`

Nebraska Authors

Ruth P. Van Ackeren

Born 1905-05-13 Norton, KS (USA)

Died 2002-04-10
Omaha, NE (USA)

Buried
Omaha, NE (USA)
Calvary Cemetery

Van Ackeren was author and co-author of two important books about the history of Sandhills ranching that connect at many points with Mari Sandoz's Old Jules and Sandoz's writing on the upper Niobrara. The books follow the fates of Bartlett Richards, his Old Spade Ranch, and Lawrence Bixby, who preserved the Old Spade after Richard's death in jail for collusion with Kinkaiders and manipulation of homesteading regulations.

Van Ackeren had a long career as a journalist, and began writing for newspaper publication in the eighth grade for a publisher who did not know her age.

Places Lived

Norton, KS
Sandhills, Nebraska
North Platte, NE
Omaha, NE
Lakeside, NE

Author Of

  • Fiction
  • Journalism
  • Nonfiction

Keywords

History--Sandhills; Bartlett Richards; Short Stories; Biography; Lawrence Bixby; Ranching History; Cattle Industry

Occupation

Journalist
Writer
Newspaper Correspondent
Country School Teacher
Secretary

Honors

National Western Heritage Award, 1980
Honored in Oklahoma Cowboy Hall of Fame, 1980

Bibliography

Lawrence Bixby: Preserver of The Old Spade Ranch. 1995.
Bartlett Richards: Nebraska Sandhills Cattleman. with Bartlett Richards, Jr., 1980.

We appreciate corrections and additions to our information about authors, but please read the following guidelines and caveats carefully.

  • The Nebraska Authors database is based on publicly available sources. Unless you are the author contacting us in person, it helps us if you cite the source or sources of your information. We cannot include unsourced information in the database.
  • We may be appreciative of information we choose not to include in the publicly available database.
  • To include an image on an author profile, please send jpg attachment to nebraskaauthors@lincoln.ne.gov. A photo-release agreement is required before the image will be published on this site.
  • Because of the way we are staffed, expect corrections or additions to take time, sometimes up to three months.
  • While we initially included some actual links to external URLs in the database, we will in the future no longer provide functioning links. We will instead record the presence of specific external materials in language that we hope will help intelligent users find it themselves. Web rot, in which actual materials remain online but undergo changes in their URLs, is too demanding in terms of staff time for us to hope to keep external links current.

Please copy, fill out the form below, and email it to heritage@lincoln.ne.gov to suggest a change.

/
Ruth P. Van Ackeren
ruth-van-ackeren

Do you have corrections for the above information or other information to add?:

(e.g. Author is buried in Fremont, not in David City / Also wrote for the Daily Nebraskan during her time as a student)