USA > North Dakota > Dickey County > History Of Dickey County, ND, 1930 > Part 22
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CHAPTER XXVIII
VALLEY TOWNSHIP, 132-63
[The story of this chapter is based upon the history of the township as given in the Notebook of Mrs. S. G. Brown and a letter from Mrs. Anna Stevenson Deane, both pioneers, and the related stories of others of the old days.]
TN the month of March, 1882, the first settlers of what is now known as Valley Township arrived. The first year presented a scene of great activity involving the erection of shelter and the cultivation of the new land. These first settlers were: William and John Stephenson from Illinois, Reuben and Frank Harris from Iowa, H. H. Campbell, Fred W. Brown and James Halloway from New Jersey, O. J. Smith and Alva Smith, A. Rogers and family, and G. H. Merrifield and family from Wisconsin. The mother and two sisters of the Stephensons came during the summer of 1882.
Within a few years the following names were added to the settlers of this township, Albert Follensbee, John A. Foley, John Handell, Frank Hunter, R. Johnstonbaugh, Paul King, Arthur Packstone, I. M. Ponoyer, Geo. Rogers, Frank A. Rogers, Wilbur F. Russell, Stephen and Charles Schwartz, C. P. Shear, Jos. W. Smith and N. G. Stevenson.
The Stephenson brothers settled upon Section 26 and built what came to be known for a long time as the "Half-way House" being midway between Jamestown and Aberdeen. The Harris brothers settled on the river on the southwest quarter of Section 22. They remained until 1886 when they went back to Iowa. H. H. Campbell located on the northeast quarter of Section 22 also on the river. He lived here until 1889, when he returned to New Jersey.
Fred W. Brown stayed with Mr. Campbell until 1884, when he filed on the northeast quarter of Section 20. He later traded property in the East for the quarter settled on by Mr. Campbell, receiving the deed for this in February 1889. This property still remains under the control of his family.
James Holloway settled on Section 6 where he remained a few years before going back east. His wife died while they were here and was buried at Monango. The Smith brothers lived on Section 2. George Merrifield did not come as early as the others mentioned. He lived on Section 34 until a few years before 1910 when he moved to California.
These pioneers obtained their land by homesteading. They erected tar-paper or rough lumber shacks in which they lived. However some of them had out-buildings constructed of sod. For the first few years oxen were used but horses were introduced in the settlement in 1884. The
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Village of Keystone served as a trading point for the settlers.
A school district was organized early in 1884, which was the third to be organized in the county. It included at that time the present townships of Valley and Porter (Algrove School District) but was called Valley by the vote of the settlers. In the fall of 1889 the part now called Algrove with- drew leaving a separate district for Valley. The directors were O. J. Smith, James Holloway and F. S. Harris, with Mr. Harris also serving as clerk. H. H. Campbell was treasurer. The first teacher was Mary E. Stephenson, who served the district off and on for three years. School was conducted in claim shacks and cook cars, which were moved from place to place for the convenience of the patrons. Two school houses were built by H. E. Allen in 1887. The first check in payment for them was issued April 20th, 1887.
In the first organization of the civil township Valley included the town- ship to the east, but later it was placed with Keystone for governmental purposes. On July 9th, 1888, a petition to separate the townships was presented by A. E. Smith and twenty others to the County Board. . The petition was granted thus separating Valley from Keystone Civil Township. The first town meeting was ordered to be held in the school house on Section 27, on July 26th, 1888.
The first marriage took place about Christmas time of 1884. The con- tracting parties were Frank T. Deane and Anna Stephenson. The first telephone line was constructed in 1905. The Rural Free Delivery was established in 1912. The first threshing rig to be operated in the north part of the county was that of H. H. Campbell. This machine was moved from place to place by horses or oxen. Fred Brown was engineer on this rig. The men slept in straw-piles,-no other bunks being provided. The first fall this rig ran so late that the engine had to be tended to keep it from freezing, and Mr. Ira Barnes and Fred Brown slept in the straw nearby to tend it. The creeks were frozen so hard that the tank wagon could drive onto the ice and the driver would cut a hole through which to pump the water. It was November 20th, when the season of threshing closed.
