Herbert had a siege in the hospital but is O. K. now. (May, 1959)
The above picture was take in 1945 of Herbert and Mable Haight. They have changed little in appearance 14 years later or 1959. Have no 1959 picture. Herbert H. Haight wrote the following history, his wife Mable (Chamberlain) Haight adding a little as did their eldest daughter Grace Virginia Haight Peterson. The second daughter Laura Haight died in infancy. The third child Katherine Haight Day who with her two children live here at 312-13th St. N. Great Falls, Montana, added a couple of pages. Neil, Herbert's fourth child and youngest is busy moving from New Mexico to Herbert Haight's farm in Montana so is unheard from. Maybe can send you dope from him later on. He has two kids.
May 27-1959 Dwight L. Haight
 

Herbert H. Haight
This is written to comply with a request of Brother Dwight Haight.  They tell me I was born on Sept 2-1882 in the upstairs of Grandfather Williams Haight's house in Elk Township Buena Vista county, Iowa, where my parents were at that time living.  I believer the section number is 18.  The house was and is located less than 1/2 mile from the Cherokee County line.

Grandfather had come from the Hudson River area to Ohio and was married there (8-27-1846) and my father was born in that state.  They moved, from near Sandusky, Ohio, I believe, to a farm near West Liberty, Muscatine County in 1861. From there they drove overland to Storm Lake, also in Iowa, (1869) and, after some scouting for a homestead, filed on the above mentioned 80 acres of land.  I do not know how the rest of the family made the trip.

My mother was born Laura Cassiday (10-4-1861) on a farm in Poweshiek County, Iowa.  I have visited the place and would estimate it is  about 1/2 mile north and two miles east of the inland community center named Jewart.  Her parents brought her to Elk Twp., where they too filed on a homestead.  Mother taught school for a time before her marriage.  I remember well both my paternal grandparents.  My Grandmother Cassiday I remember lived her last years and passed away in my parent's home in Brooke Twp., Buena Vista County.  My only recollection of Grandfather Cassiday is seeing him carrying a surveying instrument across the barnyard of his then Brooke county farm which must have been in either section 12 or 13.

Before the birth of Earnest, my next oldest brother, my parents moved to a location "in the hills" in Brooke Twp., which I believe is in section 15.  Spent our first few days, I've been told, with an upside down wagon box for a house.  Some of my early recollections are the two room stone house that served after quiet some time.  Later a "lean to" kitchen at a lower floor level was built on to connect the stone house with a building called the "coal house".  In one end the coal was stored.  Mother did her washing in the other end.  In the step between the stone house and the long and narrow kitchen we boys were allowed to drive nails.  I suppose to keep us out of something else.  Anyway that step finally acquired a decidedly speckled appearance.  The family ate in the kitchen and because of the narrowness of that room those located (I use the word advisedly because the right sized boys ate while standing) at the end away from the outside door had to crawl under the table. If they wished to make their exit before those on the other side of the table had finished eating and vacated room for a pathway out doors.  There was no standing on ceremony or asking to be excused.  When a fellow finished eating he simply "beat it". Most of them did.  There was a lot of crawling under that table.  I know for my place was at the west, and far end of that table.  We boys had a trundle bed in the early stages, that was pushed in under our parents bed in the day time when not in use.  During the discussion between mother and father of this bed that was going to be "pushed in under our bed" I can recall considerable anxiety on our part on how much room there would be in a bed "pushed under ours".  As we grew older and the tribe increased (ten finally and all boys) we graduated up into the attic of the stone house.  The entrance was a stoop to enter door in the east gable, reached STORY STOPS HERE AS IF IT WERE CUT OFF.

As boys we did the usual things, maybe sometimes some of the unusual.  As boys, to it seems to me we got along unusually well together.  I think some of them sometimes accused me of being bossy but necessary for some one to take charge.

I watched while Father and Grant Lord, who lived over near the north gate on the Uncle Frank Martin *80*, drilled a hole in big granite rock near the top of a hill some 60 or 70 rods southeast of our house.  I had great anticipation of seeing what would happen when they fired the blast, they were going to load in that hole when it was finished.  I did not see the darned thing though as they sent me clear over the other side of the hill when things were about set.  They did not see a thing either as they came high tailing it over that hill faster than I had.  We waited what seemed to me along time before we heard the boom.

