USA > Kansas > Riley County > Randolph > Settlement of the Blue valley in the vicinity of Randolph > Part 2
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farm and moved over after however, happy and sat there which he lived with them until and sang. Kansas was in its his death which occurred on primitive stage then and it was October 22, 1914, at the ad- hard for the early settlers to vanced age of 91 years. He get along. Not much work to
be done by which one could living possible.
make any money, as money I learned to swim in the was scarce and no one could river at an early age and often
afford to hire. The settler swam across the big stream could hardly work away when it was too high to cross either, as he needed to work any other way, carrying my at home to get his own things clothes on my head. I skated in shape as everything had to on the ice in the winter and
be done by hand and it went trapped and fished. Fish slowly. Rails had to be slit were plentiful then and of
or cut from the growing trees enormous size.
I
saw a cat
in the timber, to fence the little fish at Manhattan that had
patch that had been broken been caught in the Big Blue and planted to corn. How- river there, that weighed 80 ever, father worked at picking pounds and was over five feet
corn for a neighbor three miles long.
We had a seine then from home, in the winter, get- and could catch them any time
ting a bushel of corn for a we wanted, or could fish any
day's work, and carried it way we wanted, for that mat- home in the evening on his ter, not being restricted by any
back, parching some of it the fish or game laws, but could same evening in the oven and fish and hunt to our heart's grinding it in the coffee mill content. We did not, how- for the next morning's meal. ever, exhaust the supply as we Meat was plentiful as there did not institute any great on- was lots of game, such as wild
slaught but only
got what we
for a living. How- turkey, prairie chicken and needed
water fowls which we could ever game became exhausted shoot from the door or trap after a few years as it fled in the front yard. That made from civilization. The Indians
were a great menace to fish any fire was in sight. This, and game as they would come however, was overcome as the to the valley and pitch their years went by and got the camp and hunt and fish and land broke up and cultivated. In 1860 we were doomed
trap all winter on a large scale. The prairie fires also were a with a
very severe drought, fearful destruction as the In- when no corn was raised in dians would set the grass on Kansas. So we came near would starving, we and our animals,
fire in the fall and it
burn for days and weeks, and many a frontier settler
sweeping over the whole had to pull out and leave their country, consuming everything homes and pull "back east" to
in its wake. The white set- Daddy or "wife's folks," to
time to save avoid starvation. The fron- tlers had a hard
themselves and their homes tier had been extended as far from being destroyed by the west as the Republican and raging elements. The only Solomon rivers. Thus you see
pioneer life was not thing to be done was to break the a fireward around your
home wholly play, nor the pioneers it. path a bed of roses, but was and burn out between
doing sometimes quite bitter and re-
Those neglecting SO had and quired quite a bit of endur- often lost all they
possibly their lives as it often ance and self denial on the came at night, having traveled part of its members, but those ten or fifteen miles since dark, who were able to pull through when no fire was visible at the the hardships were amply re- time of retiring. I know many warded.
Another thing to mar the
times father had to get up several times at night and go comfort of the settlers occur- out and look around to see if red in 1864 when the country
below. Soon small ob. was visited by a far more de- ring structive calamity than the jects began to detach them drought of 1860, and one that selves from the mass so tha cast more gloom over the the eye could distinguish sepa
country at large than any pre- rate particles which looked
vious one. It was the grass- not unlike scraps of silver hoppers. To describe their driven with the terrific force coming properly would be an- from the tail end of some gi
other impossibility, unless it gantic machine. Drawing could be to some extent com- our hats down tight over our pared with a good sized snow faces for protection, we again
storm, or a regular Kansas looked up. The whole mov- blizzard. We were on our ing cloud had lowered to a dis- tinguishable distance. "Why
way to Ft. Riley, each with a
load of corn, father and I, and they are
grasshoppers," we
toward 10 a. m. it began to exclaimed almost at the same get quite dark, although it was time, and indeed, so true was
clear and warm. We began our observation and so rapid- to look around and happened ly were the grasshoppers set- to turn our faces skyward to tling that we did not know
shield study the upper
air, and lo, which way to turn to
faces from the storm
and behold, the sun was com- our pletely obscured by a rapidly Our horses also annoyed by moving mass not unlike snow the myriads of insects settling indeed, was being driven upon them began to move rest
straight
toward the
south. lessly, swinging their heads
from side to side, while they Whatever it was it was driving
fiercely ahead as if impelled whipped their flanks with by a strong wind, though there their tails and were almost un was not a breath of air stir- governable and had it not been
for the heavy loads they were of the stem. It was a deso- pulling they would have got- late world to behold in mid- en away. The ground and summer. The trees, no ter how large, were stripped
road and everything was soon covered several inches deep of their leaves, and every vest- by the hoppers and on inclines age of green was eaten to the where we would go a little ground, which in turn was faster they could not get away covered with a mass of offen. quick enough and were crush- sive
smelling substances al- ed by the wheels to such an most unendurable.
