Category: columns-history

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A Somber Winter Read

The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin revisits the deadly blizzard of January 12, 1888, in which more than 200 people lost their lives.

By John Andrews

There are few more comforting things than a hot cup of coffee and a good book to read while waiting out a South Dakota snow storm. Those are luxuries the characters in David Laskin’s The Children’s Blizzard didn’t have. They were simply trying to make it through the day alive.

I recently noticed a copy of The Children’s Blizzard on our shelves, and was ashamed to admit that I had never read it. Most Dakotans have at least heard of The Children’s Blizzard, which hit on Jan. 12, 1888, and know that ranks among our worst natural disasters. More than 200 people died, most of them children walking home from school in southeastern Dakota. So I thought that in advance of the 125th anniversary of the devastating storm that I should read the book, and I highly recommend that if you live here, or grew up here, or have any ties to South Dakota whatsoever, that you read it too.

I’ve often seen book reviewers claim that a work of nonfiction “reads like a novel.” Then I read the book and wonder if the reviewer and I read the same thing. But Laskin’s book honestly fits that description. You can almost feel the harsh wind and subzero temperatures numbing your fingers as he describes the plight of the children caught in nature’s ferocity. You find yourself hoping that the children walking blindly through the snow are discovered alive, but in most cases you’re left feeling hollow when rescuers find the frozen bodies strewn across the Plains days later.

The day dawned mild for January in Dakota. Some parents took advantage of the unseasonable weather and kept children home from school to help with farm chores. Those who attended that day walked to school wearing light clothing. Laskin traces the cold front as it raced down from Canada, across Montana, Dakota, and Nebraska. Eventually it affected people as far south as Galveston, Texas. The story was the same in every school house: lessons came to an abrupt halt when teachers and students heard the first gust of wind slam into the northwest wall of their tiny schoolhouses. There are stories of teachers who kept students inside. They kept warm by burning everything they could find. They told stories and held recitations throughout the night. But Laskin’s stories are mostly about the teachers and students who chose to brave the elements, thinking they could walk a mile or less to the nearest farmhouse or barn.

They nearly all end in tragedy. One exception is the story of 8-year-old Walter Allen, who attended school in Groton. When the storm struck, fathers drove teams of horses pulling sleighs to the schoolhouse just west of town. Students piled on and they headed into the blizzard. But then Walter remembered his prized possession: a tiny glass perfume bottle of water that he kept in his desk for cleaning his slate. Walter knew it would freeze and crack if left in his desk, so he jumped off and headed into the school to retrieve it. When he emerged the sleighs had disappeared. The boy tried walking back into town but soon became disoriented. Only a heroic rescue mission by his father and older brother saved his life.

Also fascinating is the description of meteorology in 1888. Members of the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps were responsible for taking daily observations and filing “indications” reports, which were fairly crude forecasts transmitted via telegraph. They had a pretty good idea of how weather behaved, but a combination of errors and laziness on the parts of certain observers resulted in citizens hearing the first warnings of the pending storm just minutes before it struck.

Good writing makes you feel something, and Laskin’s work does just that. Back in September we sought help from Watertown bibliophile Donus Roberts in publishing a list of books every South Dakotan should read. Laskin’s The Children’s Blizzard didn’t make Roberts’ final cut, but I’d happily add it to the list.

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Memories Atop Rose Hill

By Paul Higbee

It’s a steady climb, more than half a mile, from downtown Spearfish to the top of Rose Hill. I make the walk now and then for exercise. One day I got up there just as the sun broke through clouds, illuminating Lookout Mountain to the northeast in a shaft of light. To the west, Crow Peak loomed against spectacular, purplish cloud formations, and to the south Spearfish Canyon’s wide mouth gaped.

Had someone built a luxury hotel atop Rose Hill, those views alone would justify tacking $50 a night to room charges. Home lots up here? They’d be as expensive as any in the Black Hills and they’d all sell, even in this economy. But long ago Spearfish put Rose Hill to another use. Since November 1876, this has been the town’s cemetery.

