Tag: pioneer life

A to Z Challenge: Wildwood School

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Alzina Boone, widowed at a young age and with a family of four children to support, finds herself struggling to be a teacher at school, and a mother at home. In the early days of Kansas settlement, life was not easy for anyone, much less a single parent. Her faith in a caring God, and sheer necessity kept her going when others might have given up. She was my great grandmother and these are her true stories.

1906

Another move. Alzie, still searching for a school for that term, was convinced to uproot the household and go to Iowa. The promised job there in Trenton, was not at all to her liking and they agreed to pay her way to Tabor, a nearby town, where she had friends. Stanley stayed in Eskridge, supporting the family with his newspaper job until he was sent for.

“We went, “not knowing whither we went” or what welcome awaited us. Another adventure of faith. But I was borne above any fear by a supernatural assurance that God had a place for us there, and I reasoned that each of us could earn at least our board somewhere.

We arrived at Tabor on a cold, snowy day when snow was about two feet deep. We found paths made to the Faith Home and were given a Christian welcome there. Friends we had known in Eskridge who now lived across a ten acre pasture from the Faith Home offered to rent to us two rooms, one upstairs and one downstairs.

Folks told me that the Wildwood School, three miles west of the Faith Home wanted a teacher, and Elder Weaver recommended me to them. They came into town to meet me and gave me their contract for the school, which was to begin the next Monday, at $35 a month for three months. A horse and buggy was loaned to me by a friend of the Faith Home. The Training Home offered to give Stanley a job in the printing office, no salary, but board and lodging, so I sent word for him to come, using his money for fare. I promised to give him money later to buy a camera which he had long wanted. Both of my boys disliked to leave one place for another.

That three month term of school was pleasant and I was engaged for the next year, eight months at the same salary. During the summer vacation I found work easily in the homes of Tabor and so did the girls. John got steady work on farms near town, and Stanley got work in the Tabor Beacon newspaper office at $5 per week. My mother wrote to me “you are eating your white bread now”. It was marvelous to all of us the way God had opened for us and prospered us. “They that trust in the Lord shall not be confounded.”

Along in July 1906 we rented a seven room house from the same man who loaned us the horse and buggy. That was a happy year. Fruit was plentiful and we secured enough to can more than 100 quarts, beside a lot of glasses of jelly, We gathered apples on shares, and had ten or twelve bushels of apples stored in the cellar – Jonathan, Winesap, and Grimes Golden. We had potatoes and pumpkin and vegetables also stored, enough for more than a year.

Ethel had become quite proficient in cooking and ventured on many a new recipe to our great delight in eating. Both girls were neat housekeepers and very careful with their clothes. They earned most of the money they used for clothes. Esther’s joy was almost unbounded when she could dress with “everything new that she wore” one Sunday. They did much of their own sewing too.

John kept the yard and garden clean and neat, and took care of the horse and chickens. He also kept the wood box filled. All this besides working by the day for neighbors on vacation, or in occasional jobs.

Stanley used his out-of-office hours either in camera work, or studying telegraphy or engineering, or in some kind of athletics. He was growing so tall and yet was so thin that he was ashamed of it, and exercised a great deal to develop more muscle. He had established a five mile run that he made two or three times a week in good weather. He was ambitious to become able to support the family without my having to teach school or work out so much. He liked telegraphy and corresponded with some schools about taking a course. “

A to Z Challenge: Very Tough Times

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Alzina Boone, widowed at a young age and with a family of four children to support, finds herself struggling to be a teacher at school, and a mother at home. In the early days of Kansas settlement, life was not easy for anyone, much less a single parent. Her faith in a caring God, and sheer necessity kept her going when others might have given up. She was my great grandmother and these are her true stories.

1904 – 1905

Alzina moved the family 45 miles away to Eskridge for this fall term. Her brother-in-law, Ora, was trustee on the board of Eskridge Bible School and she contracted to teach there in return for $15 a month and room and board for herself and the four children. She was not always paid when it was due and things got tough.

