A town springs to life when homesteaders stake claims and build their community with a post office, school, church and, sometimes sooner than later, a cemetery. The story is a common one in Western Nebraska and could be telling of more than one location across the expanse of the Great Plains.

One such place is Epworth, Nebraska. It won’t be found on the newer maps of Banner County. But it was once a town like so many forgotten. Today, there are two reminders of the community that once was. The first is the Epworth Cemetery. The second is a log home, an original structure from homesteading days, down the road east of the cemetery.

Nature takes its toll in these lost places. Blizzards, drought and grasshopper infestations can make or break it for settlers there. Sometimes progress also takes its toll. One town becomes the hub in a large area – schools consolidate, buses run and little towns die. Buildings find their way
to new places. People do, too. The post office closes, and the school and church fall into disrepair.

All that remains are, perhaps, the graves in the cemetery, nearby descendants and the stories.

In the case of Epworth, the worn log home still standing as a memory of times long gone was built by Thomas Cox, the son of Jacob and Hermina Cox. They were proudly one of the early homesteading families in Epworth who moved from Missouri to Nebraska in 1887. At that time, there was no Banner County. The area was still in Cheyenne County, which was later subdivided into six counties, with Banner being one of them. Three of the Cox boys took claims in this community – John B., Thomas and Erastus. Three more homesteaded after 1904, when the Kinkaid Law passed, and Thomas took over the homestead that brother Charles didn’t prove up.

Many years down the road, in 1921, the Thomas Cox family moved to Oregon and sold the place to Martin and Anna Kryger, who came from Denmark. Anna planted a black walnut grove. Their son, Elmer, married Doris Cox (Thomas’ daughter) and brought her back from Oregon to live in the log house her father had built. Elmer died in 1933 and Doris remarried, first to Elmer’s brother, George, then after George died to Joe Person.

She and Joe rented the log house and grounds from Anna, and they continued to live in the old log home until Joe purchased a place to the north in 1943. When they moved, Anna decided to sell the home.

The rest of the Cox family also had strong ties to the Epworth community. One of those young men, John B. Cox, is buried in the cemetery. When John and his wife, Lydia, moved from eastern Nebraska to take a homestead, they lived in a dugout for the first few years until they built a log cabin of their own. Life for the couple reflected that of many of the pioneers of that age. Together they hauled water to their homestead for 12 years, until 1900, when they were able to drill a well.

Thanks to John, the first school in town was built in 1892. He donated an acre of his homestead, hauled logs from the hills along Bull Canyon and, with the help of his neighbors, brought the much-needed structure to life. Water had to be carried here, too, until a well could be dug. Mae Snyder was the teacher for the first three-month term.

The town’s timeline continued and eventually saw another teacher, Ona Cecil Ogg, welcomed to the schoolhouse. She had worked in Lincoln for William Jennings Bryan, who would later be appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to serve as the secretary of state. Ogg came westward to teach, and Epworth was her first school. She instilled knowledge in her students there from 1908 to 1911. According to historical records, one such pupil said that when Ogg’s future husband, John Dunn, came courting at school, the students had long recesses.

In 1910, the old log school was torn down, and a frame one was built. Epworth School District #20 was in operation until Banner County schools were consolidated in 1957 and students were bussed to the new school in Harrisburg.

Throughout its life, the Episcopal Methodist Church was another key part of this small community. Though it is not documented, the town’s name “Epworth” was most likely in honor of England’s Lincolnshire town of Epworth, where John and Charles Wesley (founders of Methodism), were born and raised.

Over 80 congregants were registered in 1918, and the church remained active through the mid-1930s. The church was built on land donated by Erastus Cox in 1910. According to the “History of the Epworth Church” in the Banner County Museum’s collection of papers, “the blocks were made by a hand-operated press and dried a few days before being used in the construction.” Reverend Nelson was the first minister, followed by Reverend Schakelford.

The Epworth Methodist Episcopal Church had an active Ladies Aid that held socials – ice-cream, strawberry, oyster soup and box suppers – in the basement of the church. The building was eventually condemned for public use and fell into disrepair. It was demolished approximately 15 years ago.

Another member of the Cox family, Elizabeth, was very supportive of the church and her community. She began the Epworth Post Office in her home on Jan. 25, 1906, and later added a grocery store. Her brother John brought mail from Harrisburg. The post office was discontinued Oct. 15, 1918. Mail was then delivered from Harrisburg by route drivers.

 

Longtime Banner County resident Myrt Hughbanks’ family had mail Route 1 for 14 years, delivering to houses in the Epworth community three days a week. They rarely saw another person on the entire route. According to Myrt, one of her favorite memories was stopping at the bottom of the hill between Epworth and Harrisburg, in Bull Canyon, and getting a cool refreshing drink of water from the windmill when it was running. A tin cup hung on a nail for passersby.

Myrt was born in 1930. Her father, Morris, took his pregnant wife, Myrtle (Schindler) Sandberg, by wagon across the country to Bushnell to stay with the midwife until the baby was born. She was their seventh child, and as Myrt said, “They ran out of names.” The parents called the infant girl “Babe” for the first few months until the oldest daughter took matters in hand and named the baby after their mother, Myrtle.

Myrt’s grandfather, George Schindler, homesteaded in Banner County 3 miles from the Epworth church and cemetery. Her other grandfather, August Sandberg, is buried in the cemetery. August, who emigrated from Sweden, came to Banner County with his sons Morris and Earnest, as well as his daughter and her husband, Amelia and Charles Swan. Mary Lore, Myrt’s sister, is also buried at the Epworth Cemetery. Having died of pneumonia, she is buried next to her grandfather, August.

There are a total of eight graves in the Epworth Cemetery. Beside John Cox, August Sandberg, and Mary Lore Sandberg, Samuel and Elizabeth Edwards lie buried there, as do two graves whose stones are weathered beyond reading. That makes seven. The eighth grave marks the burial place of baby Shelby Ruth Anderson, born in February 2006. She died in October of that same year.

The Anderson family has been in the Epworth community since Shelby’s great-grandparents, Charles Ivan and Rena Anderson, married in 1939. Charles promoted centralizing the school system and served on the Epworth School Board from 1941 until the new school (Banner County School) was built in Harrisburg.

Shelby’s parents, Laif and Sondra, still live just south of the Epworth Cemetery. Sondra keeps the cemetery grounds. When asked why they buried their daughter there rather than in the Albin Cemetery, Laif simply stated that his baby was right across the road from them. “She’s almost home,” he said.

Laif believes that when people know the cemetery is still active, more members of the community will choose their final resting place near those eight.

So very little remains of Epworth – the graves, some distant trees and the earth. The writing on those gravestones continues to wear away. Some trees were planted, some distant trees were felled and hewn and made into homes, such as the one that still stands and is now a tired monument filled with tumbleweeds. Some trees are just a whisper of memory, far distant cousins of the walnut grove once planted, turned to paper on which records are marked, stories are remembered, bound into magazines and books.

The leaves of these documents are fading, withering and blowing away in the stiff Nebraska wind. Some leaves regenerate in spring times, as do the budding lives of grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who first homesteaded in the area. This earth, this land, was once prairie grass scratched by the plow and blown east during the 1930s to unwillingly enrich the soil of communities with water more readily available than what those first pioneers hauled by hand. The dirt that remains is not only the earth that cradles their strands of DNA, but the ground roots those people currently living in Banner.

Edna Johnson wrote it well in Banner County and Its People: “Whatever strength of character or virtue they possessed is a part of the inheritance they received from their folks as they were reared on the family farm in Banner County.”