For a long time I thought it unbelievably ironic that the first person buried here, a Mr. Blizzard, actually died in a blizzard. It reminded me of the stale, dark joke about how strange it was that Lou Gehrig died of the very disease that bore his name.

As readers swifter on the uptake than I may have guessed, this is what happened: a stranger carrying no identification perished in a snowstorm near Spearfish. The tombstone bore witness to the manner and date of his death. Local folks called the unfortunate drifter Levi Blizzard, which leads me to believe he was wearing Levi Strauss denim, produced beginning in 1873.

Levi Blizzard is one of only a few strangers buried at Rose Hill. You know a community is your hometown when you can’t walk 50 steps through the cemetery without anecdotes and emotions of every variety flooding your mind. My teachers, the first two businessmen who offered me employment, and the minister at my wedding are interred here. So are schoolmates who died young and tragically, kids I thought I could never possibly forget but almost have.

You find yourself doing a lot of math in your local cemetery, often with surprising results. I happened upon the graves to two men I thought were old codgers when I was a teenager and discovered each was in his 50s during those years — which gives me a clear idea of how teens view me today. On the other hand, I used to enjoy talking to a gentleman who lived on my street. A few years ago, I heard a story I knew he’d enjoy but I never got around to calling him. At Rose Hill I learned he died in 1999 — and that he would’ve turned 100 in 2011. He was my peer, never an old man, and I still can’t figure out how it’s been more than a decade since we spoke.

You know a community is your hometown when you can’t walk 50 steps through the cemetery without anecdotes and emotions of every variety flooding your mind.

I’m not implying anything spooky or otherworldly when I say I hear voices in the older cemetery sections. It’s just that these are the graves of historical personalities I’ve studied in depth the past couple decades, and I know their written words and adventures well. Daniel Toomey (1852-1941), a Brooklyn-born buffalo hunter, stood on this very hill in May 1876 and described what he saw below as”a pretty picture,” with”no sign of settlement, only a light fringe of oaks, ash, and elm with a few cottonwoods bordering the stream.” Toomey’s mortal remains now lie here, as do those of Irish-born Robert Evans (1840-1929), who wrote of traveling stealthily across Montana in”the year Custer was killed and we were continually looking for trouble.” Evans transformed the view Toomey described, turning Spearfish into a garden by digging a web of irrigation channels that still carry water today.

Rose Hill is the final resting place for Mary Kercheval (1833-1921), who historians believe was George Custer’s personal cook when he rode to Dakota, and for Harvey Fellows (1845-1929), the classically stoic stagecoach driver renowned throughout the West for adeptly handling the steepest trail grades and never injuring a passenger.

My favorite Rose Hill personality, though, is Fayette Cook (1850-1922). He stepped off a stagecoach in Spearfish in 1885, charged with building a viable institution of higher learning in a rough and tumble mining district. Within hours the Minnesotan feared school boosters had bamboozled him into coming west. Cook found the only campus structure to be”the poorest excuse for a schoolhouse, dugouts or sod houses excepted, that I ever saw. It was evidently planned, if indeed there ever was a plan, by someone quite unfamiliar with school architecture, but having some knowledge of stampmills.”

Still, Cook didn’t board the next stagecoach and return east. He went to work building a school that today is the state’s third largest university, and lived in Spearfish the rest of his life. Toomey, Evans, Kercheval and Fellows –all drifters and professional itinerants in one way or another — obviously stayed, too. Standing atop Rose Hill, taking in the vistas, you don’t have to wonder why.

Editor’s Note: Paul Higbee has written regularly for South Dakota Magazine since 1991, serving as the Black Hills correspondent. This column appeared in our September/October 2010 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call us at 800-456-5117.

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Reminders of Our Outlaw Days

By Katie Hunhoff

Every region has favorite outlaws and villains but few have the outlaw-rich history of Dakota Territory and South Dakota.

Those who came to Dakota Territory were either bravely adventurous or very desperate. The faint of heart did not leave family, friends and comforts of home for a dangerous and uncertain existence. South Dakota remains the center of the American frontier, and we are surrounded by remnants and reminders of territorial history.

