Editor's Notebook

 


Been thinking about the upcoming Lady Vestey Victorian Festival and how to freshly retell the Evelyn Brodstone story on this, the 31st anniversary of the first festival.

The festival founders hoped the annual celebration would help preserve the community’s history and highlight the life and contributions made by Superior High School’s most notable graduate, Evelyn Brodstone.

William Loudon is credited with establishing the village of Superior in 1875. The community’s diamond jubilee was celebrated in 1951 and its centennial in 1975. It is probably time to start planning for the celebration of the town’s sesquicentennial in 2025.

Loudon arrived in the Superior vicinity in 1871. During his first months in this area he stayed south of the Republican River in Jewell County. In 1872, he built the log cabin now located on the Nuckolls County Historical Society’s museum grounds. In 1872, the cabin became Superior’s first Post Office. So this year mark’s the 150th anniversary of the Superior Post Office. The cabin was not only his home and the post office but also a store stocked with groceries and supplies needed by the early settlers. It was located along Lost Creek south of the present town site.

When the post office was established, mail was delivered by a horseback rider who traveled from Hebron to Franklin once per week. Loudon persuaded the post office department to established a daily mail route which linked Edgar and Jewell Centre (now Mankato) and brought mail to Superior.

Within a year, stage coaches were being used in conjunction with the operation of two mail routes through Superior and mail was received daily. The east-west mail route served Hebron, Friedensau, Kiowa, Henrietta, Spring Valley, Superior, Guide Rock, Red Cloud, Riverton and Franklin. The north-south route, connected Edgar, OxBow, Nelson, Superior, Modock, Bishop, Reubens, Steuben, Holmwood and Jewell Center. Most area residents would be hard pressed to find the location of those offices.

In 1876, Mr. and Mrs. Hans Brodstone moved from Wisconsin to the new town of Superior with their two young children, Evelyn, and her older brother, Lewis.

Hans Brodstone established a store in the rapidly growing community.

On Aug. 4, 1879, the Nuckolls County commissioners approved the act of incorporation and annexation ordinances which made the community an official city.

J. D. Burns and 43 others had presented a petition praying the village be incorporated. Named as trustees were A. C. McCorkle, M. L. Fogel, V. H. Kendall, E, N. Snodgrass and H.O. T. Brodstone.

Apparently the incorporation was not universally popular for William Loudon and others objected and presented a remonstrance to the petition which was rejected by the commissioners.

I’ll keep looking but thus far I have not found a story indicating why Loudon and associates opposed the incorporation. I suspect Loudon thought he was losing control of “his town.” And some may have though the action would result in higher taxes.

In 1880, the Union Hotel located at the northeast corner of the Second and Central intersection became the town’s first brick building in Superior and the first hotel west of the Missouri River to have lavatories in every room. Water for those lavatories was supplied by a windmill located on what is now the Superior Bowl property. While the hotel building is still used, the hotel operation ended in the 1970s.

I’m not sure when the windmill was removed but in the 1920s, my grandfather, in partnership with two other Superior businessmen, opened the community’s first self-service gasoline station where the bowling alley is now located.

The last surviving windmill in Superior is located near the intersection of First and National streets.

In 1878 David and Jennett Guthrie constructed a large two-story frame house at 342 S. Bloom. It is today the oldest frame residence in Superior.

The town grew rapidly and ordinances were adopted in 1885, 1886 and twice in 1888 to annex adjoining land and expand the city limits.

In 1905 the Express Printing Company printed and bound with a hard cover a book containing all of the then enforced city ordinances. In 1905 I believe the print shop and newspaper office was located in a now vacant building at Fourth and Central. Look real hard and you can read portions of the printing company’s sign that was painted on the side of the building.

The book has some interesting ordinances. I plan to write about some of those ordinances in a coming issue of this newspaper.

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I haven’t understood why some people like to play with the modern fidget toys, but show me a one-foot wooden ruler with a series of holes in a line down the center and I’ll know exactly what to do. I learned about the rulers while attending Pleasant Valley School and still like to insert a sharpened lead pencil in the center hole and see how fast it can be spun. Do it wrong in the classroom and the ruler tries to decapitate a classmate.

And in my student days, I never found a teacher who understood why I needed a fidget device.

Now fidget devices are described as soothing and calming tools which help people with their sensory needs. The tools may also help people control their anxiety.

Had I known that when being called down by a teacher for spinning my ruler, I would have told her, “I’m just calming my anxiety in anticipation of the spelling test you plan to give me.”

My mother didn’t understand why I wanted a new ruler with the center hole when she had given me the wooden ruler she had used in grade school. If that ruler was good enough for her, it should be good enough for me.

But it didn’t have a spinner hole.

I had to use money I had earned by collecting and cashing in pop bottles discarded along Highway 14.

It’s a wonder I wasn’t scarred for life for my teacher didn’t understand why I liked to spin the ruler on my pencil when I was supposed to be an attentive pupil. She made me stop the stress relieving activity.

 

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