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Our Grandfather, John Alexander Hogg, came from a long line of farmers. His grandfather, Robert Hogg, born in Donegal Co., Ireland, in 1783 - died 1852. He came to America in 1803 and fought in the War of 1812. He was in the Battle of Lake Erie, and while standing guard he captured Brig. Lawrence, for which he was decorated for bravery.
Later Robert Hogg took land in Mifflen Co., Pennsylvania and married Anna McCoy in 1816. They had nine children:
The eldest son, Robert Hogg, Jr., married Mary Jane McFate in 1843. Mary Jane McFate, born March 15, 1823, in Londonderry, Ireland, came to America in 1836. Her parents were Alexander McFate, born in Ireland, died in Ireland in 1835, and Margaret Mills McFate, born in Ireland, died in 1860 in Pennsylvania. There were nine children born to Robert Hogg, Jr. and Mary Jane McFate Hogg:
John Alexander (Alex), our grandfather, was born on a farm in Butler Co., Pennsylvania, near Harrisville. The family was Presbyterians belonging to the West Union Presbyterian Church of Harrisville, where their father, Robert Hogg, Jr., was a Trustee. The family was brought up by the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. The Sabbath was strictly observed. The food for Sunday was prepared as well as possible on Saturday and all clothing to be worn to church was brushed and made ready. Usually each member of the family had but one pair of boots. If those boots were not cleaned "greased and shined" the day before, they had to be worn to church just as they came from the field or the barn yard, so we were told.
Grandma's family was also from Ireland but they were not farmers. James Thompson came from Donegal Co., Ireland through Canada (no date recorded). He married Sarah Gilliland east of the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania about 1800. They kept a boarding house east of the mountains before coming to Beaver Co., Pennsylvania.
They had 13 children - four boys and nine girls:
William Hall, son of Patrick Hall and Margaret Floyde-Hall, was born January 9th, 1811, in Donegal Co., Ireland. William came to America bound to his Uncle, John Floyde, when he was 14 years old. John Floyde was a carpenter, so as his apprentice, William learned the carpenter's trade.
William Hall and Minerva Thompson were married in Beaver Co., Pennsylvania in 1843.
Their eight children were:
Our Grandmother, Margaret Hall, was born April 9th, 1844 in Butler Co., Pennsylvania, in the little town of Centerville ( now known as Slippery Rock) where she grew up. In the summer of 1863 she went to visit her cousin in the country near Harrisville, to help her cousin make her wedding dress. One morning while the girls sat on the porch shelling peas, a young man, who was plowing in the field nearby, walked over to ask his young neighbor to go to a party with him. He didn't know she was planning to get married. This young man was Alex Hogg, our grandfather. That was when and where he met our grandmother. It was Margaret that he took to the party and a courtship followed.
Many years later Grandpa told his granddaughters that when he saw that jolly little girl with those laughing black eyes, he knew she was the girl for him.
In April 1865, William Hall moved his family out to Poweshiek Co., Iowa. Grandma taught school that summer in Iowa. In those days there were two terms of school each year - one in the summer that the younger children attended and a winter term when the older boys and girls were free from summer work so they could go to school.
That fall Grandpa came out to Iowa and on October 31, 1865, Margaret Hall and John Alexander Hogg were married in Brooklyn, Iowa. They then went back to Pennsylvania to live with his parents and help farm the next year.
Eleven children were born to John Alexander Hogg and Margaret Hall Hogg:
Our mother, Mary Minerva Hogg, was born December 7, 1866, in her grandfather Robert Hogg's house in Butler Co., Pennsylvania. When she was little, Mother couldn't sound the "r's", and she couldn't say Mary, so she called herself "Mamee". So everyone called her Mamie and she was Mame or Mamie all her life.
The following year Grandpa rented a farm, where they lived for two years. It had a little log cabin on it and that is where their first son, Robert William Hogg, was born. Grandma's sister, Tillie, came to stay with them before Will was born and went back out to Iowa with them in April 1869. Grandma said the train was crowded with Union soldiers, most of them in worn and dirty uniforms, just as they came from camp. Some were wounded, but all were deliriously happy to be going home. The Civil War was over!
The first winter in Iowa, Grandpa worked in the woods cutting firewood for the Union Pacific Railroad. The engines burned wood instead of coal out here in the midwest at that time. He walked four miles to work and back each day. In the spring he started working with his father-in-law at the carpenter trade and learned to be a carpenter.
Grandpa Hogg's children liked to tell this story about him:
"It happened that first summer while he worked as a carpenter. It was a blistering hot day, not a breath of air stirring. One of those days that Old Timers would call a "weather breeder," and they would probably be right for already there were storm clouds boiling up in the northwest. The crew was up on the roof of a barn laying shingles. Along in the afternoon, the men wanted time off to go to the saloon for a glass of beer. Now their foreman knew that if some of those men got into the saloon, they would never come back and it would take all hands to finish the roof before the storm broke. He wouldn't let them go. But, he said, one man could go and bring back a bucket of beer for them. After collecting money to pay for it, they drew straws to see which one should go.
Grandpa drew the deciding straw! Now Grandpa had signed the Temperance Pledge when he was 12 years old and he had no intention of breaking it. Those men knew how he felt about drinking for he would never go with them for a drink after work, so they thought it a good joke to send Alex after their beer. (He was sure he was framed). He couldn't refuse but his "Irish Wit" arose to the occasion. "All right fellows," he told them cheerfully, "I'll buy your beer, but you will have to drink it out of whatever I bring it in." His first stop was the general store where he bought the largest chamber pot they had. Then he took it to the saloon and had the bartender fill it with beer. Stepping off the porch he carried that pot of brew up the road to those men. "And," his kids always added, "That was the only time Pa ever spent a nickel in a saloon!"
Grandpa Hogg brought Grandma and the six children to Nebraska in May of 1879. Our mother, Mary Minerva (Mamie) the eldest, age 12, Robert William (Will), age 10, Lola Margaret, age eight, James Burton (Burt), age six, Sarah Inez (Sadie), age four, and Lizzie Amanda, age two. There was no house on his farm, but Henry Shafer, a bachelor whom Grandpa had known in Pennsylvania, had a homestead joining his on the southwest. He had a small frame house and Grandpa made arrangements for his family to stay there. Grandma cooked for Henry while he helped Grandpa build his sod house.
Grandpa had a team of oxen, named Tom and Jerry, a breaking plow and a bobsled. The oxen pulled the plow to break the sod. Then, after loading the sods on the sled, the oxen hauled them to the building site. The sod house he built was larger than the average sod house, but it had a sod-covered roof like all sod houses had at that time. They moved into it that fall, even before the partitions were in place. There was no floor, just grass, which soon wore off leaving bare ground, which Mother said was soon trampled as hard as cement. They sprinkled it with water to keep the dust down, and it could be swept as clean as any floor. The partitions were soon put up and a cupboard made for the kitchen in the sod house. It seemed like home to them in spite of the dirt floor and unfinished sod walls. The walls couldn't be plastered until the sod settled. Since they had no well yet, they had to take the oxen and cow to a neighbor's place about half a mile east to water and Mother and Uncle Will hauled water in barrels on the bob-sled from there to use. Sometimes someone would have to go for a pail of drinking water and carry it back. They enjoyed driving gentle old Tom and Jerry who responded readily to their command of "Gee and Haw." The runners on that sled became as smooth as glass and slid over the prairie grass as well as if it were snow.
Another little sister, Ida Belle Hogg, was born February 18, 1880.
Life on the homestead must have been hard for Grandmother, for she was born and reared in town. She was a quiet, gentle lady. Small of stature. Not at all the sturdy, rugged type that we are often led to believe the pioneer women were, but she didn't lack courage or character. She taught her children to be industrious and dependable. The girls were taught to cook, sew and knit. Nothing was wasted. All scraps of cloth were pieced into quilts. All worn clothing was sewn into carpet rags to be braided for rugs or woven into carpets. Carpets were the pride of thrifty pioneer families. There was a sod schoolhouse, the Bluff Center School, located three-fourths of a mile west of their house, where the older children went to school. School terms were short, only six or seven months each winter, but Grandma had books. Papers and magazines came in the mail each week so the family read a lot. The "Youth Companion" was a favorite magazine. The day it arrived the chores were quickly finished so Mame could read the stories aloud before bed time.
The little inland town of Sod Town was about six miles north of Grandpa's. It consisted of a store, a blacksmith's shop, a schoolhouse, a church, and several houses, all made of sod. The Church was a Presbyterian Church, so Grandpa and Grandma transferred their membership letters from Mitchellville, Iowa, to this church that first year. Although our Mother was only 12 years old, she insisted on joining the church at that time.
Grandpa also took a Timber Claim of 80 acres just south of the schoolhouse, running east and west. Of course, he planted it to timber trees, and for many years the school children played in their shade and many a "last day of school picnic" was held there. Grandpa worked at the carpenter trade as much as he could the next few years for he needed cash to develop his homestead and raise his family. He helped build the flour mill and many other buildings in Shelton. At first he walked the nine miles to town on Monday and back home Saturday. Mr. Urwiller, a carpenter who lived near Sod Town, also walked to Shelton to work. Those men backpacked groceries home to their families on Saturday. Later Mr. Urwiller got a team of horses and Grandpa rode with him. Jacob Urwiller was a native of Switzerland who came to the United States as a child. They took a homestead near Sod Town in 1878. His great grandson still lives on that homestead, now over a hundred years later.
There were few trees anywhere except along the river and some plum brush in the low places and along the creeks. There were lots of wild plums that first fall and no fences to hinder them so Mother and Uncle Will drove those oxen all over, hunting for plums to pick. One day they were more than a mile south of home when they met another girl who was picking plums. Her name was Martha Kappler, the daughter of a German family who had a homestead two miles south of Grandpa's. They visited, getting acquainted as they worked. Most of the plums were red, ripe and juicy, but one tree had nice big yellow plums that were green and hard. Mother was going to leave them but this German girl told her to pick them, "Shust put dem unter da bed, den dey vill git ripe." Where else but "under the bed" would you find storage space in those crowded sod houses?
The winter of 1879-80 was a mild one and the following summer a busy one. A well was dug, a field of corn and a garden planted, although Grandpa was away from home much of the time. Summer and fall passed so quickly that they went into a second winter without a floor laid in their house. They must have written encouraging letters back East, for in September of 1880 two of Grandpa's married sisters came to Nebraska, Sarah and Otis VanDyke (Aunt Sade and Uncle Ote) with their three children, Myrtie, Ola and Jim, and Margaret and Joe Billingsley (Aunt Mag and Uncle Joe) and two sons, John and Robert (Bob). Also a brother, Sam Hogg, who wasn't married. The VanDykes moved into an empty sod house just east of the schoolhouse (the place that Uncle Cleve Hogg owned later). The Billingsleys located a mile west of the schoolhouse, in a house that was part sod house and partly dug out of a bank. (That was the Dave Hendrickson place as we knew it in later years.)
The winter of 1880-81 was a very bad one and a winter of heartache for everyone. Three blizzards occurred that filled the canyons level with the tops of the hills. The previous winter had been so mild that no one was prepared for such weather. It was cold and fuel was scarce.
One cold, stormy morning, John Billingsley came for Grandma and Grandpa. His mother was very ill. Grandma left Mother in charge of things at home. She left bread to bake. It was 2:30 the next morning when they came home and Mother was still trying to get that bread baked. All the fuel she had was hay that she twisted into ropes to burn. That made a hot fire on top of the stove but burned so fast that the heat went up the stove pipe instead of heating the oven. It was storming bad by that time. Grandma was carrying Aunt Mag's tiny new baby in her arms. Aunt Mag was dead. The baby was too weak and frail to live. It died the next day.
That storm lasted for days. It was a week later on a cold, clear morning after the storm was over when, with several neighbors helping, they started for Gibbon to bury Aunt Mag. They followed the tops of the hills as much as possible, scooping thru drifts as they went. It was sundown when they reached the cemetery. Of course they stayed overnight in Gibbon and came home the next day. Grandma was the only woman who made the trip and her feet were frozen.
Early in February little Ida caught a cold which quickly turned to pneumonia and she died February 13th, just five days before her first birthday. She was buried in Grandpa's yard, a little way northwest of the sod house. I believe I should mention here that it was the code of the pioneer settlers to keep a few boards on hand, in case of a death. Grandpa was called many times to help make coffins.
As soon as he could haul lumber from town, Grandpa laid a floor and also plastered the walls. Not only did he plaster the inside but the outside as well, making their sod house look like it was painted white (that made a nice background for Grandma's bright flowers). It looked real nice until the blizzard of 1888 nearly buried the house. When the snow melted it soaked the plaster so it all fell off as high as the snow was piled and Grandpa never re-plastered it.
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Uncle Otis VanDyke was a cobbler, not a farmer, so he soon moved to Shelton where he set up a shoe shop. Two more daughters were born to them in Nebraska: Murriel Agnes - 1886 and Gladys Eloise - 1893.
Sam Hogg married Florial Cook, a lady from Schuyler, Nebraska, and moved into the sod house vacated by Uncle Ote. Later they moved a few miles farther west. Then, after the drought of 1894, he went to Kansas, then on to Oklahoma.
In 1883, Grandma's sister, Tillie, and husband, Mose Chapman, along with their family, and her brother, Jim Hall (Uncle Jim and Aunt Molly), with their three children, Maude, Sam and Will, came to Nebraska from Iowa. Uncle Jim Hall located on a farm about three miles west of Grandpa's, but the Chapmans went up to Custer Co. and filed on a homestead in the rough hills between Ansley and the Clear Creek Valley, not far from Westerville. They stayed there only a short time before loading their covered wagon again and going west to Idaho. (Some of the Chapmans can still be found ranching in eastern Oregon.) Uncle Jim Hall farmed with oxen and one morning while breaking sod, Grandpa broke an ox bow and sent Mother and Uncle Will to borrow one from Uncle Jim. They walked the three miles. Aunt Molly gave them dinner, then they carried the ox bow back.
Mother was very fond of Aunt Molly and often walked over to spend the day with her. She had so many pretty dishes and she let Mother wash them and clean her cupboard. Three more children were born to Aunt Molly and Uncle Jim after they came to Nebraska: Harvey, Edward and Elizabeth (Libbie).
One year Grandpa broke a piece of sod too late to plant corn so he told Mother she could plant cucumbers on it. Those cucumbers grew real well in that new fertile sod. She picked them often, when only three or four inches long, and packed them down in five-gallon kegs of brine. She sold them to the store in town where they were resold by the dozens to ladies in town to make pickles by their own favorite recipes. Mother used the money thus earned for nice woolen material for a new dress.
The Eli Campbell family from Butler Co., Pennsylvania came to Nebraska the same year that Grandpa's did and took land joining Grandpa's Timber Claim on the south. I think they had been acquaintances when they were boys. The Campbell children, two or three boys and a little girl, attended Bluff Center School. The eldest girl, Sadie, was a little older than Mother. Addie was two years old. Sadie and Mother were the two oldest girls and became very good friends. One year a young lady from Chicago taught their school. Mother said she was a "giddy young thing" only 17 years old. She wore beautiful stylish clothes and brought paper dress patterns with her. She not only loaned these patterns to the girls, but also helped them make dresses like those worn back East. Of course, she made a hit with the girls. Then Joe Billingsley courted her and she married him, so then she was "Aunt" Annie to Mother.
One day that winter Sadie asked Mother if she had ever seen the man that she could "just DIE for." "Heavens," Mother retorted, "I haven't met the one I could LIVE for yet!" Mother thought Sadie had been reading too many silly love stories, but not long afterward her brothers came to school and told her that Sadie had eloped with John Riley, an older man who had been staying at the Campbell home that winter. He took her back to Indiana where he came from. It was 20 years later that those girls met again. Sadie was visiting her home folks and her sister, Addie Hendrickson brought her to see Mother.
As he broke sod and planted grain, Grandpa also set out several acres of fruit trees, not only for their own use but to sell, for he realized there was a good market for fruit. He set out apples, cherries, peach plums and apricots, also berries. As he set fruit trees for home use and market, he also set out hedge rows of mulberries around the orchards for the birds to eat so they would leave the other fruit alone.
Now it takes several years for fruit trees to bear, but Grandpa was an enterprising and ingenious man. While the trees grew, he planted sugar cane and harvested it in the fall and made sorghum to use and to sell.
When harvest time came, it was a 24-hour a day job. He hired 18 men to run three shifts. Grandma, with Mother's help, cooked for them three meals a day and a midnight supper when they changed shift, for that cane juice had to be kept boiling to make sorghum. This lasted about three weeks. In the evenings, while waiting to change shifts, the men often gathered around the table to play cards. One evening one man, who was a surly, quarrelsome fellow and a poor loser, accused another man of cheating. The argument became quite heated and seemed about to come to blows. Grandma stood it as long as she could. Then she laid down her knitting, went to the table, brushed those cards into her apron, carried them to the stove, and burned them. Grandpa didn't like that very well, for he liked to play a friendly game of cards, but Grandma firmly said, "There will be no quarreling over cards in MY house!".
