POOL, FLOYD W. AND CANDIS MAE

by Alice Pool

Entry F347 from the History of Hooker County Nebraska
with permission of the Hooker County Historical Society

Floyd W. Pool was born to Riley and
Missouri Boyer Pool, February 18, 1868 at
Independence, Virginia. He finished school
and singing school which was required in that
county and then decided to go west. He
arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, where he found
work as foreman of Mexicans who were
digging irrigation ditches. He found if he was
kind to the workers they would try hard to
please him. He then went to Las Vegas where
he drove a dairy truck up in the mountains
to a logging camp. Floyd said that hydro-
phobia skunks were numerous, very danger-
ous and poisonous. One morning as he was
going up the mountain road he saw one in the
road, he was afraid to go by it and couldn't
back up so he picked up a rock (having been
raised in a rock country) he threw it, knocking
the skunk quite a distance down into a revine.
Another day Indians chased him, he narrowly
escaped being caught. Life was hazardous out
West, so after a couple years, he decided to
go back to good old Virginia. He married
Candis Mae Long, November 7, 1893. Her
birthday, September, 1873. They decided to
come to Nebraska and establish a home.

Floyd and Candis with their six month old
daughter, Verna Lee and his father-in-law,
Calvin Long, his wife Mary and their ten
younger children: Lou, Emmett, Lee, Robert,
Glen, Minnie, Went, Verda, Booker and Earl,
packed a box car with their most treasured
belongings, and left Virginia to arrive in
Mullen, March 5, 1895. Mullen had one small
store, a frame building where the Commercial
Hotel now stands, owned by F.M. Cudabeck.
A building, known as the Evergreen Hotel,
owned by Mrs. Hewitt that is the present
Gorsuch apartments. The women and chil-
dren stayed inside this building and the men
folk slept on the ground and in a small livery
stable.

The men folks rented a team and wagon,
leaving the women in Mullen, starting out to
find a suitable location. They first went
northwest to what is now known as the
Gibson place to a settler named Loomis, that
had come across from Wisconsin. This was a
part of the 101 Ranch. The older boys
Emmett and Lee found work there. Calvin
and Floyd with the younger men went on to
look farther. Calvin rented a little place of the
Loomis boys, but finally located or took
squatters-rights on the place he lived on for
a few years, until his death by accident or
stroke in 1902, which will never be known. He
was found by a peddler named Davids, a
wonderful little man who somehow got Calvin
loaded on his spring wagon and rushed to the
ranch. He lived only a few hours.

Floyd took squatters-rights on a few acres
south and east of 101 Ranch, which was later
sold to Big Creek Ranch. It was the Steen
Valley, where he built a sod shanty. Another
daughter, Alice A., was born, February 27,
1897 with only a mid-wife assisting the birth.
Floyd and the younger boys Bob, Glen and
Went, put up hay the first summer on the 101
Ranch. He later filed on 160 acres west of Big
Creek; later known as the Mickey place. He
sold it and took a homestead of 640 acres
north and west of Dry Valley. He was on the
first School District #98 board. Floyd told of
getting an application to teach from a lady
that wanted forty dollars a month - such
High wages. He also helped organize and
build the Congregational Church in Dry
Valley. They had been having Sunday School
in the little school-house. Floyd and Candis
survived many hard times, but faith and grit
helped them to stay with it. They sold lovely
heifer calves for $20 a head and good cows for
$40.

When poor health struck, Floyd and
Candis sold the ranch for $20 an acre; now
selling for $100. The place is now owned by
the Albert Starr boys. They moved to mullen
in 1920, where he served as Hooker Co. Judge
for sixteen years.

Candis died July 1944 and Floyd died
October 1954.

Verna Pool married a Virginia boy, Winsor
Boyer, who had a homestead nearby. To this
union was born seven children, Fred, Jean,
Eva, Wayne, Clarice, Frank, and Keith. Fred
married a Cherry County girl, Martha Con-
ner, a ranch girl. Jean married J.C.Warden,
a Cherry County rancher. Clarice married
Harry Piercy, a Kennedy rancher. Frank
married a Mullen girl, Dorothy Gorsuch.
Keith married Bonnie Pavlick, a ranch girl of
North Cherry Co., near Crookston and Eva
married a Texas boy and Wayne a Rapid
City, S.Dak. girl.

Daughter, Alice Pool owned and operated
a Home for aged in Mullen for 16 years. She
cared for 70 patients over the years, from
some six states. Prior to that she kept 48 high
school children.

There were not many settlers at the time
the Pool family came. H.J. Lowe had come
from England in 1894. He worked for a time
and then came to Mullen and built a small
store in the summer of 1895. He was a great
help to the ranchers, squatters, and all new-
comers. Some of the early settlers were the
Hugh Boyer and nine sons; the LeLaCheurs,
Colemans, Yaryans, Jameses, Tom Carr's,
Robert Boyers, Enoch Anders, Charles Long
and their families. Riley Pool and daughters,
Jennie, Delia, and Rose came from Virginia
in 1896 and filed claims.