extent that it made it muddy
little. Ter- known our own place had it
ror stricken as we
were we not been for mother coming to
drove on to the Fort and un- meet us, pale as a ghost and
loaded and camped for the almost scared to death by that
night. We started back some terrible pest that had invaded time the next day and found that every green thing alono; the place. By night they be- gan to crawl up and so pro- devoured the road had been fusely did they cover every- by pests. Numberl~
the thing, trees, fences, houses, scissorlike mouths were gnaw- etc., no one could tell what it was but a brown mass of mov- ing things. After they had eaten everything there was to eat, they began to mate, after which the female burrowed
ing on stubs of corn stalks near the roadside, the tassel was gone, the edges of the leavor were eaten away, and lines of hungry insects could be seen clinging to the center rib of her rear end into the ground the blades gnawing and cut- and deposited her eggs and inch died, in most cases remaining
ting at every remaining
On reaching our home about not have so the wheels slid sideways if 4 p. m., we would
it leaned ever so
in the hole dead. Thus the the "river" for what we had to ground was one large honey- buy and with what we had to comb of holes so close together sell. The only thing there you could not put down the was to sell at that time was end of a finger between them. corn, what little there was These eggs, of course, hatched raised of that, as the grasshop- in the spring, and the young pers did not altogether de- ones ate all they could find stroy that every year. So, in until they got wings, then they order to put it into a more con- would rise and go somewhere densed form we got started else as soon as they got a raising hogs and fed the corn favorable wind, which had to to them, butchered them and be from the north as they in- sold them in the form of bacon variably go south. They stay- and lard, hauling it to the ed with us three years in suc- "river" points, such as Leaven- cession, destroying everything worth or Atchison, Kansas, we tried to raise, and the and traded it for goods or grasshopper years in Kansas clothing or shoes. Each fam- will always be remembered by ily usually went to Leaven-
the old settlers as long as they worth once a year to buy up
live. The years during and some stuff for the year, and
after the grasshopper raid that trip was usually made in were hard ones for the settlers the fall or early winter, and it during and took a week to make the trip. being, as it was,
after the Civil War, when We then had to rig up a cover- everything went high in prices ed wagon and camping outfit and were scare what we had to and camp by the roadside
buy. Not much transporta- when night came on. The tion facilities as the country distance to Leavenworth is 112 was new and we had to go to miles, the way the crow flies,
but the country over which we one or two days and nights. had to travel was unsettled so These mills were of the old the road was bad and wound type water mills where the around on the divides and to grain was crushed between where the creeks could be two burrs or millstones, the
most conveniently crossed. lower lying flat with the face We needed airplanes more up was stationary : the upper then than now when the road~ one going around with a ter- are graded and the creeks and rific speed, crushing the grain rivers bridged.
that ran in between them As the years rolled on the through an opening in the cen- country improved, highways ter. We usually took 15 or 20
were established, railroads bushels of grain at a time to built and little towns sprang have made into breadstuffs so
up along the lines, so it be- it would last a while an we came a little more convenient would not have to go to mill to do business. The Kansas so often. We would often take
division of the U. P. railway grist along for our neighbors
was built to Manhattan in also, and they would do the August, 1866, and after that same in return.
