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- Henry Valder was born on a farm near La Salle, Illinois, December 28, 1866. His parents were Edwin and Sarah Johnson Valder.
Henry’s family left Illinois when he was three years old. He remembers that the day they left, they were in a store and Henry fell down the cellar steps. He cried and the clerk picked him up and gave him a stick of peppermint candy.
Henry’s father came to Nebraska before his family and rented a farm. A short while later Henry, his mother and his sister came to Onawa Iowa on the train. They took the stage to the river, walked on the ice to the boat, and from the boat again and onto Decatur, Nebraska where they lived for one year.
In the spring of 1870 they moved to their homestead in the Silver Creek Presinct. “The living conditions,” as quoted by Henry Valder, “were a little tough.” Henry’s father worked his farm and also worked with his brother. They joint-owned a team of horses. Henry’s mother gardened and canned and preserved their food for winter use.
Henry Valder grew up on the Silver Creek Homestead. He and his sister walked 2 1/2 miles to school. They were afraid of the indians and rattlesnakes. They often hid to keep from being seen by the Indians and then went on to school.
Henry went to school for about eight years. He was seventeen when he left school because he was needed at home. School was held for three months in the summer and four months in the winter.
In 1873 the grasshoppers were terrible. Henry reported that the grasshoppers were so big you could look up at the sun and it wouldn’t hurt your eyes. They stripped everything, gardens, tobacco and crops of all sorts.
During Henry’s first year of school he learned of the earths’ roundness by his teacher telling him that it is something like an orange. An orange has a rough surface such as the world but when you step off and look at it, it is round.
When he was seven years old he remembers his teacher telling him that the government is the people.
At the age of nine Henry drove the team in his father’s field and at the age of ten he drove the harvester in harvesting the grain.
The neighbors were all pioneers and they all worked together.
Dances were held and later people joined the Church and dancing was ruled out. Later people took up dancing again.
As time progressed new schools were built and more land farmed.
Henry Valder classified by the personality of the young people then as the same as those of today except that they made their own fun, played with neighbor children and every one went to Sunday School and Church. They held literary and spelling and singing programs and bees at the country school house.
When the blizzard of 1888 started Henry was at Will Wallis’s shelling corn in the forenoon. He started home and the snow was deep. He walked to Snyders, it was a very cold wind. On the way home he met a man going to the school house. The teacher let school out and some of the children stayed at Will Wallis’s and some at Henry’s home. Henry’s mother kept the fire going all night long. Henry reported that none of his father’s cattle were lost.
In 1889 Henry joined the militia and served his country for three years. On January 15, 1891 he guarded at Gordon, then went to Albany where he was stationed until he went back home.
When he was twenty years old he started working out by the month. Henry and his brothers farmed together breaking the sod.
Henry started farming for himself in 1899 and in that year he married Jennie Michael.
Henry and his wife moved to the Michael place in 1900 and in 1909 Henry bought the Spilmen place where they lived for seven years and then moved to town.
Three children Dee, Doyle and Frances were born to Jennie and Henry.
Henry served as a member of the Red Cross town board and served on the Cemetery board. In 1920 he was a member of the board of treasury of Burt County Co-Operative Oil Company.
Henry “Dad” Valder in the last months of his life was blind and could not walk well. His greatest pleasures were having company, listening to the radio, thinking, sleeping and eating.
Henry Valder died peacefully at his home on December 25, 1950 after an illness of several weeks.
-Frances “Billie” Hoke-Valder
Written on April 2, 1951
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1868 - 1950 (81 år)