The first automobile owned in the township was a Ford purchased by Fred W. Brown. About 1920 the Sunshine Highway was established through Valley Township. In 1924 that part of the highway straight north from Ellendale to the county line was graded through Valley and will become a graveled highway of much importance. The Milwaukee railroad was sur- veyed through the southwest part of the township in 1886. The settlers of this township believe in education and six of the children of the first settlers were given a college education.
For incidents in the early life of Valley Township a letter from Mrs. Anna Stephenson Deane is most interesting and is given just as she wrote it.
"Our first house on the claim was 7 by 7 feet and as many as seven men slept in it at one time-three in a bed and four on the earth floor. One day soon after we had added another room 16 by 12 feet the stage driver, Mr.
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Kentner, who drove stage between Ellendale and Grand Rapids, stopped about noon and asked if he might feed his team there at noon and of course we said yes. When he got ready to hitch up he said, "If you boys could get up any kind of a meal my passengers would be glad to pay you fifty cents for it." The next day when the stage stopped Brother John rang the bell for dinner and the driver told us his passengers said that was the best meal they'd had in Dakota. That was the start of the "Half Way House" and when the girls came the reputation of the house was soon established.
"One afternoon a four horse team hitched to a wagon on which there was a big bank safe came along. Somewhere between our place and Grand Rapids they got stuck in the mud, and the wagon and load were left there for the night. The next morning Bob Christy came along where they were at work trying to start their load. 'Why don't you pull it out?' he asked. They said, 'We'll give you two dollars to pull it out.' 'All right,' he said and hitched his four big lumber horses onto it. They jerked it out so quickly the men hated to pay him the two dollars, he said. It was told that there were several thousand dollars in that safe that night.
"I remember one night early in July of '82 being wakened about mid- night by a man standing in the door of the shack. (The door consisted of a horse blanket.) When he had got us wakened he said 'I live on 20 of 132- 60. Now, how far from home am I?' I had talked with him when he had stopped for dinner with the stage passengers a few days before, and so re- cognized his voice now, and knew him to be Frank Deane who had a claim six or seven miles northeast of us. I told him he'd better put his team in the barn and stay with us that night. He did so and remained until late after- noon the next day which was Sunday. This was the first of many visits at our place.
"For myself, I well remember sleeping in that same little 7 by 7 shanty which was used as a kitchen after the 12 by 16 shack was attached to it. I had a cot in there several nights alongside the cookstove until my brothers could take time to build a nice smart little 10 by 10 claim shanty on the nearest corner of my pre-emption. We had a section there and put all the buildings in the center of it. There was a big stone marking the exact center.
"My sister came up from Illinois a month or so after I did. Having only a cot in my house to sleep on we hung a hammock above it and she and I used to take turns sleeping in it and on the cot. It was a good little shanty with a board floor covered by a rug and we had the old organ in it that we had brought up from Illinois, and had shelves on the walls with books on them, and curtains at the windows and so were quite 'fixed up.' But several times that fall did we waken to find that kind Nature had furnished each of us an extra covering during the night of 'beautiful snow'-for the shanty was only of single boards. But we Stephensons were always strong on ven- tilation and didn't mind a little thing like that.
"I recall also a time brother Will and I went over one evening to 'make
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residence' on our homesteads by sleeping there that night. Darkness came before we got there. It is easy enough even yet to get lost on the Dakota prairies, though there are now telephone poles, good roads, wire fences, and buildings, but in those days when, even in daylight, every section of land bore so close a resemblence to every other section, and there were no roads; it was still less difficult to lose yourself than now. We thought we were going straight to our shanties, but after a while we decided we couldn't find them and it was useless to try to go home. Fortunately we had bedding with us so we took the wagon box off and settled down comfortably for a good night's sleep. The morning light revealed that if we had gone a few rods further in the right direction we would have reached our shanties.
