Curt Arens / Living Here Magazine / Fall 2004 Issue
There was quite a commotion around St. James in Nebraska Territory. Word had come down from a Niobrara fur buyer that a war party of 10,000 Sioux was headed toward Cedar County, intent on destroying all the white settlers down the Missouri River valley.
Settlers from the western portions of the region were straggling into town seeking safety. A few reported that Yankton had been set ablaze.
The inhabitants of the county seat decided to reinforce themselves in the old unused courthouse building, a fine oak structure on an elevated spot called Rattlesnake Ranch, about one and a half miles north of present St. James.
They threw up an embankment four or five feet high around the building and dug a well inside the fortification so they'd have water to outlast a siege. After a tense week of waiting there for an attack, settlers gradually realized that the threat fortunately hadn't materialized and they returned to their homes.
It was 1864 and as far as settlers living along Bow Creek were concerned, St. James was the center of their world. But the prominence of the community declined into the next century as the community was ultimately snubbed by the railroad and residents settled into a more quiet existence.
For decades, the most important institutions for the community have been the Green Diamond tavern and 97-year-old Saints Phillip and James Catholic Church.
In 2000, with another parish just across the creek and a declining number of priests able to serve rural parishes, Archbishop of Omaha Elden Curtiss, closed the parish as part of a consolidation plan between four rural congregations. The plan called for the historic church at St. James to be razed.
With deep-running roots in parish and community life, everyone took the closing pretty hard. Farm families already devastated by drought and poor farm commodity prices at the time were particularly grieved at what they considered another blow to their way of life.
But five farm women and their families took their destinies into their own hands. Mary Rose Pinkelman, Vicky Koch, Jeanette Pinkelman, Violet Pinkelman and Louise Guy latched onto the last remaining structure from their parish, the old schoolhouse, and transformed it into a popular retail outlet and farmers' market now well-known as St. James Marketplace.
Koch says they are showcasing the skills of area folks. "It's been such a success," she says. "You can't believe all the people who stop in from all over the country."
Before the Marketplace opened, St. James had literally been taken off state highway maps, sentenced to forgotten status. Yet as Cedar County prepares to commemorate it's 150th anniversary of organization in 2006-07, the ladies fought successfully to get the community back on the map, figuratively and in print.
They remind visitors that St. James, located along a waterway early French traders called River Petit Arc or Little Bow named for an Indian chief, was once the region's most important village. Early settler, Gates Thompson, built a log house and plotted out the first townsite in 1856, thinking his St. James might one day be the state capitol.
The territorial legislature officially made it the county seat when Cedar County was organized in February 1857. That same year, twenty families from Iowa and others including Henson Wisemen from Virginia, settled the area.
In those frightening days of the Indian scare, residents around St. James probably had heightened sensitivity to such reports. Just a year earlier, five children of Henson and Phoebe Wisemen had been brutally killed while Henson was away in Dakota Territory campaigning against Indians with the Second Nebraska Cavalry and Phoebe had taken a three-day trip to Yankton for supplies.
Although Wisemen and most area settlers were convinced the tragedy had been the work of Yankton and Santee Sioux, controversy continues to shroud the murders, with other theories pointing fingers at a different potential assailant.
After the scare, a company of Iowa Cavalry soldiers split forces between St. James and St. Helena. They garrisoned on a high hill about two miles northwest of present day Bow Valley at a camp called Fort Jackson.
The soldiers remained for about a year, but according to settler accounts, they antagonized resident Indians and caused more problems with relations. So when the soldiers packed up, no one was sad to see them go.
That same year, a flourmill was built on Bow Creek and St. James moved to the mill site. Henry Hoese, proprietor of the mill there for years, built a big warehouse along the river from which he shipped flour to the Santee Agency. It's said he kept the mill running night and day, employing eight to ten men. His initial partner, Lewis E. Jones built what was known as the Bow Valley Mill just downstream two years later.
As the 1850's came to a close, St. James had about 50 inhabitants, a Methodist Episcopal Church called Union Mission, a general store that hosted the first meeting of the county commissioners and a blacksmith shop.
During the election of 1859, J. Sterling Morton, later known as the author of Arbor Day, gave the first political speech in the county at St. James during his run for territorial delegate to Congress.
The town's run of bad luck perhaps began in 1869 when some aggressive St. Helena boosters reportedly loaded up all the county records in the middle of the night and took them to their town, effectively moving the county seat. St. Helena, the only serious rival for commerce to St. James, was the county seat until it moved to Hartington in 1885. Yet, an Atlas dated 1895 lists St. James with 177 inhabitants.
The old courthouse was never used for county business. Moved to the new townsite, it changed ownership several times and served as a home. But in 1909, the heavy oak building that signified all the dreams of what St. James might have become burned to the ground.
It was even tougher on St. James folks 91 years later when the community lost its Catholic church. With a poor farm economy, the ladies of St. James struggled for ways to sustain their farms and save the identity of their community.