“The trustees failed to pay me the $15 agreed upon, and the matron of Faith Home objected to my discipline of her twelve year old daughter and tried to get the trustees to dismiss me. Two trustees stood for me, so the matron and her daughter left about the middle of the year. I had become inspired with the vision that more than half of the supporters of the Eskridge Bible School had for the future of the school, and I decided I would stay with the work as long as I had evidence of God’s approval and of these good people. I had the work of the Faith Home to take care of after the matron left. There were four children beside my four, all near the same age as mine. In addition to this was my work as teacher of four grades.

Alzina (far right) and a group of her students.

There were times when we didn’t know where we would get anything for the next meal. It was truly an adventure of faith for me, but I had felt that God wanted me there, and would see me through. So I didn’t complain to my parents, or to Ora, my brother-in-law, though he was a trustee, but was having his own tests and persecutions and adventures of faith, of which we may write later.

The trustees sent a basket of bread to us each Tuesday, and my cow gave two gallons or more of milk each day, and pasture was provided by friends. The closest test was one day when, at noon, we had eaten the last boat of bread or any kind of food in the house. I told the children about it and said that we would meet in the dining room right after school to pray as did the orphans in the London Orphan’s Home, of which much had been read and told in the Faith Home Circle.

At 4 o’ clock, after all pupils had gone home, I put away my papers and closed my desk to go home. As I passed through the door from my room to the hallway, Mrs. Cody, who had seemed to join in opposing me, was coming down the steps, and she handed me a 25 cent piece, saying “The Lord told me to give this to you.” So I was happy to tell the children to thank the Lord for answering before we even called.

I bought a sack of cornmeal and we had mush and milk for the evening and the morning meal. And the basket of bread came before noon next day. I cannot say that God would have one teacher bear such a load of responsibility and faith with so little cooperation, but I am glad for this experience which proved that God honors those who dare to sacrifice for his cause, and trust his promises.

In the spring when school was out, we rented a four room cottage in the northeast part of Eskridge at four dollars a month, where we lived six months or more.

As Stanley had learned to set type in the office of “The Old Paths”, founded by Ora as organ of the Eskridge Bible School, he applied and secured a job at the Eskridge newspaper office at $5 a week, ten hours a day for six days a week. While Stanley had a job, it seemed best that we should stay at this place until something else opened. Thus the three other children could be kept in the Bible School. I was not invited to teach there.

John raised some garden and chickens, and took good care of the cow, and by little jobs here and there, he usually had some money in his pockets. It seemed almost magical and we laughed gaily about his always finding money to his surprise in his pockets.”

A to Z Challenge: Suprise of a Snaky Nature

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A family with 9 children survives life on the Kansas prairie in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The experiences they have illustrate the joys, sorrows, hardships and everyday life of the Midwest pioneers. This faith filled series of stories is true. The eldest child was my great grandmother Alzina Pomeroy Boone.

And so Alzina Boone, widow, stepped back into teaching to support her young family. She was able to keep her children with her, thanks to her sister Sadie who stayed with them the first spring. The next year she persuaded Sadie’s beau, Park, to marry Sadie and move in with them and help with the farm as well. Most of the time she took Stanley, her oldest boy age 5, and John, age 4 with her to school while the girls stayed home with Sadie, or occasionally with her mother. She had all the worries of a mother, and a breadwinner, and a teacher. Children got sick, food got scarce, bills couldn’t be paid, but through it all, they stayed together and were glad for that.

The school teacher, Alzina Boone

Alzie’s story continues:

“Sadie and Park moved to his father’s farm the following autumn, 1898. I hired a girl, Mamie, to stay with me and my four children at Elizabeth Town, where I was paid $33 per month. I rented a two story house about a half mile from the school house, and close to neighbors, and my father and brothers hauled my household goods over to the new place. With my buggy and good driving pony, Kate, we thought we were well equipped for a prosperous year. But we had some exciting events, which spoiled our joy of living there, and tested our faith and courage.

I ordered some fresh hay delivered inside the barn door about the first of the first week we were there. I asked Mamie to fill the three ticks with fresh hay to be used as mattresses on the three beds. She filled the ticks during the day and let them lie on the hay pile till I came home to help carry them in. It was almost dark when we got the beds made. Our rooms were lighted with kerosene lamps.

