From The Moses Speese Family Story by Ava Speese Day (1912-1988)

"From early years, Berwyn as a part of the vocabulary of everyone who took a ride or hoped to ride on the CB&Q Railroad. When my dad, Charles Speese, came home from Omaha each fall after taking cattle, horses and mules to market, he would name the towns he had traveled through and we kids looked in the geography to see where he had been. A look at the map showed that Grandpa Moses Speese lived closer to Berwyn than to Broken Bow, so he probably did his trading at the nearest town. This meant less work for men as well as for yesterdays’ horses.

Three of these black families included Grandpa and two of his brothers. They came to Custer County and lived on farms situated between Berwyn and Westerville, north-east of Berwyn. When the railroad arrived up Muddy Creek Valley in August, 1886, the business men there moved their firms south seven miles to Ansley, the new railroad town. Consequently these black families traded frequently and transacted much of their business in Berwyn, their nearest shopping center. Then too, the fact that Berwyn had a good grain market as well as active hog and cattle buyers drew considerable business and contributed to Berwyn being a trading center.

The children were enrolled in various schools near the Westerville area, at times as many as firty were in attendance. They were for the most part, a religious group.

… in 1882 … Moses Speese went to Westerville, and on October 11, filed on the southwest quarter Section 30, Township 17, Range 18, Custer County. In 1883, he filed on the northeast quarter of the same section. The children attended school with the McEwen boys, the Cannons, Leeches, and others. Moses lived to see his children take direction in life, Henry becoming a minister, John, a lawyer and Rad, a very successful teacher of music. All played the piano and the violin. Church was very much a part of their family life and continued to be so in the lives of all.

Grandpa Moses Speese, who died when my father, Charles Speese, was 15 years old, is buried at the top of the hill of the Westerville cemetery. The three foot high headstone reads: Moses, husband of Susan Speese; died March 29, 1896. Aged 58 years. Across the bottom is the word FATHER. Next to him is buried his brother, Jeramiah Shores and his wife, Rachel Shores. She served as mid-wife to many Custer County babies, mostly her way was a chicken or two, some eggs or vegetables.

Moses’s wife, Susan Speese, is buried in Westerville cemetery."

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The Speese and Shores families lived in Custer County when famed photographer Solomon Butcher posed the families and took now iconic pictures of the groups in front of their sod houses.

Article at left from The Custer County Chief, Broken Bow, NE, 28 Feb 1908

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

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