USA > Minnesota > Renville County > The history of Renville County, Minnesota, Volume I > Part 35
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stock in trade was a sack of Hour, a jar of butter. a ham, $7 and a cow.
The pioneers in those days had a good friend and adviser in Ilon. D. S. Hall, "Dar" as he was called then, and now. too, by those who are still living there. He lived a mile from us on section 27, with his brothers, Charles and Ward.
We passed through the hardships of the grasshopper times. My father would go out and get work wherever he could. My oldest brother, Tim, and I were lost in the storm of 1873, when so many people perished, but our ox team led us to a shack where we stayed two days and nights. I was thirteen years old at the time and my brother, two years older. Father lived on the farm thirty-three years and died at the age of seventy- five, fifteen years ago. Mother still lives here and is eighty- five years old. Two of my brothers, Dennis and Joseph, still own the old place. After returning from the West I took some interest in public affairs and held local, county, and state offices and was postmaster at Morton under Cleveland's administration.
W. H. Jewell. In 1867, accompanied by my wife and four children, I came to Renville county from Outgamie county, Wis., and settled in Birch Cooley township. I built my house, cut hay and plowed all around my home as the grass was very heavy and I feared prairie lires. One of my neighbors acci- dentally set fire to the grass and I had to work all night to save my property. The fire spread as far as Preston Lake and ran into sloughs three to six feet deep.
The next season I went to the Republican convention in company with D. S. Hall. I nominated him for county auditor and he was elected. I was elected sheriff. We held to the old party until Bryan became prominent in polities and then left.
In 1868 I was appointed postmaster at Birch Cooley. keep- ing the office on my farm, and held the office about ten years. In 1878 Eddsville postoffice was created and a branch line opened to Preston Lake. Settlers began to come in very rap- idly at this time.
A. D. Smith. Before Jefferson Davis began to make history in the South I was born in Mellenry county in the northern part of Illinois. I attended the public schools of Woodstock and ob- tained an education. In time I met Margaret McBroom and in due time we were married. For some years we conducted a small farm and dairy but with Horace Greeley's advice ringing in our ears "Go west, young man, go west," I decided to follow it, just as soon as we had enough money to make the venture. In due course of events, namely in 1886, a fluent talker and an agent of the Fredericson Prins and Kuch Land Company, with
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offices in Chicago, Il., came to our neighborhood. extolling the virtues of the soil in Renville, Redwood, Chippewa, and Kandi- yohi counties, Minn. I obtained a half rate landsecker's ticket to Renville, my wife remaining at home to take care of the cows, and at length arrived at my destination. A good break- fast was served early in the morning at the Land Seekers' Hotel and three platform wagons were made ready and the teams hitched. A good supply of lunch, put up in boxes, was put on and also a liberal supply of "Land Seekers' Telescopes," which were similar to beer bottles and contained a liquid which made everything look good and a great many of the landseekers had no trouble in buying land. But several, including myself, were a little cantious in using the telescope too often and did not deeide upon any. land until we had spent five days looking over the land lying north and west from Renville within a radius of fifteen to twenty miles. There was only one settler within three miles of where Clara City now stands, and he had a well of water. Finally I decided that everything considered, the southwest quarter of section 12, range 37, township 116, was about the best piece of land available, and on returning to Ren- ville a contract was drawn and "binding money" paid, the price to be $10.00 per acre. This land company had offered this piece of land at a public land sale a short time before at $4.50 per acre, $1.00 per acre to be paid down. This land is now (1915) worth $150 to $175 per aere. In early March, 1888, my wife and I arrived at Renville and found some immense snow banks. We finally settled on our land and built a barn, 14 by 24 and lived in one end of it, while the three horses and one cow lived in the other end. We dug a well. striking good water at the depth of thirteen feet. We never suffered much from the prairie fires, losing at the most, perhaps a hay stack or two. Grass- hoppers did not trouble us much, but we had badgers, foxes and skunks as close neighbors. After twenty-seven years of ups and downs incidental to pioneer, or nearly pioneer life, we are satis- fied that Minnesota is a very good place to live in.