Furthermore, descendants of some of our most colorful characters still live here. Last year I helped write a South Dakota Magazine article on outlaws. We featured a man who had lured investors to the Hills by switching mineral samples. The suckers realized they had been duped when miners processed 3,000 tons of ore and extracted only $5 in gold. It’s a good story, but one of our readers took offense. “My grandfather was not a crook!” wrote a nice lady from West River. It turns out her ancestor was also a pillar of the Rapid City community.

Other reminders of our outlaw past remain in every corner of the state. In Geddes the cabin of fur trader Cuthbert DuCharme sits in the city park. DuCharme, called “Old Paps” because of a talent for whiskey-making (Papineau is French for whiskey), lived along the banks of the Missouri River. His roadhouse boomed when Fort Randall was established, and wild parties were held every night.

On the other side of the state, a tree used for hanging three accused horse thieves still stands on Skyline Drive in Rapid City. The tree died long ago, but the trunk is now embedded in concrete, a grey reminder of an era when hangings were punishment for a crime that might not merit a prison sentence today.

One of those killed that night was a teenager. His two traveling companions admitted their guilt, but declared to the very end that the boy was innocent. Some Rapid Citians felt there was a curse on their city because of the boy’s hanging.

Yes, our past is hard to escape. A new gravestone now marks the Gregory County burial site of Jack Sully, the famous Robin Hood of the Rosebud country. The shackles worn by Lame Johnny on his last stagecoach ride (vigilantes stopped the coach and hanged him) are now split between the State Historical Society in Pierre and the 1881 Custer Courthouse Museum. Potato Creek Johnny’s 7.75 ounce gold nugget can be seen at the Adams Museum in Deadwood. And you can still sleep at Poker Alice’s house in Sturgis.


Reminders of our outlaw history are all around. South Dakota Magazine recently published a book, South Dakota Outlaws and Scofflaws, about the colorful characters who settled Dakota Territory. The book also points readers to historical places that can still be visited today — like Old Pap’s cabin and the hanging tree. For more information, call us at 1-800- 456-5117.


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What Does the Civil War Have to do With Dakota Territory?

By John Andrews

Think of the Civil War and what comes to mind? We all learned about Bull Run, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh and Robert E. Lee’s final surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. But are you familiar with the Battle of Whitestone Hill? The Battle of Killdeer Mountain? The Battle of the Badlands?

They aren’t as prominent in Civil War history because they didn’t directly affect the outcome of the conflict. But they are important here because all three battles took place in Dakota Territory and greatly affected how this region was settled.

We’re in the midst of commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War as well as the 150th anniversary of the Dakota Uprising in Minnesota (another important regional clash during the Civil War period). To discuss Dakota Territory’s role in the war that divided our nation for four years, a series of programs is planned around the state beginning this weekend and continuing through the fall.

“Back East it was the Civil War. Out here on the Northern Plains it was a whole different situation,” says Brad Tennant, an associate professor of history at Presentation College in Aberdeen and discussion leader for a portion of the series. “I think it’s often overlooked.”

The first tragic event was the Dakota War of 1862, which ended with the executions of 38 Dakota warriors, the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Following the uprising in September 1863, the military dispatched Gen. Alfred Sully up the Missouri River through Dakota Territory in pursuit of hostiles who had fled Minnesota. He found an encampment at Whitestone Hill, about 80 miles northwest of Aberdeen. Sully’s troops murdered nearly 300 Yanktonais, Dakota, Hunkpapa Lakota and Blackfeet. As it happened, none had been involved in the Minnesota conflict.”It’s North Dakota’s counterpart to Wounded Knee,” Tennant explains.

The next clash between Sully and the Indians came at Killdeer Mountain in June 1864. More than 1,600 warriors fought Sully’s force of 2,200 men. Estimates range from 31 to 150 Sioux warriors killed, compared to five U.S. Army soldiers. The Battle of the Badlands followed in August 1864 near Medora, with another 100 to 300 Indians killed.

