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| Marcus and Emma (Hart) Eaton |
With a population of 20 (according to the Nebraska State Gazetteer, Business Directory and Farmers List for 1890-1891,) Lavaca was the Sandhill version of a post-hamlet. It had 2 blacksmiths and a general merchandise store that probably doubled as a post office, as well as a school and probably a church or two. It was located about 25 miles southwest of Merriman on the extreme western edge of Cherry County. The Lavaca Flats lie alongside the Niobrara River. It's an area of level land with good meadows, and nowadays, some center-pivot irrigated farmland.
According to the 1886 map of the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad. a rail line ran through Valentine and Gordon and on to Douglas, Wyoming. The Homestead Office was in Valentine. Marcus and Emma probably rode the train as far as Merriman, but I have read about people who got off the train at Valentine and walked many miles through the sandhills to their homesteads.
During their years at Lavaca, Marcus and Emma added two more daughters to their family, Almira and Letha. Marcus drove the twice-weekly stage to Gordon, and was a road overseer for the Lavaca precinct, as well as farming his homestead.
As the girls grew up, Marcus and Emma wanted them to have a high school education. They sold their homestead in about 1912 and moved to Gordon.* There, the three younger girls completed high school, and Marcus operated a livery stable. Marcus was a farm boy, and he had worked as a teamster in Marshalltown before they came to Lavaca. He knew a lot about horses.
Emma died in 1929, and in 1931, Marcus lost his daughter, Violet (Eaton) Sees to influenza. Marcus visited his widowed son-in-law Harry Sees and his granddaughter, Doris (my mother) frequently after Violet's death. Doris described Grandpa Eaton as a tidy, well-groomed fellow. Both she and her cousin Maxine Young (daughter of Letha Eaton Young) had fond memories an all-day trip with Grandpa Eaton in his car to visit Wounded Knee, just across the South Dakota line from Sheridan County, Nebraska.
Marcus and Emma are buried in the Gordon, Nebraska city cemetery, adjacent to the graves of Violet Eaton Sees, Harry Sees, and Harry's second wife, Barbara Weber Sees. The Eaton graves were unmarked for many decades, but in 2014, my brother, Dwight Hill (a great-grandson,) had a tombstone installed.
When I was a little girl, my mother pointed out a certain frame building in Gordon as her Grandpa Eaton's livery stable. The building had big doors -- beyond that, I don't remember much about it. When I was in Gordon with Keely and Isaac in 2000, I tried to relocate it, but I learned that it had been torn down.
One other thing of interest about my great-grandfather Marcus Eaton -- he remembered that as a little boy in Marshall County, Iowa, he played in the buffalo wallows on the prairie.
One other thing of interest about my great-grandfather Marcus Eaton -- he remembered that as a little boy in Marshall County, Iowa, he played in the buffalo wallows on the prairie.
* In about 1917-1920, Violet Eaton returned to Lavaca as a schoolteacher. While Violet was teaching there and boarding with a school family, she had the memorable experience of discovering a mouse inside her nightgown after she had put it on and gone to bed. (Good family stories should be recorded and retold.) In 1940-42, my mother (Doris Sees Hill) taught in the same Lavaca school. As part of her contract, she was given a horse to ride to school. Some in the community remembered both her mother (Violet) and her grandparents (Marcus and Emma.)
Emma (Hart) Eaton was born in Polk County, Iowa, 06 Feb 1865, and died 19 Apr 1929 in Gordon, Sheridan County, Nebraska. Marcus Eaton was born in Marshall County, Iowa, 13 Sep 1861, and died 03 Jul 1942 in Gordon, Sheridan County, Nebraska. Marcus and Emma were married on 19 Nov 1889, in Mitchell, Davison County, South Dakota.
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