Thus Far Our Experience

A HOMESTEAD WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

My Great - Grandparents
James Sankey Lindsey (1846 - 1921) & Sarah Elisabeth Hartman
in Summer 1913 with their grown children
Sitting by father: Wayne Wallace (1889 - 1951)
Sitting by mother: Samuel Gordon (1893 - 1918)
Standing, L to R: Lillian Virginia (1897 - 1980), Gail Hartman (1899 - 1944),
My Grandfather Paul Jones Lindsey (1895 - 1983)
Bertha Mabel (1880 - 1968), James Sankey, Jr. (1883 - 1965),
Edna Beatrice (1891 - 1922)
Two weeks ago, I quoted several paragraphs from a letter that my great - grandmother wrote during her homesteading years in Nebraska. Here is the letter in its entirety, complete with Sarah's views on various governmental homestead measures and Veterans Affairs.

from Sarah Elisabeth Hartman Lindsey, 1856 - 1937

to her niece Eyrie Winegarden Hadley, 1866–1943

Eyrie was the daughter of Sarah's half - sister
"Emma" Emily Eugenia Hartman, 1846 – 1928

*********************
Madrid, Nebraska, July 30, 1893

Dear Eyrie,

Your truly welcome letter of the 9th was rec'd the following Saturday night. Found us all well, and so glad to know that your mother is again improving and we fervently trust that it will continue so until she recovers.

I am (nearly) alone this afternoon, with my babies Beatrice and Gordon both asleep. Jimmie went 5 miles away to see a sick horse this morning, taking Wayne with him. Mabel and Jim are at Sunday School three and half miles distant since dinner. And I have a quiet time in which to write. You know, Eyrie, few of the homesteaders have another room where they can go and read or write undisturbed.

We had a delightful shower last night, and I was reading today little poem entitled "The Music of the Rain" and thought the author did not know in what sense it was musical to us. It was indeed a grateful sound, after having been so long without rain. I have felt so deeply concerned about your mother's illness that I have not written you much "news" lately nor have I spoken of our lack of rain.

We have had the worst drought this summer that we have ever had. We have always had what we call our spring rains, until this year we had none until the first of June we had a thunder shower, and two light showers since, that of last - evening being one of them. This is the first spring without some early garden vegetables. Even 3 years ago when we suffered so from drought we had early vegetables, but later ones such as beans, peas and beets, etc. did not grow. But this year we have not had any of any description -- nor a bite of fruit. Our wheat was blown out entirely by the severe spring winds and the drought has burned up the corn. It is general too, and the coming winter will be the worst that the homesteaders of this county have ever known.

I see by the papers that the governor of Kansas has called an extra session of the Legislature to afford relief to the drought stricken farmers in the western half of the state, immediately south of us.

Well, as a result of this succession of crop failures, Jimmie [her husband James] has at length concluded to take your advice and go where he can gain something for his labor but he cannot go until his time on the homestead expires, which will be a year and a half yet.

Thus far our experience in this country: a good year follows a general drought and invariably a great many eastern people who have heard of the rich land. So long as the poor fools will come and will have the land, we hope to dispose of ours so that we will not lose everything by this dearly bought experience. It had to be experience with us too for we thought it was a grand country, and have laughed at folks for moving away. People cannot live on a crop once in three years. That is the average -- as we have found it, but we kept on hoping that the rainbelt would be extended and we would have rain more regularly. We have read, and heard it said,that agriculture extends the rainbelt westward from the 100th meridian, but I do not believe it will ever do it permanently. The effects of the rainfall we do have are carried away by the constant winds. I have not kept account but I don't believe we have had a dozen days this last five months without strong winds all day long -- sometimes ceasing at nightfall but renewing their energies with the sunrise.

People are deceived by the appearance of the country and the occasional good crops. A very wealthy gentleman from Philadelphia has purchased hundreds of acres of land north of Madrid and has been at great expense to have it plowed this summer. Another from the central part of this state has done the same. Had we the amount of moisture required to grow vegetation, never was there a more fertile country; but we are so far from any stream that it is impossible to irrigate it. The winds are very destructive and disagreeable, once the sandy soil is cultivated the wind blows it in great clouds across the country almost blinding the people and filling the houses with dust. This is what we call a sandstorm. It blows the pig pens full of sand like drifts of snow so that the pigs can walk out over the top of the pen.

When the thunder shower I have mentioned came up the first of June little Jim was just coming in with his herd at noon and it was right in the worst of it when he got them to the coal gate and Mabel, Jimmie & I all helped and he had an awful time to get then to go in, but finally succeeded, and Mabel & I came in the house to get on dry clothing, when there came a terrible flash of lightning (Jim had gone to put this horse up in the barn & his pa was closing the corral gate when we came in). I rushed out of the house in an instant and saw Jimmie lying by the corral gate. He received a pretty severe shock, did not regain consciousness for awhile, and we had an awful time to get him in the house. It was in the hardest of the shower too; he was sick abed several days from the effect of it.