A favorite sport of us boys was throwing rocks for distance.  I do not remember on ever being thrown by one boy at another boy.  The chickens, though, got awfully good at dodging.  Father told us when he was a boy back in Ohio the rocks were scarce so they threw apples.  I did  not see nor could I imagine a place where they could be that many apples.  Apples at our place consisted mostly of sour seedlings the folks would get from the Vasco Bradfield trees down in Elk Twp.  A barrel of store apples would be bought in the fall.  Later on the folks planted apple trees but none bore during my time at home. When there were about seven of us boys a maple tree was set out south of the house, one maple tree for each boy.  My maple tree was the one farthest southwest of the house. Along about apple buying time in the fall the folks would also lay in a supply of several boxes of soda crackers and one box of gingersnaps.  The boxes were made of wood and were about the size of a 45-pound box of apples.  Once they failed to keep those gingersnaps properly guarded and I have never again cared much for that kind of cookies.

Wintertime we did  a lot of sliding down hills, it looked like a whale of a big one then, and also hunting rabbits.  No guns wee allowed in our family as long as I was at home but we could and id make bows and arrows and usually had a dog.  The dog however would be inclined to gradually loose enthusiasm as the day wore on.  Once I really shot and killed a rabbit with my bow and arrow.  Measured in degrees of ecstasy I am certain that has, so far, been the high spot of my lifetime.  Once when I was going to break a colt to ride we got him all fixed up for his first lesson.  Just as I was about to get on him I decided that Ernest needed a riding lesson.  Events proved that he did.  Some of finally learned to swim a bit and either Rex or Trevor wanted to be taught how.  We tried to convince him that the way we learned was to let someone poke a water hose down our necks and then turn the water on.  We never got him really convinced on the cold water.  The motions he made would certainly have kept him from drowning anywhere and anytime.  Once an event took place that was embarrassing.  Father had a hired man and Mother was boarding a teacher lady.  Our house not having modern toilet convinces it was an invariable routine for all of us to be chased out of doors just before going to bed.  Perhaps on account of my age I was through before some of the others were.  In those days even baby diapers were spoken of in a hushed voice.  Imagine the consternation when Ray busted into the house yelling "Mama, Herbert chased me and made me do half of it in my britches". That teacher lady suddenly had to leave the room.

The first school I attended was in a tent pitched near our "west gate". (The "West Gate" was where the road left our place and went into the Lindlief place.  It was slightly over eighty rods west of the home of on the Fred Haight farm known as Glenn Alphine Home.) The teacher was D. A. Hamm.  I never went a lot to the Brook center school. (The Brook center school followed the tent spot and was about eighty rods south of where the tent stood.  This school house most of the Haight Brothers attended and was there forty to fifty years.)  The teachers there did not seem to cooperate well with me.  I went a term or two to the "Hulser" school located two miles north of the Brook center school.  I went most to the school located two miles west of the Brook school.  I believe Nellie Thomas, later Nellie Elliot, was always the teacher while I went there.  She saw to it there was always the proper cooperation, and no fooling.  with the exception of my parents I feel she had more influence on my life than any other individual.  She passed away in Denver in 1957.  I believe that Father and Mother were somewhat in doubt about the wisdom of me pursue my education, further but were willing to take a chance and sponsor my attendance in High School.  I, however lacked interest and the matter was dropped for
the time being, and for quite some time.