Oscar Miller. I came to Renville county with my parents in the spring of 1865. We settled one mile from the old Birch Cooley battlefield, where father had bought a man's homestead right for $100. There were eight children in the family, seven boys and one girl. Father built a log house in which we lived for many years. The wind and snow penetrated through the cracks. and often in the morning we would awake to find six inches of snow on our beds. Though we had some hard times not one of us became siek. It was a very usual thing to have three or four feet of snow on the level and the snowstorms usually lasted at least three days. We had to melt snow for the stock to drink, as we could not let them outside the barn.
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We would fasten a clothes-line to the house and by means of this find our way to the barn and back to the house. as otherwise we would have been lost in the storm.
One winter the snow was so deep that we had to go to town on snow shoes, the drifts being hundreds of feet deep.
In the spring we sowed our grain by hand and dragged it with oxen. The first few years we cut our grain by hand with an old fashioned grain seythe, and bound it into bundles. We hauled them into the granary and threshed the grain with a fail. For three years we were troubled by the grasshoppers. The fields were red with them. To drive them From the fields we used to take a sort of a strawtick and drag it through the grain field. The grasshoppers even affected the hen's eggs. the chickens eating so many of the insects that the whole egg would be red and therefore worthless.
In 1875, 1 went to California, remaining there for two years, after which time I returned to Renville county. In 1879 | mar- ried Lavina Kumro. Her relatives were living in Birch Cooley during the Indian outbreak and had a terrible time. Twelve children were born to us, six boys and six girls, 'of whom one boy and one girl died. For many years my brother and I threshed and 1 fed a threshing machine for sixteen seasons. During the last twenty-eight years I have been in business in Renville county at Franklin village, but left there in lune, 1915, and now reside in Minneapolis.
Herman Stark. As a young man I reached Transit township, Sibley county, Minnesota, March 20, 1872, and secured work at $130 a year. The next year I was married and started in life as so many others have done, with plenty of strength and cour- age and with high hopes for the future. In 1874 we had an experience with the grasshoppers. but they came late and we reaped a fair harvest. In 1875 the erop was entirely de- stroved by grasshoppers. So I went to Biscay, in Meleod coun- ty, and obtained work to support my family. For the three months of July, August and September, I earned $60.
In 1876 we had the prospect of harvesting a good crop. The grasshoppers, however, came again, though later than usual, and seemed to take to the oats, so most of the farmers out their oats rather early to save it. 1877 would have been a good year for erops had all the farmers sowed their grain, but having had such poor luck for so many years, many people were too poor to risk their last bit of seed and very few seeded in the spring. Those who did had a very fair crop. In the fall of 1877 } rented a farm. We now had three children in our family, who helped us on the field whenever we were ont working. In 1878 the crop looked very prosperous but in July we had rain and after that hot sunshine and hot winds which scorched the grain.
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The wheat vielded only twelve bushels to the acre and we paid 7 cents per bushel for threshing it and received twenty-five cents per bushel when we sold it. Eggs were 7 cents per dozen and butter 5 cents per pound. Stock had fair price at that time, a good cow being worth $25.00, dressed hogs, 3 cents per pound, but there was no market for undressed hogs.
