ERNEST NICHOLSON TAKES A HAND

About this time Ernest Nicholson appeared on the scene, and purchased a forty acre tract of land north of the town, for which he paid fifty-five dollars an acre, later paying ten thousand dollars for a quarter, joining the forty. Still later he purchased the entire section of heirship land, belonging to a man named Jim Riggins, an Oristown city justice, and a former squaw-man, whose deceased wife had owned the land. For this section of land the Nicholsons paid thirty-five thousand dollars. The price staggered the people of Amro, who declared Nicholson had certainly gone crazy. They set up a terrible "howl." "What were the d— Nicholsons sticking their noses into Tipp county towns for? Were they not satisfied with Calias, where they had grafted everybody out of their money?" No, the trouble, they all agreed, was that Ernest wanted to run the country and wanted to be the "big stick." But they consoled themselves for awhile with the fact that Amro had the county seat and was growing. The settlers were trading in Amro, for Amro had what they needed. An indignation meeting was held, where with much feeling they denounced the actions of Ernest Nicholson in buying land north of the town and announcing that he would build a town such as the Little Crow had never dreamed of, and that Amro should at once begin to move over to the new townsite and save money; but they were hot. Old Dad Durpee, in his shirt sleeves, corduroy and boots, his shaggy beard flowing, declared that the low-down, stinking, lying cuss would not dare to ask him to move to the town he had as yet not even named; but Ernest, at the wheel of a big new sixty-horse power Packard, continued to buy land along the railroad survey all the way to the west line of the county. In fact he bought every piece of land that was purchasable.

I watched this fight from the beginning, with interest, for I had become well enough acquainted with Ernest to feel that he knew what he was about. When the surveyors had arrived in Calias, Ernest had gone to Chicago. In declaring the road could not miss Amro the people were much like inhabitants of Megory had been a few years before. While they prattled and allowed their ego to rule, they should have been busy, and when it was seen that the town might not get the railroad, they should have gone to Chicago and seen Marvin Hewitt, putting the proposition squarely before him, and requested that if he could not give them the road, to give them a depot, if they moved to the line of the survey. By that time it was a town with two solid blocks of business houses and many good merchants and bankers. I often wondered how such men could be so pinheaded, sitting back, declaring the great C. & R.W. railway could not afford to miss a little burg like Amro, but from previous observations and experience I felt sure they would wait until the last dog was dead, before trying to see what they could do. And they did.

In the meantime the promoters, who were nearly all from Megory or somewhere in Megory county, had learned that Ernest Nicholson was nobody's fool. They hooted the Nicholsons, along with the rest of the town, declaring Ernest to be anything but what he really was, until they had roused enough excitement to make Amro seem like a "good thing." Then they quietly sold their interest to the Amoureaux Brothers, who raked up about all that was left of the fortune of a few years previous, and paid six thousand, six hundred dollars for the interest of the promoters which made the Amoureaux the sole owners of the townsite and placed them in obvious control of the town's affairs, and again in the white society they liked so well.

All the Calias lumber yards owned branch yards at Amro and everybody continued to do a flourishing business. The Amroites paid little attention to the platting of the townsite to the north, nor made a single effort to ascertain which survey the railroad would follow, but continued to boast that Amro would get the road. About this time Ernest Nicholson called a meeting in Amro, inviting all the business men to be present and hear a proposition that he had to make, stating he hoped the citizens of the town and himself could get together without friction or ill-feeling. The meeting was held in Durpee's hall and everybody attended; some out of curiosity, some out of fear, and but few with any expectation or intention of agreeing to move to the north townsite. Ernest addressed the meeting, first thanking them for their presence, then plunged headlong into the purpose of the meeting. He explained that it was quite impossible for the road to go to Amro, this he had feared before a survey was made, but that he had ascertained while in Chicago that the road would not strike Amro. He then read a letter from Marvin Hewitt, the "man of destiny," so far as the location of the railroad was concerned, which stated that the road would be extended and the depot would be located on section twenty, which was the section Ernest had purchased. Then he brought up the matter of the distribution of lots which was, that to every person who moved or began to move to the new townsite within thirty days, one-half of the purchase price of the lot would be refunded. The price of the business lots ranged from eight hundred to two thousand dollars, while residence lots were from fifty to three hundred. "Think it over," he said, in closing, and was gone.

Needless to say they paid little attention to the proposition. The Amro Journal "roasted" and cartooned the Nicholson Brothers in the same way Megory papers had done, on account of the town of Calias.

After thirty days had elapsed, the Nicholsons warned the people of Amro that it was the last opportunity they would have to accept his proposition, and when they paid no attention to his warning, he named the new town. I shall not soon forget how the people outside of the town of Amro laughed over the name applied to the new town, as its application to the situation was so accurate and descriptive of later events, that I regret I must substitute a name for the purposes of this story, but which is the best I am able to find, "Victor."

Instead of moving to Victor, taking advantage of choice of location and the purchase of a lot at half price, the Amroites began making improvements in their town, putting down cement walks ten feet wide the length of the two business blocks and walks on side streets as well. A school election was called and as a result an eleven-thousand-dollar school house was erected, a modern two-story building, with basement and gymnasium. The building was large enough to hold all the population of Amro if all the men, women and children were of school age, and still have room for many more. This act brought a storm of criticism from the settlers, and even many of the people of the town thought it quite a needless extravagance; but Van Neter, who was strong for education and for Amro, had put it through and figured he had won a point. He was the county superintendent. Most of the people claimed the town would soon grow large enough to require the building, and let it go at that.

People began drifting into Victor, buying lots and putting up good buildings. Nicholsons announced a lot sale and preparations began for much active boosting for the new town. In the election to be held a year later, they hoped to wrest the county seat from Amro.

When Ernest Nicholson saw the improvements being made in Amro and no sign of moving the town, he began to scheme, and I could see that if Amro wasn't going to move peacefully he would help it along in some other way. However, nothing was done before the lot sale, which was advertised to take place in the lobby of the Nicholson Brothers' new office building in Calias.

On the date advertised for the lot sale, crowds gathered and many who had no intentions of investing, attended the sale out of curiosity. I took a crowd to Calias from Megory, among whom was Joy Flackler, cashier of the Megory National Bank, who stated that Frank Woodring had loaned the Nicholsons fifty thousand dollars to buy the townsite. Megoryites still held a grudge against the Nicholsons, and Flackler seemed to wish they had asked the loan of him so he might have had the pleasure of turning them down.

The second day of the lot sale, a bunch of bartenders, gamblers and Amro's rougher class appeared on the scene and distributed handbills which announced that Amro had contracted for a half section on the survey north of the town and would move in a body if moving was necessary. The crowd styled themselves "Amro knockers," whose purpose it was to show prospective lot buyers that in purchasing Victor lots they were buying "a pig in a poke." The knocking was done mostly in saloons, where the knockers got drunk and were promptly arrested before the sale started. The sale went along unhindered. The auctioneer, standing above the crowds, waxed eloquent in pointing out the advantages, describing Sioux City on the east and Deadwood and Lead on the west, and explaining that eventually a city must spring up in that section of the country, that would grow into a prairie metropolis of probably ten thousand people, and whether the crowd before him took his eloquence seriously or not, they at least had the chance at the choice of the lots and locations, and eighty-four thousand dollars worth of lots were sold.