Monday, October 23, 2006

Boyd's Then White's

I didn't know much about Haigler from away back, except through other people’s stories. We mostly went to Parks. It was closer and was my parents’ "home town", plus my Aunt Georgia's house was along the road to Parks.

I remember White's house when it was Boyd's house. Grandma Boyd was a tiny little woman. Her son, George, who was single, lived with her and did the farming. Their first house was on the south side of the road (CR891 /BB) between Uncle Vester Crabtree's house and east of the Parks Road in that quarter section that we call “the basin”. Boyds finished "proving up" and moved cornerwise across the road to start proving up over there on the section later known as the Barber (Reichert) place.

My grandparents, Peter and Sarah Crabtree, lived at the Boyd’s first place while they were building a barn and house and dug a well on their own place on the next quarter south. Otherwise they would have had to sleep under their wagons or something I guess. They were lucky that the Boyd's house was right there standing empty. My dad, Frank, was about nine years old, Aunt Cora about 5, Aunt Sarepta , maybe 16. Uncle Vester, about 17, Mary and Addie. The three oldest of the family, Uncles Will, Dave, and Abel were still in Eastern Nebraska.

Rudolf Boyd stayed on the next place and farmed it while Mrs. Boyd and George moved over to what is now owned by the Whites. Rudolph and Gertrude Boyd had three boys: Max, Bill and Don. Rudolph died when the boys were quite young and Gertrude moved to Haigler and rented the farm out. The boys went to Haigler school but, Don, who was the youngest often stayed out in the country with his Grandma and Uncle George Boyd and went to the Prairie Bell School.

The first people who rented Gertrude’s place were the Charlie Armstrong family. They moved there sometime during the year when I was in sixth grade (1925) and Mildred and Marjorie came to our school, Prairie Rose for several years. Then the Armstrongs bought the Zuege place and the Alva McDonald's rented it.

Sometime during that next summer, Gertrude married Mose Barber and they moved back out to her farm so Don Boyd lived with them and came to Prairie Rose when he was in seventh grade. Emma Freehling was the teacher and her sister Alma was teaching at the John Keller School. Alma boarded with the John Keller family. John’s wife was also a sister of Alma and Emma Freehling. (Editor's note: Correction - John Keller's wife was Alma and Emma's Aunt. Read the comments from readers for clarification)

To homestead was quite an undertaking. A lot of settlers gave up and left without proving up and another settler would buy it from them or somehow acquire the land and continue building it up.


--Submitted by Alice Gregory

(Editor’s note: When she was a child, Alice lived west of the first Boyd place and east of the White’s section.)

3 comments:

  1. Mrs. John Keller was not a sister to Emma and Alma Freehling, the girls were her nieces. Mrs. John Keller was a Wagner as was my dad's mother Mary Freehling. Mrs. Fred (Rosa) Kamla was also a Wagner sister. The little old lady (my great aunt) Pauline Wagner who taught piano lessons in St. Francis was another Wagner sister. Dad had nine sisters including Emma and Alma. Emma passed away in California this past year. There are two living Freehling girls left, Esther Walter and Pearline Rath who both live in St. Francis, Kansas. Mrs. John Keller's name was Matilda. Bob Keller, one of John and Matilda's sons just recently had a bad stroke. The Wagner homestead was on the Hackberry and is now owned by the Mills Ranch. There are some cement foundations just east of where Merle Mills lives and that is the old Wagner Place.

    Some place in my hoard is a picture of the old Wagner homestead, when I find it I will post it.
    Calvin Freehling

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh Yes! I remember now that Mrs. John Keller was Emma's and Alma's aunt. I remember Aunt Pauline, too, and where she lived in St. Francis. We went past her house every time we drove into town. The first house. My dad, Frank Crabtree, went to school with her in the little country school. Was it the Rattlesnake Gulch School? Anyhow he said that she was the best cipherer in the school. She was the only one who ever could beat him! (Every Friday the last period of the day schools would have ciphering and/or spelling matches. Often several schools would meet together for the afternoon. Parents and others would come for the excitement. That custom lasted a long time. Up until sometime in the 1920's. I remember one time our school, Prairie Rose, and the east school, Prairie View met at our schoolhouse for a contest. Ethel Harvey beat me at ciphering. )

    Miss Emma was my 8th grade teacher. It was her first school. My brother Lloyd said that she was his favorite teacher. That year there were three families in the school--Dorothy, Marlin, and Tom Ritchey, Don Boyd, and the 3 of us Crabtrees. I wrote letters to her after we moved away from that district in late March and she would answer them. In one letter she said that she was saving money to go to college. Back then not many people could go to college. There were county teachers' examinations in 17 subjects. But . Miss Emma really did it. Then in the 60's she stopped by the St. Francis Grade School library to talk to me. She and her husband were taking her grandchildren home with them. Her son and wife were lost somewhere in the Andes Mountains. The wreckage of the plane was never found.

    I remember about where the Wagner homestead was. I think. Wasn't it right near where Ruben and Berniece Bandel lived? That is just across the creek from where my Williams great-grandparents gravesite is. In Mills pasture

    ReplyDelete
  3. I also remember Rosa Kamla. I would see her at school or community programs. That was before their children were in school. And years later Mrs. Mabel Ferguson took me to her house. They were in the process of canning corn. Opal and Pearl were the girls helping with the work. Then the two little girls were in school the year Marion Ferguson taught the school and my little girl, Leah, started there. They all gave her such a good time that first day that when we went to get her, she came out like a thunder cloud, and complained, "I wanted to stay till it was over!" I think that Glen Wall started to school that year too.

    I am sorry to hear that Bob Keller had a stroke. I see Elton at the alumni meetings some years. He was in my third grade the year I taught Mills school. He and Lois Raile.

    Am I getting names right? Sometimes my memory plays mean tricks on me lately.

    ReplyDelete

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