USA > North Dakota > Dickey County > History Of Dickey County, ND, 1930 > Part 15
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For a voting place the old town hall near the center of the township is still used. The district maintains three good country schools. The people get their mail from Ellendale and Forbes. The township is crossed from east to west by State Highway No. 11, leading due west from Ellendale on the quarter line to the east side of Section 8 where it turns north a mile and a half to again go west to Ashley, Linton and Bismarck. One of the best bridges in the county spans the Elm River on Section 10. The Great North- ern Railroad crosses the township east and west but has no station stop in this township.
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A HISTORY OF DICKEY COUNTY, NORTH DAKOTA
CHAPTER XVIII
ALBION, 130-64
[The stories of Tom Clark, Everett Gray, F. A. Bobbe and P. J. Rasmusson, supplemented by the memory of some who knew the township are authorities for this chapter.]
TN the Dakota Atlas of 1886 Townships 130-64 and 130-65 together make the civil Township of Enterprise. Just where this name originated is not told, perhaps for the reason that naming towns does not follow a system. Later when the Township of Enterprise was divided on lines of the congress- ional townships the east part was named Albion, but the reason for this name is not stated in the early accounts. The word signifies white or whiteness and is an English name of long standing.
Like other townships of the new region it was located by its boundary lines only and the homesteaders took only squatter's rights at first. The Elm River afforded good drainage and the soil was good. A list of its early settlers gives seventy-seven names as follows;
Levant Bangs Titus Harvey
August Prochnow
Andrew B. Blumer
Frank Harvey
John Prochnow
Wm. Bolen Carl Heine
James Proctor
Patrick Bolen
Gustav Heine
Peter Rasmussen
John Bolen
John Hickey
Wm. Retzlaff
Michael Bolen
Williams Howard
Andrew Smith
Frederick Bristol
H. B. Homedew
James Storre
Henry N. Bristol
George Homedew
Joseph Taylor
Peleg Bristol
N. J. Homedew
Albert Thomas
F. Townsend
John Burkhalter P. H. Bunker William Burton
Henry Hoermann James Hyde Robert Karl
Seth Tubbs Edward Retzlaff
William Campbell
John Keogh
Emil Retzlaff
Wm. D. Campbell
Frederick Kalbus
William Rose
Chas. L. Chapman Thomas Clark Thomas Colvert Isaac Cole
Truman Laurence
Amy Schwartz Gustauf Steffen Augustus Steffen Albert Storms
Benjamin Day
Henry Negley
Carlton Dickinson
Lewis Noding
George Stubbs
O. C. Farnsworth Emmett Gray
Anderson Noding
George Towers
Augustus Noess
Frank P. Warne
Edward Lauer
Chas. Schroder
Ed. McEntee S. M. Mowyer
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A HISTORY OF DICKEY COUNTY, NORTH DAKOTA
Theodore Gray George Noyes
Edward Williams
Everett Gray
Hulbert J. Perine
Ludwig Weis
Robert Gregory
James Pierson
Jacob Young
George Harvey L. W. Pike
Frederick Zinter
Like other townships in a new country its people moved around to other locations, but after forty-five years it still has some of the pioneers, and several families of the pioneers are still living on the old homesteads.
Tom Clark was a farmer in Iowa and had a good place there, but Dakota was being advertised big by the railroads and he got the fever of adventure in new lands. He rented his Iowa farm and came up to Dickey County, landing in Ellendale on April 11th, 1883. He found this a small new town, so with four other Iowa men he went out west of town and located his tract on the northwest of Section 19, 130-64. They had squatted on the land but had gone on with their improvements, and on the 21st day of November, 1883, the land was placed on the market by the Government, so Mr. Clark took both a tree claim and a preemption.
C. B. Moore, one of the Iowa men, and Mr. Clark were in partnership and had brought quite a lot of supplies, horses, lumber, machinery, and 600 bushels of shelled corn, a part of which they sold to the Dunton brothers in Ellendale. As soon as the group got located they put up their claim shanties and went to breaking. Tom got about fifty acres turned over with one team and a fourteen inch walking plow. He worked at this until the 14th of June when he put up some hay, and that fall went .over to the Dalrymple farms to earn some money in harvest and threshing. On November 14th he came back with Gallagher and Taeronie whom he located on land near his. He then left these boys in charge and they wintered his stock and hauled out their own lumber while he spent the winter in Iowa getting his affairs there straightened up.
