1924 Elijah Filley

Elijah Filley, Leader in Improved Farming

by H.Clyde Filley
A paper read before the Nebraska Hall of Agricultural Achievement at Lincoln, Nebraska, January 1924

Elijah Filley was born in a log house in Jackson County, Michigan, November 28, 1839. He died at Beatrice, Nebraska, March 31, 1920.

Eighty years is a long span of life, but length in years is not a true measure of either life or its living. What has a man seen? What has he learned? What has he accomplished? What have been his joys and his sorrows? What has he done for himself and for others? How much has a man appreciated the opportunity of living, of taking part in the movement of events, and how much better is the world because he lived? What was his contribution to the sum total of human happiness? These are the things that count rather than mere length of years.

Certain it is that the octogenarians of no other country or period ever had the opportunity to witness such a development of natural resources, and such an advance in science and invention as those who lived in the United States from about 1840 to about 1920. In few places were the changes greater than in the great Middle West.

In 1840 there were less than 3000 miles of railway in the United States and no road had as yet crossed the Mississippi. Morse did not build his first telegraph line until 1844, and Bell did not construct his first crude telephone until 1876.

Science and invention have wrought a marvelous change in agriculture since 1840. When hardly more than a boy Elijah Filley cut grain with a cradle; as a young man he bound grain, following a McCormick reaper and assisted in operating a Marsh harvester. He was one of the many farmers to rejoice over the invention of the Applebee binder and the many additions and improvements that have been made in harvesting machinery within the last half century. During his lifetime the threshing machine replaced the flail; the corn planter with check row attachment ended the planting of field corn with a hoe; the corn cultivator, the milking machine, the gasoline engine, the automobile and other inventions came to the aid of the farmer increasing his efficiency and lightening his labor.

In 1840 Michigan was a pioneer state, Chicago was little more than a village, and the frontier had hardly crossed the Mississippi into Iowa. Nebraska was not even organized as a territory until 1854 and did not develop rapidly until after the close of the Civil War. We know the Nebraska of today, - its cities, its schools and its agriculture. What part in all this development was taken by Elijah Filley?

The boyhood of Elijah Filley was very similar to the boyhood of many other sons of pioneers in a timbered country. He attended school in winter and worked on the farm in summer. The cleared acreage gradually increased and the number of stumps and stones in the fields decreased, due in part to his efforts.

In the spring of 1858 when he was eighteen years of age, he went to Joliet, Illinois. He worked on a farm that summer and helped saw wood with a horse power saw for the Rock Island Railroad the following winter.

In 1859 he went to Livingston County, Illinois, where he worked on a farm for about a year. He was then hired by William Straun, who was one of the largest cattle feeders in Illinois. This employment was particularly fortunate because he not only earned wages, but had the opportunity of learning the cattle business. Mr. Straun needed a helper who could do more than carry out the daily routine and wish for quitting time. He was buying cattle over a wide area in a region where there were no railroads. These cattle must be driven to his feed yards, fattened and sold. He soon came to appreciate the initiative of the young man from Michigan, taught him as much about judging, buying, and feed cattle as he could, and gradually increased his responsibilities. During a part of his term of employment with William Straun, Elijah Filley bought cattle of farmers, collected them into droves, and drove them to the feed yards, letting them graze along the route by day, and placing them in some farmer’s corral by night. It was experience which fitted him well for his work of later years.

On November 4, 1863 he was married to Emily J. Burd of Pleasant Ridge, Illinois. She proved a true helpmate, being not only a good home maker and mother, but taking an interest in livestock and other things in which her husband was so greatly interested.

In 1867 Mr. Filley moved to Nebraska. He was accompanied not only by his wife and two small sons but also by his father, Arnie Filley. They traveled overland in covered wagons and reached their destination, which was later to be known as Cottage Hill Farm, on the 17th day of August. Theirs were the first two upland homesteads to be taken in Gage County. The few other early homesteaders had settled in the Blue River Valley and on the bottom land along the creeks.