it became a little more conven- ient. A mill was built there tion was when the hogy were about the same time, so
Another marked co-opera-
we fat and ready to be butchered, could get our grist ground a which was generally in the little closer to home. Before fall when cold weather had that we had no mills close to set in. Then it was a com- home, but had to go to Marvs- mon thing to invite two or ville, Grasshopper Falls or three neighbors and their Milford. Sometimes we had wives for a day when there to lie there and wait our turn was a regular wholesale
slaughter. When trading work them go on and pull the big
this way with each other; each plow which cut the heavy one had a certain job assigned prairie sod often eighteen and him. Some did the killing, up to twenty inches wide. It that was usually the job of the was a wearying task, as one writer, the "Pioneer Boy" with had to walk back and forth his rifle or six shooter, anoth- from the wheelers to the lead- er had a horse to snag them to ers then back and halloo and the scalding barrel, then some hit with all your might to scrape make them go, and it is sure a up, go a thing that it did not last forever, as it was indeed
to scald and some to clean, then hang them and someone to cut them open and take out the insides. Thus cruelty to fifteen or twenty hogs often killed in one day.
animals to work
were the cattle that way, but we had no other power then and it had to be done.
Coming to Kansas as I did at the age of eight, my first To tell all the different do- ings of the early settlers would be an endless task and would years were spent in helping® father with what I could; in the winter usually in the tim- take too much writing, so I
ber making rails for
fence must hurry and tell the most important that I can now re-
around the place, and in the summer driving a breaking call to memory as the time is team which consisted of two or three yoke of oxen which had to be driven along by
short and the old ones are passing one by one and I know not when I may be call- walking by their side in the ed to my reward, maybe be- grass with a big whip lashing fore I have been able to finish and cracking at first one yoke this narrative, if it will be any and then the other to make benefit to do so. When I look
back on the past I can see it to take the boys and girls rid- all as though it were a moving ing on. That consisted of a picture passing before my vi- stout
post set in a hole sion. I can see how the neigh- through the ice to the
bot- bors used to visit each other, tom, and a pole about twenty using the oxen and wagons as feet long with a hole through conveyance. How at Christmas it about four feet from the time they used to gather at big end and an iron pin our house or some neighbor's, through it into the post which old and young, to have serv- projected four feet above the ice, "Julotta" in the early ice. Then tie a small sled to
morning. At one occasion, the long end and two or three the Christmas of 1863, the boys would walk around at the neighbors across the river all short end and push it around came over to our house in the and
send the sled flying early morning, afoot, and, car- around the circle with its pre- ried an organ -- they called it cious load.
a "melodeon"-to play the How we would go turkey sacred old Christmas hymns, hunting in the evenings after crossing the river on the ice they had gone to roost, or in and two men, Sumner Rolan- the early morning before they der and Peter Johnson, car- had flown
down. How we ried it between them suspend- would shoot them down from ed on-a pole, the distance of a the tops of the big cotton- Nothing was woods by the river so they
mile and a half. too hard then. How we used would come down with a thud to have skating parties on the at our feet. Everything had a ice up and down the river. We thrill then. How we would would build a fire on the ce go deer hunting and follow and have a flying Dutchman their £ tracks for miles and
crawl in the deep snow to plains, much augmentd by some crest to try to get a view bushwhackers, half-breeds and of the game. How we would Mexican cowboys. We would trap beaver in the river and often see great bands of In- coons by the shore and hunt dians go through, dressed in wildcats by following
their war regalia and painted with tracks in the new fallen snow war paint, to fight some other then tribe. They did not molest any until we treed them,
shoot them down. All this of the settlers, though they was great sport in those days, would halt a while and sit on something we cannot indulge their ponies and look at us
and sign to each other as in now.
The Indians were plentiful though they thought we were in those days and were our funny objects in their sight. daily neighbors. We often We were in no way protected. visited their camps, went into so they could easily have tak- their tents and saw them cook en our scalps, every one of us. their food and sat with them but they did not, and went around the camp fire. Some their way peaceably. This was of them would sometimes come in the latter fifties. After that to our house and mother the government took charge of would bake Johnny Cake for them, the Indians, by estab- them as long as they could eat lishing agencies at their reser- and they surely could eat a vations and in some cases buy- lot. They were not hostile at ing them out and moving them that time : that was before the to the Indian
territory, thus Civil war. After that they opening their reservations for
got stirred up and gave the settlement by the whites.
