Sod Walls and Daily Life

A footnote from history by Stephanie Grace Whitson

The Dowse Sod House in Nebraska
photo by S Whitson

 This past weekend a friend from 
"back east" and I journeyed to the western part of my home state of Nebraska. We visited the Dowse Sod House pictured at right, which was built in 1900 and was the first home of newlyweds William and Florence Dowse.

William and Florence's son, Philip, was born in 1909 and reminisced about life in the soddy when interviewed many years ago. "We had a big root cellar and in winter we'd get a old, crisp apple for a treat.

Oh, they were good! At night mother would read us boys Zane Grey novels by the light of a kerosene lamp ... Sometimes we'd play checkers. We didn't have a lot of things, but it seemed we were always happy."


Sod houses are unique in that they are literally made of dirt. The grasses that grew on the prairie formed such dense root systems that the earth could be cut into bricks and laid up into walls like the ones you see exposed on the Dowse home. In fact, the root systems were so tough that a special plow was invented to facilitate the "sod-busting." Sod bricks were laid grass side down. The walls were often plastered over. 

I remember reading about one family who came to Nebraska from Czechosolavaki in 1885. They had eight children and lived in a one-room dugout that measured about 20 by 24 feet. What was that like? Here are some first-person accounts from sod house pioneers that I've collected over the years (Note: spelling errors in the original sources have not been corrected):

A wooden spool serves
as a door pull at the
Dowse Sod House.

"I don't see how my mother did the many things that fell her lot to do aside from the regular household duties, gardening, helping milk, caring for the milk, which had to be set in crocks and tin pans and skimmed by hand, churned to butter before it could be sold; she manufactured all our clothing from cloth bought by the yard, underwear from cotton flannel, skirts, overalls for summer, jeans for winter, all our socks and stockings to knit, and all this sewing to do by hand, she also made our straw hats ... "

"I am so tired I do not know as I can tell you all the particulars tonight ... I have been on the trot all day and have not done much either only washed."

This rustic clock shelf
is embedded in the sod
walls behind the plaster
finish. 

"I had a whaleing big washing last week. It was so stormy I had to dry [the shirts] in the house I could not hang them but what our heads would rub some of them when I went to Iron I was almost spunky because they did not please me the fine shirts especialy."

"I had to make some new clothes for the girls to wear to the fair and I was very much hurried as I done it all by hand. Mother, I often wish I was close to your machine for three girls makes lots of sewin."

"We had a very long and cold winter set in early and had lots of snow ...

J.T. had bought me a new Singer machine and I made good use of it making all the clothes we wore. I had done this before by hand only occasionally taking some long seams down to sew on Mrs. Strohls machine."

"All we had to eat that first hard winter was jack rabbits and sorghum."

"One morning I said we had better put the bedding out in the sun for an airing ... all the things on the clothesline, but the feather beds ... spread on the grass. About the middle of the afternoon they were brought in ... Along in the night, I felt something cold and clammy at my feet, and called to my husband. He said 'It's just your imagination, go to sleep.' In the morning I got up to dress and I heard something go k-plop on the floor ... there was a big bull snake three and a half feet long ..."

At first we had no fences and, as the cattle must have pasture, it fell to my lot to watch them graze. Dinner time was the only time that I came home. I tried to pass the time away by reading, piecing, quilt blocks, and hunting wild flowers. 

How about you? Do you enjoy visiting historic homes? Do you have a favorite architectural style?

My novel Karyn's Memory Box opens with the words "Dirt. He expected her to look at dirt and call it home." Karyn Ritter has just arrived in Nebraska from Germany and she is not impressed with the soddy her husband has constructed. 

Available as a trade paperback and ebook for Kindle. The ebook is only $2.99.

https://www.amazon.com/Karyns-Memory-Keepsake-Legacies-Book-ebook/dp/B01DV1SYIO/

 

Pioneers and Summer Heat

A footnote from history by Stephanie Grace Whitson

Summer in Nebraska. Hot. Hot. Hotter. What did folks do before air conditioning? This woman has rolled up the canvas on the wagon sides, undoubtedly to let the breeze blow through ... if there was one. 

