Remembrances of Napoleon Bonaparte Rees

Remembrances
of
Napoleon Bonaparte Rees

In October 1915, the Lincoln Sentinel began publishing historical accounts of the settling of Lincoln County written by Napoleon Bonaparte Rees, who had just been chosen as president of the Old Settlers reunion association. Mr. Rees’ remembrances were published nearly every week for more than six months. The last installment I was able to find was May 18, 1916. If anyone has any missing pieces of this series, however, please notify Tracee Hamilton at the email address at the bottom of the page.

Mr. Rees apparently started his series by consulting old account books from the Rees Mill, which was owned and operated by his father, Elias Rees. The series goes on to detail, by neighborhood, who the earliest arrivals in the county were. It also tells of the Indian raids and other crimes during those early days.

A transcription note: I have corrected only the most egregious spelling errors when the correct names were known as fact; otherwise, I have left the transcription as close to the original as possible, trying to embellish only where I thought the meaning was unclear. I did clean up the punctuation; the writer tended to use dashes instead of periods, which made reading difficult. I transcribed from copies made from microfilmed copies, so there are occasionally some words that I could not read because of black splotches or other damage to either the originals or the film; I’ve indicted those spots in brackets.

Mr. Rees started each installment with this greeting:

To the Old Settlers of Lincoln County

DO YOU HAVE
QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONTRIBUTIONS FOR US?

Bill and Diana Sowers, Lincoln County Coordinators
Tracee Hamilton, Lincoln County Coordinator

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