Raised in Vermont, Isaac Pollard worked to identify pines and spruces that would survive the prairie climate. Additionally, he planted apple, pear, peach, and cherry orchards which provided a broad knowledge base regarding what fruit tress to plant in Nebraska. When his apple orchards began fruiting, Pollard asked the University to analyze and compare his apples to eastern raised apples. Every apple grower owes a debt to Mr. Pollard for helping put Nebraska apples on par with the New York apple.
Mr. Isaac Pollard. A Tribute and Estimate of His Life
Read before the Nebraska Hall of Agriculture Achievement, Jan. 17, 1917.
Away back on the green hills of Vermont, where three generations of the Pollards have lived, was born in the happy mountainside home of Isaac and Sally Pollard the little boy Isaac, opening his eyes into “life’s infinitude”.
It is a great thing to be well born, and the boy and girl are handicapped in life who have not had the privilege of selecting good grandparents. A child is the product of the choices and desires of al who have gone before.
Mr. Pollard was exceedingly blessed in his ancestry. It was from a stirred and troubled Europe that God picked the tested people who were to settle a new continent and work out institutions for the brotherhood and equality of man. They wanted to be loyal to their convictions; they wanted to work out their ideas of truth and justice. And so, they came to the harbors and woods of Maine and the hills of Vermont, to Puritan Mass., and Loger William’s Rhode Island, to Dutch, New York and Quaker, Pa., to Maryland and the Appalachian highlands. They applied themselves heroically, forcefully, successfully to the building of homes; and yet they believed that the greatest realities of life were its invisible forces and principles -- honor, truth, virtue, love, service, justice, brotherhood. Mr. Pollard’s ancestors were the produce of these times and struggles.
Mr. Pollard was emphatically a very industrious man, scarcely laying down the burdens before the last days. In his early years at home, he learned the value of labor and economy and thrift. He would pay his way through life. Life, care in infancy, the institutions of society, and of our country, and all our aspirations were laid at his feet by those gone before. It is a great fact that in the upbringing of our lives into civilization of today many thousand years of human struggle and battle and heartaches have wrought. He would not take from this great store-house without adding to the treasure for his children and children’s children. He would pay back as much as he received: it was his pride and ambition to strengthen the institutions of his community and country.
In 1857 in company with Lawson Sheldon and Perry Walker he left the old Vt. home via Panama for the California gold fields, returning after four years by the same route, fairly successful. The county was rushing to its civil war. The Dred Scott Decision, The Kansas-Nebraska bill, the Border warfare, the granting by Congress of the charter and land subsidies to the Burlington and Rock Island railroads across Iowa to the Missouri River were charging men’s minds and hearts with big things to come. Into this atmosphere the Green Mountain fortune hunters returned. And in the spring of 1856, they again turned their steps westward. Here was a chance to build a home and help found a state. Late in May they reached Council Bluffs and late in the evening of June 7th they came to Mr. Gage’s place not far from their present homes. The country was in its glory of springtime green, and as they looked over the weeping water valley, it was indeed a goodly land. Their search was ended. With true New England thrift, they commenced to build homes and work themselves into their county’s and territory’s development.
Soon after locating their claims Mr. Pollard in partnership with Mr. Sheldon purchased a saw and gristmill combined; for several years they sawed logs for their neighbors and ground their sack of corn into meal. This brought them a wide acquaintance with the scattered settlers. But the venture was unprofitable and was abandoned. The mill had been a great boon to the few who built their homes always along the tree-fringed streams. At this time there was not other mill in the county.
Almost from the first Mr. Pollard engaged in farming, rejoicing to help to convert the stored-up fertility of the soil, into the golden harvests for man’s needs and satisfaction. As he was able, he acquired possession of a goodly tract of land along the banks of the Weeping Water. He improved and built for permanency. He early realized that it took a lifetime to build a home, its income, its structure, its surroundings, its inner soul life. Home is the sweetest word in the language. Around it cluster the dearest ties of life. Mr. Pollard planned and dreamed all his life for a home, the best, happiest, dearest spot-on earth. When the young woman in their early years said “yes” to his outgoing life, home making began in fact. The coming of the children, the sympathy, courage, plans of the wife, their mutual expanding hopes, grew them into richer ideas of home. The first home he built was of brick made in that early day from the clay along the Weeping Water. His cold storage plant was out of the limestone on his farm and brick that he burned on his own grounds, and his last commodious residence was of brick from this same clay deposit. He early called attention to a valuable pocket of pottery clay. He had a great deal of very substantial rock fence built from the limestone quarries he opened. It was a day when lumber was hard to get.
Coming from the East, the prairies looked very bare and desolate to him in winter with only a narrow fringe of trees, skirting the streams. It was early a dream of his and faith that the spruce and pine of his Green Mountains would grow here and add their charm and cheer to our wind-slept slopes. In these early days he worked and spent money to beautify his surrounding and test out the evergreens that would thrive here. Today we everywhere plant the pines and spruces of the east and west, from the Scottish hills and the Noise mountains because of the love for the green and the beauty and the warmth and the cheer and the companionship of the pine in this man’s soul, and a few others like him who in those early years at big expense of labor and money and hope experimented for us. Not only in this matter are we debtors to Mr. Pollard for this tinge and prophecy of summer in mid-winter, but also for much of the knowledge of our fruits. The wild gooseberry and strawberry and grape and plum were our fruits when he came to the country. He almost at once began planting apple and pear and peach and cherry. Our climatic conditions he soon discovered were very different from those of New England. Many varieties would not do as well here, some couldn’t live, others as winter varieties in their old eastern home became fall apples here. So, he planted and re-planted and tested; and he has contributed his share to the knowledge of the Horticultural Society of what trees to plant in Nebraska.
