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| Governor Thayer |
I wanted to write just a bit more about the vigilantes from the early Nebraska days. In the area of the Niobrara River where Newt Turpin resided, it was well-known that vigilantes existed. The area included Brown, Rock, Holt, Boyd, and Keya Paha counties. After doing a little poking around, it seems that the spirit of the vigilantes played an immediate role in the Turpin family’s life in Rock County. I’d mentioned before that neighbor suspected neighbor sometimes and that law enforcement was a scarce commodity. In analyzing Louis Goochey’s story that he told to grandchildren, I could see that Goochey was incorporating some facts of local history into his own tale of woe to enhance it and justify what he did.
So here is a bit of what I discovered.
