38 Nebraskaland • March 2025
ebraska frontier life involved hardship, deprivation and
… luxury?
One of the striking things about pioneer narratives is
the important role of luxuries where such things were
hard to get. When Nebraska Territory opened to settlers in
1854, a string of crude villages sprang up quickly along the
Missouri River. People staked out farms and town lots and
lived in tiny cabins or dugouts while they speculated in real
estate and dreamed of the future. For the fi rst few years,
"Everybody considered himself rich or likely soon to be," in
the words of early Omaha historian Alfred Sorenson.
Mrs. Fenner Ferguson, wife of the fi rst chief justice of
the Nebraska Supreme Court, had a piano shipped from St.
Louis in 1855.
Her daughter-in-law later recalled that "Mrs.
Ferguson's piano was one of her greatest comforts in those
early days. I have often heard her say that many times when
she would be practicing, the room would suddenly become
darkened and she would fi nd the Indians looking in at the
windows to see and hear what was going on. She often asked
them in and played for them."
On New Year's Day, 1855, Acting Gov. Thomas Cuming
bought a basket of eggs so his wife could make "Virginia
egg nog, Mrs. Cuming being a Virginian." While sipping the
beverage, Cuming joked that the eggs were "extra fi ne" and
quoted the price — a dollar an egg, roughly $37 in today's
money. It isn't clear how Mrs. Cuming reacted to that news,
but she was still telling the story 50 years later.
That winter, Tom Cuming suggested holding an "executive
Frontier Luxury
By David L. Bristow, Nebraska State Historical Society
N
The Thomas P. Kennard house (with cupola) in 1872. Located on H Street just west of 17th Street in Lincoln, the house is owned
by the Nebraska State Historical Society. The view is to the southeast from the capitol. NSHS RG2432-1-337