I remember my family essentially moving to the basement of our home for the summer. A whole house fan drew cool night air into our little house, and once the sun came up, dark drapes were drawn to hold in the cool air. We fled down the stairs to the basement, "finished" with paint on the concrete floors and walls. What little cooking we did during the summer was accomplished on an old stove in one corner. At night, fans stirred the air, but sometimes they didn't really keep anyone comfortable. We endured. 

What kinds of challenges did pioneers face in the summer? When reading pioneer memoirs, one common theme among those who lived in sod houses was that the three-foot thick walls carved up from the prairie and stacked like bricks kept those homes "warm in winter and cool in summer." Still, with the ever-present wind blowing on a hundred-degree day, I'm fairly certain the pioneer woman's idea of "cool" and mine are very different. 

Other summer challenges included:

How to preserve food without refrigeration

"Our only refrigeration in the summer was a long, covered wooden water trough between the windmill and the cattle watering tank.

Nebraska State Historical Society nbhips 14572

We kept milk, butter and other perishables in it. Luckily, refrigeration was no problem most of the year. The dug cave, back of the house, served as a storage place for a lot of fruits and vegetables. It provided cool temperatures in summer and a freeze-proof place in winter." (Russell Riley in Sod House Memories)

Some pioneers stored butter and milk in a bucket lowered down a well and into cold spring water. Garden produce might be dried, but once canning jars were invented, many a pioneer woman spent hours over a hot stove processing the year's garden bounty to feed her family through the coming winter. 

Drought

In Kansas in the spring of 1859, prospects were unusually bright with bumper crops in the making. Then in late June the rains stopped, and the settlers did not see another rain until November, 1860 The merciless heat opened up wide cracks in the earth; springs and streams dried up; horses and oxen grew emaciated. Before the drought broke, thirty thousand men and women called it quits and left ... (Everett Dick, Tales of the Frontier)

In July of 1880, Martha Mott of Nebraska wrote home to Virginia: "No rain ... it requires constant prayer and watching to keep back murmuring ... but ... don't worry about us. He has always cared for us and will care for us still." The very next day after writing those words, she added to her letter: "Just as we were completely discouraged, the fain came and a fine one, too...it is too late for the wheat but if it will keep on raining we will have corn." 

Prairie Fires

Harpers Weekly February 28, 1874

Drought and high winds could combine to set the stage for prairie fires. Once kindled, fire moved across the prairie with appalling speed--often faster than a team of horses could run away from it. Homesteaders plowed fireguards around their homes--two sets of furrows about fifteen yards apart, with the grass between those two furrows burned. "The same idea often saved travelers caught in the path of a prairie fire. The traveler would burn off a patch of ground large enough so that when standing in the its middle he would not be touched by advancing flames."

To read first-hand accounts of pioneers facing prairie fires, go here:

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5512&context=extensionhist

How about you? Do you love summer or hate it?

In Karyn's Memory Box, Karyn Ritter encounters a prairie fire. 

"A sea of fire was rolling toward them, carrying with it black clouds of suffocating smoke ... the horse was wild with fear ... Karyn rolled down a little hill and landed in a patch of bushes beside the creek. Above her flames were licking at the sides of the canyon, crawling down the ridge from tree to tree, making their way relentlessly toward her ..." 

Find it here: 

https://www.amazon.com/Karyns-Memory-Box-Keepsake-Legacies/dp/1523637498/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528758259&sr=8-1&keywords=Karyn%27s+Memory+Box

Valentine's Day and a Woman Entrepreneur

A footnote from history by Stephanie Grace Whitson

I just returned from a writing retreat in Florida. While there, I visited several historical sites, among them the gorgeous Henry Plant Museum, now located in one wing of the 500-room Victorian hotel built by Plant to lure the rich and famous in the late 1800s to play in Tampa. 

One of the special exhibits at the museum was a display of exquisite vintage Valentine's Day greetings. I photographed all the Valentines in this blog post at the museum. 

