Memories of Margaret (Stafford) Hightower

Letter to cousin Floy from Margaret (Stafford) Hightower, daughter of Lewis (Lute) and Georgia (Bartlett) Stafford. (*italics supplied)

I have been really enjoying the Benkelman Post every week and especially your column and yes I remember my school days in the little country school - one teacher, forty five kids and 9 grades. And we had every subject every day. The last three years there, I helped the teacher with the first 3 grades, as one little girl was afraid of the man teacher. So along with my studies, I taught those grades with their reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic.

Then they voted that school out and the schoolhouse was sold to the Hurley Crabtree family. Harvey and Marie (*moved it to) the Crabtree farm and built onto it and made their home there.

I remember the programs we had there and even the Box suppers. The girls took a nice box supper and the men and boys bought them, then ate with the buyer. And I remember one time we went to your (*probably Prairie Rose) school or something, I don't remember if it was a program - the children put on as if it was a church gathering.

I also remember about a school house our Grandfather Bartlett bought and moved to their farm, years before I can remember, and they said 18 (*people) lived in it one winter while they built a sod house right next to it. I was told he paid $35 for that school house. Then after they built the big house they moved the school house north about a quarter of a mile where our Uncle Harry and his wife lived.

The first time it was moved must have been about 1910 or 1911. As it was about the time the Bartletts moved from Eastern Kansas.

Mamma told me that she and Grandpa Bartlett came west in a covered wagon and took out the homestead land there, then went back and your mother (*Mae (Bartlett) Crabtree) Uncle Art (*Bartlett) ,and My mother (*Georgia (Bartlett) Stafford) stayed back in Jewell County, Kansas, to harvest the crops and the rest of the family moved out to Cheyenne County. Uncle Harry was born in 1911 (In Cheyenne County). Then the three older ones came west and evidently some of the Hughes boys (their uncles) came about the same time because that winter they all lived in the schoolhouse.

When Grandpa and my mom came they had no place to stay, so my grandparents (the *Job Staffords) asked them to stay with them until they could get a place built. Well, sort of an underground place to live. It was over the hill, east of where they finally built the house where they were to live.

And, Oh, the wonderful garden Grandpa and Grandma raised there in that little valley. They had Cherry and Pear trees and the pears were Bartlett pears. I thought it was because of their name was why they were called Bartlett pears. The rhubarb plants grew so big Grandpa would give each of us 4 girls a stem with a big leaf for an umbrella when it was real hot in the summers.

I was in Goodland one time and Jack & Jerry Bartlett wanted me to go with them and we drove over to Grandpa's farm and of course the house had been moved away and the barn was about to fall down. But those pear trees were still producing. But deer had gotten as high as they could reach and had picked them. There were deer everywhere - all over those hills, something we never saw back in the days of old.

We have to lock everything up now days and we should have back then, too, as one year my mother had just put 200 laying hens in the laying houses and a neighbor came one night when we were away and took every one of them. We found out who it was because he had sold them in Benkelman. My dad happened to be in Benkelman one day and the man that had bought those hens told my dad that he was so proud of xxx as he had bought so many nice chickens from him a day or so before. But xxx never had a place to raise that many chickens. Other neighbors had lost chickens, too. Everyone called the couple Galloping xxx and Trotting xxx, as they walked into places at any time and from different directions. Yes, they had a car but they never drove in to places unless they knew the owners were gone.

Another time Mamma raised some turkeys and they didn't get very big when that couple took all but the little ones. Oh, if they walked in, people would take them in out of the hot sun and let them have water or eat a meal.

People were friendly with them but knew they were looking things over to see what they could take and sell. Oh, they farmed. But their crops hardly ever done much, as he really didn't take care of the crops too well and they only had a few acres, if I know or remember rightly.

--Margaret Hightower grew up around and in Parks, Nebraska. She is 91 years old and the cousin of Floy Ruggles and Alice Gregory.