Not surprisingly Dakota Territory promoters had a difficult time convincing Easterners to settle on the Plains. Tennant cited a study by former University of South Dakota professor Thomas Gasque that found only three South Dakota cities with a population greater than 1,000 possessing a name of Indian origin: Sisseton, Yankton and Sioux Falls.”That’s not just a coincidence,” Tennant notes.”Most of our places were named after people or geographic features, simply to make it sound less Indian, and to convince Easterners that the territory was not as hostile as they may have been led to believe.”

There’s much more to learn about the Civil War period in Dakota Territory at these upcoming discussion sessions.

Aug. 26, Sept. 16 and Oct. 7: Klein Museum, Mobridge
Sept. 6, Oct. 18 and Nov. 8: Public Library, Sturgis
Oct. 4, Nov. 1 and Dec. 6: Siouxland Library Main Branch, Sioux Falls
Oct. 11, Oct. 20 and Nov. 4: South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center, Pierre

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Historic Ranch Turned to Ash

By John Andrews

The Williams Ranch had survived many a Black Hills wildfire. When we first explored the ranch in 1992, the most recent blaze had been extinguished just one hill away. The 18 buildings — all built by hand from Black Hills pine by Albert Williams in the 1890s — were safe.

Then last week, the metal blade of a road grader smoothing one of the Hills’ many twisting, gravelly paths sliced a rock in half, flinging sparks into the dreadfully drought stricken grass. The resulting Myrtle Fire, which has burned 16 square miles near Pringle, consumed the Williams Ranch on July 20.

“It’s hard to deal with,” says Michael Engelhart, an archaeologist with the U.S. Forest Service who has worked to preserve the ranch.”This was a part of my life for five years. It was a pretty sad day when I heard it had gone.”

The Williams Ranch, nestled 3 miles south of Pringle in peaceful Shirttail Canyon, was one of the oldest remaining homesteads in the Black Hills. Albert Williams felled Black Hills pine trees and milled them at his personal sawmill to build his house, which he finished in 1896. Over the next decade he added a smokehouse, outhouse, root cellar, granary, workshop, garage, corral, barn and other miscellaneous outbuildings.

“They did a little bit of everything,” Engelhart says.”They raised pigs, cows, sold cream for cash. For a while Emma ran a telephone station out of their house in the 1930s. It’s a wonder that they did everything they could to make it from 1896 to 1944, living off the land and taking care of themselves and their neighbors because it can be really harsh out there. Emma used to raise gooseberries and apples, and people wondered how she did it because it’s so dry and inhospitable down there.”

Trees and lilac bushes planted by the Williamses survived 115 years until the fire swept through last week. Engelhart says firefighters tried valiantly to save the ranch. Fires in the corral and barn were extinguished and a line had been drawn to protect the other buildings.”They thought they had it,” he says, exasperation evident in his voice.”They put a lot of resources into protecting it. But they turned their back for a second and the whole thing just went up. They were shocked and saddened because they were winning the battle. They thought they had beat it.”

Albert and Emma Williams lived on the ranch until 1944, when poor health forced them to move to Hot Springs. The ranch held other occupants until 1984. The next year, federal authorities made one of the largest drug busts in state history there. The ranch changed hands several times until the U.S. Forest Service took possession in the late 1980s.

Forest Service personnel had grand plans for the Williams Ranch. Archaeologists rebuilt the porch and did other rehabilitation work. There were dreams of turning it into a living history ranch and creating a trail system. Engelhart escorted dozens of school and service group tours. It was only a step or two away from inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

As devastating a loss as it is to the Black Hills and South Dakota, it’s worse for the family. The Williamses’ youngest daughter Betty and her family were actively involved in rehabilitating the ranch in the early 2000s.”I felt bad to have to break such news to them,” Engelhart says.”They really cared about that place. It was history to us, but it was their personal history.”

