AMERICA 1900-1910 -- 'THE OLD HOMETOWN' (Part 1)

SEIFERT

Posted By: David (email)
Date: 3/7/2004 at 21:17:59

'AMERICA 1900-1910'

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~ Life in a Prairie Town ~

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This town is the fruit of great aspiration, and we who live here now have a debt to posterity that we can pay only by still achieving, still pursuing; we must learn to labor and to wait.

-- William Allen White, Editor of the Emporia, Kansas

Gazette.

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Patience was a way of life for at least 45 million Americans at the turn of the century. Those millions, comprising the 60 per cent of the population that resided in towns of fewer than 2,500 people, endured as country folk always had, in the grip of the seasons, following the rhythm of planting and harvesting. So it was for the wheatgrowers of Dorrance, an austere little town huddled on a windy prairie in north-central Kansas.

During its half-century of existence, Dorrance had never been more than a speck on the map, but it had seen a lot of history. The area had been crossed by Indian hunters, by wagon trains of settlers and gold seekers. In l867, the Union Pacific Railroad tracks reached Dorrance, bringing with them the German, Irish and other immigrants who accounted for much of the town's modest growth after 1870. By 1910, when Dorrance was incorporated, it had only 281 citizens, yet it was one of the most important towns in Russell County.

Not without cause, the townspeople took quiet pride in their community. Dorrance had everything a country town really needed: a good public school, with four teachers and about 100 pupils; a bank and a hotel; four churches; a variety of stores and businesses; telephone and telegraph service. This was a progressive town. Decades ago, farmers had built windmills that still pumped their water. Recently a few men had acquired modern steam-driven threshers, and the Mahoney family even bought a car when autos were still a novelty in the cities.

The people themselves, shown in pictures taken by Leslie Halbe, the banker's son, were exactly what their town suggested: a plain, durable folk who feared God and worked hard. In their need for relief from the prairie's raw isolation, people drew tegether and got on well. German and Frenchman, Catholic and Mennonite pitched in to help one another at harvest time, and to outfit the town's baseball team. No one got rich, but no one was poor.

In such small towns life had a continuity that extended beyond the grave. The dead, buried in cemeteries inside the town, were as much a part of Dorrance as the blacksmith's shop and Weber's lumberyard; their graves were visited on Decoration Day by all the citizens, led by Civil War veterans in faded uniforms. Few people, living or dead, left Dorrance; almost everyone stayed on, content and patient to labor and to wait.

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Captions of pictures following this article:

1. Dorrance's station crew waits for a train under a sign listing distances to the nearest big cities. Here salesmen detrained and hawked their wares for miles around.

2. Two landmarks on Main Street, the post office and village drugstore, were built of limestone from nearby quarries and lumber that had to be brought in by rail.

3. Dorrance's telephone switchboard operator had few calls and plenty of time to chat. Twice, she had no work at all when blizzards knocked down all the wires.

4. The Citizens' State Bank issued loans to families between harvests. One major cause for seasonal borrowing was the average farmer's need for a dozen work horses.

5. Under hats pegged to the wall, town workers and visitors on business are served family style by a dexterous short-order cook in Sheetz's Restaurant on Main Street.

6. Wearing their Sunday suits and straw boaters, two young farmers, Peter Steinle and Henry Heinze, Share a buggy ride to Dorrance from their outlying spread.

7. The Luthern Church lets out its congretation, about 60 families strong. Dorrance had three other deonominations, all with white frame churches of their own.

8. A wheatgrower unloads his crop at a grain elevator This elevator was constructed by German immigrants who brought with them the winter wheat grown locally.

9. A man identified as S. Shilts tended pigs to supplement the income from his wheat crop. A typical Dorrance farmer, he cultivated about 300 acres of prairie land.

10. Helping at harvest time, a wheat farmer's family gathers together on the water wagon driven out to refill the steam engine that powered the threshing machine.

To Be Continued . . . 'Big City Down River'

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Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
February 29, 2004