"Mr. Deane relates that he and his brother, by means of road scrapers, dug out a 40 by 40 side hill barn on their place and put rafters over the top, and in the fall when they threshed they covered this well with straw, thus making a good, warm, commodious barn. In the fall they two went back to the family home in Boston to spend the winter, leaving a younger brother Bradford and his friend, Henry Y. Jones, to care for the stock. There was a good deal of snow that winter and it drifted around the barn and up over the straw roof. One night one of the oxen got out of the barn and strolled around till he came back to it and walked right up on top of it. The straw gave way and he dropped through the roof to the floor-quite unhurt.
"When the Deane boys came out from Boston they brought with them two friends who also filed on claims. One of them, named Fitzgerald, borrowed a rifle to go hunting. On his travels across the prairie he encount- ered a small, pretty black and white animal which gave him so strong a sprinkling of perfume that on his return home he wasn't allowed to come into the house until he had entirely disrobed and buried his clothing and taken a good scrub.
"After getting their claims located and being settled on them they decided they might as well put in some crops, so Mr. Deane went to Wisconsin and brought back ten oxen, two horses and some machinery, potatoes, corn, etc. Then though the car was full, he decided to get a wagon also. This he did and managed to get it fastened on top of the car (outside) and brought it into the country in that unusual fashion. He got into Ellendale with his carload of stuff April 26th, and there had been so hard a frost the night before that they found little birds frozen in the car and when he got home the men told him they had found a number of the prairie chickens frozen.
"Neither Mr. Deane or his brother had the slightest knowledge of farming and if possible knew even less about oxen, so they had many ad- ventures with them that seem much more amusing in retrospect than they did at the time. The oxen soon came to realize that they were masters of the situation. One little trick they had was to turn out of the furrow and march right up to the watering trough when they felt thirsty and no amount of eloquent persuasion availed to prevent them from getting their drink.
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Occasionally they ran away and the prairie bore many a scar-evidence of the driver having tried to hold the plow in the sod in an effort to dim their joy of running.
"Bradford Deane was calling at one of the neighbors one evening and stayed rather late and lost his way going home. After wandering quite a while he saw a light and decided to go to the place and get straightened out as to the direction of his home. He kept traveling toward the light a long time and began to wonder why he did not reach it. Then he thought it had a 'Will-o-the-Wisp' appearance and gave a vigorous call. This brought a reply and he found out that he had been following a man with a lantern. After a good laugh they walked along together until they happened to run onto a straw stack and agreed that their best plan was to make themselves as comfortable as possible and remain there until daylight,-which they did.
"One laughable incident of the early days occurred one very cold night when Dr. Duncan (one of Ellendale's early citizens) and Mr. Deane hap- pened to be both stopping at my brother's place and sleeping in the same room. The doctor had gone to bed early and when Mr. Deane was ready to go he called up the stairs and asked Dr. Duncan if he would like a hot brick to put at his feet. Being rather chilly the doctor replied that he 'certainly would enjoy it', whereupon Mr. Deane went out into the 30 below outdoors and brought in a brick of that temperature, wrapped it in a paper and took it up and placed it at poor thin little Dr. Duncan's feet. His sensation may be imagined.
"One day about noon seven antelope were seen passing the Deane buildings. Mr. Deane got his Smith & Wesson rifle, mounted a horse and took after them. He shot and broke the leg of one but they got away. The next Sunday he drove out to where he had shot it and found the poor animal dead a short distance further on. He never heard anything more of the rest of the bunch. One day he and three others, heavily armed, went out into the hills on a hunting expedition. Coming up over the brow of a hill they saw a bunch of antelope but by the time they had got their rifles up out of the bottom of the wagon the antelope had departed for parts un- known."
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CHAPTER XXIX
KENT TOWNSHIP, 130-61
[Information for this chapter was gathered from people who knew the early days, from the story of Mrs. Pollock and from accounts of the later times.]
TOWNSHIP 130-61 had about the same pioneering experiences except that no ambitious colony tried to organize a townsite within its borders. It was crossed by the preliminary survey of the Dakota Midland railroad, and the Great Northern just misses it on the southeast corner. With no river through it the land is mostly good farming or grazing land.