A woman entrepreneur named Esther Howland is credited by many with popularizing Valentine's Day in America.

Esther Howland

Esther was part of the class of 1847 at Mount Holyoke Seminary in Massachusetts. She apparently had both an artistic eye and an entrepreneurial spirit, for when she received an English Valentine from one of her father's business associates, she thought she could do better. And so she did. She ordered supplies and made a dozen samples for her brother to take along in his sample book on his next sales trip. (The family operated a large book and stationery store.) Her goal was $200 in orders. Imagine her surprise (or sense of panic) when her brother returned with $5000 in advance sales!

Esther created a production assembly line at home, employing the help of several of her friends. Soon, her cottage industry had taken over the third floor of the Howland house. 

Eventually, the New England Valentine Company rented its own building and even published a small book called The New England Valentine Co.'s Verse Book for 1879. 

Esther Howland didn't invent the American valentine and she wasn't the first to make them, but she did popularize her own style. In 1881, Howland sold her business to George Whitney, which became the largest valentine factory in the world.

How about you? Do you celebrate Valentine's Day? In what way? At my house, Valentine's Day was about birthdays ... my daughters were born on February 14 and February 15. 

* * *

Stephanie Whitson's historical romances feature love stories from the past. This one was inspired by a newspaper article reporting on an even that took place in Grand Island, Nebraska in the late 1800s.

In Karyn's Memory Box, a German immigrant who chose to come to America rather than marry the man her father had picked out, marries a stranger who takes her home to a "house made of dirt"--a Nebraska soddy. It isn't at all what Karyn envisioned. But she is beginning to fall in love with her husband when circumstances threaten to ruin the dream she's beginning to believe in. Inspired by an event.

Find the ebook here for only $2.99: https://www.amazon.com/Karyns-Memory-Keepsake-Legacies-Book-ebook/dp/B01DV1SYIO 

And the trade paperback: 
https://www.amazon.com/Karyns-Memory-Box-Keepsake-Legacies/dp/1523637498/

Harvest

A footnote from history by Stephanie Grace Whitson

Nebraska's agriculture heritage is celebrated 
by the sower atop the state capitol building. 
Photo by Ammodramus (Own work) [CC0],
via Wikimedia Commons 

When I first moved to Nebraska, I had to ask a farmer at the state fair to identify a stalk of something on display. Said farmer grinned. "You aren't from here, are you?" Nope. Not a farm girl, either, and woefully ignorant of all things agricultural. (I was asking about milo, a crop planted across the state and used as feed for cattle ... and, I later learned, to make sorghum molasses, which I love.)

I hadn't been in Nebraska long before I began to admire the hard work and dedication and plain old stubbornness it takes to succeed as a farmer. But today's farmers have it so much easier than did the pioneers who settled this state. Of course pioneer farmers in 1860s Nebraska had it easy compared to their forefathers. And so it goes all the way back to biblical times when Ruth was gleaning fields.

Growing and harvesting only 5 acres of wheat took about 250-300 man hours in 1830. Farmers used a walking plow and a brush harrow. (I had to look up the word harrow to know what it does. It's used to cover over the seeds after planting.) Seeds were broadcast by hand (memorialized by that 19-foot tall statue atop the Nebraska State Capitol) and harvested with a sickle and flail. By 1850, those man hours had been reduced to 75-90 hours, thanks to inventions like the McCormick reaper, plows faced with steel blades, and threshing machines. 

 

Nebraska State Historical Society  nbhips 14563

In 1881, Nebraska pioneer Giles Thomas wrote to his family in Wisconsin: "I am putting out sixty acres of a crop and have had every foot of it to plow and am doing it all myself with two horses. I put 10 acres to wheat, 10 to oats, 15 to flax, 2 Mamoth grass, and the rest to corn and garden...I have been in the field following plow and drag...I have been fearful tired at times but I feel good all over because I have my crops all in and in splendid shape. Considering the work my team has done, they look well and are in good spirits." 