In 1879 we had a good erop of wheat, the grain selling from 75 cents to 80 cents per bushel. That fall I bought 80 aeres of state agricultural land in the east half of the southeast quar- ter of section 8, township 113 (Bismark), range 30, at $5.00 per acre. During the winter of 1879-80, 1 hauled logs from the woods, hewed and planed them, and built a so-called "German" frame house. We moved on to this farm May 10, 1880. We also built a straw shed which was to serve as a shelter for our stock. June 10, a cyclone passed through our little prairie country and blew down our little church, also doing some dam- age to several farm houses and sheds. The fall before we had broken seventeen acres of land, which we had put into wheat. We also rented 30 acres which we put into oats, wheat and corn. This crop was a good one and we felt rich to be able to furnish sufficient food for the family for the coming winter. Fall came early that year and on October 15, we had a terrible blizzard, and awoke in the morning to find that the snow had blown through our temporary roof and was lying thiekly on our beds. We had left our cattle outside during the night, not thinking that such a snowstorm would come up, and it took us till 2 o'clock in the afternoon to get our sheds uncovered to get our cows into shelter. The snow melted away and we had some nice weather again, until November 7, when winter commenced in good earnest. During December and January the sleighing was excellent. but the weather was very cold. During these two months I would go to the woods, some twenty-five miles away, to get fire-wood, the trip taking two days. During these days my wife and children were alone a great part of the time. When the calves were born my wife had to take them into the house several times a day to get them warm and then take them back to their mother, as otherwise the little animals would have froz- The last day of January I went to Henderson, a distance of forty miles, and returned on February 1. I'll never forget how glad I was to be back home again with my family, as that very night it started to snow and stormed for a week. Our . stock shed was a mass of snow which looked like a snow bank and the snow packed down so hard that a team could easily have driven over that shed and not have broken through. It took us an hour's shoveling every morning to get at our hay and corn fodder stocks to get feed for the cattle. There was at least four feet of snow on the level that winter. During Feb-
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ruary and March only three trips were made to Browaton, our nearest market. fifteen miles away. We had a poor crop that year on account of the late spring and wet summer, having started to seed about April 15. We also had a wet fall. In the month of October we threshed with a horsepower machine. It kept one man busy carrying straw for the horses to walk on. At this time we also experienced a hard time on account of one of our children being sick with typhoid fever. I left the thresh- ing machine and rode on horseback to Brownton for a doctor, and it took him till midnight to reach us, as he had lost his way and the roads were very bad.
During the winter of 1881-1882 the weather was very mild with no snow. 1 hauled all of my firewood on the wagon. The erop was good that year and in the fall of that year we bought another 40 acres of state land, adjoining our 80 acres, at $5.00 per acre. During the winter of 1882-1883 we had a cold spell with much snow and blizzards. Oftentimes I would go down to the woods for firewood and return without any. the weather being so bad that I was unable to haul it. Sometimes I unloaded on the way when the roads were so bad, and oftentimes barely came through with an empty wagon. That year's crop was good in spite of the late spring. The fall was also late and all the work was done up nicely. That fall we bought another 40 acres of agrienltural land adjoining our 120 acres and at the same price as the first land.
During the winter of 1883-1884 I went to the woods twenty- five times. I hauled logs to the saw-mill at New Anburn, to be sawed into lumber For a granary. We had much snow that winter, but I always managed to get through. The crops were good and that Fall I purchased 80 acres of railroad land at $7.50 per acre, which adjoined our 160 acres. During the winter of 1884-1885 I hanled Imber from Winthrop, a newly built up town at a distance of nine miles, and built a barn 28 by 36 by 14 feet. In the fall of 1886 we bought another 80 acres of railroad land adjoining our 240 aeres, That fall I circulated a petition For a new school house district, as the whole township belonged to the same district. and in the spring of 1887 we built the school house, 20 by 30 feet, on our first 80 acres, about 80 rods northeast of the house, and here all of our children received their education. I took great interest in school matters and held the position of treasurer until I retired from active farming.
In the fall of 1890 we bought 160 acres of land in Transit township for $3,000, which we sold the following year for $4.000. February 17, 1891. our youngest son died from pneumonia. That winter was a severe one and there was much snow. We had a hard time to get a doctor and couldn't get a minister. We had our child with us almost a week after he died. waiting for a
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change of weather, but with our neighbors' assistance we buried him in a Christian way.
Our hardships of pioneer life ended and we retired from active farming January 10, 1905, owning 800 acres of land in Bismark township. June 16, 1905, our next youngest son died at the age of seventeen years, five months and twenty-eight days. In 1905 we bought a farm in Prestou Lake township at $35.00 per acre, which was very cheap at that time. The crop was good that year, but in 1906 a terrible hailstorm passed through our section which destroyed nearly everything. What had not been destroyed by the hail could not be ent on account of its being so wet, so this made a total loss. not only in Preston Lake township, but also in Bismark township, these two townships be- ing seventeen miles apart.
A Blizzard Experience. The "Minnesota blizzards" of early days, can never be forgotten by the early settlers. Pages might be written of the privations, losses and deaths caused by these storms. Many persons now living, ean remember distinctly see- ing crowds of men walking across the prairies, and shoveling mountain snow banks in search of the body of some missing neighbor supposed to have been frozen.