Miss Anna Redmond who afterward became Mrs. James Pollock came into the Yorktown country with the family in 1883, where they located on a homestead. In 1884 she herself filed on a homestead taking land in 130-61. She went to Fargo to make her filing and found that it would take more money than she had and was about to go home without filing, when some Irish "bye" became sympathetic and advanced the money for her. He said, "I may be taking quite a chance, but you look honest and you are Irish". Later, she left the money to his credit at a bank in Ellendale, as he had land in that vicinity and occasionally had business in Ellendale.
She lived on her claim for five years and made final proof on it. One winter she ran short of supplies, probably the second winter, and set out to walk to Yorktown for something. The snow was deep and the cold severe and she froze her feet badly. She had to give up going and turned into a house about halfway to Yorktown, where the family thawed out her feet and took her to Yorktown where she took the stage to Ellendale and spent several weeks having her feet treated.
Miss Redmond was alone on her claim most of the time when she lived there. She had five acres broken and hired a neighbor to farm it. The first year they put in potatoes under the sod as many of the early set- tlers did, and produced a fine crop. The potatoes were so clean that they hardly needed to be washed when they were harvested. The meadow larks used to light on the roof of her little house early in the morning in the spring time and were the advance guard of the flocks of summer folk that made the prairie cheerful.
She had a neighbor girl, Lizzie Court, on a nearby quarter and she used to walk over there at times when she was not busy with her garden or farm work. When it came time for Lizzie Court to prove up she had no well and had been unable to get one up to the Saturday before she was to make final proof. She was diffident about asking help and was rather "up against it."
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Miss Redmond knew that she had no well and went over Saturday to see about it. They took a hoe and a sharp stick and went down to a springy place to prospect for water. They determined to dig for water and spent the afternoon digging. They got down about two feet and stopped to rest, the water began to seep in and they left it. The next morning they were to go to church in Yorktown and Miss Redmond hitched up the old gray horse to the buggy and drove over to get Lizzie. When she stopped, Lizzie was already to go, but came out with a tin pail on a string. The pail was full of clear water which she had dipped out of her "well." They owned that old horse and buggy together and used it for driving to town and haul- ing little loads. On the next Monday after the "well digging" they went to Ellendale with the rig and proved that they had the required improvements on the claim, as they were able to swear that among other things they had done was to dig a well and get water.
Miss Redmond had a harder time when she had to prove up somewhat later. A new administration was in charge of the government land office and she had trouble getting title to her land. She had spent the most of five years living on that place, but the officials required her to pay about $600.00 for it. She was in Aberdeen and had to borrow that money from a money lender named Lincoln. It took her many years to earn the money to pay that off. In later years after she was married to Mr. Pollock she traded this land for a tract near where her husband's land is located on Maple Creek and still has it. Mrs. Pollock remarks that these are some glimpses of the difficulties met in getting title to the land which had been taken up from the government.
George Hatfield came into this country in the very early days and took up the northwest of Section 17 in this township. He has resided on that land and on the northwest of Section 18 ever since and has acquired other land to make him a substantial farm. The close times of the twenties has made it hard for him to keep even and the loss of Mrs. Hatfield a few years ago was the loss of a pioneer woman who shared her husband's faith in the Dickey County country.
Henry Barnaby took a homestead on the northwest of Section 6 and Jo Blumer took a preemption on the northwest of Section 9. B. F. Bower- man also took a homestead in the township which still is held in the family. A list of the settlers in the township in 1886 includes the following in addition to those mentioned above:
William Bodette Ingar Hoffoss
George Metcalf
E. A. Bean
Arne Hoffoss
E. A. Mangold
A. N. Cross
Peter Hoffoss
Robert McNichol
Thomas Doyle F. J. Leonard
Thomas Mayhew
John Echterbach
J. O. Lindahl
Ole Noer
Benj. McCormick
Martin Noer
E. S. Gilbert J. W. Higgs
Wm. McPherson
John M. Olds
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Albert Olds H. J. Roberts W. N. Roberts John Stewart
A. F. Sutton
A. S. Pryor
The Higgs homestead was on the southeast of 34, which is still the farm home of Mrs. Higgs. Ferd Higgs, one of the sons, has a beautiful farm home on the southwest of 32. Archie Higgs was in the photography business in Ellendale for sometime but for a number of years has been the manager of the home place. Two of the daughters are Mrs. Mamie Rusco and Mrs. Vera Pazandak. Mrs. Higgs lost her Ellendale home in the big fire of 1916, but has erected a nicer home near the site of that one and lives in town.