The spring of 1884 was a hard one for Mr. Clark. Hail had destroyed his crop in Iowa and he didn't have much money. He needed some horse feed to get through the spring and as business was done on a cash basis he had to leave his gold watch with one dealer in order to get a couple sacks of horse feed. He was able to redeem the watch with some money he got from Iowa, and later that same year he had to pawn it again to get $13.00 worth of twine. That spring he had to buy seed wheat, but he was quite successful, getting a crop of 12 bushels to the acre of good quality wheat. Mr. Clark was a single man and with his hired man boarded at Piersons. He was busy on his place and helping his neighbors and wintered on his claim in 1884-85.
New adventure had no terror for Mr. Clark, so the first fall after he returned from the Dalrymple farms, he and a Mr. Bishop, in spite of the cold weather took a drive overland to Ft. Yates. They had heard that the Indians had made a killing of buffalo and they wanted to get some robes. They were two days on the road each way, and did not see a building of any kind on the way except the old stage "half-way house" near Hoskins Lake,
A HISTORY OF DICKEY COUNTY, NORTH DAKOTA
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Ox Team Photographed in Ellendale in 1883
and had to camp out near the location of Coldwater on the going trip and at the half-way place returning. At Ft. Yates they found that the Indians had made a successful hunt and they could buy robes at $5.00 each. Tom bought fifteen robes and Bishop eight. They baled these up and pushed them across on the ice ahead of them, as the Missouri River was frozen over but was unsafe and they were taking long chances in crossing. After getting the robes over to the east side they went back to get some supplies and to see Sitting Bull. They paid an Indian a quarter to show them to Sitting Bull's tent, and the guide got them inside where Sitting Bull was lying on a bunk. The interior was full of smoke from a fire smoldering under a pot in the center, their eyes were filled and water running from them to ease the smart, when Sitting Bull motioned them to sit down on a little bench which was near the dirt floor and below the worst of the smoke. He then told them that they were expected to give him a half dollar each as the price of ad- mission, a request with which they complied. He appeared to be the dirtiest specimen of an Indian in the entire camp, so far as they were able to see. There were some signs of the Indian occupancy of the country in Albion. A skeleton was found on Section 17 and also a big dipper. These were found by the Mellon boys, and Harry Barker found another skeleton further to- wards the hills.
Everett Gray and his two brothers came from Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the spring of 1882. Everett was not quite of age at the time but wanted to see the world. The Dakota boom was on and he bought a round trip ticket for about $19.00, a rate which applied from Chicago to Fargo. The brothers came down by way of Jamestown and Grand Rapids to Ellendale. They hired a one-armed man named Schultz and located over in Brown
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A HISTORY OF DICKEY COUNTY, NORTH DAKOTA
County and put up shanties, hiring John Keogh to build the shanties at $15.00 each. Mr. Gray went back to Michigan for the winter. On the return to Ellendale in April, 1883, they found that their claims had been jumped, but not to be defeated Everett took the yoke of oxen and drew the shanties into Ellendale (in the absence of the jumper) and located them on a vacant lot which a brother had bought for that purpose. Fortunately the builder had penciled the name of the owner on the door, so Everett had no trouble in knowing the shanties. About the first of May, Everett Gray located another claim on the southeast of Section 31, 130-64, and the other boys came out and located, taking some homestead land and trading for some. They began with squatters rights and drew their shanties out from Ellendale and began improvements. They had paid the locater $10.00 each for their first locations but located themselves on the Elm River land. Everett worked in Fargo that summer and wintered in Ellendale working at jobs that could be found. The brothers got along with one yoke of oxen among them for the first years, and one cow, but as they were able they bought other stock and equipment.
For a time Everett Gray drove the stage from Ellendale to Grand Rapids for Martin & Strane, getting the job to replace a drunken driver. Although a new business for him he soon learned the job, and was driving when LaMoure was made the northern terminal.
Peter J. Rasmussen was an early settler and lived in the township for many years building up a good farm, but deciding that he would retire from active farming and to give his daughter an education he removed to a lot of ten acres east of Ellendale and built up one of the beauty spots of North Dakota for his home.
F. A. Bobbe came out from Wisconsin in 1883, but located in McIntosh County with his brother Herman as a neighbor. In 1887 he decided he wanted to live nearer civilization and friends, so he removed to Ellendale and bought out a shop. He had money enough to buy a cow and the man from whom he bought trusted him for the tools. Later he bought a farm in Albion Township and has farmed it by renters or on his own account ever since.