John A. Hogg, Jr. was born July 31, 1882. Floyd Cleveland Hogg was born October 13, 1884. (Grover Cleveland was a candidate for the President that year and Grandpa was a staunch Democrat). Uncle Cleve was born right in the beginning of sorghum-making season. Then Grandma had phlebitis and was bedfast for several weeks. Mother was only 17 years old and she had the full responsibility of cooking for all those men, as well as caring for Grandma, the new baby, and sending the younger children school. Lola, who was 13 years and small for her age, had to stay home from school to help.
It was a pleasant walk to Grandma's house. So quiet and peaceful with wild flowers growing along the side of the road - violets, crocus, Johnny jump- ups, bluebells, sweet peas, buffalo apples and buffalo peas, daisies, roses, fox glove, lily of the valley, Job's tears and others. They were all there, each blooming at their proper season. The birds kept us company, too, and sang to us as we walked the one mile north. Meadowlarks, song sparrows and quail. There was a chicken hawk always circling lazily overhead. I think he had a nest in the tall grass and buck-brush in the ravine by the side of the road. When we turned west along Grandpa's orchard for another quarter mile, those trees were the home of many birds, robins, jays, catbirds, brown thrushes, doves, wrens and others, singing and calling cheerfully to one another. They sounded so happy like they were just bursting with joy.
The new house that replaced the "soddy" stood tall at the end of the shady lane where we always found a welcome when we walked to Grandpa's house.
It is 80 years later, the year 1983. Today we sped along this same road in a car going 60 miles per hour. I couldn't help but think back to the years that we walked over this country road, kicking up dust with our bare feet where now there is a well kept highway, wondering at the change that had taken place. The field west of the road used to be prairie sod where native hay was cut each year for winter feed for our horses. Now it is a corn field. Where were the wild flowers that used to grow so abundantly, not only along the roadside, but in all of the native sod? Were they victims of the plow or the chemical spray used now to kill all weeds? I don't know. Even the ravine was gone, the ravine where the hawk made its nest in the tall grass and the bunny rabbit scurried out of sight among the buck brush when we went by. That ravine was gone, the banks leveled and the farmers' grain grew clear to the fence. Now we turn west and see that the orchard isn't there any more. The trees, where the birds sang, have either died of old age or the drought years have taken their toll. That field is planted to corn. We drive up the lane that used to be lined on both sides with mulberry trees. The trees are gone. The apple orchard to the west is now a grain field. Only Grandpa's house is the same. It has had a new coat of paint and looks well kept but it stands alone. Not a tree any place for a bird to build a nest, no place for a child to have a swing, and no shade where the farmer can sit and rest, away from the noonday sun.
The hedge row by the front gate where Uncle Irv shot a rabbit with his new air rifle, that Christmas morning so long ago, it's gone now. The yard looks neglected, yet Grandpa's house still stands, tall and proud like the pioneer who built it, defying the ravages of time. Yes, that house stands alone like a brave sentinel overlooking the surrounding hills.
Grandma and Grandpa are gone now and strangers live in that house. The road leading there is a lonely one now 80 years later.
James McGill, son of James McGill [7/10/04 DJN - Now James is known to be the son of William and Margaret McGill], was born in 1793 near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. When he was 12 years old he was captured by Indians and carried down the river to Georgia, where he was kept captive for four years. An old Indian, who had lost a son, took him into his family and treated him as a son, teaching him the ways of the Indian, but James dreamed of home and longed to go back. One day the whole tribe got ready for a long hunting trip. They would be gone several days and everyone old enough to help in any way, men and women, both old and young, were to go along. James, who was a trusted friend, was left to care for the very old and the very young. "Now," he thought, "was the perfect time for him to get away." As soon as the hunting party left he started out to find his way back home. He traveled all day through the woods. When night came and he became hungry and cold, he began to think of the helpless ones back in the Indian village, wondering how they would get food or keep warm. He couldn't go on. He turned around and retraced his footsteps back again, arriving just as the sun was coming up.
When the hunters came back, the old men told them how James had left and then came back to care for them. The Chief held counsel and decided that James had earned his freedom, but to gain it, he must "run the gauntlet." Young braves lined up with their tomahawks and Indian clubs, two lines of them, several feet apart. James ran down the center with clubs and tomahawks flying all around him but not one touched him. When telling his grandsons about it, he said he knew his Indian brothers better than that. Their aim was perfect. They didn't want to hit him.
This period in our great-grandfather James McGill's life must have taken place about the years 1805-1809.
On April 8th, 1828, James McGill was married in Butler Co., Pennsylvania, to Isabelle Adams. We have no information or record of her family. She was born in Virginia in 1797 and died in Butler Co., Pennsylvania, in 1865. James McGill died in Butler Co., Pennsylvania, in 1883 in his 90th year.
They had two children that we know of: Grandmother, Rebecca Jane McGill VanDyke and her brother, William McGill.
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Although the Vandyke family has been traced to John "Vandike" born in 1739, there is no record of when, or from what country, he or his ancestors came from. He married Martha Huston in 1776. She died in Butler Co., Pennsylvania in 1820. John died at the same place in 1821.
Their son, Richard "Vandike," born in 1779, died in 1862 in Butler Co., Pennsylvania. He married Elizabeth Waddle, born in West Moreland Co., Pennsylvania, in 1782 and died January 26, 1862 in Butler Co., Pennsylvania.
Robert "Vandike," son of Richard, was our grandfather. (The "i" in the name was changed to "y" in this generation). Robert was born January 9, 1820 in Butler Co., Pennsylvania, two miles east of Harrisville, and died February 5th, 1890 in the same house in which he was born. He married Rebecca Jane "McGill" (Becky Jane) May 17, 1848. She was born April 16, 1829 in Butler Co., Pennsylvania, four miles east of Harrisville, and died January 14, 1899, in Butler Co., Pennsylvania, in the home of her daughter, Minnie McAllen.
Robert Vandyke and Rebecca McGill Vandyke had eight children:
Our father, Loyal Boyd Vandyke was born on his father's farm, two miles east of Harrisville, where he grew up. The family belonged to the same Presbyterian Church in Harrisville that the Hoggs belonged to, and were brought up in a good Christian home.
Grandfather Vandyke must have been a strict disciplinarian, for he told his boys if they didn't behave and got a "lickin" at school, he would give them another when they got home. But our Dad said he got one severe whipping at school that Grandfather never heard about. It happened on a winter day when the snow was just right for snowballing. The boys had had a grand time having a snowball fight at recess. Dad said his desk was right by a window over the roof of a low wood shed built against the schoolhouse. The day was warm and the window was open. When the schoolmaster rang the bell the boys all rushed in to take their seats. Dad said he didn't know what made him do it, but he reached out the window and grabbed a handful of snow off the roof of that shed and threw it across the room, hitting his best friend square on the back of his head. Snow flew everywhere just as the Master stepped back in the room. The Master didn't say a word but grabbed Dad by the ear and marched him up to the front of the room, then he reached over the blackboard for the hickory stick that he used for a "pointer" when explaining a lesson on the board. He didn't whip Dad, he beat him! His back was so bruised and swollen that he couldn't raise his arms to "skin out of his shirt" for several days. Aunt Clara, who was about three years older, helped him dress and doctored his bruises. No one told Grandfather. Dad had been punished enough.
Aunt Clara mothered Dad in many ways. Dad told me that he and his cousins "the McGill boys" were lively young blades and Aunt Clara watched them like a hawk to keep them out of trouble.
On September 18, 1883, Aunt Clara and John P. Hays were married in Grandfather Vandyke's farm home. It was a gala occasion with family and friends attending. That evening Dad boarded the train to go to Nebraska. As he bade Aunt Clara good-bye she gave him her Bible and told him to read it and be good. So it was in September of 1883 that Loyal Vandyke came to Nebraska to visit his brother, Otis, and then hired out to help Grandpa Hogg with the cane harvest and sorghum making. That was when our Papa met our Mama.
Although they were both born in Butler Co., Pennsylvania near Harrisville, to families who attended the same church, Grandpa Hogg moved to Iowa when Mother was only two years old. Hearing that there was still homestead land to be taken in Custer County near Westerville, Nebraska, Loyal Vandyke went there to find land to file on but there was nothing left but very rough hills, too rough to farm. So he rented a quarter section of government-owned school land, a couple of miles northwest of Grandpa's, and bought horses and what else needed to start farming. First he built a good two-room sod house and a small barn for his horses and cow.
Dad worked for Grandpa Hogg during busy seasons that first year he was in Nebraska and I am sure he noticed Grandpa's pretty daughter, Mamie, who was also a very good cook, and Mother recognized that good looking young man with the blue eyes and auburn hair to be the "man she could LIVE for."
Less than a year after Aunt Clara married she was left a widow by the death of John Hays in the Spring of 1885. Grandpa and Grandma Vandyke, Aunt Clara and Uncle Ellis, came to Nebraska to spend the summer. Loyal was batching so they stayed with him. While there, Grandma Vandyke quilted a quilt for Grandma Hogg. It was a friendship quilt that her friends in Iowa had pieced for her before she left there in 1879.
Uncle Ellis, a lad of 15, had heard them talk about prairie fires and was curious to see how prairie grass would burn, so one day he touched a match to some grass back of the barn. He soon found out how it would burn, for he couldn't put it out, and he saw a real prairie fire out of control. People were always on the watch for fires, so as soon as they saw smoke, everyone left whatever they were doing and came from all directions to help put out prairie fires.
Aunt Clara hired out to keep house for a widower in Shelton, Tom A. Taylor, whose wife had died, leaving a family of small children. After a few months she married him, September 22, 1885. They had two daughters, Ella born in 1886 and Jeannette born October 13, 1895.
It was a cloudy, cool Tuesday morning, July 21, 1885, when our father, Loyal Boyd Vandyke stopped at Grandpa Hogg's house to get our mother, Mary Minerva Hogg. It was their wedding day. They rode in his spring wagon to Gibbon, Nebraska, where they were married in the Presbyterian parsonage, by Rev. C. G. A. Hullhorst. Dad's sister, Clara E. Hays and George W. Brown were witnesses. Rain started falling so Loyal bought an umbrella to keep them dry as they drove on to Shelton where they stayed overnight at Uncle Otis and Aunt Sade's house before going on home.
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Loyal Boyd Vandyke and Mary M. Hogg Vandyke married July 21,1885. Their ten children were:
Now that their son, Loyal, had a cook, Grandfather, Grandmother Vandyke and Uncle Ellis went to Shelton to visit. Then after Aunt Clara's marriage to T. A. Taylor in September, they went back to their home in Pennsylvania.
The winter of 1885-86 was a mild one. There were quite a few young people in the neighborhood who kept things lively with Literary in the schoolhouse and parties each week. The Vandyke home soon became a favorite gathering place with many an informal party. Usually they danced, Mother said, for they had the smoothest floor in the neighborhood.
The years that followed were good ones. Little Blanche Louise Vandyke was born June 6, 1886. She was a pretty baby with auburn curls and brown eyes, the first grandchild and adored by her young aunts and uncles.
Many stories of that historic blizzard of January 12, 1888, have been told; of how it came so suddenly and caught so many unprepared and away from home. Mother and Dad were no exception. Dad was on his way to town. The sun shone bright, so unusually warm that he unbuttoned his coat. Then suddenly the sun was gone and a cold north wind, accompanied by snow, closed in around him. He was trapped in a blizzard so fierce that it was useless to think of turning back, all he could do was hope he could keep his team in the road the next four or five miles to Shelton.
Mother had been through so many Nebraska blizzards that she knew exactly what had to be done. She hurried to fill boxes, baskets and washtubs with cobs, stacking them in the kitchen. Not knowing how long the storm might last, she filled the manger with hay and shut the cow in the barn, and although she had been milked early that morning, she milked her again then turned the little calf with her so he would get fed.
The temperature dropped so rapidly that she soon realized that her supply of fuel wouldn't last many hours, so about three o'clock she and Blanche, who was about one and a half years old, ate a good supper and went to bed to keep warm. The storm raged on through the night, all the next day, and part of the second night. Mother got out of bed only when necessary to care for Blanche and prepare food for them to eat. The windows were drifted full of snow so she couldn't see out. When the wind died down she knew the storm was over, but when she tried to open the door she found it completely blocked with a snowdrift. It was late afternoon before Dad could get home. A neighbor helped him the last few miles and they had to dig a path through a drift that reached over the top of the door before they could get into the house.
One day we asked Aunt Lizzie what she remembered of the early days on the homestead. She said she wasn't quite two years old when they came to Nebraska and she remembered very little. She remembered that she and Aunt Sade roamed over the pasture picking wild flowers which were so plentiful, and she remembered climbing up a cliff to dig out some sort of yellow, petrified root that pulverized easily to make frosting for their mud pies. But there was one day later that she remembered very well. She said she went very early one morning to spend the day with her sister, Mamie, and little Blanche. Then she walked home late in the afternoon, singing along and picking flowers. When she got home she was told that she had a new little sister. That was April 4th, 1888, the day Rose Florinda Hogg (Aunt Rose) was born.
Loyal and Mamie's second child, Inez May Vandyke, was born February 26, 1889.
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Then in October, tragedy, in the form of typhoid fever, struck their home. Mama and Blanche Louise both were stricken at the same time and on November 5, 1889, little Blanche died and was buried in the Shelton cemetery. Fearing that the well on Papa's place was contaminated with typhoid germs, Grandpa persuaded Papa and Mama to live with them that winter. They never went back to live in their home on the school land.
Uncle Will and Aunt Lola were both away from home going to school in Gibbon. Grandpa needed help so he hired Dad to work for him the next year.
Irwin Hogg (Uncle Irv), the youngest of the Hogg children was born July 30th, 1890 and on September 7, 1890, Edgar Leslie Vandyke was born. Edgar was the seventh and last child born in Grandpa Hogg's sod house.
Grandfather Vandyke died February 5th, 1892, in Pennsylvania. At that time Dad was working for a farmer and sheep feeder, a Mr. Stockwell, who lived about two miles east of Shelton. He was a single man and Mother cooked for him and several of his hired men.
Early in the spring of 1894, Uncle Ote went back to Pennsylvania to visit and brought Grandmother Vandyke home with him to spend the summer in Nebraska with her children. Now the year of 1894 is another year that has gone down in history as the year of the worst drought that ever hit the Midwest. There must have been some rain earlier in Buffalo County, for in spite of a dry June, the corn in the valley was knee high by the 4th of July. Grandpa Hogg's fruit trees and berry bushes looked like there would be a good crop, the blackberries were ripening and Grandpa had pickers engaged to come the next Monday to start picking. Then, on July 6th, a hot wind from the south that felt like a blast out of a furnace blew hard all day. There was no humidity and the heat was so intense that neither man nor animal could survive for long without shelter. The air was so thick with dust they couldn't see the sun.
The house on the Stockwell ranch was a one and a half story frame house built like most of the frame houses on the homesteads of that day, with two rooms below and two above under the eaves. The stairway leading up from the living room had a closet enclosed beneath it. Grandmother Vandyke was there that day, and she crawled back in that closet and lay on a blanket all day to escape the heat and dust.
By the next morning the wind had died down. Everything was covered with red dust that came from as far away as Oklahoma. The air was still so full of dust that the sun looked like a ball of fire. The corn that had been so green was burned brown and rattled in the breeze like it did in the fall. The leaves on the trees were dead. Grandpa's berries that had looked so promising were dried up on the vines with the leaves curled and crisp.
There was no more rain that year. It is hard to realize what the impact of that hot, windy day had on the little town of Shelton and surrounding community. With their gardens and crops gone, there was nothing for many of the homesteaders to do but sell their livestock and go to find work elsewhere. Many went back east where they came from. Uncle Ote was a cobbler. Who would have money for shoes now? He closed his shop and moved his family to the larger town of Grand Island. Uncle Tom Taylor got a job with the railroad so he and Aunt Clara moved their family to Grand Island, also.
Loyal and Mamie stayed with Mr. Stockwell the rest of the year. He took Grandmother Vandyke back to her home in Harrisville, Pennsylvania, that fall. Then on December 8th, 1894, I, Ruth Gladys Vandyke, was born in the little frame house on the Stockwell ranch, southeast of Shelton. Nebraska.
During the early nineties, there was a heavy migration to the West, and newspapers were advertising the land along the Colorado River around Grand Junction, where irrigation was making the area there a Garden of Eden. Aunt Mollie Hall's brother, Ed Wilson, was Postmaster in Palisade and wrote encouraging letters telling of the wonders of the Grand River Valley. So in the winter of 1894, when the Union Pacific Railroad was offering excursion rates to Grand Junction, Dad and Mother decided to go west.
