Holcomb-Arneson Family

Joseph C. Holcomb came to the Walnut Creek area of Webster County (southwest of Red Cloud) in 1870. A year later, his sister Mary E. Holcomb (1848–1929) also came to Webster County, homesteading her own quarter section of the Walnut Creek township. She had a dugout house on the property, and while Mary kept house for her brother, her mother Eliza remained at the dugout to fulfill the requirements of the homesteading agreement.

It's believed that Mary Holcomb was the first woman homesteader in Webster County.  In 1879, she married Anthony Arneson, and he built a frame farmhouse to replace the dugout. In a remembrance of Mary Holcomb Arneson that was written by her friend A.C. Sanford, Mary's life in Indiana and Chicago was described as "not very wealthy [but] with every refinement, every comfort" a person could want. Sanford remembered that some of Holcomb's family was "ready to return to civilization" but Mary Holcomb believed "If I could stand it, you could stand it, and we will yet carve out a home in this wild desert."

This farm has remained in the Arneson family. Aleck Arneson, Anthony and Mary's grandson, was cited as a Centennial Farm by the AK-SAR-BEN organization in 1971.