Three times Mr. Pollard planted out orchards: one to be killed by grasshoppers, a second by the great hailstorm of 1883, and a third, and his largest venture, one of the few model productive orchards of the State. When this last orchard commenced fruiting there confronted him the problem of market. People believed in New York and Michigan and Ohio apples; they believed no such apples could be grown here. He asked the University to analyze his apples and the eastern fruit to prove that Nebraska apples were just as rich and a little richer in ingredients, and just as spicy and delicious as those of the east. Every apple grower owes a debt to Mr. Pollard for helping to put the Nebraska apple on a par with the New York apple.
There is always in an apple crop a lot of culls unfit for market. With an eye open to human needs and tastes and to his native thrift, Mr. Pollard installed a large cider and vinegar plant at big expense and uncertainty. His faith and courage won out for himself and the future growers.
He early realized the enemies of the orchard. It was a fight through the years for the tree -- enemies of the leaf, and twig and trunk and fruit. Spraying machinery was purchased and used and improved. He kept in touch with the foremost investigators trying to protect and perfect the apple.
In the fruit industry Mr. Pollard has shown his hope and faith in another large way. For years he has been experimenting in cross-fertilizing, not only of apples on apples, but of pear on apple. It has been his dream of crossing the Ben Davis and pear and getting an apple hardy and fruitful as the Ben Davis with the added richness and deliciousness of the pear. He has a good many fruits coming. But he said he wanted to live to a hundred years of age to fulfill his labor of love and benefaction to the State and country. Even one new apple richer and better than now grown would mean much to apple eaters everywhere.
The Creator has given a large range of possibilities in the pent-up varieties to reward our sympathy, intelligence and cooperation. The florist has worked with nature and given us great varieties of size and form and richness of color of the zinnias, pansies, dahlias, gladioli, chrysanthemums, Burbank and other men have given us plums and apples and peaches and pears. Again Mr. Pollard was one in our midst who was filled with the beauty of nature. The wonders of the growing world were his daily art gallery. His senses were regaled with all sweet sounds and smells. The concert of the birds and insects were his oratorios, while his soul opened to the inaudible symphonies of the music of growth and of the spheres. It was fellowship with nature. The birds and trees were his friends. His crops and orchards fairly clapped their leaves for his care and gifts, and a smile of joy and health broke out all over their green faces. The buds swell with pride and perfume us with their sweet incense, and the plants and trees groan under the load of fruit they bear for our kind care. They will talk sympathetically and hopefully to us in the chilly days and laugh with us in the bright days.
Not only was Mr. Pollard growing in touch with nature and natures cod, but he had an eye for the footprints of former activities of man in the vicinity of Nehawka. Long years ago, he became convinced that man had left traces along the Weeping Water bluffs. Forty years ago, he dug into these works vertically and from a bluff horizontally thus exposing the “diggings”. He was sure the Indians did this in pre-historic times for the large nodules of flint that was abundant in the lowest stratum of limestone that had been moved. Evidently the vicinity here was a great gathering place for flint quarrying and manufacturing into arrow and spear heads. Here was water and shade and wood and rich pasture. Patiently and skillfully, they fashioned the flint points. The pioneer farmers report plowing into many scattered piles of flint chips. Here we can picture the dusky lads and lasses feasting on the wild strawberries in their season, the plums in late summer and the hazelnuts and walnuts in the fall and winter.
Mr. Pollard was also very much interested in the life of his community and State and nation. He was a firm believer in the democratic school for every boy and girl. He served continuously on the school board of his district from the time of its organization till recent years. His plans for beautifying the grounds are seen in the clumps of pines and spruces on the campus, along the R.R. right of way about the station, and in our village cemetery. He has helped to boost for all the good things that have come to Nehawka, even to the grading of good roads. It is to Uncle Isaac as we all like to call him, that we owe the name “Nehawka”. There was the English name “Weeping Water” full of the sad, tragic, beautiful Indian tradition or legend. The French called it “The Water that weeps”. Mr. Pollard in one of his trips back to Vermont went through Washington and after consulting with the authorities of Indian nomenclature came away with the Indian name of Nehawka.
Mr. Pollard was all his life a progressive Republican in politics and practice, believing in a strong government active in doing all it could collectively for the people, whether in municipal control of water, light or transportation; or in general government activities for all the country in ways as of agricultural betterment, or fighting against the enemies of animals or man or plants, or suppressing gambling, or forbidding adulterated foods or drugs, or for reclamation of arid, or swampy lands or for control of water or mines or forests for public welfare. He could kill brook corruption or fraud in government.
Never using alcoholic beverages, he was an ardent supporter of abstinence and prohibition. In a word, he believed he owed a clean physical and moral life to the community, and that clearly and honestly, he should strive to leave his country and state richer and better than he found it. He tried to measure duty in terms of life, and his growing and changing values of life were the result.
Eighty-six years of life on God’s earth! We respect him, we honor him, we love him, we miss him, we need his cheer and vision. We must step in the vacant place, fill the gap, carry forward the banner, so that we may have a right to be missed.
