FREMONT COUNTY HERALD
No date, but circa early 1914
Keeping History Straight
Lot Brown of this city, who has been Constable Brown of Sidney
township for just 40 years, may be given a free trip out into
Nebraska for the purpose of definitely locating the scene of the
famous Plum Creek massacre in which a freighting train fell into
the hands of the merciless Sioux Indians and all its members
killed with the exception of Mrs. Frank Morton, who was held
captive for nearly two years before the government finally
succeeded in effecting her release by paying a goodly ransom. The
secretary of the Nebraska State Historical Society has written
Mr. Brown: "We may have to call upon you to come out and
help us locate the site, as there is some disagreement about this
among the people who profess to know". It is the society's
intention to erect a monument on the site of the massacre.
Lot knows all right, for he reached the spot while the remains of
the wagon train were still smoking and just as the soldiers had
concluded the burial of the unfortunate victims. He belonged to
another train bound for Salt Lake and beside himself there were
in the party his brother Pete Brown, C.C. Hickman, John Gilbert,
John Rodamel, Joe McNatt and a cook known as
Nigger Jake. Lot made numerous trips across the plains and
encountered many such scenes as this. But luck was with him. He
was always just ahead of or just behind these massacres.
Mrs. Morton was a sister of Hiram Fletcher and Mrs. Emma Curran
of this city. Hers was an experience such as probably no other
white woman was ever called to endure. On that fatal day, July
10, 1864, at Plum Creek she saw her young husband, her brother
Bill Fletcher, and a cousin John Fletcher, cut down before her
very eyes, as every other man of the party. Then she was carried
away by the Indians and held captive for two years. She always
said the red-skins treated her kindly but that she was never out
of sight of the lynx-eyed squaws. What she suffered in mental
anguish during these two years is beyond the pale of imagination.
Mrs. Morton in middle age married again and lived to be a good
old age, her death occuring about a year ago at Jefferson.
N.B.:
1. Delos White "Pard" , or "Lot", or
"Common" Brown was born 2/22/1847 at Beardstown,
Illinois - died - 10/25/1930 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The Brown
family came to Fremont county at Christmas time 1855.
2. Josiah Allen Harvey (who wrote the account in the Sidney SUN)
died on the Saturday before January 20, 1914; he's buried in the
Sidney, Iowa, cemetery.