The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1872-07-18
SEVEN HUNDRED NILES ON FOOT.
NILS svENSON NYsTEN, THE HoME-sTEA-
DER.-wHERE THERE'S WILL,
THERE'S A WAY.
BY PROF. J. D. BUTLER.

LINCOLN, March 25th, 1879.
| Nils Nysten is q Swede,-and was born where
his forefathers even to the years of many genera.
TONS has been content with "only this and MOTH
ing more
"To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot"
! He aspired higher,-but 30 slow was his birth,
and so strong the barriers around him, that he
was threescore years old before he could work his
passage to America. Two years age he reached
Iowa with his wife, and penniless, stopping first
| in Mount Pleasant.
While working there at his trade OF wagon MAX
lug, he became, convinced that his best means Of
further advancement was to secure a Nebraska
Homestead without delay. His mode Of making
this boon his own, is worth telling to encourage
the others
HOW DID IT!
He walked from his home to Lincoln, 3O7 miles,
slong the track of the Burlington & Missouri RiB-
er Railroad This Journey he accomp lished in
about fifteen days. At Lincoln he found shelter
in the Immigrants Rest, a building provided by
B. & M. Railroad Co., where land hunters may
lodge and live without charge, while seeking
farms
Looking at the maps of public lands in the
United States Land Office there, he judged York,
county to afford the most desirable hornesteads-
He therefore walked thither-seventy miles furtbs
err. Having picked out the farm which suited him
best Of all those still vacant he returned to the
Land Office andfled his claim to it, September I'd,
1871, paying in $t4 in fees. His homestead con
sists of80 acres, in the 34th section Of the nth
township in the Sd range west, of the 9th principal
meridian. aEf. T.~ n -t~7..N s....t E.
WHAT THEN e- ~ ~ .s~. p r
I Repairing again to the farm of his choice he
made sundry improvements for month He fin
ished hma dug-out and stacked twelve tons of
wild hay. '''N VI ne. 80
His purse was now empty, save one dollar and
q half, but he walked to Lincoln and thence home
as he had walked hithcr, daily laying behind him
about twenty miles.
Soon after reaching home, at the end OF seven
hundred mile walk, ha learned that his hay stacks
had been burned by prairie fre-having no pillow
he had been unable to make fre-break around
them. But throughout all, he seemed to have
lost nothing of heart hope, but to have remain
ed as jolly as Mark Tapley, in Chuzzewit
Through all the winter he worked at his trade
sometimes beginning his tolls at two o'clock in
the morning. Thus he finished three good wagons J.
Two he traded Q f for a mule and harness Then
putting on board his wife, barrel of pork har-
row, all of wood, made by himself and some
other needments, he drove westward by the same
route which he had last fall travelled on foot. t a
He took with him three other Scandinavian
Homestead hunters, each with wagon with his
family in it,
He arrived in Lincoln in due time, rested lit
tie among the old familiar Inequalities for strang
ers, offered gratutously by the B. NJ. Railroad Co.,
through the whole-souled keeper, John Frost, and
on the 2lst of March, in spite Of. an equinoctial
wind, set his face towards his homestead. His
journey thtther can hardly require more than three
days,-but as he must need be there before the
first day of April, be egregiously pril fooled,
By forfeting his farm, he resolved to make assur-