That was the day of the dug out, the sod house and the shanty. Few men were certain that it would be possible to live that far away from the Missouri River. They wanted to try out the country for a few years before building any permanent improvements.

Mr. Filley was less interested in going “back east” than he was in having eastern comforts in Nebraska. He put up a tent and started to building a stone house. It was a big undertaking. The stone had to be quarried and hauled 3 ½ miles. A sand bank had to be located and opened. It was necessary to burn stone for lime. This entailed the cutting of a large amount of wood. Mr. Filley and his father were quarrymen, lime burners and masons. Mrs. Filley helped haul stones. Such small supplies as had to be purchased were brought from Brownville and Nebraska City. One room of the new house was ready for occupancy before cold weather. The house as originally planned – four rooms on the ground floor and three bedrooms upstairs was completed the next year.
Breaking prairie sod was one of the first jobs of the Nebraska pioneer. As all who have used a breaking plow can testify the sod was tough and the plow hard to pull. It was a grueling job for man and horses. Mr. Filley had brought with him two teams of splendid horses. Before spring three of the four horses and sickened and died. He therefore went to Nebraska City and bought several yokes for oxen. He purchased unbroken oxen at Nebraska City and others near home. After returning home he had two jobs; one was the securing of contracts for breaking prairie and the other was breaking oxen.

When the spring opened he put out 20 acres of spring wheat on land which he rented of Noah Norton. The ground was plowed, the wheat sowed broadcast by hand and covered with a brush harrow. He then started breaking land for his neighbors and afterward for himself. The oxen performed the heavy work much better than the light horses owned by the majority of the settlers. Nearly all the land was broken in the spring and early summer was planted to corn. This was rather slow work. A hole was cut in the sod with an ex and two or three kernels of corn dropped in and covered. Fortunately sod corn requires no cultivation. The yield that first year was fairly good.

One of the big jobs of the summer was the breaking of 400 acres of prairie about five miles from his home for a man by the name of Newhall. For this he received $4.00 per acre.

Following harvest he bought the first threshing machine ever owned in that part of the county and threshed all the grain raised for many miles in all directions from his home. He hauled the machine from one farm to another with oxen. The farmers for whom he threshed furnished horses for the power.

In the spring of 1869 Mr. Filley broke the rest of his own land, and set out a windbreak and an orchard. Walnuts had been gathered in the preceding autumn and planted ready for the cold of winter to crack their shells. The first planted on Cottage Hill Farm were gathered along the Missouri River in the autumn of 1867 and plated on a part of the first narrow strip of breaking that he turned over late that summer. Cotton woods were dug up on a sandbar in the Missouri River when they were only about a foot high and hauled the sixty miles by the wagon load. They were set out in rows alternating with the black walnuts. The early settlers had come from a timbered country and felt the need of the protection that trees afford.

Mr. Filley wanted to raise cattle. To keep cattle in any considerable number meant either the expenditure of money for fencing or the payment of boys for herding. The purchase of boards for fences was impossible, not only because of the cost at the lumber yard, but because of the distance they must be freighted. Timber was not plentiful enough to permit of the building of rail fences. Smooth wire will not turn cattle, and barbed wire had not yet been invented. The osage hedge fence seemed to offer a solution, so a hedge was set entirely around Cotton Hill farm in the spring of 1868. As more land was purchased it too was surrounded with osage hedge. Miles of this fence is yet in use.