I had put the children to bed, and they were soon asleep. Mamie and I sat on the top step of the stairway, talking over tomorrow’s plan when suddenly Ethel, the oldest girl, screamed in fright, as in a bad dream. I sprang to my feet holding the lamp in my hand and saw a dark snake about a foot long wriggling up and down her right arm, and off onto the floor. I exclaimed, “Oh Mamie, it’s a snake!”

Then she sprang to her feet with a scream and whirled me around, which motion put out the light, and without a match where we could find it . I started down the stairs for a match, but she wailed, “Don’t leave me up here!” So I commanded her to get a match. When we got the lamp lit, there was the snake darting up and down the wall from the floor. I seized a mop and stepped on one side of the bed and struck at the snake, but it vanished.

We hunted for an hour or so, but never found it. We decided it must have jumped out of a low open window beyond the foot of the bed. But it was very hard to give up looking for the snake and go to bed. A neighbor woman jokingly said next day, “I’ve heard of men having snakes in their boots, but never of women having snakes in the beds.”

A to Z Challenge: A Pistol Shot

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A family with 9 children survives life on the Kansas prairie in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The experiences they have illustrate the joys, sorrows, hardships and everyday life of the Midwest pioneers. This faith filled series of stories is true. The eldest child was my great grandmother Alzina Pomeroy Boone.

A pistol shot at 12 noon on September 16th was the signal to start. The story, as told by Alzina Pomeroy Boone in her memoir “Me and Mine”

“In the autumn of 1893 the government acquired the western part of what had been Cherokee Indian Territory and opened it for settlement. A quarter section of land in rural sections, or a town lot in the cities that had been laid out by government surveyors was offered to the first person to drive a stake as a claim to that piece of land. A signal shot was given for starting.

Milford and a young man who had worked for my father each purposed to secure a quarter section farm in the “Cherokee strip”. Milford had traded a young three year old black horse for a fleet footed sorrel mare, which he drove hitched to a two-wheeled cart or buckboard.

I consented to this trade (the black horse was mine), but I was not very enthusiastic about the venture. We had lost on so many ventures on the farm, and I would have preferred his teaching school. Milford was not successful. He never liked to talk about it.

He and the other man went about September 1, as they wanted to explore the strip beforehand and get some idea of where they wanted to see land. They had to register at one of the booths which were set up along the borderline. Also, they needed to hold that place in line. The strip was 165 miles from east to west, and 58 miles from north to south. One could begin the race anywhere they could get in on one of the four borders. Many spent three days and nights or more holding their places. Some men spent three weeks on the line. Probably they were with covered wagon outfits and close to water. They must have gotten pretty tired of it.

In this race, said to be the “biggest horse race that ever had been”, the purse was the Cherokee Strip, larger than the state of Massachusetts. There were thousands of horses, and thousands of drivers and riders. Most of the horses were under saddle. The others were hitched to every kind of a rig – light buck boards like Milford’s, spring wagons, and sulkies, and covered wagons too. There were one thousand people in the run and they came in from all four directions.

At the pistol shot, Milford started from a point not far from the Sedan on the north border. The horseback riders took the lead, passed Milford and other drivers. When he had gone about 15 miles with the crowd, he turned to the east where he saw the top of a string of trees. That meant a stream, an asset of great value to a claim. After crossing two dry creek beds and mounting the rises, he saw the welcome sight of the trees he had seen when he first turned east.

He rode onto a draw while he followed the creek which was ten or twelve feet across, and was just about to drive his stake when a rider appeared over the bluff. The man was leading his horse from which he had removed his saddle and informed Milford that he had already staked his claim to that land. Milford rode with the man to higher ground and saw the flag and pup tent where the man had driven his stake, so he knew he had been beaten to the claim.

On some quarter sections there were as many as 300 claimants, and contests after contests for those who could afford law suits, and some who had won fair and square never got a thing. Milford had no money for a law suit and was too honest to deny this man’s right to the claim. He spent several hours driving around but did not secure a claim. He had left the farm in care of his brother Samuel before crops were harvested and didn’t return until December.