settlers quite a bit of trouble, In 1873 we saw a tribe, the especially out west and on the Pawnees moved from the res-
ervation in Nebraska to territory. It consisted
about 800 Indians. They pass- pass. ed by our place and it was a constant stream that lasted whole day from early ing until 10 o'clock at night. A government escort that had charge of the moving panied the caravan. About and
the do anything that day but stay of by the house and watch them
The period we happen to
a live, that is, the years from
morn- 1860 up to the present time,
1922, or especially the last twenty years, has been the
accom- most forward in advancement
improvements that the forty wagons carried the Dag- world has ever seen. When gage and household effects we first came to Kansas and and a bunch of fat cattle was began to raise corn we planted driven along and a beef
killed in camp every
was it with an axe by cutting a slit day. in the edge of the newly brok- rode en sod and dropped the seed same and
Squaws and papooses
their ponies and dragged their kernels in the
to- tent poles behind them. Occa- tramped on it to press it
sionally a bed was made on gether. Some dropped the the poles where one or more corn in the furrow when they tiny youngsters would be rid- were breaking, but that did ing. The bucks and braves did not come up very good as it not travel on the road, but would come under the sod would stay along the river among the turned down grass
and across the farms along the where it was not able to get line to hunt and shoot what through the sod unless it was game they could find on the very thin, but the other grew
way, joining the camp at finely and raised good corn. night. It was indeed a great Later we dropped by hand sight to behold and we did not and covered with a hoe, then
came the hand planter, and about three feet and eight later, in 1866, we got the first inches. This chain was staked horse planter along the river, down tight at each end and where a man or boy would passed through a slot in the sit and drop the corn by jerk- planter that would bring the
plate around and
ing a lever back and forth ev- dropper ery time the pointer on the drop the corn. The chain had seed box cover passed over the to be moved and staked down marked out row, as the field every time you turned around was first marked and we drove at each end, so you see this
across these marks as
planted. Could he put
we was better and we thought
it we sure had it then, but we
straight in the cross ? That were in the advancement and improvement stage, so here
we would find out when it came time to cultivate, as we comes the lister, first the walk-
would cultivate both ways. Then some smart head bobbed ing lister, and oh, my, the man killer. Then the wise heads up and invented what they put it on wheels so we could ride and that was better SO we had to have that also, and it is still with the farmers to it this day.
called a "check rower," an at- tachment to put on the horse planter so that one, the driver, could do it all alone, as would take the place of the
Then we have seen the ad- dropper boy and also you vancement of the reaper from would not have to mark the fields. It consisted of a out the scythe, the £ cradle, the hand rake reaper, the Marsh' wire chain® 80 rods long, or harvester, where two men long enough to reach across the field, with balls on it the stood on the machine and bound the grain as fast as it distance between the hills, or was cut and elevated to them.
We did not have any of these cessful of them all, as it bas for our own, but I bound on gone on and been improved one of them at a neighbor's to and is still the leading ma- try it and you had to work fast chine. They have, however, if the grain was thick and commenced to use the com- heavy. Their life was short, bined harvester and thresher they did not stay in use long. in the wheat belt of the west Then came the dropper, that the past few years, and thus it carried the grain till the has been going on from better driver, with his foot, dropped to better all the time, until
it the amount of a bundle to be has reached a stage of almost bound. Then the table rake, perfection.
Formerly when
with an arm moved by a chain, we would thresh it was neces- swept off the grain in a pile to sary to feed by hand and some be bound. Then the self had to stand up by the feeder to at the mouth of the machine,
rake, something similar
the former, only improved. in the dust, and cut the bands Then the self binder, and what with a knife and run the risk a wonder! You would go al- of cutting yourself on the feed- most any distance to see it. er unless it was an expert band The first of them
that came cutter. Then the grain had to out bound with wire, very fine be measured with half bushel wire, but they were not satis- measures and put in sacks or
factory, So their life was dumped into a wagon and short. Then in their place keep tally with a pencil or dial
came the twine binder. I not know but the header
do board with hands to move for was every half bushel and one for
out before that time, but I did every ten, sometimes forget- not see any until later. The ting to move or not having twine binder was the most suc- time when the grain was com-
ing fast. Now you do not ha-
pushed them into the alley or to touch it, the machine does junk pile, where they have it all automatically. been left to rust and decay. How about transportation? Thus it has gone step by step Have we not seen it all the forward in all branches of way from the ox cart on up? industry, just in our time, till How, when we would go any- we have now the most com- plete commodities of all kinds, almost impossible to improve where it was to start out and walk or those that had them would take a horse and go upon. We cannot here begin horseback, or in a lumber wa- to enumerate all the different gon, on a board laid
across things that have been brought
the wagon box to ride on. about for general use and
Then about 1870 £ came the mostly within the last twenty spring seat, and, oh, my, we years, and it is remarkable, thought we had it then, and when we stop to think of it, what a great honor it was if only how we can stand in our we got to ride and sit in the own home and talk to anyone, spring seat, and those that all over the whole world, you could afford one were looked might say, and besides that upon as high-toned. And it the wireless that is just now was not better when later the getting into use, and the rapid
spring wagon came out. The moving automobile and the
first ones to get one of them flying machine. The latter
were considered rich and aris- has not become very common tocratic. And the same way yet as most people prefer be- with the buggy and carriage, ing on terra firma, but the which were used everywhere auto has gone into general use when the automobile came both in the cities and in the and crowded them out
and country, in a very short time
until it is now used by every- then, and we thought it won- body and every class. In 1901 derful, but what shall we say while in Chicago for two now when we think of the months, I saw my first auto- advancement in construction mobile and was offered a ride that has taken
place since in one of them, but missed it then and the number there
because of wife being too are now in use, and what a fidgety and would not go as state of perfection they have
she was afraid
of the thing attained, both in the way of and did not dare to get into it.