Below is an account of one of the many incidents of the kind that occurred in those days: An old lady named Mrs. Rogers, residing in Wellington township, went to a neighbor's house two miles distant to borrow flour. Her aged husband was unable to go at the time, and she herself' was partially crippled by rea- son of frozen feet, the family evidently being almost destitute of fuel and provisions. Upon returning with the flour, Mrs. Rogers was suddenly overtaken by the storm of that Sunday afternoon, and turned by the force of the tempestuous wind she evidently wandered with it in a northwesterly direction, the body being found on Tuesday afternoon at a point more than three miles distant from her home, and not more than eighty rods from the house of a settler. Two dogs had accompanied Mrs. Rogers and one of them was the means by which the searching party found her frozen remains, completely buried in the snow, The faithful animal had stood guard over his dead mistress where she had fallen, and would not allow the dogs from the house near by to distract him from his vigils, until his peculiar behavior attracted attention, with the result as above stated. The other dog attempted to run home, and was frozen to death.
The deceased Mrs. Rogers was sixty years old, and was the mother of four children. The two sons are young men, and were absent at this time. The only child at home was a young girl. The funeral took place on Friday, sympathizing neighbors
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drawing the body to its last resting place with their own hands, the roads being impassable for teams.
B. C. McEwen. Few living in Renville county today realize the abundance of wild game and fur animals that inhabited this section in the fifties and later. On the prairies (except in win- ter) there were dneks and geese, sand hill cranes, chickens and wild pigeons by the millions and in the timber there were deer, rabbits, partridges and more wild pigeons.
When on the farm in MeLeod county we were about seven miles from what was known as the "Great Pigeon Roost." It was the big woods east of our place and covered hundreds of acres, and there the pigeons came every spring from 1855 to 1861 and built their nests and raised their young and they were there in such countless thousands that we could often hear the roar of their wings that distance when they would rise in a body. And I have often heard people say that lived near, that they had often seen the air so full of birds that they hid the sun like a cloud and I have seen thousands light down on fields of grain in shock and cover the shocks so thickly that each shoek would look like a pile of live pigeons. I have seen them light on stubble fields and those that came behind would jump up and fly just ahead and light and the great flock would roll over the field like a great hoop, and all that was necessary was to get in front of the line and keep out of sight. I once killed 23 with one shot. What became of the pigeons is a question that has never been answered although several different themes have been advanced by sportsmen. One is that improved firearms and market conditions had annihilated them with the American buffalo, and another that some contagious disease killed them all off. The fur animals were: foxes and wolves, otter, fishers, minks, coons and muskrat. It was the mnskrat we depended on to pay for our postage stamps and to pay the subscription to Horace Greeley's New York Weekly Tribme. It was my fath- er's Bible. No other product of the country sold For cash, every- thing else was barter and store pay. After the Indian outbreak in 1862, and the Indians were driven away, and many of the old settlers were killed or driven out of the country, and while al- most every ablebodied man was in the Civil War, game increased very fast, especially deer, until a large number of emigrants from the South, mostly from Kentucky and West Virginia, came here. They brought their long Kentucky rifles and hounds and very little else. They, with the long-to-be-remembered winter of 1866-67 numbered the days of the deer in the vicinity of Hutchinson. My father and my oldest brother were never very good at hunting and I was never very good for much else, and I suppose for that reason my principal business for a number of years was to supply the family and hired help with meat and
Darwin S. Hall.
MARY DUNLOP MCLAREN HALL
TH> ATW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR. La .. X IND TILDEN POLEDATION-
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herd the cattle. When I could get the wherewithal to buy a pound of shot and a quarter of a pound of powder and a box of G. D. caps I was happy. Perhaps I ought to explain to the young people about those G. D. caps. Percussion caps in those days came in little round boxes like a pill box, and held one hundred eaps, and on the cover in large letters was "G. D. caps." I don't know to this day what the G. D. stands for, but they were mighty poor caps. If they got the least partiele of dampness on them the priming eame off. Prices of fur up to about the close of the war were as low as I remember them.
CHAPTER XX
BIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW.
