GARLAND, HAMLIN

GARLAND, MCCLINTOCK, TAFT

Posted By: Janice Sowers (email)
Date: 9/10/2006 at 15:13:19

PIONEER DAYS-HESPER TOWNSHIP 1851-1941

Hamlin Garland, a well known writer of the midwest, was born on a farm near West Salem, Wis., September 16, 1860, the son of Richard H. Garland and Isabella Charlotte McClintock, natives of Maine and Ohio. In February 1868 he came with his parents to Winneshiek county. They traveled by sleigh from Onalaska, Wis., and stopped in Hokah, Minn., on the trip for the night's lodging. At their arrival in Caledonia, Minn., they found only one store and a few dwelling houses. The farm on which the Garlands settled is the present farm home of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Koppen, two miles west of the village of Hesper. They had three children at the time of their arrival in Hesper township, Harriet, Hamlin and Frank and another child, Jesse was born while they resided here. In the book entitled "A Son of the Middle Border" are taken the following quotations: "One of the noblest features of this farm was a large spring which boiled forth from the linestone rock about eight rods north of the house, and this was a beautiful spot to us. There was something magical in this everboiling fountain and we love to play beside its water. One of our delightful tasks was riding the horses to water at this spring and I took my lesson in horsemanship on these trips. The school house of this district stood out upon the prairie to the west a mile distant and during May we trudged our way on a pleasant road, each carrying a small tin pail filled with luncheon." His father was a man who seemed to keep thinking of pushing on to the west for the free lands, and early in March he took his family and moved six miles west of Burr Oak and lived there until August, when they again moved, this time to Mitchell county, Iowa. From here they moved out into the west. Hamlin married Zubine Taft and were parents of two daughters. During his long career as a writer he gained special prominence for his trilogy dealing with the middle west. In the spring of 1940 he died at his home in Hollywood, California, at the age of 79 years. Following is one of his poems entitled "Prairie Pioneers."

They rise to mastry of wind and snow,
They go like soldiers, grimly into strife,
To colonize the plain; they plow and sow,
And fertilize the sod with their own life
As did the Indian and the buffalo.
Above them soars a dazzling sky,
In winter blue and clear as steel,
In summer like an Arctic sea
Wherein vast icebergs drift and reel.
And melt like sudden sorcery.
Beneath them plains stretch far and fair.
Rich with sunlight and with rain;
Vast harvests ripen with their care
And full with over lust of grain,
Their square, great bins.
Yet still they strive! I see them rise
At dawn light, going forth to toil;
The same salt sweat has filled my eyes;
My feet have trod selfsame soil,
Behind the snarling plow.

--Hamlin Garland