He [Jimmie] had his [Civil War] pension granted some time ago -- six dollars a month. He thought it so little. When granted he considered it almost an insult, but if it were not for it now we'd nearly starve. I see [President Grover] Cleveland is having all the New Law of 1890 Pensions suspended for sixty days until all the evidence can be reviewed. We may come under that. Don't know yet. There will be a great many pensioners cut off during the present administration.

While Jimmie was sick an old friend & wife who used to live in J’s native town in Ohio, came eight miles to see him. They are well-to-do people spending a few months here for their health. They brought him some oranges, a can of peaches, and Gordon [Uncle Sam, as a baby] a new dress. After Wayne had eaten of the peaches, his papa was telling him we would move east where fruit grows and then we could have some. I was out, and when I came in, Wayne said, “And Mama don't you think they grow on trees”! It has only been a year since he learned there was such a thing as a tree. He scarcely ever sees one, they usually die in the first year.

Mrs. Jung brought so much shrubbery with her & had not but one bush on her place, after nearly five years of trying. I rec'd this paper & the other papers last - night. Many thanks Eyrie for the same. God know I never want you to feel the sting of poverty as we have. I hope in some way some time to repay you for your kindness to us.

I saw Grandpa a week ago just for a few minutes. I went uptown for the mail & he was in too. He is well. You must not feel hard toward him Eyrie for not writing oftener. He has worked awfully hard all summer and not writing much & with his hard work and age too all together his hand is stiff and tired and he no doubt does not feel like writing. I did not tell him what you said. He was awfully glad to hear of your mama being better. Tomorrow is the 31st, his 69th birthday. I wrote Frank the other day to send him some help. He will not have anything for his hard work. I think he will go to Frank's this fall to stay. We don't know where we'll go but we will certainly go -- if we live -- as soon as we can dispose of our claims.

Eyrie, I am glad you take such a sensible view of your trouble, for it is something you cannot help, and I think Fred is a grand good fellow to help you bear it too.

I read a poem two or three years ago, perhaps you have seen it -- about a census taker who called at the home of a man who had a son that lost his mind from a disease incurred in the war. In telling the census taker of it [the son was at home] and on his remarking about it being unfortunate for them, the father replied "Unfortunate -- yes: but we can't complain. It's a living death . . . when the body clings to a life of shame and the soul has gone to the bad. But Bill is out of the reach of harm and dangers of every kind. We only take care of his body but God takes care of his mind." Isn't that a beautiful thought and so comforting.

Write soon -- hope to hear about your mom.

Love to all, S.
*********************

A few lines from one of my favorite novels:

"I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or anything about the long day's journey through Nebraska. Probably by that time I had crossed so many rivers that I was dull to them. The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska. . . .

"All the years that have passed have not dimmed my memory of that first glorious autumn. The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed the sunflower - bordered roads. . . . sunflower - bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom.

"I used to love to drift along the pale yellow cornfields, looking for the damp spots one sometimes found at their edges, where the smartweed soon turned a rich copper color and the narrow brown leaves hung curled like cocoons about the swollen joints of the stem. Sometimes I went south to visit our German neighbors and to admire their catalpa grove, or to see the big elm tree that grew up out of a deep crack in the earth and had a hawk’s nest in its branches. Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons. It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious." (5, 28 - 29)

More Willa Cather on QK and KL

*********************
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, October 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
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www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Talking About the Homestead

A HOMESTEAD WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Map of the Family Homesteads and Surrounding Area ~ 1890s
Sketched out in the 1940s by Wayne Wallace Lindsey (1889 - 1951)

Madrid, Perkins County, Nebraska

Detail of Perkins County ~ Grant = County Seat

In 1887 my great-grandparents (my mother's paternal grandparents), James Sankey Lindsey and Sarah Elisabeth Hartman Lindsey, headed west from Ohio to settle a homestead in Perkins County, Nebraska, taking along their three children: Mabel (b 1880 in Ohio), Jim (b 1883 in Ohio), and Nellie (b 1887, along the way, in Illinois). During their years in Nebraska, three more children were born: Wayne (b 1889), Beatrice (b 1891) and Sam (b 1893). My grandfather Paul (b 1895 in Oklahoma) and his two younger sisters Virginia (b 1897 in Kansas) and Gail (b 1899 in Kansas) were born after the family gave up the homestead claim and returned to Kansas.

