Trading Co. in Valentine, Nebraska.

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com