USA > South Dakota > Who's who in South Dakota, Volume II > Part 6
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C. O'Harra of the State School of Mines at Rapid City, to visit the institutions of the east that had sent expeditions into the Bad Lands in years gone by, and to collect from their libraries all available records of these expeditions, and to unite them into one general report for use in South Dakota. Burt objected; Spafford defended: the mo- tion prevailed; and today, as a result of the undertaking, there is distributed through- out our state and elsewhere 2,000 copies of Dr. O'Harra's "Geology of the Bad Lands," containing 150 pages of condensed subject matter, plus 50 full-page illustrations. It is a document without which no library in the state would be complete. In addition to the second-hand data used, Dr. O'Harra went away beyond and incorporated into it the results of his own immediate investigations and observations in the Bad Lands.
Prior to this-in 1902-Dr. O'Harra prepared and published his "Mineral Wealth of the Black Hills," a book that attracted wide attention, for it was the first time that a ripe student of minerology had taken time and gone to the expense of collecting suf- ficient data from which to work out an authentic volume. New discoveries here and there during the past ten years may make its early revision necessary, but in the main,
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it will always stand-a triumphant achieve- ment of its indomitable author.
PREPARATION AND EXPERIENCE
Dr. O'Harra came into life at the village of Bentley, Illinois, not far from the old Mormon town of Carthage, in Hancock coun- ty. His parents were early pioneers in that section of the state.
He got his early education in the schools of Hancock county, and then attended Carth- age college, being graduated by that insti- tution as an A. B. in 1891. The board of directors immediately elected him a member of the faculty of his Alma Mater, and as- signed him to the professorship of natural and physical sciences. He had made good as a student and they knew he would do so as a professor.
After filling this position for four years, he resigned in 1895, to enter Johns Hopkins university at Baltimore. Here he specialized on geology and minerology; graduated in 1898 and was given his Ph. D. degree.
COMES WEST
On the very day that he took his final examination at Johns Hopkins, he was elected professor of geology and minerology in the School of Mines at Rapid City, this state, and he immediately struck west.
He filled this position so satisfactorily
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for thirteen consecutive years, that when President Fulton of the School of Mines re- signed in July, 1911, Dr. O'Harra was tendered the presidency of the institution.
The first thing he did was to throw out the business course and the academic pre- paratory course and bring the institution up to college grade in all lines. The only under course now in vogue is a preparatory scien- tific course. This, under present conditions, seems to be an indispensable necessity. At present the school has an enrollment of 78. Only 5 are girls. The change in the course of study forced them to take training else- where. Good for O'Harra! He did the man- ly thing.
DOMESTIC RELATIONS
When Dr. O'Harra graduated at Carth- age, in 1891, he was the only member of his class. Two years later (1893), Miss Mary Marble, of Bowen, Illinois, also gradu- ated at Carthage college; and, strangely enough, she, too, was the only member of her class. The school is a half century old, and the two occasions herein enumerated are the only times in its history when its graduating class consisted of but one person.
O'Harra is a pious fellow as well as a philosopher. He believes in the scriptures and he is a profound student of them. He
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realizes that God meant it when He inspired Moses to write "It is not good for man to be alone;" so the lone graduate of 1891 married the lone graduate of 1893, immediately after her graduation, and they have been having a happy social duet ever since.
Into their cheerful home have come four children-three boys and a girl. The oldest son is now a sophomore in the School of Mines; the other two are attending public school in Rapid City, while the girl is not as yet of school age.
OTHER RELATIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
Dr. O'Harra was elected a member of the Phi Beta Kappa at Johns Hopkins. He is also a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, a Fellow of the American Associ- ation for the Advance of Science, a member of the Seismological Society of America ; was special assistant for the government in preparing the United States geological sur- vey; published a number of geological pam- phlets of his own, and mapped many square miles of Black Hills geology, including Belle Fourche, Devil's Tower, Aladdin and Rapid Quadrangles.
He has procured many choice views and specimens of antedeluvian fossils. From these he gives two choice, scholarly, illus- trated lectures-one on the Black Hills and
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the other on the Bad Lands. The educational value of these two lectures is not discounted by any speeches that are, or have been, de- livered throughout the state.
