NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/625084
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2016 • NEBRASKAland 53 Museum. "These inventions do not come as a happy inspiration to men, but are the outcome of deep and long-sustained effort," according to the Biographical, Genealogical and Descriptive History of the First Congressional District of New Jersey, published in 1900. "It has been such qualities that have won Mr. [George W.] Pressey prominence among the mechanical inventors of the land and gained him a handsome competence." In 1859, Henry's wife Julia gave birth to young Henry Eugene, whom friends later called Harry, probably to differentiate between he and his father. Harry spent the first two decades of his life in Hammonton. Few documents exist to color his formative years, though census records show he was just one of seven sons, and that a 23-year- old laborer lived with the family for an uncertain period of time. Further, both Henry and Julia were leaders in the local Universalist church, hosting social functions to bolster their faith, which dismissed the Calvinist doctrine of predestination once dominant in American culture. No doubt Harry was exposed to Universalist beliefs at an early age. Regardless, by the time Harry turned 21, he considered himself a farmer, a trade he would soon follow 1,500 miles west to Custer County in central Nebraska. In Aug. 1881, Harry purchased the homestead of a man named EJ Packard in the Wood River township. He plowed the land and repaired the crumbling dugout, and by the following September, he'd moved permanently onto the property. On Jan. 7, 1882, he filed a homestead pre-emption claim (entry no. 2909) with the land office in North Platte, and spent the next five years working to "prove up" on the land. He broke 52 acres, planting corn and oats. He built a new stable, hen house, hog corral and a corncrib. He upgraded from the dugout to a new sod house with a glass door, "habitable all the year," he testified, and in an act of forward thinking, he planted 700 two-year-old "forest trees" at a cost of roughly $200, nearly a third of his total expenditures in improving the property. History seems to have poorly documented H.E. Pressey's midlife. We do know, however, that in 1893, he married a woman 10 years his junior named Hannah Katherine Burbank. Born in Bitlis, Armenia (now eastern Turkey), Kate was the daughter of a Presbyterian missionary and doctor named L.T. Burbank. When they returned to America sometime around 1881, the church sent L.T. to spread the word in Custer County, specifically to those settlers along the South Loup River. "As he went from one settlement to another, preaching and encouraging the pioneers spiritually, he also administered to their physical needs as well," according to W.L. Gaston's History of Custer County, Nebraska. When Harry first met her, Kate was the first teacher in the history of the nearby village of Cumro. A decade later, in 1903, Harry bought the land Pressey State WMA sits on today, formerly the ranch of Civil War veteran Ferdinand Zimmerer. Once the postmaster in Tuckerville, Zimmerer prospered during his time on the ranch, acquiring land beyond his original claim and building a framed house next to the old soddy. All of it now belonged to Harry. He and Kate moved into the house, and like he had on his original homestead, Harry quickly set to work planting a large flower garden and experimenting with non- native trees along the South Loup River, among them more than 5,000 pines of differing species, according to the Custer County Chief. Though he may not have shown it, Harry must have been excited when Kate first revealed she was related to botanist Luther Burbank, famous for developing more than 800 varieties of plants and flowers, the Shasta daisy and the blight-resistant russet Burbank potato among them. In curating the nature on his new property, Harry frequently consulted with the famous botanist. "He has planted almost innumerable varieties of trees and shrubs, and has properly cared for them until they became a stately forest," wrote Outdoor Nebraska. "The flower garden which he and his wife…maintained each season attracted