Sometime in the 1940s, my grandfather's brother Wayne sketched out the above map, recalling all of the homesteading families who lived near them in Madrid, Nebraska (in the 1890s). The two Hartman - Lindsey homesteads are near the middle: "Grand Pa" (Sarah's father, Charles Gordon Hartman) marked with an "X" and "H sted" marked with an X (James & Sarah's place). Another "X" on the "Road from Madrid" marks the "School where mother taught" (Mother = Sarah Elisabeth Hartman Lindsey). If you look at the right hand column listing all the other families, you can see at the very top of the list is another school -- maybe "Rucker" School. Going south from there, the families seem to be: Williams, Randall, Simon, Janes, Bauer, Kegras, Cutler; to the west are Olesons, two unnamed farms, and Kenaugh; and further west on the "Road from Madrid" is Sam Culver.

It was the adventure of a lifetime, but it was also a tough, harsh time, filled with adversity, frustration, and loss. Saddest of all was the death of 4 1/2 - year - old Nellie in 1891, when she fell from a horse. Yet somehow my Great - Grandmother Sarah persisted, caring for the other children, teaching school, and maintaining connections with relatives back East.

Sarah's account of the devastating drought reads like a testimomial in a history book (for additional narratives, see The Great West, p 424; and "Drought and Depression in 1890s Nebraska").

On July 30, 1893, she wrote to her niece in Ohio:

We have had the worst drought this summer that we have ever had. We have always had what we call our spring rains, until this year we had none until the first of June we had a thunder shower [which knocked James unconscious!], and two light showers since . . . . This is the first spring without some early garden vegetables. Even 3 years ago when we suffered so from drought we had early vegetables, but later ones such as beans, peas and beets, etc. did not grow. But this year we have not had any of any description -- nor a bite of fruit. Our wheat was blown out entirely by the severe spring winds and the drought has burned up the corn. It is general too, and the coming winter will be the worst that the homesteaders of this county have ever known.

I see by the papers that the governor of Kansas has called an extra session of the Legislature to afford relief to the drought stricken farmers in the western half of the state, immediately south of us.

Well, as a result of this succession of crop failures, Jimmie [her husband James] has at length concluded to take your advice and go where he can gain something for his labor but he cannot go until his time on the homestead expires, which will be a year and a half yet.

Thus far our experience in this country: a good year follows a general drought and invariably a great many eastern people who have heard of the rich land. So long as the poor fools will come and will have the land, we hope to dispose of ours so that we will not lose everything by this dearly bought experience. It had to be experience with us too for we thought it was a grand country, and have laughed at folks for moving away. People cannot live on a crop once in 3 years. That is the average -- as we have found it, but we kept on hoping that the rainbelt would be extended and we would have rain more regularly. . . . The effects of the rainfall we do have are carried away by the constant winds. I have not kept account but I don't believe we have had a dozen days this last five months without strong winds all day long -- sometimes ceasing at nightfall but renewing their energies with the sunrise.

People are deceived by the appearance of the country and the occasional good crops. A very wealthy gentleman from Philadelphia has purchased hundreds of acres of land north of Madrid and has been at great expense to have it plowed this summer. Another from the central part of this state has done the same. Had we the amount of moisture required to grow vegetation, never was there a more fertile country; but we are so far from any stream that it is impossible to irrigate it. The winds are very destructive and disagreeable, once the sandy soil is cultivated the wind blows it in great clouds across the country almost blinding the people and filling the houses with dust. This is what we call a sandstorm. It blows the pig pens full of sand like drifts of snow so that the pigs can walk out over the top of the pen.

. . . We don't know where we'll go but we will certainly go -- if we live -- as soon as we can dispose of our claims.

[Letter to be continued next time . . . ]
As the historians will tell you, immigration to Nebraska slowed to a halt in these years and thousands of covered wagons (18,000 of them in 1891 alone) reversed their westward path and returned to friendlier climes. In 1895, three of these wagons belonged to James and Sarah, who was expecting my grandfather at the time.
In his autobiography, my grandfather writes:

I was born in a covered wagon in the fall of 1895 in Choctaw Indiana Territory near Stigler, Oklahoma. My father left Perkins County, Nebraska, two months before I was born, with his family in three wagons outfitted for sleeping, and with 30-some loose horses He was headed for Arkansas and intended to trade horses for land.

They came through Caney, Kansas, and on southeast when they had to halt for my birth.

By this time they were all chilling. Everyone was full of ague [malarial fever] from drinking water out of creeks. They saw graves being dug in every graveyard they passed, so decided to come back north.

The country around Caney had appealed to them so they came back thus way and traded horses for eighty acres of land in the Sand Hills of Cascade Community, immediately west of Caney.

