CHAPTER II
The intention
of the writer is to confine these events to
the separate years as far as possible, and
also to speak of townships separately, but
after all they will be more or less blended.
Having drifted into Ocheyedan Township by
the location of Mr. Buchman, it is
perhaps best to finish this township for the
year 1871. Ocheyedan had no prospective railroad
to cross it, which, perhaps, may be the reason
that this township was not sooner settled,
or its land filed upon as early as Holman.
Buchman's place, meager as it was,
and not tempting to a traveler for hotel accommodations,
was, nevertheless, a sort of headquarters
between Western Osceola, Eastern Lyon and
Milford and Spencer; and the boys had many
a rollicking time at the Buchman habitation.
About the first of May, 1871, Will Dunham
and Fred Frick settled on Section 18,
we think the southwest quarter, Ole Peterson
settled.
This same summer
of 1871 also came A. B. Elmore, L.
G. Ireland and E. N. Moore; these
came from Clayton County, also Elder Dean.
Mr. Elmore first filed on a part of
Section 24, in Horton Township, but afterwards
settled on Section 2 in Ocheyedan, where he
still resides and is highly respected. E.
N. Moore settled on Section 4, in Ocheydan,
as did also Elder B. D. Dean. Mr. Moore
still owns the same quarter-section, but resides
now in the Town of Ocheyedan, is postmaster,
and considered on of its best citizens. Elder
Dean is now in Exeter, New Hampshire,
and left Osceola County in 1878. L. G.
Ireland, who was a very honorable and
conscientious man, left in 1879 with his family
and moved to Florida. They have since all
died.
On the northwest
quarter of Section 20 lived Fred Nagg.
These comprise the settlements made in Ocheyedan
in 1871. Nothing was raised that season by
these settlers, and the summer was uneventful,
except a severe hail storm which swept this
part of the County and was unusually severe.
Mr. Buchman lost a cow and a calf in
this storm; they probably went with it, as
cattle will; at any rate he never saw them
afterward.
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The
winter of 1871 and 1872 was a disagreeable
one, but most of the Ocheydan settlers wintered
elsewhere. Those that remained on their claims
were Dunham and Frick, Ole
Peterson and Fred Nagg. The Nagg
family had a hard time of it. They lived in
a sodded house, small and cold, and kept a
yoke of oxen in the same room, ground corn
to live upon, and cut weeds and fed to the
oxen to keep them alive. Their lot seemed
to be a hard one, and indeed it was. Had they
been there by order of some despotic ruler,
as a convict goes to Siberia, it would have
been unbearable, but thoughts of the coming
spring time, and of the green grass and wild
flowers of the beautiful prairie which would
return in the summer before them, kindled
the joyous feeling of promise and of hope,
and gave them a heart of sunshine, even amid
the snows of winter. But, alas, before the
hoped for spring time had come to this poverty
stricken family, that grim reaper Death, which
stalks unbidden alike into the palaces of
the rich and the hovels of the poor, sought
out upon the bleak prairies of Ocheyedan during
that hard winter of 1871 and 1872 the head
of the household Fred Nagg himself,
and this terrible affliction just then laid
a burden of sorrow upon the family which in
addition to their abject condition of poverty
seemed greater than they could bear. Nagg
had started on foot for Roger's store
during the latter part of that winter, the
only store then where Sibley now is, obtained
a few needed and indispensable articles, and
left the store to return to his family, but
he never reached them. He had a hand sled
and was overtaken with a blizzard and sudden
cold weather. He was not sufficiently clad
even for weather less severe, and, becoming
numbed and senseless by the cold and storm,
lay down and died. This blizzard, on February
12, 1872, lasted three days, and at it commencement
there were about sixteen men at Roger's
store in from their claims. They all started
home. Some reached there and others stopped
with some settlers on the way. After the storm
was over word had been received that Nagg
had not reached home, and J. F. Glover,
M. J. Campbell, C. M. Brooks,
Al Halstead, F. F. and Eugene
White started out and followed Nagg's
sled trail. About seven miles out southeast
from Sibley they found the sled and sack;
wolves had clawed in to the sack and eaten
a part of the contents. The party were unable
to find Nagg's body, but went to the
house and consoled his wife as best they could,
holding out hope that he might still be alive.
