Warrick Ranches
1900 to 1960
Buying and selling livestock was a big business in developing rural Nebraska. There was no big outlet for grain, especially before the railroad came through Meadow Grove. Many farmers raised livestock that could be fed and driven into town, where it was sold. The railroad opened up a huge market, not only for livestock but also for grain. Warrick & Sons had large lots to hold hogs until they could fill a railcar to be shipped to the packing plants in Omaha, NE. Meadow Grove had a small but busy livestock sales barn and shipping facilities on the railroad. I remember being warned to be careful around large pigs. They were dangerous.
Feeding cattle, hogs and sheep was very profitable for farmers especially after the railroad arrived in 1871. When sheep would arrived from Wyoming and Montana all the boys would help unload the train cars full of sheep. Many had to be pulled out but sometimes, if one would go out, the whole herd of sheep would follow. Cattle feeding was also profitable. In the early years most livestock was butchered locally, as meat could not be shipped long distances. Grain could. In the boom times of the 50s and 60s, refrigerated rail cars arrived to ship meat to the West Coast and fresh fruit to the Midwest and East Coast.
Rail transportation was heavily used, and Meadow Grove had three to four passenger trains a day that could pick you up and take you into the city. My grandmother Warrick could get on the train in Meadow Grove, go to Norfolk, shop and be back in Meadow Grove for supper.
Sunday Afternoon Picnic at the family home in South Meadow Grove. Sometime in early 1900
J. W. Warrick Sr. Residence build in 1903 as written up in the Norfolk County Times in 1904.
Ruth and John Wesley Warrick Jr. had two sons and a daughter: John Wesley Warrick III (Jack), who passed away in 2018, Robert, who lives in Oceanside, CA and Janet (Warrick) McMullen, who lives in Stella NE.
John Wesley Warrick Jr., the only son off John Wesley Warrick Sr., attended Culver Military Academy, Indiana and received a degree from the University of Nebraska. He was expected to come home and help his father in the lumber, grain and livestock business.
Ruth Hoflund Warrick, his wife, graduated from Wesleyan University in Lincoln, NE and taught school in rural Hawarden, Iowa. Her father, O.E. Hoflund, was a successful business man, selling silos and insurance. Her sister Grace was married to Warren Gregg, a farmer and cattle feeder.
My fathers three sisters, Bess, Dorthey, and Ruth all went to Wesleyan University in Lincoln, NE. There they met their future husbands. Bess, the oldest, lived in California, Dorthey lived in Omaha, NE, and Ruth lived in Lincoln, NE. I grew up with lots of cousins and Christmas was a gathering of the Warrick family that was something.
I loved to visit my mother's relatives in Hawarden, IA. Many happy summers were spent playing with friends I made in Hawarden and swimming with my cousin, Francie. My other cousin Glen was in the army and fighting in Europe in WWII.
My early years were spent living in Meadow Grove, population 500. My grandfather Warrick owned a quarter section on the south edge of Meadow Grove raising corn, oats and alfalfa and lots of pigs. That was where he built his large home. In1928 my father also built his home on the same section, across from my grandparent's house.
Soybeans were not grown locally until the 1960s. I would help the hired men whom my grandfather employed, stacking bottomland prairie hay using horses. I was also employed helping catch pigs, to be castrated.
We would use “horse sweeps” and then had stackers that could lift the hay and dump it in piles, where two men would “stack hay”. Hot, hard work, which occupied a lot of my time during the summer. I would drive the stacking team of horses that would lift the hay up to the stacks. I would also drive a team which pulled a rake that would rake the newly mown hay into windrows. The stacked hay would be fed to horses and cattle during the winter months. We also used horses to cultivate corn and pull wagons to harvest the corn. My grandfather did have tractors, but mainly for plowing.
In 1939 we had our first farm plan with the then USDA Soil Conservation Service.
John Wesley Jr. and Ruth Warrick.
Wedding picture 1925
1940-1950
Most of the farm ground was plowed in the spring, prior to planting corn. This was a major land use problem, as the land would be uncovered and would blow away in the spring winds. Especially after rains and before the ground would be covered with growing corn. Some of the dust storms were terrible. Now, with the tillage machinery farmers use and the herbicides to stop weeds, most of the ground has a cover. During World War II, Nebraska was fairly isolated, however we did have a number of Army Air Force Bases and military facilities that made bombs for the war. In 1941 the Department of the Army placed an “Air Ground Gunnery Range" north of Meadow Grove. It consisted of a strip of land of a few thousand acres, mostly pasture. But a few farm families were forced to move to other areas.
1941--1945
The gunnery range provided a wonderful and exciting place. Families could drive up to watch the Army Air Force practice low-level flying and gunnery. The P47 Mustang was my favorite plane. It had a large radial engine and the planes would roar over my home in formation, just clipping the tree tops. Many times when planes were not practicing we would run out and pick up empty 50 caliber casings. The Army even built targets for the planes to shoot at and bomb them with fake bombs. The use of this fragile land for practice did cause erosion and litter problems. When Warrick & Sons purchased a section of land, that was within this gunnery range, from the Drahota family we had to spend time repairing and replanting “blowouts” and also picking up bomb casings littering the pasture. I have a letter from the Army Corp of Engineers warning me of any unexploded munitions in the pasture. However we did not find any.
Another fond memory, and one I always enjoyed, was driving cattle on foot and horseback to the pastures north of Meadow Grove. We did own a river pasture, but we had rented additional pastures north of Meadow Grove. It took us 2-3 days to move cattle to the summer pasture in Pierce county.
1950--1961
After my grandfather John Wesley Warrick Sr. died in 1950 the running of Warrick & Son’s became the business my father John Wesley Warrick Jr.. He ran it with my uncle Emmet Warrick, who had followed his brother from Virginia to Nebraska. Emmet Warrick died in 1952. In 1959 my brother John Wesley Warrick III (Jack) came back after serving in the military and started running the lumber and hardware business, while my father ran the elevator business. The elevator business became quite profitable in the late 40s and 50s, due to the fact that a surplus of corn was being raised by farmers who returned from WWII. Grain was financially supported by federal price supports, as there were no markets for all this corn. So the government paid licensed grain elevators so much per bushel to store it. Warrick & Sons built a new elevator and many storage facilities to hold some of this grain (corn).
During this period occurred the largest physical growth of Warrick & Sons. The original name Warrick & Sons included J. W. Warrick Sr. and his son J. W. Warrick Jr.. Son J. W. Warrick III, Son Robert Warrick joined in 1961. Warrick & Sons incorporated in 1961 under Nebraska law and became a family corporation, with Robert as president, J.W Warrick Jr, Vice President, J. W. Warrick III treasurer and secretary. Stock in Warrick & Sons Inc were divided equally among family members.