We visited the grandparents on the farm while Dad sold what they couldn't take with them. Then after a few days of visiting with the relatives in Grand Island, we boarded the train for Colorado. That was in March of 1895.
What I tell of our life in Colorado will be what I have been told or the childish things that I remember, for I was only three months old when we left Nebraska. Ed Wilson met us in Grand Junction, and we stayed with them in Palisade for a day or two while Dad looked for work and a place to live. We stayed only one night in the first cabin he found for it was so infested with bedbugs, we couldn't live there. When he finally found work in Fruita, we lived in a tent until he could get a house.
The nursery Dad worked for would sell trees faster than they could ship them in. Orchards were being planted wherever the irrigation ditches could carry the water. That was the beginning of the Grand River Fruit industry that is still producing some of the best peaches and pears to be found anywhere.
We lived in Fruita for about two years. We had good neighbors, and lots of children to play with. Someone gave Inez and Edgar a St. Bernard puppy. He was gentle with all of the neighbors and children, but would let no stranger come near.
Mother felt safe to send the children to the post office to get the mail when Bruno was with them. He wouldn't let anyone touch them. Also the highway ran right by our house and there were lots of hobos. But they didn't dare come into our yard.
There was a large strawberry field just outside of town. When the berries were ripe, lots of pickers were needed. That first summer, mother and a neighbor girl decided to pick berries. She put me in the baby carriage and with the kids and Bruno tagging along, they went to the field. I was asleep so mother put the water jug under the carriage in the shade and Bruno lay down beside it. Later when the neighbor girl came to get a drink of water, Bruno wouldn't let her near until Mother came, even though she played with him everyday at home.
The river was near and Dad caught a lot of fish, more than the family could eat. So he wanted to salt some of them down, but he didn't have a heavy, tight box. Edgar remembers seeing him take a new board and make one. He didn't have a saw, so he cut deep grooves in the board with his jack knife, then broke it into the proper lengths to nail together to make the box.
Mother said I was always a restless baby, never content to stay in one place very long. When I learned to walk, she made a little harness for me with a harness ring sewed to the back. Then Dad threaded another harness ring on the clothesline wire, and put a snap on each end of a short rope. One end snapped into my harness ring, and the other fastened to the ring on the clothesline. I could run back and forth along the line, or sit down and play in the sand pile of dirt, but I couldn't run away.
Our nearest neighbors, the Pecks, had a fence around their yard. They had a little boy, Freddy, who was about my age and Mother told me that I liked to run away to play with him. She said I would go to their place and shake the gate and call, "Ope-a-date, Peddy, Ope-a-date!".
Sadness came to our little community too. One of the neighbors lost his wife. Mother took his two small children into our home and cared for them, and cooked for the man until he could dispose of his property and return to Canada, where his folks lived. When he left, he gave Mother his dishes and cooking utensils. Two of the things I remember were a glass rolling pin that we used for many years. I believe a hired girl broke it about 20 years later. The other was a black cast iron Dutch oven that Mother used as long as she kept house. That old cast iron pot has a story all its own, which I will relate later.
Papa invested in five acres of land near Fruita, but had no money to develop it, so he traded it to a man for a team of horses, a lumber wagon and a cow.
The economic depression causing the money panic of the 1800s hit Colorado pretty hard. No one had any money. I recall hearing Dad say many times since, that there was work for everyone, but not money to pay for it. He said, "You had to take taters or honey for pay."
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In the Spring of 1897, Dad loaded our furniture and the family into the wagon, and with the cow and Bruno trailing behind, we left the Grand River Valley to go up to the Plateau country around the little inland town of Mesa. It was 40 miles from Grand Junction, a very long trip, especially for children. I must have been pretty cross, for Dad took me on his lap and gave me his watch to hold and listen to. But somehow it came loose from the chain fastened to his vest, and I dropped it out of the wagon and a wheel ran over it on that rocky road! Poor Papa! His good 17-jewel gold watch was gone!
We lived about two miles east Mesa for the next four years. It wasn't much of a town, really. There was a General Store with a Post Office in one corner, a Blacksmith shop, and a few houses. A church was built while we lived there. The first year on the Plateau we lived in a two-room log cabin on a farm that Papa rented from Lige Monroe. We may have lived there two years.
One day Papa came to the house carrying two trout. He was wearing rubber boots, carrying a long-handled shovel. He was irrigating alfalfa and scooped those fish out of the irrigation ditch!
Another thing I remember was that we dipped our water out of a spring hole among the rocks near our house, and a little stream of water ran across our yard. Edgar says they often saw small fish in the water there.
Ralph Burton Vandyke was born in that cabin near Mesa on June 7, 1897, and one day a neighbor lady came to see Mother and the new baby. Her little boy fell into the spring, and got soaking wet. He was about my size, so they put one of my dresses on him while his clothes dried. I didn't like that … a "boy" wearing MY dress! I don't think he liked it any better! We sat on chairs, glaring at each other across the room.
Inez and Edgar attended school at the Bull Creek School three miles from home. At first they walked, except when Nora and Jessie Monroe gave them rides on their ponies. Later Papa got an old pony for them to ride.
Everyone rode horseback in the mountains. One morning I crawled out of my high chair onto the table so I could look out of the window and watch Inez and Edgar ride away on "Old Blue." When I turned around to climb down, I lost my balance and fell on the hot stove burning my hands and one side of my face. Mama had just churned, so she grabbed a handful of unsalted butter and put it on my burns.
It was while we lived in Monroe's cabin that we lost Bruno. Someone poisoned him. A family with two teenage boys lived across the canyon from us, and Papa always felt they were guilty because they were afraid of Bruno, since he would not let them come near. Later they gave us kids a colt. Everyone raised gardens. There was lots of fruit, but no sugar. We had bees and sweetened everything with honey. I remember one time when our cow was dry, Mama made pumpkin butter sweetened with honey to spread on our bread. It must have been the second year on the Plateau that Papa rented the Davis place across the road from Monroe's. I remember many things that happened there. We lived in a two room log house, but there was also another small building beside it that we called the bunk house. One fall Mother was puzzled when the potatoes and apples that were stored out in the bunk house kept disappearing. One day she looked up and saw the missing items all lined up in a row, pretty as you please, just under the roof! A pack rat had been carrying them off. Papa made a box trap and soon caught the thief. There was a log fence along the road past our house. One fall we saw a large herd of longhorn cattle being driven along the road. They were the sorest, scrawniest cattle I had ever seen. They were all colors it seemed to me, black, brown, yellow jersey, spotted and brindles, with very long horns that clicked and clacked with a dull thud when they bumped together as they ran along. I can recall that sound even yet. The cattle were being driven by small dark men, perhaps Mexicans, who had black mustaches and wore big black hats. They had red bandanas around their necks, and wore buffalo chaps. Each carried a whip with a long leather lash that they cracked over the cattle to keep them moving along. The road was very dusty and they were all so dirty. That was the only herd of Longhorn cattle I ever saw, and the only real, old-time Western cowboys I ever saw. It was scary, but oh, so exciting. My brave big brother climbed right up and sat on the top rail of the fence to watch them go by, but not me! Nor sister Inez! We looked between the rails! These cattle belonged to Mr. Dinkle, a rancher who lived not far away. They were being brought down from the open range higher up in the mountains, where they had grazed during the summer. July 4, 1898. . . a day I remember! We celebrated at a neighborhood picnic at Collbran. Everyone was a stranger to me, so I stayed pretty close to Mother. All the men talked about was how the Battleship Maine had been blown up by the Spanish Fleet in Havana, Cuba, and about the war that had been declared in April. So many of the neighbor boys had joined the Army and had gone away to fight. I was only three and a half years old, but it left a lasting impression that war was a sad and frightening thing. There was a homemade merry-go-round on the picnic grounds, with a horse to pull it around. Not many children could afford to pay to ride. We couldn't. But when the horse was taken away to be fed at noon, the big boys pushed the merry-go-round, and all the children got a ride. Inez took me with her, but the boys made it turn too fast and I got dizzy and had to get off, but Inez rode all the noon hour. There was also a stand where fireworks and lemonade were sold. Papa gave Edgar a dime to buy firecrackers, and he bought one bunch for five cents. The matches and punk were free. He joined the other boys in playing war. One boy had a toy cannon that shot caps, so he and his pals were the Americans, naturally! The others with the firecrackers had to be the "damn Spaniards." One little boy, a stranger to Edgar, didn't have a nickel for firecrackers, so Edgar gave him half of his so he could play. Edgar still had all the firecrackers he needed, so he gave his other nickel back to Papa when they started home. Late in the afternoon everyone was shocked when a messenger rode in to say that one of the boys who had gone fishing up in the mountains, had drowned in a Reservoir.
It was a three day trip when folks went from Mesa to Grand Junction, Colorado: one day going, one day to trade, and one to return home. You either camped out or stayed at a hotel overnight in Grand Junction. I am sure I must have gone with my parents several times, for they made the trip once or twice a year to trade, but I recall only a few incidents that occurred on those trips.
One thing I remember was the steep canyon gorge that we had to descend to reach the valley below. There was a one-way road cut out of the canyon wall just wide enough for one wagon. There was the rock cliff rising high above on one side, and on the other side was a deep ravine with the river rushing over the rocks below. One time when we were going down this steep trail, a man on horseback met us. He said a wagon was coming up the trail from the valley below and asked that we stop and wait until this other wagon got up to a wider place. . . a place cut out of the rocks for passing. When the other man got his wagon into this cut as far as he could, so that we could pass, Papa had Mother and us kids get down and walk in case the horses became frightened and our wagon went over the cliff. It was a tight squeeze!
Another thing I recall was a "Half-way House" along the road where we stopped to feed the horses and have dinner. This Half-way House, as I remember, was quite a rustic place. There was a small cook stove, a table built against the wall like a wide shelf, and several three-legged stools to sit on. In another room was a bed where Mother put the baby down for a nap while she prepared food for us. Perhaps a particular day stands out in my memory of that place because on that day another family had also stopped to rest and eat. They were getting ready to leave when we arrived, and the lady sat her little girl, a beautiful blue-eyed tiny tot, on the table to comb her curly blond hair. She wouldn't sit still, so her mother rapped her over the head with the comb and said, "Sit still, Ada Lovell Gibbs!" I thought that was the prettiest name I had ever heard, and I always had an "Ada Lovell" in my doll families after that.
In the fall of 1898, I remember going to Grand Junction for Peach Week, a festival that was put on celebrating the first BIG crop of peaches from the new orchards in the valley. This festival, to promote the sale of fruit, was held in a new park. It must have been a new park because the shade trees were still very small. There was table after table piled high with peaches, and the men attending the tables invited everyone to sample the fruit, and eat all he wanted. Ladies in those days carried parasols to protect their lily-white complexions. Most of those parasols were ruffled and dainty, but one I recall served a different purpose. A woman dressed very fashionably in a black taffeta dress was carrying a man's large black umbrella with the crook of the handle over her arm. As she moved along the tables, she was dropping peaches into the folds of that umbrella until it was as full as it could be. When she turned to hurry away, one of the men at the tables noticed her and called out, "Bring back that bumbershoot!" Another one yelled, "Bring back that gunny sack!" But the woman hurried on and climbed into a wagon where a man had been waiting, and they drove away.
I remember the Hotel where we stayed some nights in Grand Junction. It had a narrow hall upstairs, with many doors before we got to the room where we were to sleep. And the ceilings were so high compared to our cabin home. One night a child in a room down the hall cried all night. When I asked Mother why he had cried, she told me the little one was sick. And three days after we got home, Ralph, Sidney and I took sick with fever and a rash. There was a severe epidemic of scarlet fever in the mountains that winter. Many children died. Scarcely a day went by that there was not a funeral some place. It must have been in the winter of 1900 because Sidney was only a few months old. The boys had only a mild case of the fever. But although I don't remember it, they told me that I was very ill.
Dr. Craig, the only doctor on the Plateau around Mesa, came every day to see me. He changed his clothes before he came into our house, and changed again and washed well before leaving, to prevent carrying the fever to anyone else. Uncle Burt Hogg and Bob Billingsley stayed at the Monroe's after we were quarantined, but they came every day to inquire about me so Uncle Burt could write letters to Grandma and Grandpa in Nebraska and let them know how I was. All I remember is waking one morning in Mama and Papa's bed (my little brother, Ralph, and I slept in a trundle bed that was slid under the big bed during the day), and Mother was leaning over me, telling me to look at the window to see who was looking in at me. It was Uncle Burt and Bob. The fever was gone, and they knew then that I would get well. A week or so later Papa carried me out into the yard, wrapped in a quilt, and put me in the rocking chair so the doctor could fumigate the cabin with formaldehyde, and burn sulphur to kill the germs, a practice later terminated.
Inez and Edgar had stayed with the Monroes to go to school when we had gone to Grand Junction that time, so they didn't take the scarlet fever. Before we had left Nebraska, they had had a mild case, what was then called scarletina, so they were immune.
One year, I recall, the Monroes took Inez and Edgar with their children, Nora and Jessie, to Grand Junction to see a Ringling Brothers Circus.
When Grandpa Hogg's sister, Margaret Billingsley, died, she left two sons, John, about nine years old, and Robert (Bob), aged five. John was content to stay with his father, but Bob made his home with Grandpa and Grandma Hogg. Uncle Burt was about his age, and those boys grew to be as close as brothers.
I don't know what year Uncle Burt and Bob came out to Colorado, but it must have been in 1898. They were young men in their early 2Os, and started from home all prepared to go to the Klondike Territory to stake a claim in the gold fields of Alaska. On their way they stopped off to visit at Mesa. I remember they stayed at our place and slept in our bunkhouse. Mother cooked for them, did their washing, ironing, and mending. They must have changed their minds about panning for gold, for they didn't go on to Alaska. Instead, they got work and stayed on.
Uncle Burt worked for a rancher, and while out on the range checking cattle, he found a bridle or halter, made of braided leather that an Indian had lost. He took it back to Nebraska when he went home.
Cousin Bob made friends with a young man whose last name was Billings, and they later formed a partnership of "Billings and Billingsley" and rented a farm across the canyon from the Monroes. Bob stayed in Colorado for several years and later married Jessie Monroe.
In the winter of 1899, we attended a program at the schoolhouse at Collbran, about eight miles on up the mountain from our place. There was snow on the ground. Papa had a homemade sled that he hauled wood and hay in, but it was too heavy to go that far, so he and Bob borrowed Mr. Monroe's bobsled. It had one seat for the driver and a box in the back padded with hay and covered with blankets for the rest of us to ride on. Papa drove with Mama beside him and Bob, Jessie, Inez, Edgar, Ralph and I rode in back. I remember that Jessie had a fur muff and she tickled Ralph's nose, and it frightened him because he was afraid of all furry animals, even our cat!
It was a frosty night, but with a blanket and buffalo robe to cover us, we kept very warm. I recall that the sky was so full of stars blinking and twinkling in the night. They seemed so close in that thin, pure air, as if we could reach up and touch them. The snow was deeper as we went higher through the woods and the spruce trees along the road were so heavy with snow, that they almost touched us on either side as we drove along.
Our Mother had prepared us to take part in the program at the school. Papa would sing a song and each of us children had memorized "pieces" to speak. I remember so well practicing mine at home. It was a little action verse. I stood on a kitchen chair and acted it out and memorized it so well that I have never forgotten it: Two little hands so soft and white. This is the left, and this is the right. Five little fingers standing on each. So I can hold a plum or a peach. When I get as big as you, Lots of things these hands will do.
Now I am sure that Edgar and Inez spoke their lines very well, and Papa sang his song. Then my name was called and I bounced up on the platform. But did I speak my piece? No! I sang a song!
There were no radios or phonographs, and of course, no television had been heard of in the 1890s, but Papa loved to sing, and we all sang along with him. We memorized all of the nursery rhymes, and often made up tunes to sing them by. Singing was as natural for me as speaking the lines, so I guess I thought if Papa could sing a song, so could I! I wish I could remember what I sang!
After the program, the benches were pushed back to the walls to make room for the dance, while the musicians were tuning up and preparations were underway for an oyster supper. I sat on a bench beside Papa, and the schoolmaster came and sat down beside us and asked my age. When told I was five, he said he thought I was small for my age. I was so indignant! I sat up as straight as I could and told him, "Well, I'm BIGGER than I LOOK to be!" After all, I felt quite grown up for my fifth birthday was only a few days away.
Mother's sewing machine stood in one corner of the bedroom when we lived on the Davis place, and the quilt on her bed was pieced, crazy quilt fashion, of pieces of fine wool, silk and velvet, swatches that she had collected over the years. Some were sent by aunts and cousins in Iowa and Pennsylvania, as well as scraps saved from clothing she had made at home. I loved to sit on her bed while she sewed and have her tell me where all the pieces came from. The blue velvet was Aunt Rose's best hood. Aunt Rose had blue eyes. Aunt Lizzie's eyes were brown like that brown velvet. The piece of brown silk was Aunt Lola's wedding dress. One piece was from Mama's wedding dress. The pretty fawn colored soft wool was MY baby cloak! Oh, there were so many pretty pieces and so many memories!