One of the needs of every new community where there are children is a school house; another need is a place to hold religious services and public meetings. Realizing the need for school, Mr. Filley helped organize a school district in his part of Gage County, District No. 9, and became one of the three members of the first school board. Many men favored the building of a temporary structure for a school house, as there were but few children of school age, and money was not plentiful. Mr. Filley insisted that with the new settlers coming in, most of whom had children, a large school house would soon be necessary, and that in the long run it would be economy to erect a permanent building at once. It would also give a place for Sunday School, church and community meetings. His counsel prevailed, but a second difficulty arose. No one could be found who wanted to take the contract to build the school house at anywhere near what Mr. Filley thought should be the maximum cost. He, therefore, resigned from the board, took the contract himself, and built a stone school house in the summer of 1869. No bonds were issued because the advocates of a good school house believed that each generation should pay for its own improvements. There was no deeded land in the district and government owned land was of course exempt from taxation. As a result the schoolhouse was paid for within two or three years with funds raised by levying taxes upon buildings and other personal property. As Mr. Filley had purchased a considerable number of cattle, a threshing machine and had built a stone house he paid about one-third the cost of the new building.

During these early years when Mr. Filley was not busy farming, running a threshing machine, building a school house or improving his own farm he was very apt to be freighting. At one time he had fifteen yoke of oxen and three freight wagons and with them he and his hired men hauled many loads of freight from Nebraska City for the stores in the village of Beatrice. These same oxen fattened were the first loads of stock ever shipped out over the Burlington road after it reached Beatrice.

As has already been stated Mr. Filley came to Nebraska to live. He wanted a permanent home, which to him meant a good house, trees, orchard, shrubs and good barns and sheds as well as a school, church and the other things which make a desirable dwelling place.

A man who farmed extensively and kept many horses and cattle stood in particular need of a large barn. Mr. Filley decided to build a barn that would last for many years. It was constructed of stone and was ready for occupancy in the fall of 1874. It is still in regular use on the Cottage Hill Farm. It is a large barn for any farm and built so permanently in an early day it became one of the recognized landmarks in Gage County. Many is the wayfarer who has been directed to go by the “big stone barn”.

Early settlers have told us many stories of the ravages of the grasshoppers which came in the summer of 1874. They flew in such numbers that at times the light of the sun was dimmed. They ate corn, vegetables, grass and even the leaves from many trees. Before them was hope, but behind them was despair and devastation. I have heard my mother tell that the only part of the growing crop not destroyed by the grasshoppers was a few small pumpkins.
Mr. Filley had 500 head of cattle that summer. When the pasture was destroyed he shipped them to Creston, Iowa, where he fed them until they were ready to sell. He shipped corn back to Nebraska to feed his horses and breeding stock and to supply his neighbors. Anticipating a good crop of corn, many of the settlers were raising hogs. The destruction of the corn crop left them without feed. One morning Mr. Filley found a neighbor out in his hog lot with an ax. He had started to kill his hogs because he had nothing to feed them and no money to buy corn. Here was an emergency that demanded immediate relief. Mr. Filley’s decision was quickly made. He asked the neighbor to delay the killing operations and drove on to visit other neighbors. He found that nearly all had hogs but little feed. He bought those pigs by the thousand, shipped them to Iowa where the corn was good, sold a part of them and fattened the others himself. His personal profit upon this venture was relatively small, but the money which he paid for the hogs was of great benefit to the distressed pioneers.

Mr. Filley fed cattle nearly every winter for forty years. He was always ready to buy all the cattle and hogs offered for sale, and in the early years furnished the only local market for his neighbors. One year he feed 1800 head of cattle at different places. He had feed lots at his home farm, one near Wilber, one between Wymore and Blue Springs, one at Endicott and one at Reynolds. He sent train loads of fat stock to Chicago before there was a market established at South Omaha.

He was one of the first men in Gage County to own purebred stock. He recognized the difference in the feeding quality of cattle and was naturally desirous not only of producing good cattle himself but equally desirous that his neighbors should produce good cattle. His breeding of hogs and cattle was, however, of much less importance than his livestock feeding.

On the whole his farm and feeding operations were successful. His land holdings grew until he owned 1,500 acres at Filley, 1,000 acres at Reynolds, 40 acres at Endicott and 20 acres between Blue Springs and Wymore.