I helped around home and worked for some of the neighbors.  First money I ever earned was 25 cents for plums I gathered and sold as a boy.  I spent it for a cap. (Must have had some suggesting.) First full time man sized job I ever had was hauling manure for Randall LeVander at $18.00 per month.  (The summer I was 17 I worked for Grandmother Haight who was living alone on the William Haight farm eight miles S.W. of G. A. Home in Elk Twp. Some cousins of mine and some neighbor youngsters did no riotous living but I am sure Grandmother Haight got less attention that she deserved. Next year when I was 18 I worked for Uncle Jim Haight a mile south and a mile east of G.A. Haight where I grew up.  Took a shine to a Swedish neighbors daughter and next year rented a part of her dads place, he furnished the farming equipment. My children do not know how nearly they came to being half Swede.  That winter I accepted an offer of neighbor Victor Beckman to go to Little Falls, Minn.  and clear stumps, from some land he had bought there, at so much per acre.  I knew nothing about grubbing stumps and learned little for before I got even close to absorbing any stump pulling education I realized the financial consideration was way, way below parity.  Worked for him awhile and then went to Osakis, Minn. where Gens Larson, a Brook Twp., Iowa neighbor had settled.  Got a job with a contractor who was building a store.  Lost it in a few days because he very correctly guessed I was no carpenter.  Went to Hadley and worked on a farm for a guy named Ed Dye. Next I went picking corn for Mr. Anton Larson. By that time it had grown wintry and corn was poor so I got half for picking the corn for my wages.  Anton Larson had a brother "Bill" who had spent some time in Colorado mining camps.  That and ever since I picked up some "Garden of the Gods" literature in the depot at Linn Grove, Iowa I had in the back of my head the idea that if I could ever live to see that apparently wonderful place I would have experienced the ultimate. Sometime along in the winter I went back to Iowa and rigged up with my cousin Clarence Haight to head for Colorado.

Some place along the way I have missed a trip I took out into Dakota where I apprenticed myself to the owner and printer of a paper in Montrose I believer.  I believe it was the fall after I dissolved our partnership farming.  Anyway I got just plain homesick and I terminated, who knows what.

Clarence and I left for Colorado via self paid railway fare in the spring of 1903.  Could be an error in that date.  It can be checked by the date of a bombing on the Independence depot in Cripple Creek, Colo. area for we arrived in Colorado Springs the day after the bombing.  Fourteen people had been killed.  We were looked upon with some suspicion
but were allowed to go free, after some explanations.  First thing was to head for the "Garden of the Gods" via a horse driven vehicle.  As we neared what is known as the Gateway, the stone over the top of the rocks.  Remembering how good I thought I was at this rock throwing business I volunteered.  But in spite of several trails I never got a rock as far as the base of the gateway rocks.

We were driven to the Balance Rock where we had our pictures taken while seated on Burros.   I still have this picture of myself and my cousin Clarence Haight on those burros. The driver left us in Colorado City from which place we had embarked and which town was even closer to the site of the independence depot bombing than was Colorado Springs.  Things were in a real turmoil.  Our efforts to get at least one of us hooked up with a revenue producing occupation got us no where so we decided to move on. Decided we would have a good look at the mountains and knew we could get work there, for want that where the mines were?  We got us a railway timetable and from the map decided that a place named Fisher was in what seemed the most mountainous country the railroad ran through.  Bound to be there so we bought a ticket for that place.  Along about three O' clock in the morning the brakeman informed us that Fisher was the next stop and to step lively as the train would not stop long.  So off we went, into a snowstorm and not a light in sight.  A little reconnoitering explained why, not a building in sight either, for there was none there.  We started hoofing it down, no up, the track.  We were still on the east side of the Continental divide and we were not going to head back out of the
mountains and those jobs in the mines.  We finally met a section had who informed us that there was a rock quarry over the ridge that sometimes wanted men.  We went there, got not job, but did get our breakfast (free) and the information that the only way to get back on the train would be to walk to Granite, the closest place where a train would stop, which we did, and it did.  By now my money supply was getting low and I was beginning to do some serious thinking about future eating. The Joe Longaker family, friends and neighbors of our parents back in Iowa, had not long before moved to Grand Junction, Colo.

This was at the foot of the main range of the Rockies on the west side. They were farmers, not miners, but we were sure they ate regularly.  we had done more hunting for mine jobs than I have catalogued here and had concluded that maybe we would do something else for awhile anyway.  We walked four or five miles out to the Longaker place the next day.  Clarence Haight, got work there and I went to work for the Matlack family a couple of miles away shortly afterwards.  Raised garden stuff and fruit.  Plenty of work and also plenty of time to think.  The result was that in the fall I went to Fruita, the first town west where I did not know a soul and started back to school.  I had just had my 21 St. birthday but they put me in the 8th grade along with the usual kids of that caliber, just the same.  I had the fastest promotion ever given any 8th grader though when they saw how well I would fit into the High School football team.  Did various jobs that winter. Made up apple boxes, janitor a church or two, took care of a Dr.'s horses, worked in a drug store and took care of among other things a telephone exchange.  Next summer I went to work for W. A. Merriell in his lumber yard and hardware store.
Joined the Methodist church but quit after they had expelled a member for attending a dance. Hooked up then with the Congregationalist.  To bring that angel down to date I transferred by letter to the Presbyterian church in Colorado Springs and later to the same denomination in Lewistown, Montana where I was for a time one of the elders. Because of distance and for other reasons asked to be relieved of the job.  Think I am still a member in good standing though.