One day when Mother was doing the family washing, Bob told her to throw away one of his old black sateen shirts (they were in fashion then), as it had a worn out collar and cuffs and holes in the elbows. After washing it, Mother ripped it up and made me a little jumper dress with feather stitching using pink tidy cotton embroidery thread. Then she made me a pink blouse, or gimp, as it was called then. The dress was so soft and had a sheen like silk. I felt like a Princess! When Bob's girl, Jessie Monroe, told me I had a pretty dress, I proudly told her that Mama made it out of Bob's shirt tail! Poor Jessie, she was so embarrassed! In those prim and proper days men's shirt tails were something that were kept inside the trousers and weren't talked about by nice young ladies!
When I wanted to wear my new dress for every day, Mother told me I must keep it nice to wear to Sunday School. I was sitting on her bed pouting as a result, and was rubbing my little hands over her beautiful quilt. I told her, "Well! When I get big, I am going to let MY little girls wear their best dresses every day … and they are going to be made of silk and velvet, too!" Little did I know that thirty years later our country would be in the grip of another depression, and my little girls would be wearing dresses made out of second hand garments also.
Sidney Arnold Vandyke was born in the log cabin on the Davis place on November 9, 1899.
In the Spring of 1900, Mr. Davis wanted to move onto his place, so Papa rented the Stubbs' place with another log house for us to move into. It was near the edge of a gulch, and we had to go down quite a steep path to the spring to get water. I believe the place belonged to a widow for I recall that she and her son came to see us one day. She was short and so fat that she couldn't bend over to remove her rubbers or put them on again. Her son had to do it for her!
A Negro family (we didn't call them "blacks" then) had lived in the cabin before us. The kitchen was papered with newspapers. Their stove must have smoked a lot because the walls were so black and Mother told us jokingly that the Negro mammy must have rubbed her little picaninny's greasy head on it. We didn't live there long.
One warm spring morning, Edgar, Inez and I walked over the hill and looked across Mr. Dinkle's pasture. It was covered with cactus, which looked like a beautiful flower garden with its waxy flowers of almost every color. I wanted to pick some to take home to Mama, but you can't pick flowers from Prickly Pear or Deer Tongue Cacti.
Papa was quite ill that year, and not being able to rent a good place, he thought it would be better to take us back to Nebraska. So again they sold what they couldn't take back with them. The hardest thing to dispose of was his hay. Either no one needed it or couldn't afford to buy it. Finally he sold it to a rancher, perhaps Mr. Dinkle, for $2.50 a ton. He had to haul it and feed it to that man's cattle, day by day, until it was all delivered before he could get paid for it.
Packing what could be taken with us, the wagon was loaded and we started down that long mountain road to Grand Junction for the last time. Bob Billingsley was with us, to take the horses and wagon back up to Mesa. Our train would leave at 2:30 A.M., so we stayed at the hotel until time to leave. Before we went to bed, Mama combed our hair and neatly braided it. We only removed our shoes and outer garments, so it would be easier to get all of us awake and dressed when it was time to go to the depot.
It was exciting for us to see that big noisy black engine go past the depot with the bell ringing. When it finally stopped for us to board, a Negro porter in his snappy uniform, swinging his lighted lantern, stepped down, placed a step stool by the door for the passengers to climb aboard. Then he called, "All Aboard! All Aboard!" I was a bit frightened when the Porter lifted me aboard. The bell on the engine was still ringing and the engine puffing as if the train was impatient to get moving again. But we were soon comfortably seated and on our way to Nebraska.
I vaguely remember the train trip. We saw the mountain, Pike's Peak, and I recall the folks waking me up to see Royal Gorge as we rounded a curve. What I remember best is going through the mile long tunnel. Trains were not air conditioned then, so windows were opened for fresh air. When we were nearing the tunnel, the Porter came in and closed all the windows. If he hadn't, we would have been suffocated by the smoke from the train's engine. Then he lit all the kerosene lamps, for it was very dark going through the tunnel. As soon as we had passed through, the porter returned to open windows and blow out the lights.
I don't know how long we were on the train, but one morning, when we were near Julesburg, Colorado, Mother looked out of the window and called excitedly for us to come see the pile of corn cobs in a farmer's yard. Corn cobs? She had to explain to us what they were and tell us that we would burn them in our stove instead of wood, when we got to Nebraska.
I can still remember that bleak looking farmstead. There wasn't a tree or shrub any place, just that cob pile, a small frame house, a stable, and a windmill, which also had to be explained to us children. There had been no windmills around Mesa.
I am not sure what time of year it was, but it must have been late winter for I can't remember any green trees or grass. But Mother was so excited! She was back in Nebraska!
Grandpa Hogg and Aunt Lizzie were waiting for us when the train pulled into Shelton. Grandpa had a three-seated spring wagon, and there was still room for our trunks and other baggage in the back.
So many things happened that first year we were back in Nebraska. Grandpa had rented a farm for us one mile south of his farm. We stayed with Grandpa and Grandma in their sod house while Papa bought horses, cows, machinery, furniture for our house and whatever else was needed to begin our life in our new home.
The first Sunday after we arrived in Nebraska, Grandpa hitched his ponies to his big spring wagon so we could all attend church at Sod Town. As I remember, Uncle Irv and Edgar stayed at home for there was so much for two little boys to explore and talk about. All went well until we were about half way to church. There had been a heavy rain a few days before but Grandpa didn't know the bridge over Sweet Water Creek was washed away. There was a track where someone had driven down the bank and crossed the creek, which was only a small stream by then. Grandpa thought he could cross that way too, but those ponies didn't want to get their feet wet. They refused to cross the creek. Grandpa touched them with his whip and they jumped, broke the double trees and upset the spring wagon, spilling us out in the mud! Grandpa had to walk about a quarter of a mile to the nearest farm house to borrow a set of double trees. Needless to say we didn't go on to church.
Aunt Lizzie had remained at home to get dinner. I don't remember how everyone was seated around that long table in Grandma's kitchen, but three young men, my Uncle John, Uncle Cleve and their friend, Alfred Woodurn, sat across the table from me. Everyone was excitedly telling about the accident, so I had to speak up and say, "Yes! and I tore my best petticoat, too!" Those young men snickered, and Grandpa chuckled. Aunt Rose, who was sitting by me, patted my knee and whispered "Shush." You see, properly brought up young ladies weren't supposed to mention their undergarments in front of boys in those days, back when I was a little girl.
Inez and Edgar went to Bluff Center school with Aunt Rose and Uncle Irv the rest of that term.
We thought the frame house we were moving into was very elegant compared to the small log cabins we were used to. The house was like so many others of that era. It had two rooms, a living room and a bedroom on the first floor, with a kitchen built onto one side. There were three rooms upstairs under the eaves. The stairway led up into a fair-sized room on one end. The other end was divided into two very small rooms. We liked that. Edgar had one room and Inez and I the other. When our little brothers, Ralph and Sidney, were older, they slept in the larger room. Our front door was on the east and although there was no grass in the yard, someone had planted two clumps of "Bouncing Betts," a perennial that had clusters of beautiful pink flowers that smelled oh, so sweet.
There were trees north of the house, not very nice ones because a prairie fire had burned through several years before and those trees were the survivors that had grown up from the roots. But they were shade for us to play in, shade for the chickens and shade for the hogs back near the barn. The barn was small and low with no hay loft, but there was a well and a windmill not far from the house. There would be no more dipping water from a mountain spring for us. There was a cellar near the well. In that cellar was a long wooden tank, and all the water that watered the livestock flowed through that tank on its way to the barn yard, keeping the cellar always cool, even in the hottest weather. As soon as the cows were milked, the milk was put in covered milk cans and set in that tank of water to cool. Then Mother hand-skimmed the cream to churn it into butter, to be sold at the grocery store. That was the only way butterfat could be sold at that time. The cream separator came into use a few years later. After that, creameries were built in larger towns, and cream was sold.
But Mother continued to make butter. The five-gallon barrel churn was kept in the cellar; we all took turns at churning but it was Mother who washed, salted and printed the butter. Grandma had a round butter mold, carved inside with a design so that when taken from the mold, each print looked like a pineapple on top. She also had a beautiful covered cut glass butter dish to serve it in. But Mother chose a brick-shaped mold that held one pound of butter. It was a new shape at that time but has been the standard butter mold ever since.
The cream was churned several times a week; each pound print of butter was then wrapped in parchment paper and kept in that cool cellar until it was carefully packed in a wooden box lined with wet muslin. The box was placed under the buggy seat in the shade, a wet blanket was then tucked over and around the box to keep it cool on the way to town.
The fame of Mrs. Vandyke's good sweet butter soon spread through the town and the grocer, Morris Weaver, said some of his customers would buy no other butter. He was paying 30 cents a pound for printed butter but he soon raised the price to 35 cents to Mother. So Mother decided she should have a distinctive mark on her butter. She drew a mark across the center of her mold, and drew a star on each side of that. That evening she asked Papa for his sharp pocketknife. He grudgingly gave it to her, telling her she was going to ruin her butter mold, but Mother very carefully carved along those lines. After that there was a raised star on each half-pound of butter with a dividing line in the center to mark the half pound. Those stars became Mother's trademark. I am telling this because Mother's butter helped so much to buy, not only our groceries and clothing, but also it paid medical and doctor bills for the ten years we lived near Shelton.
We went often to see Grandma and Grandpa. There were so many interesting things to see at their place. Grandpa had many hives of bees and many fruit trees with lots of clover around the fence rows, so he harvested lots of honey to sell to the stores in towns nearby. Then in June the cherries were ripe and ready to pick. That was fun time for the grandchildren. Our Mothers helped pick cherries and many of the neighbors came to help. Grandpa gave them a share of what they picked.
There were also mulberries, June berries, gooseberries and currants. Later there were peaches, apples and grapes, and Grandma's cookie jar was always full. One of my fondest memories was laying on the floor reading one of Aunt Rose's storybooks or the Sunday funny paper, with a juicy apple in one hand and one of Grandma's ginger cookies in the other.
By 1910 we had outgrown the Judd place. The boys were old enough to help farm. Papa had been renting additional farmland each year but we needed a larger place to live. When Aunt Clara Taylor, Papa's sister, wrote that a large ranch 12 miles west of Loup City would be for rent that fall, Dad lost no time looking into the situation and contacting the owners, Beecher, Hockenburger and Chambers, a real estate firm in Columbus, Nebraska. This ranch consisted of four sections of land. Cattle and hogs were raised and fed on the place on shares. There was an eight-room square house and other good buildings. L. B. VanDyke, our father, signed a five-year lease, and when the corn was harvested that fall he billed a farm sale for November 26, 1910. He kept his best horses, wagons, farm machinery and household goods; everything else was sold. The next day five or six wagons were loaded and sent on the way to the ranch.
Mother and the four youngest children took the train from Shelton to Loup City. Then early in the morning on November 29th, Dad, Ralph, Sidney, Inez and I started out in the spring wagon. It was a cold, cloudy day with a northwest wind blowing and before noon snowflakes and sleet began to fall. We stopped at Hazard to feed the horses and eat dinner. In spite of warm clothing and plenty of blankets to wrap up in, we were thoroughly chilled when we reached our new home that evening. Several inches of snow fell that night. Two of the neighbor boys helped drive the wagons to the ranch, Harry Sobers and Claude Stapleton. They stayed on to help feed cattle that winter. The others took the train back home the next day.
We had been on the ranch about three weeks when Edgar, Harry and Claude attended a Christmas program at a neighboring school. Soon after that we heard that smallpox had broken out in that community. Thinking it would be wise to have all of us vaccinated, Dad called a doctor from Mason City to come to the ranch to vaccinate us. Claude had a sore throat and fever that morning. We supposed he was coming down with a cold, but when the doctor stepped in the house he said, "It's too late to vaccinate anyone here; someone here already has smallpox." Dr. Henderson had been with the army in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War where he treated smallpox among the soldiers there, and would never forget the smell of that fever. So, we were quarantined! (Everyone of us had smallpox, even Mother who had been vaccinated when a child.)
But, to be quarantined! What would Dad do? There was a carload of fat hogs in the pen ready to be shipped to the Omaha market, the railroad car had already been ordered and was to be in Mason City the next day. News travels fast over the party line. When our good neighbors heard that we were in need, even some men whom Dad hadn't met came with wagons to haul those hogs to market. We had, indeed, moved into a very nice, friendly neighborhood. There were lots of young people too, and we lost no time getting acquainted.
We got our mail at the Huxley Post Office located on the Custer-Sherman County line about halfway between Loup City and Ansley, just one mile west of our house. Mrs. J. M. Lowry was the postmistress. J. M. ( Monroe) Lowry took up a homestead and tree claim in 1877, and built a dugout on the bank of Clear Creek to live in. He also had a nursery and sold trees of all kinds, including fruit trees, to the early settlers. He gave the community the name of Huxley and in 1879 established a mail route, carrying the mail on horseback for three months. Later a Star Route was established between Ansley and Huxley.
The post office where we got mail each day was located in a small room built into the back porch of Lowry's nice frame house. One day soon after we moved to the ranch, Mrs. Lowry asked me to help her cook for corn shellers. I walked over, then after the work was done she insisted that her son, Maurice, take me home in his Sears Roebuck automobile. This automobile was like a one- seated buggy with small hard rubber tires and a gasoline motor. Instead of a steering wheel, a tiller was used to guide it. That was my first automobile ride.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Lowry were well educated. Mrs. Lowry was one of the first schoolteachers in Custer County. Mr. Lowry was a quiet man who confessed to being an atheist. When he died of pneumonia the following winter his family granted his wish to have his close friend, Judge H. M. Sullivan of Broken Bow, come to the home to deliver his eulogy. But Mrs. Lowry was a Christian and she asked my father, my sister, Inez, and I to sing hymns at the funeral.
Our nearest neighbors were the Adam Jahns, who had also homesteaded their land. Mr. Jahn called all who hadn't homesteaded "Newcomers." Others in our school district of Lone Elm were the Fieldings, Coppersmiths, Kuhns and Adams. Mae Adams, the eldest daughter in the Adams family, was teaching the school.
The first Sunday in June, I went to visit the Adams family; Mary, Ruth and I were playing croquet out under the big shady trees in their yard when a young man dressed in overalls walked from the barn to the house. Mary said he was her brother, Russell, who had just come home from school in Fremont, Nebraska. A little while later this same young man came out where we girls were. He had changed into a white shirt, red necktie and gray trousers. I think he wanted to impress the new girl in the neighborhood! He must have, for two years later I married that handsome young man.
An autobiography is an unfinished story and this one must have a sequel.
The summer of 1901 turned very hot in July. Sidney, 19 months old, became very ill with cholerainfantim or cholera-infantim. A hot south wind blew day after day. Papa hung a blanket over the open south window and kept it wet by throwing buckets of water on it. The evaporation helped keep the sick room cool. Doctor Smith came every day.
There was sickness in Grandpa's house at the same time. Aunt Rose and Uncle Irv had diphtheria. Then early one morning Uncle Burt took a load of hogs to Shelton. It was blistering hot when he came home in the middle of the afternoon. He stopped the team near the house and went to the well for a drink of water. There he collapsed. He was carried into the house and someone went to get the doctor. There were no telephones at that time. The nearest doctor was in Shelton, eight miles away. Uncle Burt died two days later, July 22, 1901. The doctor said he had a sun stroke. Because of the diphtheria in the house, Uncle Burt's funeral was held in the shade of the elm tree near the milk house. The organ was moved out of the house, chairs and benches were placed near where the casket rested on saw horses. Rose Smith, a neighbor girl, played and sang his favorite song, a cowboy hymn.
Ralph and I didn't go to the cemetery. Papa let us out of the buggy near our house so we could stay with Mother and our little sick brother. It was a sad day for all of us for Uncle Burt was our favorite uncle. Uncle Burt was 28 years old when he died. Grandma had begged him to leave home and go get a start for himself. He told her he would as soon as they could build her a new house. Times had been hard, with dry years and the Money Panic of the '90s. It was hard to save money. Then, when it looked like a new house would soon be possible, a careless hired man dropped a cigarette in the hayloft and burned the barn down in 1899. The hard earned savings went for a new barn.
Clara Margaret Vandyke was born August 25, 1901. Sidney was gaining strength each day and the weather was cooler. September was an exciting month. The threshing machine was coming to thresh our grain that was stacked at the end of the field and it would be at our place on the first day of school. Inez had to miss school that first day to help Mrs. Fink, the lady who was coming to our house to cook dinner for the threshing crew. Edgar and I went to school. Just after the last recess someone knocked on the schoolroom door. The teacher talked to someone, then turned and told Edgar he was excused. I saw him riding behind Papa on our pony as they went past the window. Now, why would Papa come for Edgar and leave me there alone with all of those strange kids? I had not seen a one of them until that day! I laid my head down on my desk and cried. I didn't look up until school was dismissed, then I grabbed my sunbonnet and dinner pail and ran as fast as I could for home. Mama told me that the man who hauled water to the steam engine had become ill and they needed Edgar to help haul water. (The man who hauled water was called "the Water Monkey." I never have understood why.)
