August 29, 1937 -July 22, 2022 William “Bill” Teel, age 84, of Indianola, Nebraska, was surrounded by his family when he passed away at his home in Indianola late Friday evening, July 22, 2022. Bill was born at the family home in Frontier County to Warren A.

Just west of Wilsonville, Nebraska is a small pioneer cemetery know as the J. O. Stone Cemetery. There are 46 people buried in the Stone Cemetery dating back to 1882. According to Robert Pore, Julius Stone first came to the area with his family in a covered wagon in 1875. He built a sod house and began to break the prairie sod to farm. In 1882 he decided to do something for the growing community and deeded two acres of his homestead to Furnas County for a cemetery that the public could use free of charge. A.A. Plumb, the first person to settle in the Wilsonville area in 1871 is also buried there. The last person to be buried at the cemetery was in 1982.

Recently, I visited the grave of Civil War Veteran Samuel Phenice who is buried in the small cemetery at the community of Precept, Nebraska which is south of Beaver City a few miles. According to Eula Brown, who found his story in an early Times Tribune article, he fought in the Civil War and was wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness. Later he was assigned to examine soldiers' passes to Ford's Theatre and was on duty there the evening of April 14, 1865, the night that President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. Let me quote Phenice in the account of that night.