| Summary: | 'Since 1887" * SINCE 1887" By Mrs. J. W. Taylor, Buford, N. D. (formerly Eva Molena Burgess) My parents, Thomas and Mary Burgess, were raised in the small town of Drumbo, Ont., Canada. My Dad got the urge to go west, and hired out to the Canadian Pacific railroad when it was building west in 1881. He tho't the land in Assiniboine (now Saskatchewan) looked like good farm land, so located there. My mother and two small boys came by immigrant train and joined him there, where they farmed until 1886. The climate was not suited to the kind of crops which they tried to raise, so when the Great Northern R. R. was building west from Grand Forks, dad went to Minot and joined the construction crew of the G.N. l\.y., as a carpenter working westward. My mother, two brothers, an older sister and myself went by horse and wagon overland from the amdary, with the Geo. Woods family, to the place near the junction of Little Muddy creek and the Missouri River. There we lived in a tent and waited for the construction crew. We arrived at Little Muddy in April, 1887. The railroad reached Williston in June 1887. The Geo. Woods family later located south of the river in what is now McKenzic county. The summer of 1887 was a rainy summer, nearly every evening, about sundown, a thunder storm would come up. People living in tents had to watch out or their tents would be blown down. One evening, while our family was camped near the river, one of those storms came up. Dad and his cousin Dave Cochran) were there and everyone had to hold on to tent poles and guy ropes to keep the tent from blowing away. Dad's cousin would turn to my mother and say ''Mar)', you are the bravest woman I ever saw". Then turning to Dad, he would say "My G . . . Tom, we will all be blown into the river". The tent was later moved to what is now Recreation Park. We lived in the tent until a log house could be built. My Dad sold the house to F. L. Barnfather in the spring of 1888 and we moved over on the North side of Stony Creek, about wdiere the Sales Ring is now located, living there for 6 years, at the end of which time we moved back to Williston. During the time when we lived on Stony Creek, Dad worked as carpenter at Ft. Buford quite a lot of time. I believe the Fort was abandoned about the time we moved back to Williston. Some other men who worked at Ft. Buford when Dad did were Charley Field, H. E. (Gene) Field, Jack Patch and Walter Patch. There were others whose names \ don't know who worked there with Dad. There were Gros Ventre Indians living along the river bottoms and on the hills during the eighties and until about 1892, when they were loaded into wagons by soldiers and taken to reservation at Popular, Mont., and Ft. Berthold in No. Dak. by the soldiers. These Indians were friendly with the white people who lived here. I think the army was afraid they would join the Sioux Tribes and cause trouble, so they were put on the reservations. About 1894, we moved back to Williston where we lived until 1900, when Dad filed -on a homestead west of Trenton where he lived until his death in 1912. About 1900, the Great Northern put on an advertising campaign to induce people from other parts of the country to come and settle on vacant lands along the G. N. Railroad thru North Dakota and Montana. Much of the better farm lands was filed on about that time. Several local men around Williston acted as guides or locaters to help the newcomers find desirable homesteads. One trainload of immigrants arrived in Williston during a bad March blizzard and had to find lodgings wherever they could in Williston, until the weather cleared. Quite a few camped in the Williston County Court House. Many of the original homesteads have sold out and gone — some back east, others west and south, but some of the hardy ones are still with us. Most of the farms (except under irrigation) are now larger than the original 160 acres, quite a few 1,000 acres or more. Before the town of Williston was organized, a subscription school was started to take care of the children who were old enough to attend. To pay the teacher, different ones would take turns collecting money to keep the school going. After the village was organized, the subscription method was discontinued. The first school which I attended, was held in an old granary which had belonged to Bob Mathews. It was located where the Post ()ffice building now stands. There were two teachers, one at each end of the room. The primary pupils faced toward the East and the advanced pupils faced toward the West. My first teacher was Mrs. L. I). liayrcll (Annie Leonhardy). The teacher for the advanced pupils was Miss Celestia Brown (Mrs. Wm. Freeman). As the school increased in numbers, different Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Taylor Taylor's Homestead Shack 14 Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited in Multi-page TIFF Editor.
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