The school we attended was "Mt. Nebo" District 56, of Buffalo County, Nebraska. The schoolhouse was located near the south side of a high hill that pioneer settlers called Mt. Nebo. We lived one mile north of the schoolhouse and went over that hill morning and evening each day. It seemed like we would reach the top each morning when the school bell would ring. Down we would run as fast as we could go to get into our seats before the teacher called roll and marked us tardy.
My first teacher was Jessie Keene and the last one Bernice Wood. It was a German community. We were about the only family who were not German. Boys and girls of all ages attended school. There were several little girls of my age, Emma and Marie Gumprecht, Rosie Bonsack, and Laura Wiest, who became my life-long friend. Later the Meusch girls, Lura and Lunora, and others who came and went, for some farm families moved nearly every year.
School days were happy days in our rural school. Besides learning the "3-Rs" we looked forward to the noon and recesses when we all played together. Sometimes we played competitive games and chose up sides. Other games were "Last Couple Out," "Drop the Handkerchief," "Pom, pom pull away" and "Run Sheep Run." Some of our favorites were "Anti- over the schoolhouse" and the ever popular "Let's play ball!," games played with a homemade ball of string. In the winter after a snow, when the meadow next to our schoolyard was level with snow, we always played "Fox and Geese." I wonder if children play any of those games now?
Drinking water was carried from the nearest farmhouse, about a quarter of a mile away. Two of the older children took turns going for water, usually carrying the water bucket suspended in the center of a stout stick, each one taking a hold of the end of the stick. Later fresh water could be pumped from a well that was dug on the school grounds. Country schools are a thing of the past. Rural districts have been consolidated and children are bussed to city schools each day. I believe they miss many of the neighborhood ties that country schools provide.
The Luce Post Office, where we got our mail when we came back to Nebraska from Colorado, was in a country store one mile north of Grandpa's house. The mail was carried out from Shelton each day and from Luce it was distributed to farmers in the surrounding countryside. Grandpa usually got our mail when he went after his and brought it to us. One day I recall was September 7, 1901. When Grandpa came that day, he told us that our President, William McKinley, had been shot the day before. President McKinley died September 14, 1901.
In the year of 1902 Grandpa hired carpenters and built the new house they had planned for so long. It was a beautiful big, two story house, with four large rooms on the first floor and four large bedrooms on the second floor. There was a pantry, a washroom, closets and porches. It was quite the nicest house in the neighborhood. Uncle Burt's life insurance did what he couldn't do farming. It built his mother a new house. But Grandma grieved so for her son, she was never happy in the new house.
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A year or two later rural mail routes were laid out throughout the country and the mail came to each farm directly from the Shelton Post Office. Morris Swan was our first mail carrier. The first mail wagon had an enclosed cab made of wood with glass windows that could be opened or closed, depending on the weather. There was a slot above the dashboard for the harness lines to come through so the driver could guide the team of horses.
In 1903 the telephone line came north from Shelton to Luce. The following year the line was extended beyond Luce to Sod Town, then on to Ravenna. But since farmers along the route had to pay for the poles, the telephone wire was strung on fence posts instead of poles for miles through the Sod Town community and remained that way for years. Soon the telephone lines branched out in the country until nearly every farmer had a telephone. There were ten patrons on our party line. That was not only a nuisance but a source of information. Much like a local newspaper, almost everyone listened in no matter whose ring ("rubbered" we called it) to hear the latest news, or gossip as it came over the party line.
One morning when Mother answered our telephone ring, a gentleman asked, "Is this one, nine, zero, eight?" "No, this is one, nine, zero, four," she answered. "Well, April Fool, Mrs. VanDyke. Look on your calendar; this is April 1, 1908," laughed our neighbor, Herman Kappler.
The farm where we lived was known as the "Judd Place." Grandpa Hogg had rented it for us from a man by that name. Then Mr. Judd died leaving the property to his daughter, an old maid schoolteacher who lived in Chicago. In the summer of 1903 she came to see the farm. Grandpa met the train in Shelton when she arrived and brought her to see her farm. She was a short, plump lady, not young, but she was dressed young. She wore a fluffy pink dimity dress trimmed with many ruffles and lace. Her hat was made of pink crinoline, pink roses and ribbon. I thought she was the prettiest lady I had ever seen.
The lady's name was Miss Susan Judd. Now we had an old black milk cow named "SUSAN" that we were afraid of; even Old Shep learned very quickly to keep out of her way. She had such mean looking eyes and she milked so hard and kicked so bad that no one but Papa could milk her. Mother warned us not to tell Miss Judd about our mean old cow. She didn't think a city lady would like to have a cow for a namesake. This City Lady seemed very much interested in everything about the farm and wanted to see the buildings. Papa showed her around, and of course we kids tagged along. When we came to the pig pen, there was an old sow with a brand new litter of pigs right in the corner where she had made a nest in the shade of a tree. I am sure they were the first newborn piglets Miss Judd had ever seen. She made such a fuss over them. She wanted to hold one, so Papa reached over the fence and picked up a squealing little pig and gave it to her. She cuddled it in her arms, cooing, "Oh, you little darling, you are so cute, so cunning and so sweet." I thought it was sort of CUTE, but how could anyone call a little pig SWEET!
Another little sister, Dorothy Helen Vandyke, joined our family on August 7, 1903. It may have been about that time Uncle Otis and Aunt Sarah Vandyke (everyone called him "0. J.") with their two daughters, Murriel, 16, and Gladys, eight, moved back to Shelton to run a restaurant. He was a cobbler by trade but everyone bought factory made shoes by that time. He was also an auctioneer and cried many farm sales.
Gladys was near my age and we played together often, staying several days at a time at one home or the other. What great times we had, but Gladys was mischievous and often got someone into trouble. She didn't have any brothers and always got along fine with mine. One day she and Ralph cut plugs out of every watermelon in Mother's garden trying to find a ripe one.
Lots of peddlers came through the country during the early 1900s. The first one that I remember showed us a stereoscope (an instrument that showed pictures in three dimensions). Papa bought that fine viewer. The agent gave a free box of pictures of the Russian-Japanese War (which was being fought at that time) and Papa bought a box of scenic colored pictures of the Colorado mountains that interested us very much. Through these pictures we got our first view of the Garden of the Gods, Royal Gorge and the Grand Canyon, and it was my first desire to travel and see those wonderful sights first hand. (It was 82 years later that I traveled through Colorado and took pictures of those mountains with my own camera.)
Another peddler came along and demonstrated the Edison Phonograph. Oh, my, if we could only have one of those! But Papa couldn't afford it. Two of our neighbors were more fortunate. My best friend's family got one, and a bachelor living with his mother and retarded brother bought one, so we often listened to theirs. Jake, the bachelor, sometimes rang the general ring on the telephone, a signal for all on the party line to listen in to see what was going on. Then he would play phonograph music as long as anyone would listen.
No, Papa didn't get us a phonograph but soon after that he got us something of more lasting value. He bought us an organ. We all enjoyed that and the first thing Papa wanted me to play, after I had taken a few lessons, were hymns, so we could all sing them together. We sang other songs, too. One day when we were singing "My Bonnie," little Clara said, "Papa, you should sing 'Bring back my hat!'" We spent many happy evenings around that organ.
Every year Shelton celebrated Harvest Days with a five-day festival. A carnival set up on Main Street with rides, sideshows, games of chance, booths selling popcorn, candy, lemonade and trinkets. A park by the river was a cool place for a noon picnic. The main attraction was horse races every afternoon, for there were several local men who were breeders of fancy driving horses. There were some running races with fancy dressed jockey riders, but the ones I liked best were the sulky races with those beautiful groomed driving horses competing in either trotting or pacing races. Papa loved horses so we always attended the races. After the races were over we watched the hot air balloon being filled with gas, then just before sundown it was cut loose to float high in the sky with a man in a basket hanging below. We watched anxiously for him to jump out of the basket, open his parachute, and float safely back to earth.
A ball game between rival towns or communities was usually played each day. Other exciting days for us was when a traveling circus (usually Campbell Bros.) came to town, with their wild animals, clowns and trapeze artists.
One of the most memorable days of my young life was when Buffalo Bill's Circus showed in Grand Island in September of 1907. Grand Island was too far away to drive a team of horses, so Dade Hendrickson took his two eldest girls, Edna and Lola, my brother Edgar, and I to Shelton where we took the train to Grand Island, arriving in time to see the parade led by Buffalo Bill dressed in his fancy western outfit, riding his beautiful well- trained pony. The parade had a typical western theme. There were covered wagons, people in pioneer dress, cowboys, Indians, cattle and buffalo.
The Circus carried a lot of personnel and traveled by Union Pacific Railroad. Booths were set up all along the parade route to sell Indian blankets, beads and trinkets of all kinds for souvenirs, as well as soft drinks, sandwiches and ice cream. The arena was much too large to be covered by a tent. We sat on open air (bleacher seats) and enjoyed seeing fancy riding, roping and shooting before the climax of a sham battle between Indians and a pioneer wagon train. This may have been the last show that Buffalo Bill put on before his show broke up.
In 1904 the school system changed. Rural schools as well as those in the cities had to be graded. Eighth grade pupils had to take State Examinations and have passing grades in all subjects before they would be admitted into high school. This posed a problem in our school. Mt. Nebo, District 56, was a poor district and, in order to comply with State Rules, new and more advanced books would have to be purchased. Since there was only one pupil ready for those books, the school board refused to buy them. My brother, Edgar, was that one pupil, so he transferred to the district north of us and walked the two miles to Bluff Center School each day to join a class of six other eighth graders. In the spring of 1905, all seven went to Kearney, the county seat of Buffalo County, to take the first Eighth Grade Examinations held in the State of Nebraska.
A baby brother, Robert Clyde Vandyke, joined our family September 23, 1905. Another event which took place in 1905 should be recorded here. The spelling of the VanDyke name was changed. In the winter of 1905, Uncle Otis Vandyke went to Harrisville, Pennsylvania to visit two brothers, William and John, who lived near there. It was at this time the spelling of the Vandyke name was changed. The "d" in the name was changed to a capital "D." VanDyke.
Uncle Otis and Papa both belonged to the A.O.U.W. (Ancient Order of United Workman) Lodge. In 1906, Otis James VanDyke was elected Grand Master of the A.O.U.W. Lodge of Nebraska. Then the following April, while attending a convention in Omaha, Uncle Otis was stricken suddenly and died April 16, 1907, at the age of 52 years. He was buried in Grand Island, Nebraska beside his daughter Myrtie and son James.
The last member of our family, Loyal Boyd VanDyke, Jr. was born October 25, 1907.
Grandpa and Grandma Hogg only stayed two years in Oregon. They were homesick for Nebraska and moved back as soon as Aunt Rose graduated from the Salem High School in June of 1908. Grandpa bought a house in Shelton. Uncle Irv spent most of the time working on the farm with his brother, Cleve Hogg. Aunt Lizzie and Aunt Rose taught at the rural Mt. Nebo one-room school.
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Lewis L. Adams was born July 27, 1823 in Chester Co., Pennsylvania. His father, John Adams, as far as is known, was born the same place, but the grandfather (name unknown), was a Virginian who moved to Pennsylvania, bought a tract of land, and spent his last days there.
John Adams was a stonemason, and followed that trade in Pennsylvania until 1825 when he bought in Ontario Co., New York, near Honeoy. He engaged in farming until his death. The maiden name of his wife was Eliza L. Davis. She was born in Chester Co., Pennsylvania, and her father was Lewellyn Davis, a farmer and a soldier in the Revolutionary War. John Adams died in Chester Co., Pennsylvania. There were eight children in their family:
Lewis L. Adams was two years old when his parents moved to New York State. He attended country school there and assisted on the farm after his father's death, residing with his mother until 1846. In that year he started out for himself, beginning work on a farm for $13.00 a month, the highest wages paid in those days. In 1847 he came to the Territory of Wisconsin. He traveled by railroad to Buffalo, New York, then by steamboat, "The Baltic," to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, then by stagecoach to Madison.
At that time Madison was a small place; the surrounding country was sparsely settled, most of it belonging to the Government. The following year he bought a piece of Government land and built a log house. He split rails and fenced 40 acres that first winter. He paid $150 for his 160 acres of land, $50 dollars for a pair of oxen and had only $30 left (plus health and spunk). There were no railroads and Milwaukee, the principal market, was 100 miles away.
Lewis L. Adams and Mary A. Salisbury, a daughter of Russell Dean Salisbury and Susan (Bunnel) Salisbury, were married in Madison, Wisconsin, June 29, 1848. Mary A. Salisbury was born August 8, 1830, in Canandalqua, Ontario Co., New York. She came to the Territory of Wisconsin with her father, Russell Dean Salisbury in the year 1844. Nine children were born to Lewis L. Adams and Mary A. Salisbury Adams:
The log house that they moved into in November 1848 continued to be the family home until they moved into a fine new frame house twenty years later, in November 1868. By that time, Lewis L. Adams owned 240 acres of the best farmland in the Township. Mr. Adams was a Republican and was elected three times a supervisor, although he never actively sought office.
Mary A. (Salisbury) Adams died April 12, 1885. Lewis Lewellyn Adams died March 1, 1903, and is buried in Oak Hall Cemetery, one mile south of L. L. Adams' homestead building site.
William Oliver was born January 10, 1838 in Columbus, Ohio, to Scotch English parentage. When he was very young his parents moved to Indiana. His father died when he was three years old, leaving his mother with a large family of small children to raise. William Oliver was a self- educated man. He attended school wherever and whenever he could. As soon as he was old enough he took up the profession of school teaching, working at other occupations during vacations. When the Civil War broke out he volunteered and served as a private. Returning home on a furlough he married Martha Ann Kelly, August 23, 1862. After five days he bid his young bride good-bye and returned to the battlefield where he remained until the end of the war, serving principally under the command of General Grant and General Sherman, and was with Sherman on his famous march through Georgia to the sea. At the end of the war he was mustered out as a Lieutenant, with honors.
When soldiers were on the march they lived off the land, taking whatever they found from plantations and fields along the way. So it happened near the end of that famous march that a still was found hidden away in the woods with several barrels of corn liquor, and the men didn't hesitate to make use of it. That night while they were celebrating their good fortune, one of the men carelessly discharged his rifle and shot Lieutenant Oliver in the leg! Instead of marching victoriously to the end with his company as he had planned, the Lieutenant had to ride in the supply wagon that last day. That gunshot wound caused Grandfather Oliver to limp the rest of his life.
Martha Ann Kelly was born December 20, 1844 at Richmond, Virginia, of Scotch-Irish and English parentage. Her parents were of the wealthier class of Virginians, especially her mother's family, the Vaughns and the Wythes, who were leading men in the state, and friends of Robert E. Lee. The Vaughns can trace their lineage back to the Revolutionary War and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Following the Civil War, William and Martha Ann (Kelly) Oliver, moved to Howard Lake, Wright Co., Minnesota. Their eldest daughter, Arminta Oliver, was born there June 25, 1866. There were nine children born to Martha and William Oliver, seven girls and two boys (we have no dates of birth or other data except the girls' married names):
In 1872 the Olivers moved to Indiana, staying there only one year. They came West again, locating near Primghar, in O'Brien Co., Iowa. Here Arminta "Mattie" grew up on the farm, attending rural school with her sisters and brothers. Later she attended Normal School to secure a certificate to teach school. On March 19, 1885, Arminta Oliver and Russell Dean Adams were married in Primghar, Iowa.
The L. L. Adams family enjoyed their new frame house until, one by one, the children moved out to establish homes of their own. Mary was the first one to leave when she married Robert H. Henry, a neighbor, on February 22, 1870. Soon after their marriage they moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where for two years Robert Henry engaged in the farm implement business. Then in 1873 they moved to Columbus, Nebraska, and operated a grocery store, and an implement and lumber yard where the principal business was selling supplies to homesteaders who were fast settling the land in Nebraska. Robert Henry was active in politics; he served as Mayor, County Commissioner, and member of the school board, and was also one of the first Presidents of the Nebraska State Fair Board.
From about 1875 to 1880 the Henry brothers engaged in extensive the cattle ranching, making use of the free grass range that was available during the early years in the rough hills of the western and central part of the state, before the homesteaders claimed the land.
In 1879 Robert Henry's younger brother lost his life while rounding up cattle in the hills of West Custer County. His neck was broken when the horse he was riding stepped in a badger hole and fell with him. Their cattle holdings were sold soon after that.
