Moses and Susan Cropps-Kirke Speese

Moses Speese family near Westerville, Custer County, Nebraska, 1888.

Solomon Butcher Collection: https://bit.ly/2Z2T2Tq

Quick Facts

Significance:

Nebraska Homesteaders, Life After Enslavement

Place of Birth:

Moses born Fayetteville, North Carolina and Susan born Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Date of Birth:

Moses b. 1838 and Susan b. 1843

Date of Death:

Moses d. 28 March 1896 and Susan d. January 1925

Place of Burial:

Moses and Susan buried at Westerville Cemetery, Custer County, Nebraska

Homestead Application # 12163 (Oct 11, 1882), Final Certificate # 8622 (May 27, 1889) Application # 4940 (between 1882 and 1886), Timber-Culture Certificate # 343 (August 13, 1894)

The homestead story of Moses and Susan Speese is remarkable, especially when juxtaposed with the reality of their early lives. The dehumanizing effects of enslavement set a dramatic stage against which their Homesteading years stand as testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

Moses Speese was born in 1838 to Moses Shores and Hannah Webb. The family was enslaved near Fayetteville, North Carolina, on land that is now Fort Bragg. A young Moses was sold for $1200 to an enslaver named Speese in East Bend, Yadkin County, NC, prompting the change of surname from Shores to Speese.

Susan Cropps-Kirke was born in Winston-Salem, about thirty miles from Yadkin County. Because she was considered “puny” and unable to work the fields, she was left behind when her parents and siblings were sold and sent further south. Susan was sold more than once. Her granddaughter reported that tears flooded Susan’s eyes whenever she spoke of standing naked for inspection by prospective buyers. She bore the scars from a whipping by her enslaver to her grave. Susan prayed that her children would never experience the indignities she endured.

Moses and Susan were married in 1863, and their oldest children were born while enslaved. After the Civil War they share cropped in Yadkin County, but the landlord took advantage of their illiteracy, cheating them at every opportunity. When they attempted to leave North Carolina some family members were held hostage. Rescue came in the form of a sympathetic neighbor who helped them escape the deplorable post-slavery conditions by hiding them under a load of hay and conveying them to a railroad station. There they secured safe passage to New Castle, Indiana.

Unfortunately, Indiana proved to be no less hostile than North Carolina. Schoolboys stoned the oldest son, Henry, knocking out an eye which he carried home in his hand. By 1880, Moses and Susan moved their family to Seward, Nebraska and on October 11, 1882, Moses traveled to Westerville, Nebraska and filed Homestead Application # 12163 for one hundred fifty-eight and 46/100 acres of land.

Sometime before 1886, Moses filed Application # 4940 for a second claim of one hundred and sixty acres of Westerville land under the Timber Culture Act of 1873. The Timber Culture Act required trees to be planted on twenty-five percent (40 acres) of the land. The second parcel of land was adjacent to the first, giving Moses and Susan a total of 318 and 46/100 acres of Nebraska land. On May 27, 1889, Mr. Speese paid a fee of $3.96 and filed final proof for the homestead land. Certificate # 8622 was issued. In 1894 Certificate # 343 was issued for the Timber Culture claim.

Moses, Susan and their seven children prospered in Westerville. When final proof for the Homestead land was filed in 1889, Moses reported having built a sod family home and hen house; a frame stable, granary and corn crib; a wire hog corral and pasture fenced with wire; and a well and a windmill. The Speeses had sixty acres of cultivated land plus forest and fruit trees.

Livestock consisted of five horses, eleven cows and one hundred and forty hogs. The property holdings were rounded out with two wagons, a buggy, two cultivators, three plows, and several other pieces of farm equipment. From the filing of the Homestead claim to final proof, the Speese family successfully produced sixty to eighty acres of corn, wheat and oats each year. While Moses worked the farm, Susan was midwife to many families in Custer County.

Moses’ and Susan’s farm operation was the foundation that provided their children a life far beyond the slave quarters. The Speese home was comfortable with household goods, but Moses and Susan added books and musical instruments, including an organ. Several of the children spoke more than one language and they all played the piano and violin. Moses and Susan lived to witness their children become ministers, lawyers, and professional musicians in a world void of the brutal life that haunted Susan’s dreams.

Henry, who lost an eye to school yard bullies in Indiana, completed his theological education at Tabor College in Missouri. He was a missionary in Montana and the Dakotas, and he pastored churches in Illinois, Indiana, and California.

John became an attorney, studying at the University of Nebraska and practicing in Topeka, Kansas. He eventually returned to Torrington. Radford may also have attended the University of Nebraska. Several of the Speese children formed a professional touring musical group.

The children and their extended families were also involved with other predominately black communities in the early twentieth century west. Several of the children left Westerville for Torrington, Wyoming where they were instrumental in establishing the town of Empire. Son Charles, married Rose Meehan and eventually settled in her family’s home in DeWitty, NE before moving on to Okobojo in Sully County, South Dakota.

About 1890, famed Nebraska photographer, Solomon Butcher, immortalized the Moses Speese family in his collection of Custer County homesteaders. The iconic Speese family picture has been used in movies like Posse, in the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. television show, Finding Your Roots, and in several books, and websites.

Moses Speese passed away in Westerville on March 28, 1896. His resting place is at the top of the hill in the Westerville cemetery where a three-foot-tall headstone marks his resting place. Susan passed away in January 1925, and rests in Westerville also.

Photo Credit: Speese Family

This frame house was built by Moses Speese to replace the family’s sod house. It was completed a year before his death. The house was demolished about 1980, but granddaughter, Ava Speese Day, acquired a 5 ½ foot board with hinges to use as a frame for this image. This image is from a family album.

Newspaper article from the Custer County Chief in Broken Bow, Nebraska on February 28, 1908.

In 1908, Charles Speese, son of Moses and Susan, sold his Westerville land and moved to Torrington, Wyoming. It is impossible to imagine the emotions his mother, Susan, felt when this article was published. Perhaps the acolade to her son was a balm to her soul after all she suffered during enslavement.

Sources:

Personal letters, research notes, and writings by Ava Speese Day and her sister, Lena Speese Day.

Todd Guenther, “The Empire Builders, An African American Odyssey in Nebraska and Wyoming,” Nebraska History 89 (2008): 176-200.

Ava Speese Day, “A Piece of Speese, A Reunion of the Meehan, Speese/Shores & Day Families,” August, 1998, St. Paul, Minnesota.

~ Contributed by Catherine Meehan Blount

Catherine Meehan Blount is the granddaughter of Nebraska Homesteaders, Charles and Hester Meehan. She is an avid family historian who has spent almost fifty years preserving family letters and photographs, researching the history of the Meehan and extended families, and sharing the family story.

The story of Moses and Susan Cropps-Kirke Speese is based on Catherine’s research and on extensive research and writing by her cousins, Ava Speese Day and Lena Speese Day. The Speese Day sisters were the granddaughters of Moses and Susan. They were born in sod houses in Nebraska and were intimately familiar with their grandparents and with the homestead experience.