When the township was organized it was included with the one to the south and was known as Weston, but later the townships were separated and the north one became Kent Township. Many of the settlers in this township seem to have become discontented and sold their holdings, the great majority of the claims going to Mr. George Baldwin of Appleton, Wisconsin. He had faith in the future of the new country and was willing to pay $250.00 a quarter for this land, in some cases more if improved. In this way a great quantity fell into the Baldwin holdings, and for many years the most of this land lay idle from cropping except for the hay. There were just about enough of the resident land owners to keep up the organization.
On the death of Mr. Baldwin the lands in Dakota came into the man- agement of his son, George Baldwin, a man of enterprise and courage. Under his management an experiment in farming on a large but business- like scale was inaugurated. On the corners, northwest of 24 and northeast of 23 a set of buildings was put up in 1914, consisting of a large barn for cattle with two concrete silos and a hay-loft one hundred ten feet long by thirty-six wide and forty feet high, a horse barn, a hog barn, a chicken house and a good tenant house. A good artesian well was obtained at a depth of eleven hundred feet. These buildings were equipped for good farm practices and to accommodate the necessary employees. This farm was known as Baldwin Ranch No. 1. The next farm was established on the northwest quarter of Section 20 with about the same set of buildings except that the experience of some months with those of Number 1 had given the firm some suggestions for improvement. Other farms were inaugurated of from 1400 to 2400 acres each, and Ranch No. 7 was located on the southeast of Section 30. The other ranches were further north. As No. 2 was within easy reach of the others and at the same time conveniently near to the city headquarters in Ellendale, a manager's home was added to this ranch, a dwelling house with modern improvements and on a site of great possibilities.
Ranch No. 1 was stocked with a thorough-bred strain of Angus cattle. No. 2 had beef shorthorns and No. 7 a milking strain of shorthorns. Here- fords were tried for a time but the Angus and Shorthorns proved the most satisfactory for the conditions here. All ranches had a herd of pure blood Duroc hogs, and so thoroughly was hog raising followed that Dickey County became the banner county in the state for hogs shipped to market. On
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these ranches also horses were raised but not on so large a scale as cattle. In later years sheep have been added and have proved profitable. All the ranches had thorough-bred chickens. The result of this farming has not only proved the possibilities of such ranching but has greatly improved the live-stock of the county from the example set and the availability of good foundation stock. In order to keep the stock inside the great pastures woven-wire fences were used with barb wire on top, and for the nine ranches there were erected about one hundred miles of this substantial fencing. The principle followed was to build permanently and substantially in all that was undertaken. The exhibit of stock from the Baldwin Ranches attracted wide attention at the state fairs and marked Dickey County as the head- quarters for pure-bred stock of high strain.
The organization of this farming enterprise was thorough and efficient. There was placed over the whole enterprise a competent superintendent, and the company has been fortunate in having J. C. Hoke, a man who came to the state as a member of the Agricultural College staff at Fargo, for the first superintendent and J. W. McNary, a highly trained man with ex- perience in the work of a County Agent, as the man to carry on the work after its establishment. Under the superintendent was a farm manager who lived on one of the ranches and directed the general work of cropping and maintenance. Each ranch had its farm boss, who with his family was employed to care for his farm and the laborers who made up his crew. The boss and his wife were furnished the groceries and vegetables necessary to feed themselves and the crew and their labor was included in their contract. One member of the crew was usually a good cattle man and frequently his entire time was devoted to the animals in his charge. If extra help was need- ed at some times of the year the superintendent hired men or boys to meet the needs. An attempt is made at all times to do the work in the best and most efficient manner and many helpful short cuts and devices have been given others from the experiences of these farms. All together it would seem to be an excellent example of business organization and highest skill applied to farming as a business.
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