The Heine family has been prominent in the entire history of the township. One of the boys while a student at the Agricultural College wrote a play based on farm life, which was used as the class play in his senior year. He is now manager of a large farm enterprise at Morris, Minnesota, and Emma Zinter, a member of another prominent Albion family is his wife. August Noess was a pioneer and his family has always taken a prominent part in community affairs, and the Noess farm is one of the best in Dickey County. The Ratzlaff family is still represented in the township and the old home is still in the family.
A large number of the people are Lutherans and have maintained an active country church organization of the Missouri Synod. A good church
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building was erected on the northwest of Section 25, and the congregation was fortunate in their ministers. One of the ministers who was with them a number of years was also the teacher of the public schools, the Rev. Mr. Kluender. He was a man of high ideals and the community responded well to his leadership and was very successful in maintaining a high type of com- munity life centering around the church, finding their pleasures and recrea- tion in their own circle.
There has never been a village in the borders of this township, but for some years in its early days there was a postoffice known as Pierson kept in the Pierson home on the northwest of Section 19. This was supplied from the Lorraine Postoffice just across the line in Elm Township on the Ellendale and Ashley line. The mail sack was brought up to Pierson daily by Mr. Gallagher or one of his children. When Forbes was established these post- offices were discontinued. The mail for the township is now brought out by rural delivery lines from Ellendale and Forbes.
Attention has been given to good roads although the township is not on the course of Federal or State Highways. There are many good houses, and farm buildings show a pride in appearance and there are many fine homes in this community of progressive farmers.
Fred Zinter Jr. is living on the old family homestead. Near by is the Chris Maack home; also the homes of Henry Schaller, Fred Kalbus, Fred Phelps, Emil Dathe, and Herman Tiegs. All of these old families are now well established, and many are related by marriage among the younger generation, and a real community spirit is shown in the school and church life of the township.
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A HISTORY OF DICKEY COUNTY, NORTH DAKOTA
CHAPTER XIX
BEAR CREEK TOWNSHIP, 131-59
[The society is indebted to Mons Nelson, Anton Christianson, John Nelson, George Dill, and others of the pioneers, and to the Oakes Times for the information about this township.]
T HE Bear Den Creek was known early in the history of Dakota territory, or in fact before there was such a territory. The name was given the creek by the Indians and the Indian name was translated as "The place where the grizzly bear has his den." This was the name of a hill from which the creek gets its name. The guides of the Nicollet & Fremont Expedition in the summer of 1839 knew the creek by name.
The stage line established in 1880 to connect Columbia with Jamestown ran across this township, and had a relay station where the driver changed teams, and passengers could get meals, or stop over night. This relay station was located on a hill near where the highway crosses the creek, at the corners of Sections 4, 5, 8 and 9, and was a prominent land mark for the early years. The station was designated the polling place for the three townships in the northeast corner of the county in 1884.
Mr. Mons Nelson met in Fargo a friendly Swede who had been out in the Bear Creek region and from his description Mr. Nelson filed on a piece of land for a preemption southeast of where Oakes is now located. Mr. Brown who was located southwest of Oakes, and Mr. Nelson came out to his land that he had never seen before. They came out by stage through Jamestown to the relay station then down to their claims, and proceeded to build two shanties, mostly of sod construction. They had to go to Lisbon for their lumber and finished their dwelling by putting 2 by +'s across on the sod walls, putting on some strips of board and thatching the roof with slough grass. They changed work and lived together that first summer, getting their mail from the relay station.
Brown's horses were old and one of thein died so he had to go to Fargo to get a new team. He bought a yoke of oxen and drove overland so was away from home about two weeks. The supplies were low when he left and Nelson had to live on pancakes and molasses. The coffee was gone but he kept on boiling the grounds and extracting what he could from them. Meat was unknown and had he had a dollar to go on he would have "chuck- ed the whole thing." When he could stand it no longer he went to the Bear Creek stage station and got a meal of salt pork and saleratus biscuits, a great relief from his constant fare. There was no garden that first year, but
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they got quite a few game birds notbeing troubled much about the game laws.