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Tragedy at Amsden Dam

By Lee Schoenbeck

Amsden Dam near Andover is a pretty little lake with humble roots. The 235 acre lake sits behind a Works Progress Administration dam. The dam was started in 1934, while South Dakota was in the grip of the Dust Bowl and the nation was mired in the Great Depression. Work was scarce and WPA jobs made it possible for the farmers of southwestern Day County to feed their families. The dam was completed in 1936 and the lake was full by 1937. The dam holds back water from Pickerel Creek and Mud Creek, both tributaries on their way to the Jim River. Lurking beneath the lake’s surface is an old gravel pit that provides its deepest holes — 27 feet. Those holes have provided Amsden with its most popular current use, muskie fishing, and its darkest day — less than one year after its birth.

The New Lake Held Hidden Dangers

In 1937 there weren’t community swimming pools, Red Cross swimming lessons or long road trips for entertainment. On August 15, Leo, a local farmer, and his wife Pearl, a country school teacher, gathered their 6 children and the rest of the Happy-Go-Lucky 4-H Sewing and Garden Club of Southeast Andover at their farm for their 4-H meeting. When the meeting was over, the kids begged Leo and another father, Herman Wenck, to take them to the new local lake to cool off. Pearl had lunch ready, but put it on hold for them to eat after a quick trip to Amsden. The group happily went down the hill for swimming and games on the southeastern shore. To the immediate west of the picnic area shore, hidden below the surface, were the now water-filled gravel pits.

Leo lived just up the hill from the dam and had worked on its construction. Because so few people had the opportunity in those times to learn to swim, Leo put a rock on the shoreline to mark a point that the bathers were not to venture past. Dilleen Ninke Wenck was 10 at the time and still remembers vividly the admonition:”Don’t go north of that rock.” The warning was needed because about ten feet out, and north from that point, the lake dropped off into the old gravel pit. As the day progressed the group enjoyed wading and playing waist-deep in Amsden — until an unusual event occurred, with fatal consequences.

False Teeth Led to Tragedy

Mrs. Simonson and her friend, Mrs. Miller, waded into the lake to cool their feet, near the forbidden limits. While leaning over, Mrs. Simonson lost her false teeth into the lake. As she searched about for them, she slipped into the gravel pit depths and began screaming for help. Leo, one of the few swimmers in the group, swam to her aid, but the screaming led to pandemonium. Family members focused on their screaming, drowning loved ones and not the warning about the pit ran to assist — and found themselves quickly in peril, thrashing in water over their heads. As the confusion and the tragedy unfolded, Leo swam and retrieved and swam and retrieved the neighbors thrashing in the lake. His youngest son Maynard, only 10, had an inflated inner tube that his older brother, Leo Jr., 16, swam out with to pull his father’s retrieves to shore. The news accounts of the day describe Leo as a”strong swimmer” and Leo Jr. as a”fair swimmer.” Sr. kept returning to the deep waters and retrieving bodies. Jr. split his time between pulling the saved to shore and punching others who were trying to get back into the water to help their screaming, drowning loved ones — and creating more work and danger for Jr.’s now tiring father. Helping Leo Jr. that day was his teenage friend, a non-swimmer, Orville Simonson.

But, in what seemed like just minutes, there was silence. The screaming from the lake stopped. Leo Jr looked about — his Dad was gone. As the families hugged and gathered, the magnitude of the tragedy was soon evident — five families would not go home from the picnic intact that day. Four bodies were recovered before the dragging equipment could arrive from Webster: Leo Sr. (age 36), Herman Wenck (age 42), Ruby Miller (age 12), and Mildred Simonson (age 13). That night a fifth body, Irene Wahl (age 13), was recovered, and the last, Mrs. Clarence Miller (age 42), the mother of deceased Ruby, was found floating across the lake the next day.

Leo Sr.’s body, clawed beyond recognition, was recovered with his last rescue effort wrapped around his head.

Leo Jr. was credited with saving a half dozen young 4-Hers that day. Dilleen Ninke Wenck was one of those children. She still recalls, just before she was pulled to safety, telling her father”Dad, I want to go with you,” and hearing her father’s last words,”You can’t go with me today,” as he slipped under the waves. Another of those children, Carolyn Schoenbeck Pooley, was 8 and recalls her father Leo’s last words being”Go to shore, Kelly” as he put her on the inner tube for Jr. to pull in, before swimming back out into the deep waters.