His body was found afterwards in the latter
part of March, 1872, by W. H. Lean,
and it was
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partially eaten by wolves. Nagg
was buried on his claim, and, there being
no clergyman to conduct the usual funeral
exercises, Frick read the burial service
from an Episcopal prayer book. The few that
remained in Ocheyedan Township during that
winter of 1871 and 1872 had nothing to break
the monotony of pioneer life, so far as mingling
in society was concerned, but going to Sibley
occasionally, and trapping some, was all the
diversion within reach of these few settlers.
In the fall of
1871 Frick came near having serious
trouble with an adventurous immigrant pushing
out into the wild and woolly west. He had
some cattle with him and one of them had strayed
away at night, and when Frick got up
one morning he saw not far off what he supposed
was an elk feeding quietly on the prairie.
Frick was a hunter, and the sight of
this supposed elk thrilled every inch of his
stature, and he moved about with the stealth
of an Indian for fear that the slightest noise
would frighten this valuable game and send
it fleet-footed out of rifle reach. Frick
got good and ready, pointed his rifle out
of the shanty window, took a good rest and
deliberate aim and fired. The object of his
mark fell under the aim of the skillful hunter
and he rushed out to the bleeding body of
his victim, but instead of an elk Frick's
surprised eyes and astonished senses gazed
upon only a cow. It was meat, however, if
not venison, and Frick hauled the carcass
to his house and proceeded to do the usual
carving into roasts and steaks, when a stranger
appeared upon the scene, who was no other
than the owner of the cow which had strayed
away. Circumstantial evidence, as the lawyers
call it, was strong against Frick,
pointing to theft malicious and intended,
and the moving immigrant was about to paralyze
everything in reach of him. Frick explained,
however, apologized, and scraped together
what lose change he had and gave it to the
owner of the cow, who went on his way again
satisfied and contented.
A. M. Culver
came to the County in the spring of 1871.
He settled and filed on the southeast quarter
of Section 24, Township 99, Range 42.
The previous year,
in 1870, he had left the State of Wisconsin
and gone to Mills County, in Iowa, and from
Mills County he drove through to Osceola,
bringing with him three horses, a wagon and
buggy, also two cows. His family came with
him, consisting of his wife, one son and a
daughter. Mr. Culver and family did
the best they could with the shelter of
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a wagon cover, while his son,
Andrew, went to Le Mars and got cottonwood
lumber enough to build a house, which they
soon did, 12 x14 in size. Mr. Culver
broke nine acres that year and put them into
wheat and six acres into oats, and raised
an average crop on the sod. When Mr. Culver
came first without the family he landed at
Huff's house, the first settler and
heretofore described, and there being quite
a number there that night, he was among the
usual number laid out in rows on the floor.
Huff and Brooks located Culver
on his quarter-section. On the same section
there was also located and settled that year
Andrew Culver, Geo. W. Bean
and R. O. Manson.
John F. Glover landed
in Sibley in the latter part of August, 1871,
and settled on the southwest quarter of Section
4, Township 99, Range 41. Mr. Glover's
coming was by meeting Stiles and F.
M. Robinson at Sioux City. Glover
put up the usual settler's shack, and obtained
his lumber from Windom, Minnesota, going for
it with a yoke of oxen and wagon.
After these incoming
settlers had established a home, the next
thing was to find out who their neighbors
were, and in this year of 1871 they were few
and far between.
[NOTE: Click
on image to see larger size.]
Some
other things to think about, and among these
something to eat. Glover made frequent
trips hunting, but seemed to be unsuccessful.