The Merriell's had a son attending Colorado College in Colorado Springs and he and they persuaded me to go there and enroll in the academy connected with the college in the fall of 1904.  Again it seemed eating was going to be a problem of the first magnitude but it hardly worked out that way.  My first job was oiling floors in the library at 25 cents per hour, my last job was working as an instructor in a dancing school at $1.00 per hour.  In between I did a lot of different things during the seven years I spent in the Academy and the college but tending furnaces was my steadiest job.  Washed allot of dishes and beat a lot of rugs.  Two summers I worked in the San Luis Valley, once on the Sylvester farm and once at a summer resort near Wagon Wheel Gap.  One summer I went back to Fruita and on another I drove mail and passenger stage our of Woodland Park, Colo. Some years I was in Iowa.  In the Academy I was on the football and track team. In college I made the football squad but could never be sure I was going to play.  It was some satisfaction to me to have the fellow who was my toughest competition put on the mythical "All Colorado Team".  Belonged to Pearson's Literary Society and the Sigma Chi Fraternity.  Tried several times to make the debating team of the former but never did. Did however get third place (and a safety razor) in some sort of college declamatory contest.  In the Academy I had been in  that schools  representative in a state contest held at Montrose.  Did not place by participated, and won, some sort of a like contest while in Fruita.  Still have the boos I received for first place.  In recounting my various college jobs that of table waiter for special occasions at the then very snooty Antlers Hotel should be all meant be mentioned. Anyone who had , or will have, a look at that fancy joint should get a lot of reflected glory from having had a relative who once worked there.  One summer I was night cashier at the McRae Cafe then also the snootiest of its class in that town.

Another summer I worked at a tourist store and cafe out at Seven Falls.  I was manager of the Kinnikinnik (spelled the same forward or back) a college story magazine of my time and was assistant editor of the college paper called the "Tiger".  Tried to be editor, but no soap.  I took a liberal Arts course and majored in History.  Colorado College was a tip Mitch school and had a eminently high-class faculty.  That is not just hindsight talking either.  I had taken care of the E. C. VanDiest furnace and upon graduation went to work for him in the Central Construction Company.  First on a water line for the Santa Fe Rail Road down south of Pueblo near Rye and later with a crew that was doing coal mine survey work near Colorado Springs.  Got caught behind a cave in one day. Got us outside before 24 hours but before that long I had decided I wanted no more coal mines or even a speaking acquaintance with any outfit that as much as even looked down a shaft.  Some college mater were working on a proposed irrigation project out near Hillrose in Eastern Colorado.  Went there hoping to get on .  Did but as a farm hand for "Colonel" Link. along in the fall I packed and headed east to Iowa.

When I got there Mabel Chamberlain was teaching summer school at Brook center, about a half mile from my patents home.  could be I had some inkling of this as I had had an occasional letter from her.  Anyway first thing I knew we had made arrangements to start housekeeping as a joint undertaking.  In the fall she went back to her teaching job in Seattle and I rented Uncle Lafe's place (This was the grandfather William Haight place where I was born).  Do not know why but changed my mind on that and begged off and again headed west, this time for Montana, where my brothers, Ernest, Ray, Burl and Elgar had all homesteaded.  Rex and Dwight came out alter.  Read Woodrow Wilson's first inaugural speech on the way out.  It seemed good to get back in the west again.  By means of information from my brother Ernest located a "vacant" 160 A. and filed on same, a few days after.  N. 1-2 of N. 1/2 of S. E. c29, Twp. N., Range 18 E. M. P. M. For a long time it looked like the Haights would eventually take over Salt Creek.  Now in 1958 just Mabel and I are Left.