In addition to these two lectures, he has developed a third, entitled "The Age of Precision," which is commanding the re- spect of the scholars of the state. It is too lengthy to be embodied in its entirety in a work of this kind, yet the following extracts from it will not only prove interesting and valuable, but they will suffice to give the reader the idea of the broad sweep and beautiful literary style of the whole speech :
"This age above all others demands the keenest intellects for the solving of the problems placed before us. It is a period of unrest. In the busy marts of the world, in the quiet lanes of rural labor, among the en- lightened nations of the earth and in the far away recesses of savage habitation, the same discontent appears and all are seeking for something better. Too many, discouraged by the perplexities of their environment and sympathetic in reasonable measure for the burdens of their brothers, wonder, under the weight of dissatisfaction, if the world is all wrong. Everybody's in a hurry-in a hurry to go somewhere, in a hurry to get rich, in a
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hurry to attain position, in a hurry to excel in one way or another.
"Six hundred years ago an old English King took three barley corns, round and dry, and, placing them end to end, called the space one inch, and twelve of these spaces one foot. From this crude beginning Henry VII., in 1490, established the earliest actual yard .. stick. This stick continued in use 250 years. It was made of nicely shaped brass, but the ends were neither exactly flat nor exactly parallel. Three hundred years afterward the Elizabethan standard was made and in 1824 this was adopted by Parliament. Ten years later this standard was destroyed by fire. Fortunately one-half dozen copies were in existence and from these a new standard was made. This was legalized in 1855. It is today the English standard of the world and a duplicate rests in the United States office of weights and measures at Washing- ton City.
"In the laboratories at the South Da- kota State School of Mines we have weigh- ing balances of sufficient refinement to weigh the minute amount of graphite used in mak- ing the dot over the letter 'i' in ordinary pencil writing, and we are told that instru-
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ments are now obtainable which will record differences of as little as one-thousandth of a milligram or approximately one-twenty- five millionth of an avoirdupois ounce.
"Twelve years ago a new star flamed forth in great brilliancy in the constellation Perseus and later faded to insignificance. We are told that the light was three cen- turies in reaching us and that the phenome- non causing this brilliant display seemingly occurring in 1901 had in reality taken place in the days of Oliver Cromwell. The links that make up an ordinary chain are com- mon place enough but who can refrain from reverie when he learns that Neptune 2,800,000,000 miles away is held to the solar center by a gravitational influence equiva- lent to the strength of a rod of steel 500 miles in diameter.
"Some time ago a man found an ant dragging a grasshopper and being impressed by the incident weighed both. The ant weighed 3.2 milligrams and the grasshopper 190 milligrams-sixty times as much. Just as many another might do the observer stated that this was equivalent to a 150- pound man dragging a load of 4 1-2 tons or a 1,200 pound horse a load of 36 tons. Later
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a keener observer showed a fallacy in this reasoning in that the weight of the animal varies approximately as the cube of its line- al dimensions while its strength varies ap- proximately as the square of the diameter of the muscle. Calculation on this basis shows the strength of the ant compared with that of man to be much the same rather than many times as great.
"The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in connection with a similar organi- zation from Canada is marking with extreme precision the boundary line between the two countries. It so happens that the axis of rotation of the earth varies its position in regular order in periods of about fourteen months. This leads to a corresponding variation in latitude along this boundary line so that according to a recent statement by one of the chief officials of this survey any point of the boundary line if precisely fixed · on a given day may be as much as 50 or 60 feet distant seven months later.
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"The ability to think is a divine gift. The higher the mountain the greater the op- portunity for vision. A thousand years ago heaven had a particular physical location. But, as has been well stated, heaven today
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has a different meaning to men who know that the earth is whirling through space at a rate of 66,000 miles an hour and that the direction of the zenith changes every sixty minutes through an angle equal to 15 degrees multiplied by the cosine of the latitude. Far more faith than unbelief will come from the intelligent acceptance of well founded scien- tific facts. Science makes for purity, genu- ineness and truth. Half a century ago we limited the age of the earth to a few thou- sand years and viewed with righteous horror any who might raise a question. Today we grant ourselves unlimited millions and we love God all the more.