While in McCausland's neighborhood,
Mc returned from a trip to Spirit Lake
and reported that Rush Lake, near Ocheyedan,
was alive with ducks, and Glover became
so excited over the pictured description of
vast lakes and ponds covered with game, that
he organized a hunting party, consisting of
himself, McCausland and Luther Webb,
who started the next day with oxen and a wagon,
with which conveyance the ducks and geese
were to be carted homes. They arrived safely
at Rush Lake, and sure enough McCausland
had not overdrawn the amount of game. They
had no boat, and anyone who knows Rush Lake,
knows the difficulty of getting game there
without a float of some kind. Before the boys
had hardly appeared at the edge of the water
on one side, the entire army of ducks had
moved to the other side, out of reach, and
by running around from one side to the other,
the boys became about exhausted. Finally Glover
gathered pieces of the wagon, some brush,
and a decent sized tree or two and formed
a raft sufficient, as he believed, to float
himself out on the lake, and on it started.
When out about twenty feet the frail craft,
like many an air castle, fell
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to pieces, and its only passenger
went reluctantly into the water. He soon got
out, however, and this dampened all the ardor
of hunting on his part, and the other two
were tired and discouraged. Webb then
started with his oxen to Milford and left
McCausland and Gl0ver to tramp
twelve miles home, which they did. Just as
they were starting McCausland brought
down a brandt, and, this being the only game
they got, with it they started home, and it
was near night. They had brought with them
some cooked beans in an iron pot, and a loaf
of bread; when the brandt was secured it was
decided that bread and beans were nowhere
in comparison with a roasted fowl, so that,
hungry as they were, their appetite was reserved
until they could get home. At last they reached
McCausland's house, and Mc sent
Glover to Roger's store, three
miles, for some necessary articles for the
square meal, and to a settler's shack for
something else. Glover returned with
the articles and Mc had the brandt
stuffed an din the oven roasting, but himself
was laid out on the bed. The oils odor from
the fowl on an empty stomach had sickened
him, and Glover was left alone until
C. M. Brooks happened to arrive, when
he and Glover got the table set, the
roast on, and the two of them sat down to
a rich feast for homesteaders. But alas for
the dreams of fancy, the visions of bliss
and the tempting measures of delight, in which
we too often indulge, that are at last turned
into the bitterness of gall in the round up
of indulgence. Glover and Brooks
were soon laid out groaning in agony of too
much brandt, and the oily condition of the
fowl made them too sick to hope ever to make
final proof on a government claim, the taking
of which had been the leading ambition of
their lives. Their extreme sickness revived
Mc and he ate the beans and the bread,
and towards morning Glover and Brooks
got around all right again, but like a victim
of seasickness not a thing was left in them,
and as Mc had ate all the grub in the
house, the three of them started out for something
to eat, and before they got through they had
nearly eaten the whole neighborhood out of
house and home, and that day there was a tramping
to Roger's store for a fresh supply.
This sickened Glover for a while on
wild fowl; his hunting excursions after that
were few and far between, but it seems that
another ducking was still in store for him.
He concluded that housekeeping was not well
done without vegetables, and nothing seemed
to be in sight but potatoes, and the nearest
these could be had was thirteen miles, but
Glover had been a soldier and could
walk like a
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professional. He started with
a sack and went southeast until he came to
Ocheyedan, and when he got to that the water
was well up and the difficulty of crossing
was before him. There was a small skiff there
owned by Ole Peterson, and soon Peterson
himself appeared, and, after reciting his
experiences as a sailor and his capabilities
as a boatman, induced Glover to get
aboard, and taking a wagon bow for a paddle
started out with the frail craft to ferry
the now Mayor of Sibley across the troublesome
stream. Men are apt to make too little margin
for what might happen, often miscalculate
in more serious adventures than this, and
often start out in the buoyancy of expectation,
but fall into difficulty with sudden and unexpected
precipitation. When in the middle of the stream,
Peterson, who was standing up in the
boat, fell on one side of it, and himself
and Glover went suddenly into the water,
and, having no further use for the boat in
the interests of navigation, they struck out,
Glover for one side of the river and
Peterson for the other, and when landed
they stood dripping with the waters of the
Ocheyedan on opposite banks, gazing at each
other, Peterson filling the air with
profanity, and Glover wondering if
Peterson hadn't overdrawn his experiences
as a follower of the seas.