After a few days at home, he went to his boyhood home in Missouri on a business deal which was also a disappointment. I looked after the harvesting as best I could for Sam didn’t stay long, but had to depend much on my father. The oats got too ripe so that they fell to the ground and we didn’t get enough to pay for threshing. I got so hard up that I had to beg the two cent stamp for writing Milford, urging him to come home. He came on horseback within 24 hours after he got my letter, two days before Christmas. He never again left me in such need and was sensitive about any dependence on my folks.”

A to Z Challenge : Over the Edge

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A family with 9 children survives life on the Kansas prairie in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The experiences they have illustrate the joys, sorrows, hardships and everyday life of the Midwest pioneers. This faith filled series of stories is true. The eldest child was my great grandmother Alzina Pomeroy Boone.

The title “Over the Edge” refers to the event at the end of this post. Had the story turned out differently, I would not be here to retell it.

“Our second boy was born on May 4, 1893 at the Holland farm. We named him John, with the middle name of Milford. He had a sense of humor, the youngest I ever heard of. When only two weeks old, he smiled broadly at Sadie as she patted his cheeks. We could not decide on a name for him for nearly two weeks. Sadie declared she would call him “Jack” if we didn’t name him soon. As we began to urge Milford to suggest a name, he said casually, “Call him John”. I thought he was just joking, but when he showed real earnestness, I didn’t wait long to ask that his middle name be Milford.

All four of my children were well behaved in company because of the reticence they inherited from their father. They had very little sickness, except occasional colds, and the usual complaint when teething and in their second summer. I seldom used any drugs for medicines for any of them. Foods such as oatmeal, tomatoes, fruit and vegetables could be used, I found, to cure about all their maladies. The most serious illness was when Esther had pneumonia every winter her first three years. Onion poultices on her chest cured her within a week. The first two winters, Ethel and John often had croup, which was soon relieved by packing ears of corn around them which had been taken out of hot water. Usually, if I began in time, I could stop the croup by hugging them close and wrapping them warmly. I awoke easily when an ailment disturbed some one of the children, and our God was always quick to answer our cry for deliverance.

North of the path leading from barn to pond and east of the house was the vegetable garden. Here, of evenings, all through the summer, one could see Milford working with the three older children close at his side. They loved to drop the seeds for him, or pluck up weeds, or anything to be near him. And, he was fond of them and proud when they preferred him to “mamma”. But, the new little girl (Esther) was somewhat coquettish in her manner. She was eight months old before she would go from “Mamma” to “Papa”. How proud he was though when the day came that she cried to go to him while her Mamma was holding her. I was pleased, too, for I loved my husband and wanted our children to love him most, and was happy to see them all so happy.”

In 1895 Milford bought a 40 acre farm across the road north west of my parent’s farm. Here he built us neat one and a half story cottage, 12 x16 with an attic. At my parent’s home, there was an old well or cistern. It was old, but oh what refreshing water the buckets brought up from the depths of the earth. A feed mill was near the well, where grain was a ground, enough for a half day at a time.

“In the winter of 1896 a near tragedy occurred. Wilbur Pomeroy, one of my younger brothers, aged about 11, was drawing water with a pail and rope to fill a tub for watering the horses. Another of my brothers, Charlie, who was about 6, and my little John were near by playing. John, who was only about 3 and a half, came over to the well and wanted to see how full the pail was. He slipped and fell into the cistern head first!

There was no curb, the rocks around the edge of the cistern were level with the ground and covered with a coating of ice. Water spilt on them made them very slick. The wall of the cistern was of shell rock about the size of a dinner plate and one or two inches thick, and was six feet down.

Wilbur jumped into the cistern after Johnny, and by straddling across, found footholds at the waters edge. He grabbed Johnny when he came to the top of the water. Charlie, anxious to help, slipped in and fell on top of Wilbur and Johnny. It looked hopeless and that all would perish, but Wilbur somehow held Johnny with his right hand against the side of the cistern and pushed him to safety, with Charlie’s help. Only God could help Wilbur climb those ice covered slick walls of the cistern and get all of them out safely. Although water soaked, the wind coming strong from the north, and freezing temperatures, they made it into the house.”

These stories were put together from “Me and Mine” by Alzina Pomeroy Boone and Pomeroy family letters.