"The same requirement exists whatever be our places. Let us not start out by mourning over a supposed degeneracy of the present. There never has been a day better than today and tomorrow will be a little ahead of this one. Grumblers are seldom efficient. Let us open our door to cheerful- ness and surround ourselves with joy. Let us make our hearts storehouses for unselfish thoughts and our hands instruments for ready action. Let us see to it that our work, conceived in faith and wrought in patience, has the element of accuracy, permanency, and helpfulness, so that even better than the
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Herculanean manuscripts written in carbon ink it may withstand the vicissitudes of the ages."
The Doctor is a man of tremendous ten- sion of intellect, a profound student, a care- ful observer, a close reasoner and a deep thinker; in fact, he is acknowledged as one of the leading scholars of the state. His habits are of the simplest kind, and his so- ciability and fellowship are unsurpassed.
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C. F. HACKETT ANOTHER PIONEER EDITOR
About eight months ago, ten sturdy pioneers, with either bald or semi-bald heads, who had been in business in Parker,
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this state, continuously for thirty years or more, had their pictures taken in a group. One great commanding figure stands among them, just back of Mr. Lord (Banker Lord, if you please-not at Armageddon; but in choice company nevertheless). It is Editor Charles F. Hackett, of the "Parker New Era"-a man who has done more to place Parker on the map and keep it there, than all other forces combined; one whose good deeds will live after he is dead and gone; one who left the imprint of his personality upon our pioneer days as few other men have ever done.
ANCESTRY
Charles F. Hackett's geneology shows a lineage of high rank. The name "Hackett" is from the old English word "Harcourt." His paternal ancestors came over from Eng- land, after the fall of Cromwell and settled in Connecticut. Hackett, the commentator, and Hacketts, the actors, came from this stock. Charles' great-grandfather on his father's side settled in southwest New Jer- sey and engaged in lumbering and ship- building. His grandmother, on his father's side, was Sarah Reeve.„, Her ancestors came over from England, in 1660, and also settled in New Jersey. On his mother's side, his
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grandparents were also English. They mi- grated to Jersey in 1780.
Hackett's father was a self-educated school teacher, and a local Methodist preacher for about thirty years. Charles, himself, ought to have been a preacher also- he has all of the characteristics. For sev- eral years he has been running a chapter of the Bible each week in the New Era. This is right! Many a man reads it who would not bother to pick up a Bible.
AN APPRENTICE LAD
The old Hackett homestead near Man- nington, Salem county, New Jersey, has been in the family for 225 years. It was here that Charles F. was born, May 20, 1853. He has five brothers and five sisters, all of whom ~ 19%. are still living, except one girl, and all of whom were born on the old homestead.
When Charles was fifteen years of age, his father apprenticed him to William S. Sharp, of Salem, N. J., publisher of "The Standard," at Salem, at $2 per week. The boy had to pay for his room and board. These cost him $3 per week. He earned the balance by doing chores. Near the close of the first year, he got a raise in his apprentice fee to $3 per week.
HIS FIRST TIP
The tipping business, like other social
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habits, has its good and its bad sides. Again, . it is not nearly such a recent creation as some of us would suppose, for, judging from the boyhood record of Charles Hackett, it dates back fifty years-at least among poli- ticians. It is possible, of course, that other folks at that time had not as yet developed the contagion.
Well, it was this way: Young Hackett had gotten to be the "handy" boy around the old print shop. From the start he had not seen in it more than $2 per week. Ever alert and willing, he knew what was in every case and tool box around the place ; and he wasn't afraid of extra hours, either. He had in him that fundamental instinct which revealed to him that the quickest way to get a raise in salary was to show to his employer that he could earn it.
He had to be at the office at 5:30 in the morning and sweep out. One evening during General Grant's first campaign for the presi- dency, the chairman of the republican state central committee for New Jersey, came to The Standard office late one evening; found the Hackett boy loitering around the shop experimenting with new forms; asked him if he could get out some campaign hand bills
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for him and get them onto an early morning up-Delaware flatboat that left dock at 4:30 a. m.