Facts in the Early Career and Later Success of People Who Have Helped Make Renville County - Founders and Patriots - Names Which Will Live Long in the Memory of Residents of This Vicinity - Stories of Well Known Families Which Have Led in Public Life.
Darwin Scott Hall was born Jannary 23, 1844, on Mond Prairie in Wheatland township, Kenosha county, Wisconsin, near the village of Richmond, MeHenry county, Illinois. ITis father was Erasmus Darwin Hall. His father had two brothers, John MeCarty and Solon Willey, and a sister, Emily (Mrs. E. K. Whit- comb, Elgin. Ill.). His grandfather was Dr. Ruben Hall; his great-grandfather was Amos HaH, who had eight sons, as follows : Amos, David, Jared, Ezra. John. I'riah, Elisher and Ruben.
Amos, the eldest of these sons, in the year 1805 moved from Hopkinton, N. H., to the township of Ireland, Magantic county, in the Province of Quebec, Canada. The "Annals of Magantie County, " an historical publication of 1902, devotes a chapter to the Hall families settled in Ireland. Of Amos it says, "Ile was born at Salem, Mass., in 1761 ; his grandfather was a sea captain, and the family an old one, in which for six generations back it had been made a rule to call the eldest son Amos. Captain Amos Hall enlisted in the army when 18. served in the Revolutionary War, was paymaster-sergeant, and one of Washington's bodyguard for a time. Ile traded with the Indians for their fur: he was a man of such resolute will and power of eye, that he was a host in himself." D. S. Hall's grandmother, on his father's side, was Balinda Ruth Willey before she married Doctor Ruben. His mother, before marriage, was Mary Ann Carson : she had a sister, Elizabeth, and a brother. Philander, who was struck by lightning in Nicollet county years ago. Her father was William Carson, a
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German, who served his adopted country. the United States, as a soldier in the War of 1812. and married Merey Dodge, at Geneseo. New York, moving to Wisconsin about 1839.
When the subject of this sketch was three years old, his parents moved to Wankau. Winnebago county, near Oshkosh, where his father was among the first settlers, and later a member of the Wisconsin legislature.
In 1856 the family moved into the pine forest about fifteen miles north of Grand Rapids, Wisconsin ; his father, in company with Abija Pierce, built a saw-mill and began Imbering. There were five children in the family at this time: Darwin Scott. the eldest. Erasums Ward, Solon Willey, Charles Summer, and Mary Eliza- beth, a babe in arms. The eldest and youngest only remain in 1915. A school teacher was taken into the woods with the family. Two years later the family moved into the village of Grand Rapids, where school facilities were better. At fifteen years of age Dar- win began to work at lath making and such work, in mills making Inmber: later, in the spring, or other times when the depth of water in the Wisconsin river warranted. he was with those working rafts of humber down the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers. some- times as far as St. Louis. The work was strenuous, hardships and dangers plenty, necessitating "a survival of the fittest." He im- proved every opportunity possible for an education; the winter he was 17 he taught school near Grand Rapids: the spring follow- ing found him in Elgin, Illinois, where he spent two years at the Elgin Academy through the generosity of his aunt. Mrs. E. K. Whiteomb, then of that city. In June, 1864, he returned to Grand Rapids, enlisted in Company K, 42d Vol. Infantry, served. and was honorably discharged at the close of the war in July, 1865. From the middle of July until late in October, himself. Frank Brown and Henry Jessie worked on the Wisconsin river. They were returned soldiers of the Civil War, all from Grand Rapids, Frank Brown having nearly died in Andersonville as a prisoner of war. But it did not take them long to become civilians again : they stuck together that summer, made two trips down the Wis- consin and Mississippi rivers, built rafts on the Wisconsin river, slept and lived outdoors all the time, and were about $300 each to the good when the river froze up.
That fall the subject of this sketch went to Milwaukee. Wis., and attended the Markham Academy.
In May, 1866, he came to Minnesota. He bonght at Mankato, of Liveryman Day, a horse, saddle and complete equestrian out- fit, and mounted on his modern Bucephalus, he explored the upper reaches of the Mimesota river, going often to the U. S. Land Office at St. Peter for information regarding Government land. That smnmer he selected land in the township of Birch Cooley, in this county. That winter he taught school in the Joel Kennady
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