appearance, operation and en- It was nothing but a buggy durance, as well as conven- wagon owned by Montgomery ience. And what shall we say Ward & Co., and was used to next? I do not think we can give their £ customers what say anything but shut our they called a little spin over eyes and wait for further de- the city. There were only velopments, as we are in an twenty-three machines in Chi- advancing stage and do not cago at that time and we saw know what the next twenty or them all at once on the thir- thirty years will bring. They tieth day of April, 1901, mak- are trying hard now to travel ing a run through the parks. in the air and it would not be They were in their primitive surprising if, by twenty years stage then, only buggy type from now, everybody would with a little noisy motor, bug- be driving an airplane as they bod- now do the ever present auto- with mobile.
gy wheels and skeleton ies; one was a steamer
hap- only three wheels. We pened to be in Lincoln when they came through It probably is about time to park draw these ramblings of mine and to a close, but before so doing it was interesting to see them I do not know but what it
would be just and fair to de- years on the old home place, vote a separate chapter to but in 1886 we built a resi- dence on our own place ad-
my own self and family as
there has been nothing said on that subject.
joining the old home. Our life was an eventful one. Al-
My name is Carl Victor though we did not suffer any great misfortunes, it seemed Dahlberg. I was born in Christdala Socken Kalmer lan to be an uphill business to get Sweden, July 14, 1849, in a along. The first misfortune
little country home called that was of any consequence "Fagerback," my father's old was when our first born son parental home. When nearly turned out to be a deaf mute.
five years old my parents emi- That gave us of grated to America and I had worry and we tried all we my five year birthday on the could to get him cured, but in Atlantic ocean. We lived in vain. At ten years of age he Illinois for three years,
quite a bit
in the spring of 1857, as be- fore stated, we went to the for a term of eight years and then wild and woolly Kansas. My life was spent on my fath- er's farm until I was about thirty-four years old, when, on the first of November, 1883, I was married to Hannah An- drea Peterson Deere, of Mo- line, Illinois, a young widow with three little girls, thirteen, eight and two years, respec- become useful and respected tively. We lived about
and was sent to the institution for the deaf at Olathe, Kansas, was educated in the deaf mute language. He grew up to be a healthy, strong and intelli- gent young man and is mar- ried to a deaf Iady from Wheaton, Kansas.
Besides this boy, four girls and one boy more were born to us, all of whom grew up to
two men and women and are all
married and are living around never well from that time on, here, except Agnes, our oldest but had always to be doctor- daughter, who died in 1911,
ing, but she steadily grew after a married life of three worse until she finally died on years. My wife was an ideal July 1, 1921, at the age of 66 woman, a true and devoted years, seven months and one day. Her mortal remains are
wife, and a kind and loving mother, one that would sacri- resting in the Elmwood ceme- fice herself for the comfort of tery at Lindsborg, Kansas. others, and we lived happily
And now, at the present together. In 1909 we sold the time when this was written, in
farm and all our personal March, 1923, I am over 73
property on account of
poor years old and I know not the
health and other misfortunes hour when I may be called, so, and moved to Lindsborg, Kan- if I add nothing more to this sas. My wife's health, how- narrative it will have to suf- ever, was broken and she was fice, and I bid you all adieu.
(The End)
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