An Email conversation between two sisters:

Floy:

Look at the floor plan of the Montgomery Ward house called the Laurel. Interesting! It looks identical to Grandpa and Grandma Bartlett's house. They built an entry way on the west (back of house) with steps going out of Kitchen to a landing that went outside or down into the basement. Otherwise, it was almost identical as I remember it.

Alice:

Yes it surely looks like it. The front porch is different but that has been added of course. I remember the porch went along the entire width of the house. Remember the milk strainer? A cloth that Gramma washed and hung out on the line on that porch every morning to sun every day?

Floy:

Yes, the front porch did go all the way across the front of the house. I remember the space under it that I liked to play in. I think the dining area was in a corner of the living room instead of it being a separate room with an archway in between. Am I right?

Alice:

Yes, that house in the picture could possibly be Gramma and Grampa's "new" house--with new siding. It was shingled on the outside as I remember. I am looking for that picture of grandkids to see if it shows the siding. Their new house was a copy of Aunt Lizzie's house in Goodland but with smaller dimensions.

The steps up from the back door had a landing with 3 steps that went up into the kitchen, then from the landing the stairs to the left went down to the basement. In the kitchen, the stove was in the corner along the east wall. Beside the stove was the door to the "room", as Gramma called it, and in kitchen on the other side of that door was the wash stand. It had wash basin, bucket of water with dipper in it, and soap. Underneath was the bucket for water from the wash pan. They had "running water" ---Gramma did the running.

There was a cupboard and cabinet facing each other, one of them on the south wall, the other on the north. On top of the cupboard were the catalogs. Sears and Montgomery Ward. Then on the north wall was the drop-leaf table with chairs. No linoleum - bare wood floors with a shiny finish. Gramma scrubbed it on hands and knees. Betty "helped" scrub floors. Gramma told her that if you get the corners clean the middle would take care of itself, and she wondered how that could be!!! But by the time you got all the corners done there just wasn't any middle left. You could hardly use a mop with a handle. Besides, the way Gramma scrubbed, the handle would have poked through all the windows and cupboard doors!!

I remember, in the "room" were some chairs and rocking chairs, a magazine rack with Cappers' Weekly and some western romance magazines. One time Frances had written a story with pencil in a school tablet. Filled the whole tablet!!! I thought that she would be famous and rich.

Ethel and I spent a week there every summer. We dried dishes and thought we were really helping Gramma with the work. She was quiet--not talking--as she washed dishes and we thought that she was "mad". Well! Can you imagine her being quiet???

Editor’s Note: The house Floy and Alice are talking about was located a short distance northwest from Leo Richard’s place and south of Parks, Nebraska, in what is marked on the Google Earth map as “Bartlett’s Canyon”. Their property was in Kansas, but ran up to the Nebraska state line. Sometime in the 1950’s, the house was moved north of Benkelman and is still being lived in today. It was not a mail order house, but many of the mail order houses were very similar in construction to those being custom built at the time.

Last summer, Leah, Dwight and I walked in to the place where the Bartlett farmstead was located. All that is left is the foundation/basement filled with tree wood and three wells or cisterns.

Click on the above picture to see an enlarged version.

The house in this picture is the "old" house. The road running along the east side of the canyon was a main road and a mail route. It went all the way to Hiway 34 and into Parks.