Mrs. Nelson came out on October 29th, 1882, the first white woman to make her home in the east end of the county. She came by stage from Jamestown to Bear Creek Station where Mr. Nelson met her. She did not stay long on the preemption before she was persuaded to go to Grand Rapids to help in the hotel there. After Christmas Mr. Nelson went to Grand Rapids and worked for the hotel people as driver of their dray line. About the first of April the Nelsons went back to their preemption to com- plete their residence and prove up. They did this in order to take a home- stead, which they took in the southwest of Section 4, on the east side of the creek opposite the stage station. They bought $123.00 worth of lumber and put up a real frame house, 12 by 16, papered inside and walled up with sod on the outside. They had to build a sod barn and dig a well. All that spring when he was not making his own improvements he was working out for Benjamine at the relay station, working until June, when he went to break- ing on his own place. He managed to get a wagon for $29.00 so had his vehicle before he had his motive power. He found a yoke of oxen for $126.00 but as he had only $100.00 he had to give his note, surprised that it would be accepted. His money was gone as he had already bought a cow, three pigs which had cost him $10.00 a piece, and a hen and nine chickens for $2.75. By getting a job of breaking he earned enough to pay his note and buy his groceries.
The Nelsons did their trading at Verona, and were able to get fish from a big spring in the creek and put in a pleasant winter. He had a crop the next year, and with good credit he got well established, and never went into the grain business very heavily, but has kept cattle, hogs and chickens. When the city of Oakes was started they had a trading place there. He sold his homestead in 1910 and moved into Oakes, as he had been afflicted for some time with rheumatism and had to let his farm go.
In 1884 Herman Kenkel (or Kinkle as it is sometimes given) came into the Bear Creek country and started a big farm. The larger part of Kenkel's holdings were over in the township north, but as he needed a large number of men it was quite the practice of the men around Bear Creek to work for him in the seasons of seeding and harvest. In May of 1885 Mr. Kenkel had a serious accident from the accidental discharge of a shotgun which hit him in the arm and the wound was several months in healing. In 1888 he had 1600 acres in crop, but was unfortunate in having his granary and machine shed burned with contents, suffering a loss of $1300.00.
Anton Christianson came up to Fargo in 1882 with Mons Nelson, his brother-in-law but did not take land at that time. Letters between him and Mr. Nelson were exchanged in the winter of 1882-83, so in June of 1883, Mr. Christianson came out to Dakota from his home at Litchfield, driving a team and wagon loaded with household goods, supplies and feed. They
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A HISTORY OF DICKEY COUNTY, NORTH DAKOTA
were fourteen days on the road and much of the time Mrs. Christianson had to walk to relieve the team of all they could of the load. The boy Arthur was only two weeks old when they started on the journey. He filed a pre- emption of the northwest of Section 9, and later took a homestead on the northwest of 3. When he started from Minnesota he had seven dollars in money and his team was mortgaged for sixty dollars. The first winter the Nelsons and Christiansons lived in the Nelson sod house, but the next spring Christianson built a sod house on his pre-emption, and put up some fairly substantial buildings of sod. He and Nelson worked much in partner- ship, and he worked for Kinkel to earn some money. Both Mr. and Mrs. Christianson secured a steady job with Herman Kenkel and this gave an opportunity for another man to contest their homestead and they lost it. They received $300.00 for the first year's work at. Kenkel's and an increase of $100.00 a year for the next two years. Then they farmed their pre-emption for a while and bought one of Kenkel's farms. Later they sold their land holdings and got the funds with which they bought a farm from the railroad land grant, on which they built up a good home. He says he had to pay as high as 45 per cent for one loan he had to make and fifteen per cent on an- other loan.
Mr. George Dill and L. B. Babcock came up to the new country from western New York state, and while they located in Sargent County their places were just across the line and they had much in common with the early settlers of Bear Creek. Mr. Dill brought his family out in April, 1884, and put in some land to crop without very much return. The greatest hardship was water. He put down thirty holes on his place trying to get water and then had to move his buildings to another location to be near water, and this was alkaline. The first summer Mrs. Dill taught the neighbors' children and her own to get them started, but the next summer a school house was built and they had a regular school with Frank Graham as teacher. They started Sunday School the first thing when they got there and three families united, Fifers, Babcocks and Dills. They had these meetings in the homes and Mr. Witham from near Port Emma came over every two weeks and preached for them. A neighbor, Mrs. Short brought over her little melodian, which added much to the pleasure of the services.