"Sure!" exclaimed the lad, "I'm always up by that time."
"All right," said the politician whose corporosity was equalled only by his gen- erosity, "tell your employer to charge them to the Grant committee-he understands, and here's something for yourself (handing the boy a dollar)."
"Oh! That's too much!" declared the boy ; take 75 cents of it back !"
"Never mind," said the "corporate" gentleman, with a broad grin on his broad face, "just get the posters down to the boat on time; it will be all right."
That day Charles Hackett was the hap- piest boy in Salem. It is safe to assume that he thought himself in Salem, Massachusetts, instead of in Salem, New Jersey, and that those fancied witches had again broken out. He took that "easy" dollar out of his pocket very easily at least a hundred times during that day and looked at it; and right then and there he got his initiation into the political game as well as into the tipping habit. Somehow this tipping business appeals to us like this :
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TIPS
Give a quarter To the porter
Who deserves it, every time, But withhold it From the bandit
Who would spend it for strong wine.
So be careful, Gentle tipper, Whom you tip and what you tip for, Tips that tipple Soon may ripple
Friendships of the days of yore.
Bounteous heaven
Smile upon you
When a righteous tip is given But its curses- Empty purses- May consign you to oblivion.
CHANGED POSITIONS
In 1869, Hackett's employer went "broke," and the lad lost several weeks of his apprentice fee. Then he went to Phila- delphia and apprenticed himself for four years to the American Baptist Publication Society. He began at $3.75 per week; but his board and room were $4.00 per week, so he took on the extra work of carrying the locked-up forms from the composing room on the third floor to the press room in the basement and received 75 cents per week extra for this task. This arrangement en- abled him to pay his living expenses and left
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him a surplus of 50 cents, each week, with which to pay his laundry bills and other in- cidentals.
GETS AN EDUCATION
By the end of the first two months the "new apprentice" had so ingratiated himself into the affection of his employers and had made himself so valuable in various ways around the office, that he was given a volun- tary raise in salary. He was raised again in another sixty days, and every two months thereafter during the entire four years. He got it simply because he demonstrated to his employers that he could earn it. The boy did not grow extravagant in his expendi- tures, simply because his earnings had in- creased, but instead he pursued the same rigid economy throughout.
During the four years with the Ameri- can Baptist Publication Society, he saved enough money to put himself through school. Right here is a lesson in finance, in boyhood, in acquiring an education, which every poor boy, if he would be successful, must learn and adopt. Success is the direct result of aiming at an ideal. The element of chance is seldom of any specific use. Just so with young Hackett ; he saved his small coins and with them put himself through school. First, he attended the academy in Salem for one
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year, then he attended the state normal at Trenton, N. J., for two years.
THE TREND OF EVENTS
During his vacations he worked at var- ious things to earn more money and to con- serve his diminishing resources. In the va- cation of 1874 he edited and published the "Woodstown (N. J.) Register," while the proprietor, William Taylor (a cousin of the famous novelist, Bayard Taylor, and a brother of Maris and of James Taylor who in the early days of Dakota established at Yank- ton the "Yankton Herald" now owned and published by the celebrated Mark M. Ben- nett), toured Europe.
The Taylors took a decided liking to young Hackett and they were deeply im- pressed with his keen editorial pronuncia- mentos. So, in 1876, the two brothers who had gone west and established themselves in the newspaper business at Yankton, sent for Hackett to come and join them.
He did so; and upon his arrival he was made city editor of the Herald. He arrived with $2.40 in his pockets, a trunk and two suits of clothes. The Taylors were in no better shape financially than he. They had induced him to come west with the as- surance that they were going to make a daily of the Herald, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
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In addition to being city editor, the young fellow soon found himself setting type, running the presses, doing the solicit- ing and the collecting-in fact chief cook and bottle washer, with his. wages unpaid for several months. This continued for a year. He wanted to go home but he hadn't the money to go with. During the second year, he acted as field solicitor; rode over north- western Nebraska and southeastern Dakota, visiting the new settlements here and there, taking subscriptions and writing up for publication in the Herald the lives of prom- inent men in the several colonies.