By the time they got settled they had been on the road and in camp one year, I was ten months old when we stopped one - half mile west of Cascade Schoolhouse."

Paul Jones Lindsey (1895 - 1983)

*******************

Here I am with my grandfather in 1981,
around the time that he jotted down the above
story of his childhood and recounted several
hours of oral history that my kind husband Gerry
has painstakingly transcribed from cassette tapes
to digital files for safekeeping.

When I encountered the following poem in Plainsongs -- appropriately, a literary magazine from the Great Plains of Nebraska -- I felt the truth of my ancestors' homesteading experience:

This Is Not the Farm I Talk About
When I Talk About the Farm

I.
Show me a vase of daisies,
and I will turn over dirt, point
to chopped root of thistle
pulled the day before.

All summer
I filled the back of her truck
with purple flowers
then set the field on fire.

II.
If you squint, you won't see
sweat or prickled skin or the way
we curled away at night
from the brown recluse
that paced our headboard,
from a loaded revolver,
from spirits of animals stretched
and pinned to the wall -- for protection
or company, I don't know,
we were very alone.

Sometimes I heard wheelbarrows
bumping over rocks, saw horses
running in the two - by - fours
we'd used to build the barn. Or, if not
horses, someone's face missing
half its nose, a small child
rocking. A splinter of wood
was a gash of cloud,
and it all meant something.

III.
The chicks are learning to pluck
maggots from a steaming pile of straw.
It is winter,and you can warm your feet
to burning on last week's shit
stomped flat between two trees.

Genevieve N. Williams
Contemporary American Poet ~ Nebraska & Iowa

Associate Editor Dwight Marsh explains that "This poem is an anti - pastoral, a tradition with a distinguished history, probably as old as the pastoral itself. The pastoral idealized country life where the only problems were indifferent maidens and calluses on finger tips from strumming lutes. . . . But debunking the myth of idyllic country life is wide spread. . . .

"'This Is Not the Farm . . . ' enumerates some brute realities of rural life: thistles, fires, spiders, sweat, armaments, predators, injury, splinters, the rawness of the life cycle of ingestion and excretion in a range of animals . . . . The poem is a bitter lament for the hard life of farming, in terse forceful images and language."

Plainsongs, Vol XXXV, #3, pp 2 - 3
Spring 2015, 35th Anniversary Issue
In one of those remarkable literary coincidences that I love writing about on this blog, I was recently thumbing through one of my old notebooks of saved poetry from 1984. One of my favorites that year was "The Drama Critic Warns of Cliches" by Evan Zimroth, photocopied from Poetry magazine (April 1984). In all these thirty - four years, I can't recall ever having stopped to read the poem on the facing page until that day last month:

Mute

Once, on the last ice-hauling,
the sled went through the surface
of the frozen pond,
pulling the son under
the thrashing hooves
of horses. Listening for him

after all her tears was perhaps
what drew the mother
into that silence. Long afternoons
she sat with the daughter,
speaking in the sign language
they invented together,
going deaf to the world.

How, exactly, did they touch
their mouths? What was the thought
of the old man on the porch
growing so drunk by nightfall
he could not hear
mosquitoes in his ears?

There is so much no one remembers
about the farm where sound,
even the bawling of the unmilked cows,
came to a stop. Even the man’s name,

which neighbors must have spoken
passing by in twilight, on their way
to forgetting it forever.

Wesley McNair
Contemporary American Poet, New Hampshire & Maine

In a radio interview with McNair, Mary Kuechenmeister observes that "Drawing from his personal experiences, McNair's poetry is emblematic of both family and economic hardships, and New England living." For example, McNair recalls the time during his childhood when his stepfather "began building a garage, which we lived in for many years, actually, while he got the wherewithal to start a house. So this garage was probably one of the most forlorn family homes in existence."

In "Mute," McNair memorializes the bleak reality of rural farming, the untimely loss of life, the relentless elements, and the inevitability of nature. If the farm itself grows mute, then we must talk -- and write -- about it for its own sake and for our own. Although from different parts of the country, both Wesley McNair and Genevieve Williams insist on the anti - pastoral rather than the cozy romantic Home on the Range. Their poems bear witness to the lived reality of my great - grandparents, to the persistence and stamina required of them in their search for a homestead and a home.

"Barber ~ Shop ~ W. W. Lindsey"
One of my Great - Uncle Wayne's Barbershops

Some of my second cousins: Dick, Katheryn (top left)
Marilee, Joyce, Jeannie (front row) Fitzwater
Wish I could name the other two, but alas I cannot!
Nor do I know the exact location of the shop but know
that Wayne had shops in Chautauqua, Elgin, Havana, Peru
~ all in Southeast Kansas ~
and that in one of them, he shaved Emmett Dalton!
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, September 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com