Robert Henry, one of Nebraska's early pioneer statesmen, died February 1, 1900. Mary L. Adam Henry, died in November 1916. Two children survived: their son, Walter Henry, who at that time was a rancher near Deer Trail, Colorado, and their daughter, Mrs. H. B. Martin of Denver, Colorado.
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Russell Dean Adams, second son of Lewis Lewellyn Adams and Mary A. (Salisbury) Adams, was born June 16, 1856, in the log house on his father's farm at Fitchburg, Dane County, Wisconsin. He was named for his maternal grandfather, Russell Dean "R. D." Salisbury and like his grandfather, he was always called "R.D.". R. D. Adams grew up with his brothers and sisters on his father's farm, living at home until 1883 when he followed his brother, L. Lewellyn to Iowa where he had located. There R. D. also leased a farm in O'Brien County, near Primghar, Iowa. One of his near neighbors was the William Oliver family. After living alone and batching for two years, Russell Dean Adams married Arminta Oliver, the eldest daughter of William Oliver and Martha Ann (Kelly) Oliver, on March 19, 1885 in Sanborn, Iowa.
Eleven children were born to Russell and Arminta:
The home near Bellwood was located just east of town in a German Catholic neighborhood, and the Adams children attended a country school about a mile southeast of their home. After Mae got what schooling she could there, she went to Columbus, Nebraska and stayed with her aunt, Mary Henry, to finish getting her diploma and grades for a teacher's certificate. The children often walked across a field when they went to school. One year the farmer had planted turnips in that field and the boys ate so many raw turnips that fall that they never cared for turnips again. (I could never get Russell to eat turnips after we were married, no matter how I cooked them). It was a friendly neighborhood with lots of kids and, like all boys, their favorite place to play was climbing in the corn crib or barn loft where someone was sure to get hurt. That was how Russell, Jr. broke his left leg when he was only five years old. The doctor came to the house to set the bone and put the leg in a plaster cast. He told his mother to keep the boy quiet for three or four weeks, but do you think he would be still? He was out in the yard crawling on his hands and one knee, dragging the broken leg in the cast the next day!
Bellwood was near enough to the Platte River that the boys could go fishing and that is where they learned to swim. In 1903, when Grandfather Adams died in Wisconsin, the ice was just breaking up on the river on March 1st when R. D. got the message. The high water had washed away the wagon road bridge across the river and he would have to get across the river to get to Columbus to take the train to go to his father's funeral. There was only one way. R. D. had Russell, Jr. take him to the nearest railroad bridge across the river and he walked across that bridge carrying his suitcase. Russell watched him. He said the water was high and huge chunks of ice hit the bridge making it jump and sway as his father hurried across.
By 1905 the family had outgrown the farm at Bellwood and R. D. was looking for land to buy. This led him to the beautiful Clear Creek Valley in western Sherman County, where he found a farm that consisted of 320 acres of fertile land. The Custer-Sherman County line bordered the land on the west and Clear Creek, a small spring-fed stream of sparkling clear water, ran the length of the land from west to east. A grove of large cottonwood trees sheltered the modest frame buildings on the northwest corner of the place. This was to be the Adams family's new home.
In the spring of 1906 emigrant-freight railroad cars were loaded with all of their possessions, including the livestock, to be shipped to Mason City on the Burlington Railroad. (Mason City was eight miles southwest of this farm and the nearest shipping point.) The two eldest boys, Russell, Jr. and Chester rode in the cars to care for the livestock. The rest of the family followed in a passenger train.
As soon as the freight cars were put on the side track beside the stockyards at Mason, the boys lost no time unloading the livestock so it could be fed and watered. Then the wagons were unloaded and put together, ready to load machinery, furniture and household goods and haul them to the new home. By that time the rest of the family arrived. Also two or three of their new neighbors had come to town with empty wagons to help them move. The pigs and chickens were hauled in the wagons but the milk cows were driven along behind the wagons.
I often wonder what R.D.'s family thought of leaving the level land of the Platte Valley to come to the rough hill country where the roads wound through the valleys and over hills, taking the path of least resistance, to get to their destination. Of course it was quite an adventure for the younger children: their first train ride and the excitement of moving to a new home. But to the older boys and girls it must have been quite a shock, and perhaps a disappointment, to see those rough hills. In fact Chester told me, years later, that he had hated the place with hills all around the valley. He felt "penned in" and intended to get away as soon as he could! But 1906 and following years were good crop years. The boys all learned to be good farmers. They had to leave home to go to high school and college, but they all came back home and all five boys became successful farmers with farm homes of their own.
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Russell Dean Adams, Jr., eldest son of Russell Dean and Arminta (Oliver) Adams, was born on a farm in O'Brien Co., Iowa, near Primghar, Iowa, on September 22, 1889. When Russell was three years old the family moved to Nebraska, living first at Rising City for two years then moving to Bellwood, where they lived until 1906 when R. D. bought the farm home in Sherman County near Huxley, Nebraska. Russell was 16 years old when they moved to Sherman Co. and he very willingly took over the responsibility of helping plant and care for the farm crops. Working long hours in the fields, day after day, he went no place. He hadn't met any of the neighbors until he had to exchange work with them on the threshing crew. The neighbors thought that quiet, young man was the Adams hired hand. By the time the threshing was finished and the threshing machine moved out of the neighborhood, Russell was not only very tired, but also homesick for his old friends at Bellwood. There was a little slack time now before wheat planting and corn picking, so he took a few days off to go back to Bellwood to visit.
Farming was much different in the early 1900s from what it is now, eighty years later. There were no farm tractors or trucks, and very few automobiles. The horse was the main power in the field and much of the harvesting was done by manual labor. Take corn picking, for instance. Each ear was handpicked and tossed into a wagon drawn by a trusty farm team, that patiently pulled the wagon through the field, row by row, as the farmer picked each ear. Today self-propelled gasoline or diesel powered corn pickers or combines make short work of fields that used to take weeks of backbreaking work to harvest. Many a farm boy picked corn all fall for three cents a bushel. In a good field, if he was a good picker, he might make $2.50 or $3.00 each day. Twenty-five or thirty dollars a month plus room and board was the average wages for farm labor.
During the summer months, Professor Loren Cornett, President of Custer College at Broken Bow, traveled through Custer County with horse and buggy visiting farm families, searching for young men and women who hadn't had an opportunity to get an education beyond the rural country school level, urging them to go to Custer College where they could take a full nine-months term or take advantage of the winter term after the farm work was done in the fall. This was a wonderful opportunity for farm young folks who were needed on the farm. Russell took advantage of those short winter terms, graduating from the elementary business course in June 1910. The following winter he enrolled in a business college in Fremont, Nebraska, where he studied advanced bookkeeping and typewriting. He stayed at home that summer and fall helping with the farm work.
During Christmas vacation Russell and his sister, Mae, took a trip to Winner, South Dakota to visit R.D.'s sister, Winnefred (Adams) Lorshbaugh and family. It was pretty quiet around Huxley in the winter, not much going on. Maybe there would be a party or a dance which most everyone, old and young, attended. Or sometimes, one of the rural schools would have a "box supper" and a program.
Mae Adams was teaching her fifth term of school at Lone Elm, their home district. Russell was staying at home and he and Mae decided to put on a play for entertainment at the schoolhouse. Besides the school children, several young folks in the neighborhood were asked to take part. I was given a small part and the Adams family stopped to get me when they went to practice. About that time Russell bought a team of bronco ponies and a new top buggy, a beautiful buggy with red wheels and hard rubber tires. The back and side curtains had oval windows. It was by far the nicest buggy in the neighborhood. After that he came alone to take me to play practice. No one seemed to notice that until he started to show up at our place to escort me to parties and again on Sundays for no reason at all. Then my little sisters, Clara and Dorothy, put their little heads together and decided that their sister Ruth had a BOYFRIEND! Yes, I had a boyfriend. Russell was my FIRST and ONLY boyfriend.
Mae Adams and George Zahn were married that summer, and Russell went to Halsey, Nebraska to work as bookkeeper for Bessey Nursery at the National Forest.
The Nebraska National Forest was established by Presidential proclamation in 1902 at the urging of Dr. Charles Bessey, Professor of Botany at the University of Nebraska, who believed that forests could survive on the plains. In 1903, 85 acres of pines and red cedars were planted. Each year more trees were planted until today, more than 86 years later, over 22,000 acres of planted woodlands flourish on the 90,000 acres of this National Forest that President Theodore Roosevelt set aside to grow trees.
In 1904 the Kinkaid Homestead Act was enacted, allowing a person to homestead 640 acres of land. That opened up over two million acres of sandhill land, in eight counties in northwest Nebraska. Prior to this time 160 acres was the maximum size of a homestead. Therefore there were only a few homesteads taken along rivers and marshlands around lakes in the vast sea of barren sandhill land.
The chance to acquire a whole section of land was an attraction that gained nationwide publicity. People came from many parts of the country to take a Kinkaid homestead. Some would stay and establish a home there, others would stay only long enough to get clear title to their land and then sell it and move away.
That was the way it was in Thomas County in 1912 when Russell D. Adams, Jr. arrived at Halsey, Nebraska to be the bookkeeper at the Bessey Nursery, at the Nebraska National Forest, located two miles west of Halsey and reaching for many miles along the south side of the Middle Loup River.
The land on the north side of the river was occupied by homesteads. Several Mason City families had homesteads not far from Halsey, and while working at the Bessey Nursery, Russell visited with them and was quite impressed with the life they were living on their homesteads. By that time most people had been there long enough to have clear title to their land. Some would stay to make permanent homes. Others were already selling their homesteads and leaving. One of the places that was for sale really looked good to Russell. A widow lady had filed on this homestead and now after living there for five years she wanted to go back to Iowa where she came from. Mrs. Lewis wanted to sell everything she owned there, livestock, machinery and what household goods she had, in one package deal. Her price was reasonable, and the terms of sale were good. Russell looked it over. The hills were quite well sodded. The improvements, including fences, seemed in good condition. So, he reasoned, wasn't that a good way to get a start for himself?
He dealt for the place and March 1, 1913 found him moving into a sod house, the proud owner of 640 acres of land, with eight cows to milk, calves to feed, six workhorses and a pony to care for, and hens to feed. Russell soon found that his house leaked. Mr. Patterson, his nearest neighbor, told him that was to be expected, for this sod house like most all sod houses had a sod roof and sandhill sod only lasted a few years. So with Mr. Patterson's help, new sods were cut in a low spot where the grass was thickest, the roof cleaned off, new tar paper spread over the board roof, then the new sod was laid over that. Presto. A new roof.
Only a small number of acres of sod had been broken up to farm. The rest of the land would be mowed for hay to feed and to sell.
Although we had talked of our future together, we had made no definite plans; we both took it for granted that when he found a suitable place to rent we would be married. So, while Russell was away working, I was very busy getting my household supplies ready. No one gave bridal showers back in those days. All brides furnished their own household needs. My parents were very generous in helping me get what I needed. There were sheets, tablecloths, napkins, and dishtowels to hem, pillow slips, dresser scarves, doilies to embroider and trim with hand-crocheted lace. I made so many pretty, as well as useful, things. I also tied three quilts. One was pieced of wool pieces. Mother gave me a beautiful set of dishes and Dad gave us money for a milk cow.
It was the middle of April when Russell got Emery Runyan, one of his Mason City friends who had a homestead not far from his new place, to do his chores while he came home to get his team and buggy, as well as other personal things. When he came to see us he told my parents that he wanted to take me back to Halsey with him and asked my father if he and my mother would go with us to Broken Bow to be married. Everything that had to be shipped was taken to Mason City to be loaded on the train. Some would go on the passenger train with us, the rest would go by local freight.
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It was a warm, windy day with the dust blowing when we left home on Tuesday, April 22, to board "Old #39" for Broken Bow. Mother, Dad and I stayed overnight with mother's sister and family, the A. P. Johnsons. It started raining during the night and continued to rain gently most of the next day. I did not want to be married in the courthouse, and I didn't want to be married at the preacher's house either, so I asked Aunt Lola if we could be married in her parlor. Both she and Uncle Al were delighted with that idea and everyone cooperated.
We asked the Rev. H. H. Spracklin, pastor of the U.B. Church to come at noon to perform the marriage ceremony. The wedding march was played by Cousin Esther, at the piano, accompanied by her friend, Marjorie, with the violin. It was all so solemn and beautiful. The wedding couldn't have been more beautiful if we had set a special date weeks before and practiced and rehearsed to make it perfect. Russell Dean Adams, Jr. and Ruth Gladys VanDyke were married in Broken Bow, Nebraska on April 23, 1913. They had eight children:
We soon sat down to a delicious dinner, prepared by Aunt Lola with Mother's help. The "Bride's" cake was a freshly baked Angel Food. That was the way it happened in Broken Bow, Nebraska, April 23, 1913, when Russell Dean Adams, Jr. and Ruth Gladys VanDyke were married. It was still raining, and when we learned that it was raining even harder at Halsey, we knew we would have to stay in Broken Bow until the next day. Russell's family had given us furniture for a wedding gift: a rocking chair, a china closet and a combination bookcase/writing desk. We knew we would need chairs, so we went to the furniture store and bought dining room chairs to be sent to Halsey.
That evening a group of our young friends came with "noise-makers" to charivari us. The next day, cousin A. Paul Johnson played hooky from school to tell us goodbye. He followed us into the train and threw handfuls of rice all over us and our luggage, to the amusement of conductor and passengers.
Emery Runyan met us at the depot in Halsey, with the team and lumber wagon, to haul our trunks and other luggage to our home six miles northwest of town. Yesterday's rain had made the grass-covered hills so green and fresh, and soaked the sand so the wagon didn't sink in the soft sand. I was seeing the sandhills for the first time.
It was late afternoon when we arrived home. After unloading the wagon we explored the farmyard and livestock before I could get a good look at the inside of the house. It was just as Russell had described it, a small two room soddy. The kitchen on the south had two doors, one on the west and one on the east side, and two windows, one in the middle of the south end of the house. The other window on the west side of the room, was about four feet above the floor with the sashes set side by side making a long horizontal window. The bedroom had one window on the east. There also was a small frame shanty set against the northwest side of the soddy that was used for a storeroom. It held the cream separator, milk pails, wash tubs and wash boards, etc.
The kitchen was furnished with a range which cooked and baked well, a table, two old chairs (one without a back), a cupboard made of rough boards with a curtain in front, a bench with water pail and wash pan, with a mirror hung over it, and also an old fashioned fainting couch.
The sod walls were plastered and covered with wallpaper. The roof had leaked and the paper was stained and coming loose. We sent to Sears Roebuck for rolls of wallpaper and soon had it repapered and clean. With our new furniture in place the room looked very nice. We were proud of it.
Our first day in the soddy was a busy one: besides unpacking what we could, we planted out some strawberry plants that Russell had brought from home and a few early garden seeds. We were determined to have a garden, but I may as well tell you that although we carried water morning, noon and evening to those strawberry plants, the poor little things could not compete with the sun and the drifting sand when the wind blew. They just dried up and blew away! The garden didn't do much better!
Our neighbors were all homesteaders living on their Kinkaid homestead land. Our nearest neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Patterson, their nine year old son, and Mrs. Patterson's elderly father, Mr. Douglas. Mrs. Patterson was teaching the school nearby. Reverend and Mrs. McIntire lived east of them. There was Sunday school and church every Sunday in the schoolhouse. Rev. McIntire preached the sermon. Those living south of us were the Andersons, the Rymans, and the Al Rodocker family. Then to the southwest and west were several families that we had known in Mason City, Emery Runyan, his cousins, Willie Runyan and wife, Lois, the Ira Runyan family, and the Henry Rumery family. To the north was Mr. and Mrs. Jess Ewing and daughter, Flossie. All were good neighbors. Jess Ewing had a Sears Roebuck automobile just like the one Maurice Lowry had at Huxley.
The towns of Purdum and Halsey were about equal distance from our place. Purdum had the best general store but to go there we had to open gates and go through Mr. Ewing's pasture. I didn't like that. When I went alone, I was afraid the ponies wouldn't stand, so I tied them to a fence post while I opened the gate, then drove through, then turned the team around and tied it to a post on the other side while I closed the gate.
The store at Halsey had groceries only, but we got our mail in Halsey, so we went there almost every week. We often drove down to the river on Sunday afternoon to enjoy the water and the shade of the big trees. Sometimes friends joined us and we had a picnic lunch together.
Mason City was celebrating the Fourth of July so we took the early morning train from Halsey to meet both our families who came to Mason with well-filled dinner baskets to have a picnic in the park. After a good dinner and a very good visit we went back to Halsey on the late afternoon train.