They all had the notion of starting small businesses of their own from their homes, selling their individual items made from native products. A meeting in Fordyce shortly after the parish closing got them thinking of a cooperative effort that might benefit everyone and salvage community spirit.
Mary Rose Pinkelman and her husband Richard market their home-raised, natural pork through a cooperative known as Main Bow Meats, that includes a group of area farm families. She also makes jams and jellies.
Jeanette Pinkelman sews old Green Acres seed corn sacks into pillows and makes old-fashioned pioneer laundry soap. Violet Pinkelman works with her daughter, producing a variety of woodcrafts from locally milled wood.
Veteran photographer, Vicki Koch utilizes photos taken around St. James farm country to produce greeting cards. And Louise Guy whose husband is also a distant relative of the Wisemen's, wrote a book about the Wisemen family tragedy.
They quickly cleaned up one classroom in the old school for a sales base and opened for business. The school had been closed since 1968, but it was kept in good condition and the basement was used frequently for celebrations.
It was built by Henry Stuckenhoff, a German immigrant who also built Immaculate Conception Church at St. Helena in 1897 and Ss. Peter and Paul Church at Bow Valley in 1903. In the style of a Spanish mission, the school was beautifully crafted, but designed for functionality, with a large auditorium that also served as a chapel.
In 1919, the Ursaline Sisters from Kentucky staffed the school. Tuition was one dollar per child per month. The Sisters lived at the school until 1933 and up to thirty students boarded there. It was eventually closed as part of a consolidation plan for parochial schools in the northern part of the county.
So reopening the school for the Marketplace boosted the spirits of many residents, because it reminded them of the vibrant days when students and parents frequented the community for school and church events.
After an encouraging first year, they opened up for business in another classroom and the auditorium during their second year, tripling the number of vendors involved. Now they have sixty vendors and generate tens of thousands of new dollars annually. Besides the ladies, vendors also take turns volunteering to work.
"There's so much talent in the community," Koch says. They have nearly everything you could want and many things you can't find anywhere else. Crafts, baked goods, garden and orchard produce, natural, locally raised meat and eggs, religious articles, rugs, woodcrafts, birdfeeders, cards, books and much more spill out of the classroom into the auditorium.
One of the classrooms has been converted into a tearoom, where visitors can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee and a fresh slice of homemade pie. Another classroom is dutifully restored to replicate the glory period of the school.
They use the auditorium for special programs ranging from Lewis and Clark presentations, farm family workshops, local heritage and natural history and crafting classes. "We try to have something at least once a month," says Violet Pinkelman. A licensed kitchen in the basement is used for baked goods sold at the Marketplace.
They formed a non-stock cooperative and purchased the old school from the Archdiocese of Omaha. The group received a Value-Added Development Grant that covered half the cost of organizing. At the same time, they worked up a business plan, developed a website and with help from business students at the College of St. Mary in Omaha, established their feasibility study and strategic plan.
But for all the planning, they've also put in a lot of sweat equity. Over the past three years, they've spent in excess of $10,000 in renovations, adding central air conditioning, plastering and painting.
On the last Sunday in September - Sept. 26 in 2004 - the group honors their past with a day of old-time activities and demonstrations known as "Heritage Fest". The big event hearkens back to the days about a century ago when the local Modern Woodmen fraternal group held picnics near St. James, drawing thousands of folks from miles away.
Like those early picnics, Heritage Fest is a family affair. "Family togetherness and people of all ages is what I like the most about it," says Jeanette Pinkelman.
"We wanted to do this for our community," Violet said. But it also gives Marketplace vendors a chance to shine, providing samples of their products and a good crowd looking over the wares. Last year's event included demonstrations like hand picking corn, hand crank corn shelling and separating cream.
Two-person log sawing, pie eating, watermelon seed spitting and children's games like sack races and three-legged races keep visitors laughing.
The Marketplace season begins in early May and concludes in early December when the old schoolhouse stage once again hosts Christmas programs. So the ladies of St. James, their families and many residents around the region have a renewed stake in the regeneration of this very old community.
One of the rules around the Marketplace is to "have fun and enjoy yourself" - that goes for volunteers, vendors and visitors. Koch says that as long as they are following that rule, the project is on the right track.
So one hundred and fifty years after serving as safe haven and county seat, St. James is again becoming a gathering spot for folks passing through the area and for locals too. It's all thanks to the creativity and tenacity of farm families who stepped up when the going got tough, to save their community, their farms and their heritage.
WHEN YOU GO
Thanks to the St. James ladies, you can now find St. James on Nebraska State Highway road maps. It is located just one and a half miles east of the Wynot spur along the north side of Nebraska Highway 12. The Marketplace sets on top of the hill on the west side of the street just north of the cemetery as you enter town. They are open Saturdays and Sundays, early May through early December, from 10 am to 5 pm. You can get more information at www.stjamesmarketplace.com.