Nebraska State Historical Society nbhips 10151

This was an era when 70 per cent of Nebraskans lived on farms, and children were expected to help with farm work. School met only from October to May, for children were needed to help with both planting and harvest.  

Nebraska State Historical Society nbhips 13312

By 1890, a farmer could grow and harvest 5 acres of wheat with only 40-50 hours of labor. Their task was made easier by the existence of the gang plow,seeder, harrow, binder, thresher, wagons, and horses. 

And then, in 1892, inventor John Froelich built the first gasoline tractor. 

The 1930 farmer who, in 1830, poured 250-300 hours into harvesting 5 acres of wheat needed only 15-20 hours. Gasoline-powered machinery revolutionized farming. 

Photo US Dept. Agriculture Public Domain

Years ago, a woman sitting next to me on a plane asked where I was from. When I said Nebraska, she peered at me over the rim of her glasses. "And what does one DO in Nebraska?" The tone was superior, the manner almost sneering. It was one of those moments when I was put instantly on the defensive. Of course I came up with a great answer ... just not in time to provide it to the snooty easterner. 

"What does one do in Nebraska?"

"We feed the world." 

Are you a city mouse or a country mouse? 

What chores were you expected to do as a child?

_______________________________________________________

Award-winning novelist and HHH blogger Stephanie Grace Whitson (www.stephaniewhitson.com) began playing with imaginary friends (i.e., writing fiction) in the 1990s when an abandoned pioneer cemetery near the Whitson’s country home provided not only a hands-on history lesson for her four home schooled children, but also a topic of personal study. When not writing or researching, she enjoys reading, quilting, spoiling her dozen grandchildren and/or Kona Kai (the golden retriever), and riding her motorcycle named Kitty.


Stephanie's novel Karyn's Memory Box tells the love story of Karyn and Mikal Ritter, who are strangers when they meet and marry, and face the challenges of pioneer farming in Custer County, Nebraska. Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Karyns-Memory-Box-Keepsake-Legacies/dp/1523637498/

Notes: 

Statistics provided by www.agclassroom.org.

The black and white photographs in this blog were taken by Solomon Butcher, a pioneer photographer who chronicled the lives of early farmers in Nebraska and provide an invaluable resource to contemporary historians. 

Sesqui-what? Nebraska's 150th and Nebraska Women

A footnote from history by Stephanie Grace Whitson

Sesquicentennial: A word that would stump many a spelling bee contestant ... and the thing my home state is celebrating this year. Because Nebraska history fuels much of my historical fiction, the 150th anniversary holds special meaning for me.  Nebraska will officially be 150 years old on March 1, 2017.

Three amazing women who played significant roles in Nebraska history:

Susette La Flesche Tibbles (Inshata Theumba or Bright Eyes), who "learned the legends, songs, sacred ceremonies, and ancient wisdom of the Omaha people in her grandmother's earth lodge, was educated in the East by missionary friends, and then returned to the reservation to teach. Along with her brother and her future husband Thomas Tibbles, Susette campaigned for Native rights in the case of Ponca Chief Standing Bear. She testified before Senate committees and was feted at the White House. In a day when women had no political rights, Susette La Flesche Tibbles challenged the United States government and won a measure of justice for the Ponca. She went on to lecture in England and fought for Native citizenship.



Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first Native American woman to become a physician in the United States. After graduating from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, she returned to the reservation and practice medicine there until 1894. In 1913, she founded the reservation hospital that bears her name. 

Luna Kellie, who became State Secretary of the Nebraska Farmers Alliance (while raising eleven children on the farm) and published an alliance newsletter on a borrowed portable printing press poised on her kitchen table. Kellie was invited to speak at an alliance conference and was an outspoken on behalf of rural reform movements. She was also active in the Temperance Movement of the Methodist Church and, when she was a widow in her 80s, homesteaded alone near Phoenix, AZ. 