TRIP TO MILITARY FORTS
About the only fellows left out west who were receiving money regularly were the soldiers, stationed in the military forts at and above Yankton along the Missouri river, to Bismarck. It was, therefore, decided that Mr. Hackett had better make his way over land up the river to all of these forts, write up the officers and take as many cash sub- scriptions for the Herald as he possibly could.
The account of this trip contains so many details, the names of so many men who have since become prominent in the history of the Dakotas, and it comprises such a vital
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part of our state history, that Mr. Hackett's own story is to be published later.
CUPID'S PART IN A LIFE DRAMA
Upon his return to Yankton, via St. Paul, after his harrowing trip northward, Mr. Hackett decided to "pull stakes" and return to his boyhood haunts. At that time (1878) Shurtleff & Deming were running a stage line between Yankton and Sioux Falls. It crossed the Vermillion river on a ford at the old village of Finlay, in Turner county ; and it also passed through the village of Swan Lake, which, in the long-gone years, stood about four miles south of the present town of Hurley, on the old military road.
Mr. Hackett had friends at Sioux Falls whom he desired to bid good-by before he started east. Accordingly he took the Yank- ton-Sioux Falls stage via Swan Lake and Finlay. When they reached Swan Lake, Vale P. Thielman, postmaster at the village and clerk of the court for Turner county (Swan Lake was at that time the county seat), urged Hackett to abandon his plans ; to come to Swan Lake, buy the "Swan Lake Era," a newspaper that had been established at that village in June, 1875, by H. B. Chaffer, and to enter newspaperdom on his own behalf. Hackett agreed to think it over.
The old stage was driven at that time by
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Jack Halsey. He now lives in Parker, and he and Mr. Hackett frequently enjoy rem- iniscences of their trip together, side by side on the old stage seat, from Yankton to Sioux Falls and back-as we shall see later.
When they arrived at the Vermillion river ford at Finlay, the stage halted, to exchange mail and water the horses. Young Hackett climbed down and went into the post-office to say good-bye to the postmaster, Rev. J. J. McIntire, whom he had before met and who was just then mourning the loss of his devoted pioneer wife. McIntire was away at the time. His youngest daughter, Miss Carrie, was looking after the store and post-office for him. Hackett stood and chatted with her while Halsey watered the team.
"Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health."
The stage drove on. Hackett grew strangely melancholy as he pondered o'er another one of Whittier's choice couplets in "Maud Muller:"
"A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet."
When he reached Sioux Falls, he sud- denly changed his mind and decided to go back to Yankton, via- Finlay. When he ar- rived at Finlay she was there. Together they walked down to the well, and the gal-
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lant young lover took hold of the rope that lifted
"The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket that hung in the well," as hand over hand he raised it to the top,
"Filled with the nectar that Jupiter sips."
'Tis done! Today, she is Mrs. Hackett, postmistress at Parker; and all who come within the radius of her charming life join in congratulating her valiant husband on his stage trip in the seventies and for having "changed his mind."
BUYS THE SWAN PAPER
When Hackett got back to Swan Lake, Thielman was waiting for him, and again he urged Hackett to buy the paper. It was in a rundown condition; Hackett was not favorably impressed, but he was anxious to get settled in Turner county-and right away; for as he, himself, once confessed to the writer: "That girl at the ford had more to do with my having settled in Turner county than did the newspaper or anything else."
Briefly, the history of the paper was this : H. B. Chaffee, of Vermillion, came over to Swan Lake and started it, as previously stated, in June, 1875. He continued it till the fall of 1877; then he sold the plant to Smith & Grigsby (Col. Melvin Grigsby) who
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removed it to Sioux Falls and merged it with "The Pantagraph." The next spring ( April 1878), William Gardner came out from Chicago, resurrected the paper, named it the "Swan Lake Press," and started things all over again. He ran it until October 19, 1878, when he sold out to Chas. F. Hackett who has since been its constant owner and publisher. Its original name was "The Swan Lake Era." Hackett changed it to "The New Era." When the Milwaukee railroad built into Turner county, in 1879, Mr. Hackett removed the paper to Parker and re-named it, "The Par- ker New Era," which name it bears to this day.
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