| Summary: | FUEL A prairie housewife had to have the patience of Job while trying to cook a meal. Most prairie stoves were designed so that they could burn hay, dried corncobs and sunflower stalks. The most common fuel, however, was the cow chips collected from the pastures in the summer. The manure from the barns in winter was also saved and processed into fuel for the stoves. This type of fuel was clean burning and did not cause any objectionable odor, but it burned so quickly that much time was consumed in keeping the fire going. Dan Bechtle bought a 2nd hand iron heater and a new cook-stove in Eureka. For fuel they used anything available: wood and brush from Beaver Creek or the Missouri River. Later they too prepared a fuel from barn manure which they hauled into a pile in the winter. In the summer they had their oxen or horses trample it into a compact mass and cut it into bricks with a spade. These bricks were arranged in piles to be dried by wind and sun. In Peter Borr's neighborhood the above fuel was referred to as "Oxeline", while the German-Russians called it "Mischt". The first winter the Guilford Mandigo family lived on their homestead in 135-75, they made trips to the Missouri River to get wood for fuel, mostly diamond willow. In the summer they used buffalo chips. Mrs. Jacob Beck told how her father cut brush near the creek to be brought home for fuel, but before he could get it hauled, the winter snows were upon them. All that winter it was necessary he go out with a rope, gather a heap of brush, tie it into a bundle and carry it home on his back. Homesteaders liked to get a winter's supply of wood to augment the twisted prairie grasses and buffalo chips so went to the Missouri river bottoms to pick up dead timber. An item in the Emmons County Record in July 1889 stated, "Thirteen ox teams driven by Mcintosh County settlers passed thru town yesterday, enroute home from the river, loaded with wood." William Foell, proprietor of the "Farmer's Store" in Godkin (later Brophy) in 1906, ran out of coal because the trains were snowbound for 31 days. Mr. Foell went to Linton and instructed the tinsmith, Mr. Gillespie, to make three flax-burners. The store was 28' x 70' x 11', so it took quite a bit of fuel to keep it warm. These self-designed stoves were so successful that he continued to use them after the trains were running again. Mrs. Anna Brindle recalled the winter- mining operations of her husband who discovered coal on his land when drilling and testing for water. The 28" vein of lignite was 40' underground and required an air shaft as well as a shaft for bringing up the fuel. The coal, brought up in a tub attached to a rope, was drawn to the surface over a pulley, by a team of horses. Mrs. Brindle constantly worried about her husband and others who went down into the shaft, as cave-ins and bad air were always a danger. Another Emmons County coal mine was owned by C. L. Parkhurst at Livona. His ad in the Record read, "I have plenty of coal at the mine for $3.50 a ton." From the Strasburg Golden Jubilee book we find an interesting story about Jacob Feist and Egidi Keller in regard to getting firewood. One day these two men ventured out to Beaver Creek with their wagon and oxen. After an afternoon of back-breaking work they had a nice load of wood. They had not traveled far on their return trip when darkness enveloped them, causing them to stray from their path. After much wandering around, they finally saw the flicker of a lamp in a sod house which they reckoned must be Jacob Feist's. As they went over hill and dale the light disappeared. Presently the light returned and they were happy when they found that this actually was Mr. Feist's home. He unloaded his share of the wood and Egidi boldly ventured into the abyss of darkness, hoping that similar luck would bring him home. It did and it didn't. Before long Egidi found that he had again lost the path. After much wandering about, he dozed off, leaving the oxen without a conscious helmsman. Luck was with him; the next morning as the Kellers went out to do their chores they were surprised to find the oxen still hitched to the wagon, standing in the yard and Mr. Keller sleeping peacefully on the wagon. Water One of the formidable obstacles to be overcome by the sodbuster was to insure himself of a water supply in a land that often lay bone-dry in the summer. Some settlers collected rain in barrels and cisterns, others relied on water from a lake or creek, but most pioneers found water only by digging—often to incredible depths below the prairie surface. Most of these wells were dug by hand because of the high fees charged by the professional contractors. Carting water from a neighbor's well was sometimes more feasible than repeated attempts at digging a well on his own property. There was one mechanical device nearly every settler could afford—the windmill, which harnessed the most reliable and handiest energy source to pump water from deep wells. Hazelton, before the advent of city water, was often called the "City of Windmills". A spring-fed flowing well was a godsend to a farmer or rancher. During the drought years the Sulphur Springs Farm near Braddock, owned by John Stanton, was one of the few places in the county that had no worries about a shortage; its four-inch well furnished water for many of the neighbors. Because Hague's water level was high, rather shallow wells were dug, then shored up with stone and cement. During the early 1900s, on a New Year's Eve, the young men of Hague followed an old- country custom of "seeing the New Year in" with a great blast of dynamite. This prank resulted in many cracked walls in the local wells. That particular custom was abandoned for obvious reasons. With the coming of the Government programs in the '30s, great strides were made in conserving water by building stock-water dams on individual farms as well as the larger projects such as the Temvik Dam and Welk Dam. In 1934 in the Horsehead district, crevices several feet deep and wide enough to admit a man's body appeared in the bone-dry soil of the Ted Lawler farm. In the same valley some miles distant, Paul Mausehund struck an artesian flow of considerable volume at a depth of only 14 feet. In 1966 Orlin Lyng reported that 136 dams and dugouts were constructed in the county, amounting to some 220,000 cubic yards of dirt being moved. When all dams and dugouts were filled, it meant approximately 45 million gallons of water. Recently irrigation projects have been established along the Missouri River by our modern pioneers. Garry O'Callaghan, Jr., who lives about 10 miles northwest of Hazelton, was the first in the county to irrigate with water pumped from a well and first to irrigate a field by way of ditches. City water was installed in Linton in 1929, Strasburg in 1947, Hazelton in 1956 and Hague in 1968. Sarah Lee takes time out from hauling water to pose. 18 Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
|
|---|