The Burlington Road reach Beatrice in 1871 and was soon afterward extended south to Wymore. The branch line connecting Beatrice with Nebraska City was built in 1883. Mr. Filley owned land where the road wished to locate a town. The village of Filley was started. Mr. Filley built a new house within its limits and afterward directed his farm operations from that point. Incidentally he added the ownership of an elevator to his other activities.

From the time that he first came to Nebraska Mr. Filley was constantly on the lookout for improved farm machinery, for better farm methods and for more productive crops and livestock. He wanted to decrease labor and increase profit. When he heard that a territorial fair was to be held at Nebraska City in October, 1868, he decided to attend. That would not necessarily mean much today. A man might go to the State Fair for a holiday, or for an auto drive or just to meet his friends. In pioneer days it was different. Travel was expensive, the methods of travel slow and tiresome, and a recent homesteader could expect to find few acquaintances at a state wide gathering. A seventy mile journey was a serious business and could be undertaken only for justifiable ends. Mr. Filley went and derived such pleasure and profit that he attended every succeeding territorial or state fair up to and including 1918.

At these fairs he saw the latest models of machinery, and watched other men decide which hogs, cattle and horses were entitled to wear a blue ribbon. Perhaps best of all he met there the agricultural leaders of the state, - Furnas, Morton, Thompson, Pollard, Bassett and a host of other men who like himself were energetic and ambitious and had come to Nebraska expecting to stay. All were anxious to learn, and to know men as well as crops and livestock.

Mr. Filley was one of the first Gage County farmers to try out listed corn. He experimented with subsoiling in 1895, following the precedent set by some agricultural colleges. At first the results seemed to be fairly satisfactory and he made a favorable report at a Farmers’ Institute at Beatrice, March 12, 1896. Later trials caused him to decide that the increased cost was not justified by the returns. He sowed alfalfa before its possibilities were known, and demonstrated to his own satisfaction that it was a wonderful hay plant. It soon became one of his principal crops at Reynolds.

With the depression which began in 1920 not yet ended, we are in a position to realize the disastrous effects of the crisis of 1893 and the depression by which it was followed. It came unexpectedly. There were no popular forecasts of an impending and probable reaction as there was from 1918 to 1920. Nebraska had less reserve wealth then than now. We were borrowing money from the wealthier East with which to make our improvements. Before the depression came Mr. Filley had placed more than 1000 head of cattle in his feed lots. They were fattened, and sold in the spring for less than the purchase price. The cost of feed, labor, and freight was a total loss. The failure of a bank in Beatrice cost him heavily at this most inopportune time. The disastrous season of 1894 followed with its corn failure. Crops were but little better in Gage County in 1895. In 1896 the corn crop was large, but it could be sold for only about ten cents per bushel. The man who did the least during those years lost the least. For once, men of initiative were handicapped.

A friend of Mr. Filley’s who knew something of the discouragements of farming under those conditions asked him how he was getting along, “I’m still hanging to the willows,” was the answer. There was no complaint.

In 1900 Mr. Filley disposed of his land near Filley, and after a two years residence in Beatrice moved to his ranch at Reynolds. Here he farmed and fed cattle until 1912 when he sold out and retired from active farming. During the next few years he and Mrs. Filley traveled extensively spending a major portion of the time with their daughter at Des Moines. He wished, however, for old scenes, the faces of lifelong friends and more activity. As a result he removed to Beatrice in the spring of 1919 where he lived until the end came. He was planning and improving, looking forward to many years of activity. Only two or three days before his final illness, I found him in his backyard grubbing away at an old stump. It would have wearied a younger man, but nevertheless he removed the stump and leveled the ground.

In spite of all his other activities Mr. Filley found time to take an active part in public affairs. In 1871 he was elected county commissioner of Gage County, serving for six years. He was state representative in 1880-81 and state senator in 1882-83.

On January 20th, 1897 he was elected a member of the State Board of Agriculture, to which he was reelected in 1899, 1901, 1905, 1907 and 1909. He served as a member of the board of managers in 1901 and 1906 and was elected First Vice President in 1905, 1906 and 1907. He was superintendent of cattle exhibits at the State Fair for many years. He resigned from the board in January, 1910, because he felt that the operation of a 1000 acre farm was about all that a man of 70 should attempt at one time.