Lessons to Take Away from the Amsden Tragedy

There are lessons to be learned from the tragedy at Amsden Dam. The most obvious is, of course, the value of young people taking swimming lessons, so they have some ability to function in and appreciate the risks of a substance that covers over seventy percent of the earth’s surface. Also, as every student of a lifesaving class has been taught, a drowning victim is dangerous and presents special risks that only those who have been trained can safely manage.

Leo Sr.’s a special story. He was a strong athlete, the pitcher on the town team. His strength and commitment to survival manifested itself already as a young man in ways that were not so socially acceptable, but maybe not so uncommon in the Great Depression. He had already assaulted two people trying to repossess his family tractor, and earned another felony conviction for selling mortgaged grain, a likely product of the need to feed his young family. Today, Leo Sr. would likely have been sentenced to the state penitentiary, which would not have made him available to rise to the challenges of saving lives that tragic day at Amsden Dam. His story is one of redemption, a feeling surely shared by the families of the eight individuals that he saved that day.

Leo Jr., the 16-year-old average swimmer, never swam for fun again after that day. He would take his own family to the public beach at Blue Dog Lake to learn to swim and take lessons before his community of Webster ever had a pool. He even has granddaughters swimming in the state swim meet here in South Dakota this month, and several of his kids swam competitively. But water loses its attraction when it takes your father away far too early in life — at least that’s the way my father, Leo Jr., felt after that tragic day at Amsden Dam seventy-five years ago this August 15.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Remembering Calamity

By Laura Johnson

Calamity Jane’s life and loves achieved mythic status long ago. It’s rare to catch a glimpse of the woman behind the legend, but thanks to the a recent post at the South Dakota Oral History Center blog, we can now hear stories from two men who knew her. George Leeman first met the legendary Black Hills lady when he was just a boy. Pers Russell, the son of Gordon Party member Thomas H. Russell, knew Martha Jane Cannary from his days of bartending at the Bodega Bar. But they never forgot their encounters with one of Deadwood’s wildest citizens, and they shared those memories and other tales from the early days of the Black Hills in 1956 with J. Leonard Jennewein, a history and English professor at Dakota Wesleyan University.

Excerpts from those interviews are available at the South Dakota Oral History Center’s blog. Click here to listen, contact the Oral History Center to purchase copies of the full interviews with Leeman and Russell, or search the center’s database to find more South Dakota historical tidbits.

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Plains Heritage Restored at Augustana

By Laura Johnson

Fans of Giants in the Earth, Ole Rolvaag’s classic novel of the Norwegian immigrant experience in Dakota Territory, or of South Dakota history will want to hitch up their wagons and strike out for Sioux Falls this Sunday, June 10. For the first time in three years, the cabin in which Rolvaag wrote his pioneer masterpiece will be open to the public. Visitors to Heritage Park, located on the Augustana College campus, can also tour the childhood home of Rolvaag’s bride, Jennie Berdahl, as well as Beaver Creek Lutheran Church and the Eggers School House, originally located near Renner Corner.

The Nordland Heritage Foundation, an organization devoted to preserving these structures, is celebrating the completion of their three year-painting, repair and landscaping project at Heritage Park with a 10:30 a.m. worship service at the church, followed by brunch. After the meal, Ole Rolvaag’s grandson Paul will speak at the foundation’s annual meeting. If you’d like to attend, please call 605-338-6372 or 605-359-0123 to reserve a spot for brunch and the meeting. The cost is $10.

The park and its historic buildings will be open for visits every Sunday from 2-4 p.m. from June 10 through August 26. Heritage Park is located at 33rd Street and Prairie Avenue in Sioux Falls. For tour information, call 605-274-4007. New features at the complex inlude Jennie Berdahl’s wedding dress in the Berdahl-Rolvaag House and a newly-restored 6 foot tall painting of Christ located behind the altar at Beaver Creek Lutheran Church.

