38 Nebraskaland • June 2019
olomon Butcher came to Nebraska in a covered wagon,
but quickly found himself poorly suited to the hard life
of a pioneer. He failed at homesteading, taught school,
briefl y attended medical school, served as a rural postmaster,
and opened – and closed – the fi rst photography studio in
Custer County.
Desperate to avoid going back to farm work, Butcher had a
bold idea. He would produce a photographic history of Custer
County. Starting in 1886, he hitched up a wagon and began
visiting homesteads with his photographic equipment,
accepting meals and selling photos, and making images for
his history book.
"Some called me a fool, others a crank," he recalled, "but I
was much too interested in my work to pay any attention to
such people."
Butcher's Pioneer History of Custer County, Nebraska (1901)
gave him the only taste of fi nancial success he ever knew.
Later projects were less successful. But he continued making
photographs, slowly building a collection of nearly 3,500
glass plate negatives, which he later sold to the Nebraska
State Historical Society (today's History Nebraska).
Butcher believed he was a failure when he died in 1927,
but today his photos are recognized as a uniquely important
record of settlement on the Great Plains. He captured a brief
period after the area's Native inhabitants were forced out and
before the new settlers had fully established themselves.
Together they are a time capsule of rapid change on the "sod
house frontier."
An exhibit featuring Solomon Butcher's photography and
associated artifacts will be at the Nebraska History Museum
in Lincoln from June 15, 2019 to June 1, 2020.
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Learn more at history.nebraska.gov
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The Chrisman sisters near Gosheen settlement on Lieban Creek, Custer County, 1886. Daughters of a local rancher, each
of the sisters claimed her own homesteads, and took turns living with each other to fulfi ll the Homestead Act's residency
requirements. History Nebraska RG2068-1053
By History Nebraska
Sod Houses on Glass