The days and weeks passed so quickly. It was soon time to start haying. Now, I could help with that. Three head of horses were hitched to the mower, which had a grass catcher behind the sickle. As the grass catcher filled up, it was dumped, being careful to keep the "dump pattern" in a wind-row so the hay sweep could gather the grass up and push it in piles to be stacked. Russell gathered the hay up and stacked it as I mowed. Later what would be needed for feed was hauled and stacked in the barn yard. The rest Russell sold and hauled to the Forest Reserve. This coarse bunch grass hay was used to mulch the ground around the little seedling trees to hold moisture and to keep the sand from blowing.
We were happy living in our little soddy. We both liked the quiet solitude of the hills and our friendly neighbors. However, Russell realized early in the summer that it was a mistake to buy the land and try to farm that sandy soil. August was hot and dry. The corn was doing pretty well but the grass in the pasture was getting dry and the cattle were hungry. Early one morning when Russell went to get the milk cows, he found them in the corn field. Evidently they had been there long enough to eat all they could and most of them were lying down. All were sick and we lost two of our best milk cows! Such a tragedy!
As soon as Russell had delivered all of the hay, gathered the corn from the field and disposed of it, he advertised our place for sale. Jule Simonson, a Broken Bow man, bought it. He would take possession March 1, 1914. Russell billed a farm auction sale in February and sold everything that he bought from Mrs. Lewis. Our good furniture and personal things were shipped back to Mason City. Russell decided the best way to get the ponies back to Huxley was to hitch them to the buggy and drive them back. The weather was clear and calm as we got in the buggy. Heading east we would soon bid the Sandhills goodbye. We were both a little sad, but excited to be going back to the Clear Creek Valley.
This was a two day trip. We got as far as Merna where we stayed at the hotel overnight, then drove on to Huxley the next day. We went straight to the ranch where we would be staying. My father had offered Russell work for the summer and I could step right back into the home that I left a year before, helping my mother care for the family and cook for hired men.
The summer of 1914 passed quickly. About all the news that we read in the paper was about the political unrest in Europe. It looked like Europe was just spoiling for war and war did break out, late in the summer. Of course America was concerned about it but with three thousand miles of ocean between us, no one seemed to worry much, not yet.
The big event in the Adams family that summer was the birth of little Aaron Zahn, born September 29, 1914. He was the second son born to George Zahn and Mae (Adams) Zahn. Their first son was born the year before on September 24, 1913. He lived only a few days. Now again our joy turned to sorrow when we learned that the cough Mae had developed several months before was tuberculosis. She was very thin and weak and grew weaker as the weeks went by. Mae died December 19, 1914. She was 27 years, one month and 19 days old. The funeral was held in the schoolhouse where she taught school. She is buried in the Lone Elm cemetery, one mile from the family farm home.
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Aaron, not yet three months old, was a healthy baby. George was taking care of him, so he moved in with his folks for the winter. Russell and I were still staying on the ranch with my family. On December 27, 1914, our first son, Wayne Kermit Adams was born. Wayne was the VanDyke's first grandchild; he and Aaron, the first grandchildren in the Adams family. Those two boys also were the first great grandchildren for Russell's grandmother, Martha Ann Oliver, and Wayne was the first great grandchild for my grandpa and grandma, John A. and Margaret Hogg.
Grandmother Oliver came out from Sioux City, Iowa for Mae's funeral. She was still here and got to see both of her great grandsons before she went home.
1915 was the last year that the VanDykes would be living on the ranch near Huxley. Dad bought a farm north of Broken Bow where they would move in the winter, so we stayed to help them again that year.
In April, Russell and my brother, Edgar, took a trip to Baudette, Minnesota to look at land that was advertised as still available to be homesteaded in northern Minnesota. Russell didn't see anything to suit him, but Edgar bought a relinquishment on a homestead located on the Rainy River several miles northwest of Baudette, near the little town of Hackett, Minnesota. The Rainy River forms the boundary between the U.S. and Canada. There was an Indian Reservation in Canada across the river from the place he bought.
Later that summer I took our little son, Wayne, to see his Great Grandpa and Great Grandma Hogg and other relatives and friends at Shelton, Nebraska. My sister, Inez, and her husband, John Neal, were staying at the ranch when their first son, Harold Evan Neal, was born August 24, 1915. The baby lived only three weeks. Inez and John then went back to their home in David City, Nebraska.
In late November, Dad had a farm auction sale to dispose of the horses and machinery he wouldn't need on the smaller farm near Broken Bow. In the meantime, Russell had rented the Potts' place for the next year, about four miles northwest of Huxley, and he got some of Dad's horses and much of the machinery he needed to start farming, at that sale.
So here we were happily settling into a home of our own again, not another sod house, but one of those typical frame houses that invariably replaced the soddies on the homestead. Two rooms on the first floor and two rooms above! Was that the cheapest or the easiest way to build? I wonder.
It was in this house that Margaret Ann Adams came to join our family, November 15, 1916. Our first baby girl.
March 1, 1917 we moved to a larger and better farm owned by Doug Mills. We lived there three years.
Woodrow Wilson was our President, elected in 1912. Now in 1916 he was running for a second term. The war in Europe was going badly; NOW America worried! Our President was against war. His campaign slogan was, "I have kept this country out of war, and I will continue to do so!" At the same time they were building up the Army and Navy. Wilson was elected to a second term. Four months later on April 2, 1917 he asked Congress for a Declaration of War. The United States joined the Allied Forces in Europe. We were at War!!
First came a call for volunteers; then, selective service was enacted in 1917 and all men between the ages of twenty one and thirty registered for the draft. When the first drawing took place in Custer County, Nebraska, Russell Dean Adams, Jr. was the first name drawn, but all farmers were exempted, for they were needed to feed the army.
Food was rationed, we could no longer buy wheat flour. Food stamps were issued and we were allowed a very limited amount of sugar and many other items that we were accustomed to. Many of the young men that we knew, including brothers and cousins, were soldiers in that war. Many of them went overseas and fought in the trenches against the Germans. My brother, Edgar, was one of them. He had gone to Hackett, Minnesota in the spring of 1916, and when the war was declared he enlisted in the army, not waiting to be drafted. Sidney also enlisted, but didn't leave the U.S. Edgar was in France nearly a year. The war was over and Armistice was signed November 11, 1918, "Armistice Day." We celebrated Armistice Day until the name "Veterans Day" was officially adopted in 1954.
We bought our first car in 1918. There were several kinds of cars on the market, the most popular were the Chevrolet and the Ford. The Chevrolets were all painted green and the Fords were all painted black. Why? The school kids had a riddle to answer that. Question: "Why are the Chevrolets all painted green?" Answer: "So they can hide in the grass and watch the Fords go by." We bought a Ford.
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The winter of 1918-19 will long be remembered because of the severe epidemic of Asian Flu that struck the nation that year. It was very contagious and spread rapidly. It seemed that whole neighborhoods were sick at once. There were no hospitals and not enough doctors or nurses to care for the sick in their homes. To make it worse it was a bad winter, very cold, with heavy snowstorms that blocked the roads for several weeks. Russell took sick with the flu the week before Christmas; a week later Margaret, Wayne and I were sick. We couldn 't get a doctor. The flu settled in my lungs and I had a real high fever. With the aid of what home remedies we had on hand, Russell diligently nursed us through.
We weren't fully recovered when on January 22, 1919, our second daughter, Mae Janice, was born. Mother Adams was with us that day, and the next day my father brought my mother to stay with us until I was strong enough to care for the family. Janice was a tiny baby but strong and healthy. We had so much to be thankful for. So many families weren't so fortunate that winter.
Lewis and Bessie were married in July 1919 and accompanied us to the State Fair in September. Russell wanted to get started raising pure-blood Duroc Jersey hogs and thought the State Fair at Lincoln would be a good place to learn more about the best lines of breeding stock from the men who exhibited at the Fair. The four of us took the train from Broken Bow to Lincoln. I should say five of us, for we took baby Janice with us. Margaret and Wayne stayed with their Grandpa and Grandma VanDyke. When we reached the fairgrounds we first went through the Agriculture Hall, the Educational and Arts exhibits, and other exhibits, before we headed for the livestock barns.
Then while Russell spent several hours at the barns, I went back to the Educational building where I could sit down and watch 4-H girls demonstrate cooking and sewing. I had read about 4-H club work in the Nebraska Farmer, but now seeing it in action made me realize how very educational 4-H Clubs really were.
Grandpa Adams built their new house in 1919. In March of 1920 we moved into a small house on the south side of their farm and Russell farmed some of the land on the "Home" place for two years. In March of 1920 we bought our first pure-blood Duroc Jersey hog, a year-old old gilt from a man in Seward, Nebraska. Her first litter of pigs consisted of three gilts and two boars. Russell kept the gilts and sold the two boars to local hog men. We now had four sows. A boar was purchased from York, Nebraska. This was the beginning of the fine line of pure-blood breeding hogs that Russell Adams, Jr. and sons raised and sold both privately, for breeding stock, and commercially for the next 25 years.
Wayne started school at Lone Elm School in September 1921. He started out bravely walking the two miles, first through a field for half a mile, then on a country road the rest of the way. The weather was nice and he didn't miss a day of school in September; then the fall rains and cold weather made it impossible for him to go. Russell's sister, Ruth, was teaching in Sargent and got the loan of First and Second grade books so I could teach him at home. There was lots of snow that winter. The roads were blocked before Christmas, and we couldn't get to town. If the mail hadn't gotten through the day before Christmas, bringing a package from Grandma and Grandpa VanDyke, Santa wouldn't have had much to leave at our house.
The wind was still blowing and drifting the snow when, early in the morning a few days later, Russell hitched the horses to the lumber wagon, while I dressed the children warmly, to go to Grandpa's for breakfast. Russell's mother came back with him. Then he went after the kids in the afternoon. On the way home he told them Santa Claus had come back and left them a baby brother. That was December 28, 1921, the day Russell Dean Adams, Jr. was born. We should have named him Russell Dean Adams the third, since he is third in line to carry that name. We just called him "Junior" and "Junior Adams" was the name he went by until he went to high school. Since then he has been known as Russ Adams.
March 1, 1922 we moved onto a farm known as the "Horne Place," six miles northeast of Broken Bow. We were only one mile from the "Snake Run" school. My sisters, Dorothy and Clara, were teaching at the two-room school, and went right past our place every morning. Wayne could ride with them. Wayne had learned rapidly from the books that his Aunt Ruth loaned us and Margaret had learned right along with him, so when Dorothy asked us to let her go to school with them, we let her go. She was five years old. Wayne finished second grade that year and Margaret finished the first grade.
The Bethel Union Church was about one and a half miles east of our house so we could go to church and the kids never missed Sunday School. We lived there only one year because Bernie Horne wanted to move his family there the next year. Our next move was to the Blackburn place in Senate Valley.
The next ten years was a decade of change, for the efforts of the American Women's Suffragettes succeeded in securing an amendment to the Constitution giving the right to vote to all citizens, regardless of their sex. The war was over and America turned back to being Americans again. The soldiers came home, almost wild with joy to be out of the army and free citizens again.
Factories opened up. There was mass production of machinery, home appliances as well as farm machinery and automobiles. There was work for all and money to spend. Housewives bought such needed equipment as washing machines, refrigerators and other household needs. The stores were well equipped with groceries and dry goods.
Eating places with bars and saloons opened up. There were many wild parties with so much alcoholic liquor consumed all over the country that in an attempt to control it, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the manufacture or sales of intoxicating beverages. Prohibition lasted for thirteen years. Federal prohibition agents did their best to enforce that law. They could not control the illegal stills hidden in remote areas or the liquor smuggled in from Canada and the Caribbean. It was a hopeless task.
In spite of this disappointment, America was progressing. Motion pictures took place of silent movies. Now the movies were the chief entertainment. Radios were a new invention in the early twenties. Our first radio was a battery powered "Crosley" that brought the outside world into our home. On nice days we could get the news and weather from WOW in Omaha and very good programs from Henry Field and Earl May's broadcasting stations in Shenandoah, Iowa. There they advertised their garden seeds and nursery stock, giving advice while keeping us entertained with continued stories, which were the forerunners of the "Soap Operas" of today!
About this time our Bethel Union Ladies Club was getting lessons from the University Home Extension. We were learning to can our garden vegetables by boiling the jars of non-acid food for so many minutes (or hours) in a hot water bath before sealing them. We also were told of the pressure cooker method which was a quicker and a safer way to can. Of course I wanted one but pressure cookers were expensive. Then one day I heard Henry Field advertise a four-quart cooker at a special reduced price. I lost no time sending for one. A week later the mail carrier left two boxes at our mailbox. One box contained the cooker. The other one was an oblong wooden box. What could that be? Just imagine my surprise and delight to find that it contained ten pounds of dried prunes, a complimentary bonus for being one of the first orders received. Those first radios were far from perfect. There was lots of static and they squeaked and squawked, but the whole family sometimes enjoyed those afternoon "soap operas." Who could forget "Ma Perkins" or "Fibber Magee and Molly?" Then, what a thrill it was when, on clear nights, we could tune in such programs as the Grand Ole Opry! Yes, the same "Grand Ole Opry" was on the air back in the twenties that we see on television today, seventy years later.
We had no telephone. I don't know why, but that is another story. I am sure there were many times that we needed one. For instance, the day Junior swallowed the horseshoe nail. Perhaps I should tell you about that. It happened one day at school, when Junior was in first or second grade. Peter Esch had brought a new horseshoe nail to school that day. The little boys were busy playing hopscotch on the playgrounds when the bell rang. Junior still had that nail in his hand when they all came in to take their seats. He sat there with his elbows on his desk, his hands near his chin, still toying with that horseshoe nail. All at once he choked and gagged. The teacher asked what was the matter? He said, "I, I swallowed the horseshoe nail!" The kids all laughed, but the teacher sent him home. (I think the teacher came home with him.) Now his dad was thirty-five or forty miles away, helping farm Grandpa Adams farm near Huxley. I hurried out to the nearest neighbors to use their telephone to call for Russell to come home. He may have broken all speed limits that day because he was soon home and we lost no time getting Junior to the doctor.
Doctor Carothers laid Junior on his table under a fluoroscopic light where we could plainly see that horseshoe nail in his stomach. It was positioned head-first ready to leave the stomach. The doctor said he would be alright. "Take him home and feed him all the mashed potatoes he could eat, three times a day and nature will take care of it." That diet suited Junior just fine, for mashed potatoes was his favorite food. Later he went with his dad to the field for a load of hay and Russell couldn't keep that kid still. He jumped, tumbled, turned somersaults on the haystack and on the hay rack, while his daddy worried that he would force the sharp point to puncture his bowels. Well in due time Mother Nature, along with the help of those mashed potatoes, did her duty and Russ can still show you that very same horseshoe nail to prove it! What a story to tell his grandchildren!
We moved to the Bradburn place in Senate Valley, eight miles northeast of Broken Bow in 1923. Senate Valley was a beautiful valley. The buildings on the Bradburn place were located near the base of a hill. Walter Loyds lived about half a mile over that hill to the west. They owned their land so they were permanent neighbors. The Senate Valley schoolhouse was a quarter mile north of our house, near enough for our children to come home for a hot lunch every day. There were two other houses near the schoolhouse, one to the east and one to the north. Renters lived in those houses and since they seldom stayed longer than one year, we had many different neighbors through the years. Many other families lived at various distances in the school district.
It was a good neighborhood. We felt that we belonged there when Russell was elected to the school board that first year. Russell served on the school board for the twenty years we lived in Senate Valley, from 1923 to 1943.
The valley stretched several miles to the northwest, where it joined the Snake Run community near the Bethel Union Church. There were several sections of rough hills and deep canyons, covered with native grass southwest of our farm. The deep canyons were covered with wild black raspberry canes. We picked many gallons of those delicious berries some years. We were told that there were rattlesnakes in those canyons, but we didn't see any. We did see birds, though. Meadow Larks, Killdeer, Turtle Doves and Blackbirds had nests in the plum thickets. Also there was a covey of quail. Many birds liked those berries. We didn't see any Prairie Chickens, but I knew they were there. In the early spring mornings, as I hurried out to check my little chickens in the brooder house, I would hear the "BOOM-BOOM-boom-m" of the Prairie Chicken cock as he paraded and danced for his lady love somewhere on their "courting ground" in this native prairie land.
Sounds carried and echoed up and down the valley for miles in the still early morning hours. There was another sound that I am glad I can never forget. In the fall at corn picking time, Russell always ate an early breakfast so he could be in the field before sun up. By the time the children and I were through with our breakfast and ready to do the morning chores, he would be half way through the field and we would hear the steady rhythm of Bang-Bang-Bang as each ear of corn hit the bang board on the wagon. An occasional "Whoa" if the horses walked too fast.
Horses are smart animals. They soon learn to follow the corn row and keep pace with their master as he works beside the wagon. I would pause to listen! It was a beautiful sound on a still, frosty morning in the fall of the year. A sound that is gone forever, because corn is now harvested with huge noisy combines.