I love learning about Nebraska women--especially the largely forgotten ones who formed aid societies across the state to shelter the homeless, build parsonages, feed the hungry, buy hymnals, support missionaries, nurse the wounded, etc. Their tireless efforts inspire me--and challenge me to be part of making the world a better place. 

Happy Birthday, Nebraska! 
Here's to 150 more years of incredible women. 

______________________________

Stephanie Grace Whitson's life as a fiction author began over 20 years ago when she was inspired by the lives of Nebraska's pioneer women. 

Her novel Karyn's Memory Box tells the story of German mail order bride, Karyn Ensinger Ritter, a sod house homemaker who marries a stranger and then must cope with life in a place that is, in comparison to her home in Germany, a desert. 

Find it here:  https://www.amazon.com/Karyns-Memory-Box-Keepsake-Legacies/dp/1523637498/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483828029&sr=8-1&keywords=Karyn%27s+Memory+Box

Mail Order Bride--A True Story

A footnote from history by Stephanie Grace Whitson

Historical fiction authors spend a lot of time reading real history. Many years ago, I was reading an 1880s newspapers at the Nebraska State Archives when a news story literally stopped me in my tracks. It was a true mail order bride story.

The German Club of Grand Island, Nebraska, had decided there weren't enough German women in the area. Together, they came up with a unique solution. Pooling their funds, they sent "home" to Germany for women. Forty came. The ladies stepped off the train and into a local social hall. Couples paired off and got married. They had to spend their first night in town so that if any of the ladies changed their minds, the marriages could be annulled the next morning. And then they went home. 

After my initial astonishment at this real "mail order bride" story, my storyteller's imagination began to race, wondering about the whys and wherefores--and the what ifs. After all, Germany is a relatively temperate climate compared to Nebraska. And forested. Western Nebraska knows huge temperature extremes (over 100 in the summer and wind chills of 60 below in the winter are not unusual). As for trees, in the late 1800s there weren't many in the entire expanse of plains. 

What would that have been like? Married to a stranger in a very strange land. 

At the time I came across this true story, I'd also been immersing myself in the Solomon Butcher collection of pioneer photographs. When Butcher's homesteading efforts in Custer County, Nebraska, weren't successful, he came up with the idea of producing a photographic history of the county. His father provided a wagon and a team (pictured at right).

Solomon Butcher photographic wagon

Butcher wagon close-up

Butcher loaded up his photographic equipment, and set out on a journey that would result in thousands of glass plates and one of the richest historical archives in the country. (See the collection here: https://www.loc.gov/photos/?fa=contributor%3Asolomon+d.+butcher%7Cpartof%3Abutcher%2C+solomon+d.+%28solomon+devore%29%2C+1856-1927&all=true)

It would have taken Butcher hours to reach some of the homes and families he photographed. He supported himself with a subscriptions, donations, and the sale of photographs to his subject families. In addition to taking photographs, Butcher collected stories. His history of Custer County (Solomon D. Butcher's Pioneer History of Custer County and Short Sketches of Early Days in Nebraska) is replete with first hand accounts of events. One of Butcher's real stories inspired a dramatic scene in my mail order bride story, Karyn's Memory Box, wherein the hero, Mikal, falls into a deep well.

Tempted to think of sod house life as bleak, I've been drawn to photographs like this one at right--a prairie mansion built by the Haumonts,

The Haumont sod house

immigrants from Belgium. This house inspired a best friend named Celest Delhomme for my mail order bride Karyn Ritter.

Perusing the Butcher collection, I've wondered about those women. And about the women who came to Grand Island, Nebraska from Germany and married strangers. I hope there were many happy endings among them.

Why do you think we're so fascinated with stories about mail order brides? 

_______________________________

Stephanie Whitson's mail order bride story, Karyn's Memory Box has recently been re-released in both trade paperback and ebook formats. It will soon be available as an audible book as well. Karyn's Memory Box is Book 2 in the Keepsake Legacies series.

Learn more here: https://www.amazon.com/Karyns-Memory-Box-Keepsake-Legacies/dp/1523637498/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1472921637&sr=1-1&keywords=Karyn%27s+Memory+Box