Homesick for her Native Illinois for 50 Years, Mrs. Caroline Goble at 90 is Resigned to Nebraska 1941 Daily Tribune, Tapeline Edition, Hastings, Nebraska

For half a century Mrs. Caroline Goble was homesick for her native Illinois; but in the past 20 years she has become resigned to the idea of spending the sunset of her life in Nebraska.

She was a young woman of 21 in June 1872, when she journeyed with her 8-month-old baby over the Burlington and Missouri railroad to join her husband on his homestead on the bank of the Little Blue 12 miles south of the new town of Hastings.

The trip had seemed interminable, especially the last portion from Lincoln to Hastings. In Lincoln an unhappy incident had left her un-nerved and all too aware of the loneliness of travel. She could hardly bear to wait until the clanking train would pull into Hastings where she was met by her husband and her sister, Mrs. Tom Fleming.

WEARINESS OF TRAVEL

At Lincoln she had found it necessary to go to the station to buy a ticket that would enable her to continue the journey. A woman in the car offered to care for Baby Blanche, and Mrs. Goble accepted the kind offer. As she walked across the station platform to the ticket office, the locomotive sounded a warning whistle and the train pulled away. The weariness of travel was too much. She all but collapsed on the platform, sobbing that her baby was gone. It took all the persuasive arts of a generous trainman to convince herthe train had merely pulled into the yards for a necessary bit of maintenance and would soon be back.

The next 50 years were the hardest, for Caroline Goble could never forget her home back in Illinois. The first few years they lived in a dugout and then built a frame house.

Ayres Goble had purchased the claim of a Civil War soldier who was discouraged and was “going back East to live with the wife’s folks.” The claim was not yet “proved up,” but Ayers had no inkling that there would be difficulties, so he moved his family into the frame home of his sister-in-law, Mrs. Fleming.

HOMESTEAD LAW

Homestead law provided that, if the settler did not stay on his property and sleep there a certain number of nights in a year, the claim would revert to the government and might be subject o the filing of another settler.

Fortunately, Ayres Goble learned in the nick of time that a neighbor had his eye on the homestead. The postmaster warned him:” You’d better move out to that dugout and stay there, Ayres, and do it tonight, to: he was told. “There’s a friend of yours just waitin’ to jump it.”

Ayres drove his team to the Flemings on the run, packed

Caroline and the child quickly and headed for the homestead. En route he passed the claim of the neighbor who was planning to “jump his claim.” Standing up in the wagon box, Ayres shook his fist in the direction of the house and barn and shouted a warning against anyone seeking to “jump’” his place.

Ayres was away from home a good deal of the time. He would work on other claims for wages or shares when not busy on his own place. Busily hewing a livelihood out of the prairies, he had no time for homesickness, but his wife, left alone with her children for long hours on the dreary homestead, could not forget.

REMEMBERED ILLINOIS

Mostly she remembered the fine shade and fruit trees in Illinois. By contrast she viewed the scene between the dugout and Little Blue. Shading her eyes from the burning sun and turning her cheek to the scorching hot winds, she could not envision here such trees, such loveliness as lived in her memory.

Here in Nebraska the winters and springs were cold and uncomfortable. Sometimes it snowed heavily and spring would come with sufficient rains to promise more than a shirttail of a crop, but before harvest, as Mrs. Goble recalls it now, the grasshoppers swarmed down, stripping everything in sight. More often, though the winters produced nothing more than cold, windy days, with dry snow piling in heaps where an occasional obstacle impeded the wind. Spring often came with half a promise that faded before searing winds, leaving nothing but the rattle of empty husks in dry fields, susceptible to prairie fires and of infinite discouragement to settlers.

The next few years brought the usual pioneer experiences, prairie fires and blizzards, grasshoppers and drought. Caroline Goble could not get away from her home, except at rare intervals. Ayres Goble owned mules, but Caroline could not catch up, harness and drive the fractious, stubborn animals.

In 1878 the railroad cut across a portion of their homestead and a town was laid out. The railroad representative in charge of the new village boarded with the Gobles and became a great friend of Ayres. Late the town was named Ayr and Mr. Goble understood his friend had named the town for him. However, the point is in dispute. Railroad officials said the town had been named for a Dr. Ayr of Iowa who was a member of the road’s board of directors.

A few years after the turn of the century the Gobles moved to Hastings and a little later Mr. Goble died.

Mrs. Goble will be 90 in May and makes her home today with her daughter, Mrs. Orella Morledge, 1008 west Third.

Jay Goble, member of the Adams county board of supervisors, is the only son and still lives in the Ayr vicinity. Two daughters, Mrs. Blanche Sweeney of Longmont, Colo., and Mrs. Maude McDonald of Napa, Calif., are other members of the family.

Mrs. Goble is still active. She reads a great deal and has other active interests.

‘IT IS TOO LONG’

“I NEVER THOUGHT AI WOULD LIVE THIS LONG,” SHE SAID. “It is too long. I hope my children don’t have to go through it.”

She laughed when asked if she is still homesick for Illinois:

“I quit thinking about that 20 years ago,” she said.