Insignificant events sometimes have a wide influence on our lives.  While Ernest and Maude were students at Iowa Teachers College at Cedar Falls, Iowa they became engaged and planned to marry and take teaching jobs in, I think the Philippines or Hawaii.  They had to take a special examination.  Maude passed, Ernest did not.  So they had to make some new plans and decided on a Montana homestead which Ernest was to come out and locate in advance of the wedding.  He was headed for the area west of Billings and as he walked down to the depot to make a start west, when he met a man he knew who had just returned from working with a surveying crew in the Judith Basin.  This persons recommendation resulted in a lot of Haight's and several other people becoming "Salt Creekers" instead of "Yellowstoners".  If Ernest had passed that exam what might have happened to each of us, and to the Phillipinos?

On the way to Montana I traveled by train, via Mitchell and Aberdeen South Dakota and Harlowton, Lewistown and Hilger, Montana. Hilger was at that time the end of the railroad and about 20 miles from Ernest's. From Hilger I rode on a horse drawn stage driven by Mr. Border who lived down on the Judith River. Dan Whitmore came in on the same stage as did I think the Stevens girls. To give the horses a break Border had all the passengers walk up Gilsky Hill which is just out of Hilger and a couple of miles long. His advice to prospective homesteaders was to "Pick out some land that's got good grass on it" that was and is good advice. There were many professionals (and some semi-professional) "locators" anxious for a good stiff fee, to guide the land seeker to land still open for filing. They had learned that it was not grass that prospects wanted but land level enough to plow and these "locators" were acting accordingly. That is why there is so much evidence of a failure to make a go of it on some of these flat benches to the Northeast. Failure to succeed was often claimed to be because there were too many schoolteachers and secretaries, barbers, miners and they trying to be farmers. Add to that the fact far too many had located in the wrong spots and that the then allowable 160 A. was very inadequate in size and you had to many possible situations. Of course some came expecting to do only what was necessary to "Prove Up" and get title and then either sell out or move on and sit tight and wait developments. Others were employees of the old time stockman who for and held their jobs by proving up on a claim and then turning it over to the boss. Most of the big outfits got a substantial acreage in this way. But in the majority of cases the homesteader was looking for a home. Some succeeded. Many, many more left a homestead shack, crumbled ambitions and blasted hopes, maybe a few horses and a walking breaker plow, likely a mortgage and moved out and on.

By the time Border had got down to the Robinson place about where Blake Dawson now lives a couple of miles south of what is now Suffolk. He stopped and had dinner and he made his regular change of horses. No road, just a trail with gates in the few fences. A little later on there was 18 gates from where I now live to Hilger. At the now Suffolk and at the time it was known as Swope, a Mike Riser had anticipated civilization and was already setting up a saloon business in the new and only building. The railroad was mostly built on down Dog Creek from Hilger via Moulton and Christina with horsepower, in the summer of 1913. Swope (Suffolk) quickly acquired a second saloon and eventually a hotel, blacksmith shop, livery barn (Run and owned by Willis Anderson) hardware store, lumberyard, a depot with an agent, two grain elevators, separately owned. William Rice was first manager of the lumberyard and I ran it one winter. The first grain elevator was built the summer of 1913-14. My brother Burl and I worked on it and boarded with Mrs. John (Leah) Kelly who were living on the Swope place. Ollie White owns and lives at that place now in 1958. Kelly's later built the Kelly Hotel, the
kitchen end of which is now the Vernon Smith home. The rest of the hotel is west of Great Falls near Simms on the Claude Evans home and Mrs. Harve Adair lives in this home yet-1958. Mr. and Mrs. Wiley who homesteaded east of Suffolk ran a restaurant. There were two stores-one the "Reeves and Day" an annex to their Winifred store run by Lee Day. There was a community hall and of course a post office. Clara Nelson a sister-in-law of Wiley the restaurant man and later becoming Mrs. Chas. Warren, was the first postmistress. The stage road ran along the west side of Dog Creek for a short distance and then took off Northwest. The town site of Suffolk for the most part was from the homesteads of Willis and Ollie Anderson brothers and both early day Suffolk families.