CHRISTMAS IN THIS LOCALITY FIFTY-THREE

YEARS AGO

From the Humboldt Independent Newspaper 23 December 1915

Article written by A. D. Bicknell

1862 - Dakota City, where I resided, was 120 miles beyond the railroad at Cedar Falls.  My arrival there in July of that year, swelled the population over five per cent.  Before my coming it was 18.  I pulled it up to 19.  By February, 1863, fresh arrivals boosted the county by fifty percent, making a grand total of 28.  We felt that we wee strictly "in it".  Humboldt was still a dream, with not a board or a nail to show where she kept herself.

Dakota City was a lively place.  It was the only town between Fort Dodge and Blue Earth, except Algona.  It was the junction of two mail routes.  One was a tri-weekly from Fort Dodge to Jackson, NM.  We received our mail only three days old.

Most of the travel from Des Moines and this side of there to Mankato, came by way of Dakota City.  All manner of people stopped with us, including fresh recruits bound for the war, provost marshals with deserters in charge, refugees from the Indian massacre at New Ulm, great land owners on a hunt for their choice lands, -- worth $1.25 an acre, if a buyer could be found; and now and then we harbored a successful horse thief.  It was a long way from being a lonesome place.

As calico was 60 cents a yard, our young ladies put forth great skill in refurbishing old garments and in bedecking themselves with extra smiles and blandishments.  The lure of their charms was just as potent as it seems to be today with all the aid that wealth and opportunity have given us.

Such were some of the conditions that environed us when Christmas came in 1862.  Half of Dakota City were invited to a Christmas dinner at Alexander McLean's, who lived in a little log house, just over the river from the old fairgrounds.

We went in pretty good style for those days; for we rode after a horse team; the only pair of horses in the city.  Our vehicle was a lumber wagon.  The driver and an old bachelor rode on a board over the front wheels, and the rest of us sat cushioned on soft hay, snug up on the bottom of the wagon.

At that time turkeys were scarcer than dollars.  In fact, we had no need of them, for game of all kinds was very abundant and everybody knew how to shoot.  So it happened that two geese had kindly consented to fall to earth the day before for our dinner on that day.

Almost everything that loaded the table at that rare feast had come from the little farm nearby.  Sorghum took the place of sugar, for the tabooed article of diet was worth 40 cents a pound, or at a rate of $40.00 a sack.  Coffee, green and unroasted, cost 60 cent a pound, and the best tea took $2.50 for a pound.  Clothing was out of sight.  And yet, I have lately heard people complain of the "high cost of living."

I am sorry we had no Kodak with us so we could take take crowd and so preserve to the world a real dress parade out on the prairie at that time.  Some of the men wore blue denim overalls and most of us had our pants tucked into our knee-high boot legs.

The ladies wore the famous hoop skirt, and I am sorry to say, it took a lot of 60 cent a yard calico to get over that skirt.  But they managed it some way.  The little woman had a bit advantage.  She could get up a dress with 10 yards of cloth.  Only $6.00 for the calico.  The famous spread at the bottom was the same feet and inches as the wearer was tall.  And yet, we thought the girls looked first rate ballooned out that way.

At that Christmas we talked of war as we shall at this Christmas.  And to tell the truth about it we felt much as the French-English allies feel today.  Everything had seemed to have gone against the Northern Army.  It was over two years since South Carolina had seceded and declared that she could lick the whole North; and it looked as though the threat had something in it.

Lee, Longstreet, and Stonewall Jackson had just punished Burnside at the bloody battle of Fredericksburg, and it began to look as though our cry, "On to Richmond" did not fit in with facts as did the shout of the South of "On to Washington."  But we did not see far enough ahead.  It was a war of exhaustion as this war will probably be.

After our Christmas feast and social entertainment, we returned to Dakota City, and still feeling full of young vigor and the impulse to frolic, and a stray fiddler, dodging and skulking the draft, having dropped in among us, we had a big dance at the schoolhouse (12 x 14 feet) for which we charged 10 cents a set for the boys.  All the proceeds were turned over to the Methodist preacher, who ws stopping over night at the hotel.  We took in over $5.00.  All cash, a nice little wad, for that day.