The Ancestors

Back by popular demand,  I posted these accounts almost 5 years ago.  Time for a repeat.

The Ancestors- Part 1

My grandmother's first cousin gave my father a book of recollections written  by her mother, about their early life in western Nebraska.  I'm reading through them and find them quite fascinating: a first hand look into the early 1900s on the Great Plains, with my ancestors the central cast of characters.  I'll share them on Mondays for as long as they last (22 chapters in all), and I hope you find them as interesting as I do.  I have old photos of the family in the same time period, though identifying people is not always possible.

A Hard Road to Ogallala

The year of 1913 was one of many decisions and surprises for Clyde and me.  We had lived on and managed a big cattle and hog ranch in northeastern Kansas close to Clyde’s parents home for five years.  Clyde’s father had always planned to have his two boys associated with him in his business of farming a stock raising, but didn’t have enough land to support three families when we were married.  Now he had bought more land and wanted us to move into the old home with them that spring and when the crops were all in, they would build a house for us.

I wasn’t too happy about the arrangements, for their old house was small and we had two children, Ruth age 4 and baby Richard, four months old.  I felt it would be too hard on Grandma.  They loved the children and we managed.  Clyde’s brother Oscar (my great grandfather) had married the year after we were married and they moved into a house that was on the new land.

Grandpa was the most generous, loving man I ever knew, but he managed with a velvet glove.  Clyde was happy to be home working with his father and brother.  They truly enjoyed each other.

They raised corn and alfalfa and clover hay for winter feed for about fifty head of cattle and sixty to seventy hogs.  Their land was rich bottom soil and all fenced well.

Along in July Oscar and Ada decided to go to Montana for a visit with her parents.  The corn had been cultivated for the last time and hay wasn’t ready to cut yet.  Clyde and his father took them up to Beatrice, Nebraska, to take the train.  It was a hot day to start with, but on the way home they encountered a hot wind.  When they got home the corn was burned dry; just rattled as they drove along. The hay wasn’t so badly hurt but the growth was stopped of course.  We really knew that night that there would be no new house for us.

On a trip to the elevator to begin buying grain, Clyde ran into a friend who was going up to Broken Bow, Neb., to put his name in a land drawing for some land the government was opening up for homesteading in western Nebraska.  He asked Clyde to go with him, and Clyde, always ready to take a chance, went along.

In about two weeks a friend of Granma’s called out to tell her the winning list was in the Kansas City paper and that Clyde’s name was in it. He had drawn a fairly good number and it was exciting even if it never amounted to anything.  We knew that it was sand hill country, also that the land had been rented to big cattle ranches, so there was the possibility it would be worth looking in to.  A senator (illegible) had pushed a bill through Congress to get this land opened up for homesteading.

Clyde’s number wasn’t one of the first and he really didn’t take too much interest in his luck until he began to get offers to buy his relinquishment.  Then he decided to get on the train and go see what the land looked like.  On the train he ran into two other winners who were going on the same errand.  They had made arrangements with a man who knew the area and who would take them over the best sections.  He had a covered wagon and saddle horses and was glad to have a third customer, so they all left the train at the little town of Keystone and spent the next ten days traveling over the hill and valleys, picking out the sections they would like to choose when their number was drawn.