In the fall of 1988, Margaret Ann Neal, the Home Extension Agent of Custer County, learned that the Senate Valley Rustlers clothing club had been the first 4-H club organized in Custer County and that I, Mrs. Russell Adams, the first leader of that club, was living here in Broken Bow. She asked me to speak at the 4-H achievement program, to tell about that first club.
This is part of what I told:
The first 4-H clothing club was organized in Custer County in 1924. It isn't easy to think back over sixty four years and keep my trend of thought in the proper prospective, so I will just state a few facts as I remember them from back in 1924 and 1925, when I first became interested in 4-H work. I had read about 4-H, and had seen exhibits at the State Fair. 1924 was the year that Merle Gould took office as County Agent of Custer County and 4-H clubs were much talked about. Several girls in our neighborhood were interested in having a sewing club. Mr. Gould was asked to come out to Senate Valley to help organize a club. Although he admitted he had not organized a club, he said he would come to help us get started. Several ladies and their daughters were waiting when Mr. Gould came on May 14, 1924. Fortunately, a Miss Green from the State Office in Lincoln was in Broken Bow and he brought her with him. So I am sure our first club, the Senate Valley Rustlers clothing club, was properly organized.
Five girls signed up as regular members that day. When the word got around, four more of their friends came to join and of course the little sisters couldn't be left out. There now were nine members and five little associate members, fourteen girls in all, and I was chosen for the leader. Members enrolled were Minnie Loyd, Ardis Horn, Margaurite Holcomb, Blanche Gibson, Lera Gibson, Elizabeth Gibson, May Larsen, Maude Loyd, Leona Baker. All nine members finished and turned in their final records.
Those girls were so quick to learn and anxious to meet all the club's requirements. By fall they not only had completed the sewing lessons, they had demonstrated, judged and exhibited their work before the Women's Club. Now they wanted to exhibit at the county fair. But where? There were no provisions for 4-H club exhibits. We took it up with Mr. Gould; he didn't know. He took it up with the fair board and they didn't know what to do with us. Finally, they told us we could have a space the size of one bed sheet. We pinned our articles on that sheet and it was tacked up in one stall of the Pig Barn!
Not only was the first 4-H clothing club exhibit shown in that pig barn but also the first 4-H team demonstration was held there. A picnic table was moved into the alley. Margaurite Holcomb and Minnie Loyd demonstrated the drafting of the pattern for a butterfly-sleeved Bungalow dress from paper by measuring one girl, marking the measurements on the paper, then cutting and pinning the paper to fit the person. The Senate Valley Rustlers continued on with the 2nd year's clothing club lessons during the winter of 1924-25, again with nine members. Seven of the nine completed the work, ready to take third year work in the summer of 1925.
By 1925 there were many 4-H clubs in Custer County: clothing clubs, livestock and poultry clubs, garden and cooking clubs, etc. All were ready and anxious to exhibit at the county fair. That entire pig barn was used for a 4-H building. Each club could have a whole stall for a booth to exhibit their project. This barn was used for the 4-H clubs each year until 1960, thirty six years later, when a new 4-H building was erected.
After my having no babies for six years, Robert William arrived July 3, 1927. At that time we didn't know if tiny babies could hear very much. On the 4th of July, Russ slipped around the house and shot off a great big firecracker. You should have seen that baby jump!
Also in the year of 1927, Charles Lindbergh was making history as the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic. Having heard of the offer of a $25,000 prize for the first solo Atlantic flight, he obtained the help of some St. Louis businessmen to buy a specially-built plane he called the Spirit of St. Louis. He accomplished his feat in 33.5 hours and returned home a hero.
One year when Russell was helping his father with his farming, my brother, Edgar, and his wife, Hazel, and their four children moved in with us to help on our farm. We later built a small house next to us for them to live in. Russell had bought a brand new tractor. There weren't many at that time. Horses were still used for most farm work.
The following years were bad years for all. In 1928 and 1929, banks closed and people couldn't get their money out. These were hard times for big families like ours, but we never felt poor and never made a point of being poor. Nearly everybody was in the same boat. I do remember one family that had more money than we did. They had oranges that they threw around like baseballs and our children were lucky to get one in their stockings for Christmas.
I could tell a lot of funny stories about our neighbors in Senate Valley. We had a big watermelon patch just across the fence from the Hircocks. One day when Bud Larson and his wife lived in the house just across from the Hircocks, I had to go up there and run some errand for Russell right after dinner. I walked in and there was the biggest watermelon I had ever seen, reaching clear across the table. They invited me to have a slice. When I told the family about it that evening, Wayne said, "Well, I wondered what had become of my prize melon! I intended to take it to the Fair."
Jim Larson had some hunting dogs. We had a chicken feeder just north of our house. We'd fill the feeder full of feed, and first thing you know there would be those dogs in the feeder. No matter how carefully we'd slip out the door they'd hear us coming. Finally, Dad took his shotgun and hid around behind the chicken house and watched for them to come and start eating. Carefully, he raised the shotgun with both hammers cocked, ready to shoot. When they heard, and turned tail to run, he gave them a full blast into their rears. They howled all the way and were still howling when they got to Jim's house. They just disappeared and we never saw them again.
Walt Loyd needed some help to make a fence so he hired Francis Hircock to help him. He told Francis if he helped him make the fence, he'd give him a load of hay. Hircock needed the hay for his horses so he took his hayrack over there and filled it full of hay and tramped it into the hayrack all the way to the top. Coming home the road turned near the top of the hill, and as he turned that corner, he upset the load of hay. Wayne told that story over and over. He said, "It took two hayrack loads to carry that one load home!" Our last three children were born in the thirties: Mildred Ruth on April 21, 1930, Francis Loyal, October 25, 1931, and Gladys Kathleen, February 16, 1934. Those years through the '30s were trying for all of us, because there were so many disasters. We had the year of the grasshoppers. You could see them flying through the air on their way in. They sounded like a hailstorm coming. They were bad. When they flew in, they landed on the fence posts, one on top of another, until the fence posts looked so big.
They laid eggs every place. I had such a nice strawberry bed. They laid eggs in among them and the grasshoppers hatched out the next year. During grain harvest the men left their pitchforks out while they went in to dinner. When they went back out the pitchfork handles were all pitted where the grasshoppers had gnawed on them, perhaps for the moisture.
You just can't image what could happen. When they first came in the chickens would eat the grasshoppers. Finally, I saw one big old hen walk along the path; she looked at one sitting on the ground, looked again, and walked right on past. She wasn't about to eat another grasshopper! Also the dust storms came in the thirties. It was so hot and dry, and huge clouds of dust would come in and settle over everything. That old house was not built tight so the windows fit, and the dirt would just drift across the kitchen table. Margaret tells about her dad picking her up from teaching and driving home along the road in Tappan Valley. They couldn't see through the windshield, the dirt was so thick, so they each stuck their head out the window to try to see where they were going.
The tumbleweeds and dirt blew into the fences and were just like drifts. One year we could stand on the back porch and look out across the fields. Where it should have been in corn, you could see a jackrabbit jumping. Nothing grew. It was so dry.
Kathleen was born that awfully hot, dry year of 1934. The only thing I put on her was a diaper. I laid a blanket on the floor where the breeze would come in. She wasn't anywhere near the sunshine but became just as brown as a berry.
One year we raised a huge amount of celery. We could take things to the grocery store for them to sell in those days. So we would wash and bundle it and take it to town. Margaret tells of how her arms would ache cleaning that celery in the cold water.
One of the happiest times of our lives was when we took our five youngest children and motored to the West Coast in the summer of 1940. Russell, Bob and Junior rode in the front seat and I sat in the back seat with Mildred, Francis and Kathleen. When Kathleen went to sleep we'd lay her down between the seats. She said we used her for a footstool. It was so much fun to stop and cook meals and we'd fix lunch for the next day. Once the gas line plugged and we spent a lot of time cleaning it out. We were so afraid we'd have to turn around and go back home. The kids were so good and there was no fussing. This was a memorable time for all.
We lived on the Bradburn farm for 20 years. We'd be living there still if it hadn't been sold out from under us, for we never were in any hurry to move. It was good farmland, and we were making a living. Dad got work away from home in the A.S.C.S. program to supplement the income from 1936 to 1943.
In 1943 we moved to the Rogers' ranch east of Broken Bow. Our three oldest children were gone from home by this time. Russ, Jr. had finished high school and could help his dad full-time. The youngest four attended school in Broken Bow. This was to be our home for the rest of our lives.
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How old is our farm? The first record we have of our farm which is located just east of Broken Bow, is a clipping taken from the Custer County Chief (date unknown). I quote: "I came here in 1877, said Mr. Wilson Hewitt, and brought my family with me. We lived at the mouth of Spring Creek, near the Young ranch. In the fall of '77, I built the first house on the Muddy, to be occupied by Windsor and Coble, as a cattle ranch. The building was located on a hill just below the fair grounds and since known as the Rogers Ranch." This house was built of logs hauled from Cedar Canyon. This same Mr. Hewitt later named our city Broken Bow.
No doubt this was a cattleman's paradise, with the spring-fed Muddy Creek and the lush grass of its fertile valley. But the era of the free range was soon over, for by 1880 there was a homesteader on every 160 acres in this valley. I can't tell you who homesteaded this land but they only kept it long enough to get owner's title, then sold it.
In the spring of 1883 a wealthy man by the name of H. G. Rogers came from the East and settled in Broken Bow. As soon as the homesteaders proved up on the land he bought it up until he owned over 1,000 acres in this valley. It became known the Rogers ranch. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers with their two children moved into the log house on the ranch. Then when the Burlington railroad came through Custer County, Mr. Rogers gave them a right-of-way through his land, and in 1886 watched the first train come into Broken Bow.
Sometime during the '90s the log house was torn down and a frame house was built where it had stood. The Rogers continued to live there until about 1900 when they leased the ranch to H. L. Sullivan, and from then on it was leased until 1950 when it was sold to the Russell Adams family.
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In 1913, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred C. Sloggett and family leased the ranch and lived there for five years. By this time much of the sod had been plowed under and the land was used to raise grain and alfalfa. It is believed that the Sloggetts planted the cottonwood trees that surround the house.
In 1918, Mr. and Mrs. J. T. Cole and sons were the renters, and a son, Walter Cole, continued to live there until his death in February of 1943. In 1943, Mr. and Mrs. Russell Adams, Sr. and family leased the ranch, until they were able to purchase it in 1950. Russell Adams, Jr. now owns 240 acres and Russell Adams, Sr. owns 62 acres of the original ranch.
In 1934, while the Coles occupied the place, the frame house built in the '90s was torn down and a new modern home was built on the same spot where the log house had stood (three houses on the same spot).
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The telegraph line followed the railroad. Then the telephone. The R.E.A. lines and the Natural Gas line also cross the place. Two highways, 92 and 70, also divide the original ranch. Part of the land is under irrigation.
Many changes have taken place and the valley east of Broken Bow is much different than it was in 1877 when Mr. Hewitt built the first log house on the Muddy.
In the spring of 1901, my family came back to Nebraska after living in Colorado for six years. I had spent the first six years of my life in Colorado. Although I remember many things that took place during that time, I hadn't expected to see the country again. But when my daughter, Margaret, and her husband, Norman Kirchmann, invited me to join them in Grand Junction to travel back with them through the central part of the state, I gladly accepted. They told me they would take me to see the little inland town of Mesa, Colorado, where I lived with my family in the late 1890s. Two of my brothers were born near Mesa: Ralph in 1897 and Sidney in 1899.
I flew from North Platte, Nebraska to Grand Junction, Colorado, June 13. The next day we went to see the National Monument of Colorado, a thirty-five mile Rim Rock drive, canyons and rock formations beyond comparison, that lies west of the Colorado River near Grand Junction.
On June 15, 1983, we drove the forty miles up the mountains to Mesa. The roads are changed since we traveled them in a lumber wagon eighty five years ago. Between Grand Junction and Palisade we went past acres and acres of beautiful orchards in the wide river valley. Soon we left the Colorado River to follow the Plateau Creek canyon, a very narrow gorge where the road and river ran parallel with colorful rock walls on both sides. The river was running full of water and it had been much higher, for there was debris all along the banks. We followed Plateau Creek almost all of the way to Mesa.
My impression of Mesa is that it is a quiet little town, filled with contented, friendly people. The houses were ordinary, rather small, with well-kept yards and gardens. There were shade trees and shrubs. We drove down Main Street, past the grocery store and the church, built in 1895, where I remember attending Sunday services with my family. We went back to the grocery store to get some things for lunch and began asking questions. We learned that Mr. Pruitt's store where we bought groceries and picked up our mail in the nineties had burned down in 1917. I asked the proprietor if there was anyone in town who could remember back to the late nineties or early 1900s. He named two ladies: Maggie Dixon, a widow who lived near, and Mrs. Walter Drexel, who lived about one-half mile east of town. We called on Maggie first. She was 76 years old and could tell us many things but she advised us to see Mrs. Drexel.
Mrs. Drexel was born near Mesa in 1896 and had lived near there all of her life. She knew all about the Bull Creek neighborhood where we had lived. She invited us in and showed us pictures of the Bull Creek schoolhouse where Inez and Edgar had gone to school. She had gone to school there, too. The first picture was of a one-room school, the other one taken after another room had been added in 1907 to accommodate all 12 grades. Nora Monroe, our neighbor girl was one of the big girls in the second picture. Nora taught in that school later. One teacher who taught there was too dignified to say "Bull" Creek; she changed the name of the school to a more poetic name, "Molina." Molina is the name the neighborhood goes by now.
Mrs. Drexel asked us to go with her to see the places that I wanted to see. She took us east past the cemetery and the Henry Clark place where many old buildings still stand, past the Boghert Ranch on the side of the hill. Then we came to the Monroe place at the foot of the hill. There are many old buildings there, but a new house replaces the one that I remembered. The gate was closed and padlocked so we couldn't drive in, but looking to the southeast from there we saw the canyon where we had lived in the two-room log cabin on Mr. Monroe's ranch. Ralph was born there. It is doubtful that the log house still stands, but I could see buildings on the south side of the canyons. When we lived there, we could see our neighbor across the canyon south of us.
The roads had changed so I wasn't sure where the buildings had been on the Davis place, where we lived when Sidney was born. A little farther down the road we rounded the "Dinkle Hill" and I thought of the beautiful cactus garden it used to be in the early summer each year. Then we crossed Bull Creek and saw the schoolhouse by the side of the road, the schoolhouse where Inez and Edgar had gone to school. The schoolhouse hadn't been used for several years. It was recently sold along with acreage of land, to someone who planned to convert it into a home and retire there. No one was there but a horse was in the lot and a friendly shepherd dog came to greet us as we took pictures.
Later we drove to Collbran, not over the Ridge Road through the woods, as we did that snowy night in the winter of 1899, but following the highway along Bull Creek. How could things be the same after so many years? Everything was different, but the sage brush, the grease wood and the cacti are the same. Only we were too early, as the cacti hadn't come into bloom yet.
Jan Thomasen VanDyck, born in 1605, sailed from Holland to Utrecht, Long Island in 1652. He was the first magistrate there. He married Lytie Dirks and they had four children: Thomas, Carel, Derick and Pieter. He married again later to Teuntje Hagen and had eight more children: Achias, Hendrick, Jan Antje, Angenietje, Marretje, Tryntje and Lambert. Jan Thomasen died in 1673.
Achias, son of Jan Thomasen VanDyck and Teuntje Hagen, married Jannetse Lambert in 1674. They had a son, Lambert, born September 16, 1677. Achias died some time before 1708.
Lambert, son of Achias VanDyck and Jannetse Lambert, married Maryke Hooglant. They were members of Six Mile Run Church in New Jersey around 1712. They resided on Staten Island, New York, circa 1721. They had ten children, born 1705 to 1723: Janneke, Achias, Adrian, Johannes, Henricus, Dirck, Jenneke, Achias, Johannes and Elizabeth. Lambert died in 1772.
Dirck, son of Lambert VanDyck and Maryke Hooglant, was baptized October 1, 1707 at Staten Island, New York. He married Saertje Janszen. Four children were born to them: Matje, Johannes (John), Geurtje and Jenneken. Dirck died in Bucks Co., Pennsylvania.
John Vandike, born in 1739, was baptized August 10, 1740. He married Martha Huston, January 8, 1766. They had several children, two of which were John, Jr. and Richard. Martha died in 1820 and John, in 1821, both in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
Richard VanDike, son of John Vandike and Martha Huston, was my great grandfather. Their son was Robert, and Robert's son, Loyal Boyd, was my father.
Until recently we had found no record of the VanDykes beyond John Vandike in the mid 1700s. We now know they immigrated from Holland in 1652. Their migratory path took them to Long Island, New York, to New Jersey, and finally to Pennsylvania, especially Bucks Co., and from there to areas of the immense Northumberland Co. and, in John Vandike's case, to the hills of Mercer Township near Harrisville in Butler County.