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Dakota Territory’s “Most Interesting Man”

By John Andrews

Surely you’ve seen the television commercials for Dos Equis featuring”the most interesting man in the world.” The pitchman for the Mexican beer claims to have been involved in various adventurous escapades (cliff diving in Acapulco or splash landing in a space capsule) and is afforded unique opportunities (at art museums, he’s the only person allowed to touch the paintings).

I was reminded of those commercials recently as I paged through a book called The Last Frontier, by Zack Sutley. Written in 1930, just before Sutley died, the book is a memoir of his 17 years (1867 to 1884) spent as an adventurer on the Plains. The yarns he spins within its covers make him an obvious candidate for Dakota Territory’s Most Interesting Man.

He hunted with Buffalo Bill and explored with Kit Carson, Jim Bridger and Brigham Young. He guided George Custer on an expedition from Fort Abraham Lincoln through the Black Hills. He happened to be in Northfield, Minn., when Frank and Jesse James robbed the First National Bank. Two days later, while camping back in Dakota, he unwittingly encountered the James brothers during their escape. He was also in Yankton when Jack McCall was hanged. Sutley writes that General William Henry Harrison Beadle (McCall’s defense attorney) asked him to speak with the condemned man just days before the execution on March 1, 1877,”but McCall would tell me nothing that we could use in his favor,” Sutley reports.

It seems remarkable that the stars would align such that one man would meet all these historical figures and become involved in so many of the West’s most famous events. The note inside the front cover claims that Sutley”tells his story without embellishment,” but I think some of his tales must be read with a grain of salt. In his chapter on the hanging of famed Black Hills outlaw Lame Johnny, Sutley describes that particular trip to the Hills and recounts how he endured a ferocious blizzard. After the storm, he took his horse to a creek in a valley for water. As they came back up the hill, he heard the Cheyenne to Deadwood stage rumbling along the frozen path. Then vigilantes stopped the coach, removed Lame Johnny and hung him from a nearby elm tree.

It’s a good story, but Lame Johnny was hanged in July. Black Hills weather can be fickle, but that’s surely too late for a snowstorm. At any rate, Sutley’s memoir is worth perusing, especially for his descriptions of early Yankton, other Dakota towns and general life on the frontier. And maybe the marketers at Dos Equis will find new fodder for commercials.

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Our Historic Church

By John Andrews

I never attended a wedding, funeral or a single Sunday service in Garfield Lutheran Church, but I always sort of considered it to be our church. I’ve never heard many stories of its early years, but I always assumed the Andrews family, who came from Norway and homesteaded southwest of Lake Norden in 1882, played a part in forming the congregation in 1884 and in constructing the church in 1901.

Sadly I never knew much about the church until recently reading that it has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. Immigrant families like my great-grandparents conducted Norwegian language services in a schoolhouse in Garfield Township until 1889. By then, the congregation boasted nearly 60 families who decided it was time to build a proper church.

They found a spot almost halfway between Bryant and Lake Norden. After years of planning and fundraising, volunteer members of the congregation started work in 1900. Men dug huge stones from nearby fields and brought them to the site aboard wagons to be used in the foundation. One congregant created a metal weathervane inscribed with 1901, the year of the church’s completion, and placed it on the steeple.

The interior remained incomplete until 1913, when the pews, pulpit, altar and altar rail were added. Step inside and you’ll still see these original furnishings.

When the church closed in 1978, its leaders faced the daunting task of deciding what to do with its most important possessions. One day, one of the church ladies came to see my aunt, and she had Garfield’s intricately sewn altar cloth with her.”We figured you would want this,” she told my aunt. Puzzled, she asked why.

“Because your mother made it,” the lady replied.

That was news to everyone. Grandma Andrews always had some sort of fancywork going — knitting, crocheting or Norwegian hardanger — and never really said much about any of her creations unless prodded. As it happens, my dad and his 11 siblings attended that church all their lives, probably gazed upon the altar cloth hundreds of Sundays, not knowing it was their mother’s work.

The altar cloth has become a treasured family possession that we use on special occasions. I last saw it atop Grandma’s sea-foam green casket at her funeral in 2003. It serves as a connection to our matriarch and the little prairie church that was so important to our family and dozens of others in Hamlin County.