In the spring of 1885, Thomas Singleton and his son, W. R. Singleton, moved out to a relinquishment they had bought on the southwest of Section 2 of Bear Creek. They drove across from Fargo and brought out some lum- ber from Lisbon and put up a claim shanty, and so were prepared for the family when they came later. They drove out fifty head of cattle taking six days for the trip. During the summer of 1886 Mr. Singleton secured a contract for grading on the Northwestern near Ludden and worked six teams at that job. Later he got another contract on the Soo and worked until it froze up. There were two younger boys who took care of the stock and they did some farming. They had a winter school, the house being on
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A HISTORY OF DICKEY COUNTY, NORTH DAKOTA
wheels and movable so those who had time to go had the opportunity, but W. R. was fourteen years old and handled teams on the grading crew doing a man's work so did not get to school much at that time. The Singletons kept to the cattle business and have developed the Rosemay herd which now numbers 110 head of fine Shorthorn cattle. In 1898 W. R. took over the farm from his father and started in business for himself. In 1903 he took over the big Kinkle farms which were a few miles farther west. Kinkle was a distant relative and W. R. Singleton became the administrator of the estate. He served as Sheriff of Dickey County from 1925 to 1929.
John Nelson worked on the grading crews of the Northern Pacific west of Mandan and also on the Milwaukee east of Aberdeen, and in 1883 went out into Clement Township and squatted, first on the northwest of 33 and later on Section 4 in Hudson Township. In 1902 he came up to Bear Creek and bought a home on the site of the old stage station, the northeast of Section 8, where Wm. Mills had lived. Here the family lived for twenty years and then moved into Oakes.
When this township was organized it was a part of the town of Climax which included Clement Township also. For a number of years these two townships worked together on schools and government, but later the part east of the James River became a separate school district known as Climax and the township was named Bear Creek. Three railroads built into the township; the Northwestern from the south, the Soo from the east and the Northern Pacific from the north. Where the Northwestern stopped the city of Oakes was established, and the Soo and Northern Pacific also con- tributed to the building of that city. And from that time the new city was the center of interest in Bear Creek. The Northern Pacific built its Wadena line from Milnor to Oakes in 1901, and the flag stop of Janet was later put in on Section 11.
Several families of the pioneers are still left in the township and in the city of Oakes. One of the earliest pioneers, John A. Brown, a single man, was murdered at his home two miles southwest of Oakes on June 26th, 1896. Rings belonging to Mr. Brown were found in possession of two boys 17 years old who had been at Brown's for some time. With these as a clue the boys were tried in district court at Ellendale and sentenced to life im- prisonment.
Alx. Alexanderson built his river boat, the "Wonderland" on Bear Creek in 1910, and carried on the last experiment of boating on the James. Other means of transportation were already becoming more popular and in 1924 State Highways Nos. 1 and 11 were graded through Bear Creek Township, so that the people have easy access to their own city and to other parts of the highway system of the state.
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A HISTORY OF DICKEY COUNTY, NORTH DAKOTA
CHAPTER XX
JAMES RIVER VALLEY, 132-60
[The story of James River Valley Township is drawn from the stories of Andrew Olson, Peter B. Bergestrom, Swen Henry Johnson, Mrs. Samuel Glover, George Whitfield, E. F. Stevens and others of the old days.]
T HIS township is 132-60 of the government survey and was for a long time a double township, having the township to the east under the same organization. The James River in an irregular line forms its western and southern boundaries leaving large parts of the south tier of sections to Clement Township and taking about 600 acres west of the range line from Wright Township.
Mr. Elling O. Ulness moved out from Kindred, Dakota, in 1883, and filed on the northeast of Section 25. In 1884 he took the house he had on his place in Kindred and another building apart into sections and drew them on wagons to his new location on Section 24. He farmed his land and also put in a small stock of goods, using the building he had brought over- land for this purpose. He kept the postoffice named after him in his store. The store building was about 16 by 24 in size; one side was stocked with groceries and the other with dry goods. It is said that one thing he never kept for sale was liquor of any kind, but he could always be relied upon to have coffee and tobacco. This little store was the only place where supplies could be secured between LaMoure and Columbia. He probably got his supplies from LaMoure, and he hauled the mail part of the time himself from that town in addition to keeping the postoffice. Later Edgar A. Kent carried the mail for a period of four or five years, traveling on horse back.
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