home and their early life. The home was 16 feet square with an upstairs sleeping room. The floor boards in the loft were 18 inch black walnut and the walls were chinked with sand and lime plaster. Their first school was located in the northeast corner of Sec. 13. This was one room with hand hewn benches around the walls and no such thing as a desk. Wheat was taken to Bluffton to be ground into flour in the little water-powered grist mill. Hops for yeast were gathered in the fall, dried in the sun, stored in cloth sacks and hung from the rafters, along with seed corn ears and ripe pumpkin strips for wintertime pies. They often had 2 or 3 barrels of sorghum molasses stored for winter and always lots of garden crops. Eight o’clock in the evening was usually time to “hit the tick," but there was the occasional square dance. Kraut cutting bees, with young people going from cabin to cabin cutting up the home-raised cabbage were exciting days; when finished the boys would often whistle for a set or two of square dancing. The wolves howling at night “would sometimes raise you right off the tick.”

Diantha (Mclntire) Emery

George was a farmer and was elected and served as township constable for nearly forty years.

They moved from the farm to a home on the banks of Pine Creek near where it enters the Upper Iowa River. Their grandchildren recall the rows of beautiful flowers Diantha cared for near the creek. In about 1894 they bought the Mclntire farm in Canoe Twp., on Franklin Prairie. The log cabin built by Aaron Mclntire on the farm was the second on that location as the first had burned very early. Aaron helped new arrivals to the area find land. The home was operated more as a hotel and perhaps a tavern. It was located about 4 miles south of Burr Oak on Hwy. 52 near the small pond. The Franklin Prairie Post Office was the next cabin to the east. George died at his home 22 Dec 1900. Diantha continued to live at that home and do her own housework until 4 weeks before her death 15 Jan 1919. Both are buried at the Burr Oak Cemetery.

Emery, Omri Leonard and Caroline (Sleeper)

(Dwight M. Emery)

Omri Leonard Day and Caroline Jerusha Emery

Omri Leonard Day Emery (Leonard or L.D.) was born 11 Oct 1855 on the O.W.R. Emery homestead (160 acres on the N.W. corner of Sec. 17) in Canoe Twp., Winneshiek Co., the 2nd child of 15 children to Omri W.R. and Martha Mclntire Emery. He grew up helping his father become one of the biggest and best farmers in the area, purchasing Sec. 15, 16, 18 and the balance of 17 at $1.25 an acre. 1 Jan 1882 he married Caroline Jerusha Sleeper (Carrie), daughter of Gilbert and Emily (Bartlett) Sleeper, also from this area, and they traveled by wagon train to homestead some land near what is now Salem, SD.

Several of L.D.'s brothers soon followed them to the same area. An 8 Mar 1900 article in Munsey's Magazine stated: “The township of Emery, S.D, so named after the four Emery brothers that settled in that area." Carrie and L.D. “lived in a log house, farmed the soil and improved the land." Their first three children were born there: “Baby Girl" 9 Apr 1890 who died shortly after birth, Myrtle Evelyn 27 Mar 1892 who died 13 Apr 1894 "from a relapse of the measles,” and Frances Merle 17 Nov 1894. The first two children are buried near Salem, SD. “Merle moved with her parents back to Winneshiek Co. around 1899."

A son, Leonard Clark was born 22 Apr 1900 and a second son Clarence Ernest arrived 20 Nov 1905. Clarence died of pneumonia 26 Apr 1907 and is buried in the Burr Oak Cemetery near the graves of his grandparents Omri W.R. and Martha Emery. Around 1907, L.D. took his family and homesteaded a section of timberland near the town of Mildred, MN, Pine River Twp., in Cass Co. Several of L.D.’s siblings joined him there, built and lived in log houses and proceeded to clear some land, cultivate and farm it, and raised livestock. L.D. founded and operated the Emery-Bowman Sawmill, and used the