Mr. Filley understood men. One reason for the success of so many of his varied enterprises was that his helpers were loyal. He never hade unjust demands upon any one. He expected his men to be systematic, to work to some purpose and to secure results. He knew from experience what constituted a day’s work, and he quickly determined when the job was well done. There was never any quibbling or contention. If the man cared to maintain the very reasonable standard set, he was retained at a satisfactory scale. The man who failed to do his part when the employer was out of sight was very certain to be told that his services were no longer needed. This same attitude of fairness, of consideration for the rights of others, combined with a firmness in stating his own position characterized his work as superintendent of cattle at the State Fair. He took good care of exhibitors, and extended to them every possible courtesy. The exhibitors understood that the superintendent’s word was final. They followed instructions. There was never any contention.

Six children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Filley. Of these only two survived Mr. Filley; Hiram of Mena, Arkansas, and Mrs. M.A. Scoular of Des Moines, with whom Mrs. Filley now makes her home.

It is a little hard for men who did not know Elijah Filley to understand just what he accomplished for agriculture or what he contributed to the development of Nebraska. He made no invention; he was not responsible for the introduction of any new variety of grain or grass or breed of livestock to the state; his livestock breeding activities were of less importance than the work of many other men; no important statue bears his name; the public offices that he held were not of primary importance; many other many have been fully as active upon the State Board of Agriculture; his contributions to the literature of agriculture were very slight; he did not accumulate great wealth. Notwithstanding his failure to do any of these things his contemporaries nearly all agree that he did leave his imprint upon agriculture and had an important part in the development of Nebraska. Why?

Elijah Filley possessed initiative. He had vision. He could see what needed doing without being told. His practical common sense enabled him to carry his ideas into successful execution. He had confidence in Nebraska and the future of her agriculture before his breaking plow had turned a single furrow of prairie sod. He built for permanence. He set out fruit trees, shrubs, and groves without waiting for someone else to experiment. He put his entire farm into cultivation. He provided a means of threshing his grain and also that of his neighbors. He insisted upon adequate school facilities. He did not invent new machinery but he was quick to try out the machinery invented by other men. If it lessened labor, or performed the work better, he had decreased his cost of production. His cattle grazed on blue grass pastures in summer and fed upon timothy and clover hay in winter, when it was popularly believed that cultivated grasses could not be grown in Nebraska. While other men were discussing the possibilities of Turkey Red wheat and alfalfa, he was trying them out. He led. Men who were less venturesome followed.

Pioneers always experience hardships. Many families find it difficult to adept themselves to the new conditions and others lack capital. The man who has a start in a new locality always finds ample opportunity to extend a helping hand. Elijah Filley was ready with practical assistance to the limit of his ability. He furnished jobs for men who had come West without funds or whose crops had failed; he provided a market for grain and livestock. He loaned farm machinery, work horses and milk cows to homesteaders and tenants who needed assistance. Last but not least he supplied capital to his friends for various enterprises. Sometimes these men succeeded and the loans were repaid, but in many instances Mr. Filley had to content himself with the thought that he had tried to help someone else. These unpaid loans, most of them outlawed years ago, aggregated many thousands of dollars at the time of his death.

The generation of pioneers is passing. The men and women who were boys and girls in pioneer days are growing older and the memories of the years when houses were small, when books were few, when the groves were being planted and large expanses of prairie were unbroken are each year growing dimmer. Unless the stories of the early years are soon told they must remain forever unwritten. Unless the part played by the leaders in those early years is recorded future generations will not know to whom credit is due for our rapid development. All must admit that so great a transformation has seldom been wrought in a half century as occurred in Nebraska from 1867 to 1917. Among the leaders in improved farming few men were more ambitious, more energetic, more far seeing or more practical than Elijah Filley.