Bill and Diana Sowers
, Lincoln County CoordinatorsTracee Hamilton, Lincoln County Coordinator
Lincoln Sentinel-Republican, Dec. 14, 1933
By C.C. Hendrickson
Today, Sept. 3, 1933, we placed a simple marker of marble and concrete near the place, 1½ miles southeast of Lincoln, where young Strange [James H. Strange] was killed by the Indians May 30, 1869.
No hand with a pen of gold could have placed more fitting words on the little marker than our friend Toughf[sic], and he paid the price of the prairie. Little did that old uncle of mine, J.S. Strange, think when he crossed the Missouri river winding his way westward seeking a home for himself and family that he would give one of his own sons to pay for that homestead. But he was only one of hundreds that had to pay the price and now sleep in this land of ours, many with unmarked, unknown graves.
The first that had to pay here in Lincoln county were the Moffitt brothers, Tyler and Houston, Aug. 6, 1864. The Moffitt brothers’ bodies were taken to their old home in Illinois and laid to rest in the family cemetery. Their former graves on the Dan Day farm east of Lincoln are unmarked and unknown. The ledge of rocks where they fought their last fight has been defaced so that in the years that have passed even the old pioneers would hardly recognize it as their old battle ground.
(There is a gravestone for James H. Strange in the Lincoln Cemetery but no body in the grave. It is believed he is still buried in his original gravesite on a farm near where he was killed.)