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Memories &
Stories Elizabeth Ballantyne |
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Mrs. Ballantyne Lively and Active Has 90th Birthday Mrs. Elizabeth Ballantyne, one of Cherokee's liveliest 90 year old citizens has an agility and alertness that belies her age. Her perceptiveness and enjoyment of each day as it comes gives her an engaging personality. Elizabeth, familiarly known as Lizzie has as one of her earliest memories that of crossing the ocean at the age of six. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Olson and family came to America from Norway in 1875. She remembers that she was the only one of the family of eight that did not get sea sick on the journey at the recollection of "fighting with a little boy, who wore wooden shoes." Since neither could understand the other, she wonders what the trouble was all about. The argument was settled by a sailor who befriended Lizzie by turning the hose on the boy which tickled her six year old sense of humor. Her parents settled near Dunlap in 1875, where other Norwegian settlers had already established residence in a still very sparsely settled area. Some of her earliest memories of the Iowa prairie was of living for awhile in a dug-out with a sort of room built out from it as an entrance. Within a year a better home was started but it was a long ways to haul supplies overland and the progress was slow. Their farm was located on the Soldier River in Monona County and they had to go many miles by team and wagon to get groceries. They tried to get enough on one trip to last for six months. They did lots of canning, preserving and drying of fruits and vegetables. "No going to town for a loaf of bread in those days," observed Lizzie. They made cheese by the crock full. The town of Soldier was not as yet established. Her husband to be, Omandagus (Cap) Ballantyne helped grade the land for the town of Soldier in 1886. |  Mrs.
Elizabeth Ballantyne, another of Cherokee's lively elder citizens, who
celebrated her 90th birthday August 21. The years have passed over
lightly leaving her hale and healthy. Her early life was spent in
Monona County, Iowa when that area was just being settled so she had
known the rigor and privations of a pioneer life (Staff Photo) |
| Also in 1886, she and Cap were married at Onawaa and settled on a farm near the parental Olson and Ballantyne farms. Lizzie reports she was scared to death of the Indians. Each winter they camped on her father-in-laws farm and each summer they would pull up their tents and roan only to return each winter. She reported that Father Ballantyne always treated the Indians well, giving them a beef to butcher and in turn he was never molested and was allowed to pasture some of their land. But never the less, Lizzie was still afraid of them and so were many other settlers. The Cap Ballantyne family attended church regularly, driving a team and lumber wagon and carrying an umbrella for protection from the rain or extreme hot weather. Later on Cap ran a livery stable in Mapleton for four years and the family moved to Mississippi but that venture did not work out so the family then came to Cherokee in 1913 and remained here. Cap Ballantyne worked on the railroad for twenty years after coming to Cherokee. After retiring he worked at the Country Club. He passed away 30 years ago. On August 23, to celebrate her 90th birthday were a gathering of the clan at a picnic at Spring Lake attended by 79 of Lizzie's relatives. Liz and Cap Ballantyne had seven children: Edwin, deceased; Alfred, Guthrie Center; Mabel Julius (only daughter), Cherokee; Clyde, Ford and Kenneth of Sioux City and Walter of Cherokee, with whom she makes her home. She has 31 grandchildren, 57 great grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren. Mrs. Ballantyne is a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints. She has always been active in the Ladies Department of the church and has attended many District Church meetings and reunions. Lizzie makes her home with her son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Ballantyne. She is very active and interested in current events. She proves by her life that sturdy pioneer citizens like her do not let their chronological age slow them up for they conquer even that by remaining full of vim and vigor. She takes no cognizance of the fact that by calendar reckoning she is ninety years old. To Elizabeth Ballantyne the hardships of the past are only fond memory and she looks back on it with nostalgic amusement and enjoys the present, realizing that the present rests on the fountain of the past, of which she is happy to have been a part. (Source: Former Cherokee County Historical Society scrapbook. Clipping hand dated 1960) | |
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