Story Under a Stone: Sheldon Shafer, 1884-1909

 Story Under a Stone: Sheldon Shafer, 1884-1909

New settlements on the Dakota Territory frontier all had their “firsts.” Sheldon’s first train reached town on November 4, 1882. The first issue of a newspaper was printed on February 25, 1885.  The distinction of being the first baby born here goes to Sheldon Shafer on August 31, 1884. While we don’t know much about the life of the young Shafer, we can build a picture from what is recorded.

His parents were among the first settlers in this vicinity. His mother, daughter of Jay Rudd, and her father Jay who was popularly known as Uncle Jay came from Michigan in 1882 and purchased several pieces of land. Sheldon’s father, Alfred C. “Fred” arrived one year later. The map of Sheldon shows a portion of the village known as Rudd & Sheldon Addition.  Apparently more than one Rudd lived here at the time because it was a K. E. Rudd that sat on the first city council. Chances are K. E. Rudd is the one listed on the city map.

Sheldon spent his boyhood on the family farm about one mile west of town and attended the Sheldon school. He did not have time to establish any type of career except for a brief time clerking some in local stores and running a livery stable. That’s about it for persona

l information except we’re led to believe he must have been popular. A line in his obituary stated, “Numerous handsome floral offerings betokened the esteem in which the departed was held by his fellow townsmen.” His obituary stated that at the age of 25 he died from consumption which is another term for tuberculosis. The obituary headline stated “Sheldon Shafer’s Sufferings Over,” and later stated he had suffered for two years after being diagnosed with the disease.

It would be fun to be a time traveler and visit the town in its infancy. One man passing through on the train made this journal entry on June 5,1883.  “The only station on the road of any account is Sheldon where there are about 25 buildings large and small including a good R.R. station and elevator.” Train travel became popular, especially eastward to and from Fargo. Growing pains became an issue. In March, 1885, the editor of the one month old newspaper watched two women trying to cross the muddy street from the livery stable to the depot.  He printed a scold that a crossway should be built between the two locations.  I doubt that got done.

When entering the cemetery on the west side you can soon spot the large Shafer family headstone with Sheldon’s marker nearby.

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Story Under a Stone: George Newton, Blacksmith

 At one time blacksmiths played a crucial role in the life of a community, but in today’s

“throwaway” society those people have become almost obsolete. George Newton is the blacksmith I remember working his trade in Sheldon in the shop that people identified as “Newtonville.” I’ve written the following poem about him.

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Story Under a Stone: George Newton, Blacksmith

Dad’d take his breaks to the local blacksmith

where I’d always beg to go along with.

He hung nicknames on the two of us, Dad was Spike,

Shinglenails for me, I was short in height.

You could say his shop was kind of a shack

with piles of junk thrown out to the back,

plow lays and more littered the floor 

but the farmers kept on’a bringing in more.

He could hammer and pound and drum so loud

like the god Thor who lived in thunderhead clouds

and then make his anvil ring

sweet as a bow drawn across a string.

When he lowered his helmet, it amused me each time

I’d hear the muffled curses he’d utter inside.

While grinding a weld he’d make a shower of sparks,

then turn and start talking with manly remarks.

  

One Saturday afternoon while in town

men in the bar sat drinking their rounds,

but soon they all came tumbling out

when someone had run in to shout,

“The blacksmith shop’s on fire!”

Excitement couldn’t grow much higher.

They all high-tailed it over there,

but all they could do was stand and stare

No one could make the old fire truck go,

so they just stood watching flames glow and grow.

That old shop fell in a heap of smoldering debris

Onlookers shook their heads and could see

the town had lost its blacksmith shop.

But wait, why can’t we build it back up?

They opened their wallets, volunteered labor,

a perfect example of neighbor helping neighbor.

Soon a new building rose in its place.

When they gave him the keys, you should’ve seen his face.

Sadly no one remained in town to stoke his forge

when after a few years he moved on to meet his Lord.

But he’s in a heavenly place where his anvil rings

sweet as a bow drawn across a string.

Another "Story Under a Stone"

 Another “Story Under a Stone” in the Sheldon cemetery —

J. T. Hickey, Reno’s Freighter, Died Suddenly Last Friday. So the headline stated on the front page of the Sheldon Enterprise dated April 12, 1923. The news of it edged aside the local talk and gossip of the past two weeks concerning the total destruction of the school in a fire. But that’s another story.

John Hickey’s life fits many of the notions I’ve held about a frontiersman living and thriving in the Old West. The son of a slave holder, he saw his father free them at the start of the Civil War.  About 1871 John arrived in the Dakota Territory as a seventeen-year-old and found physically demanding employment hauling freight as a bullwhacker and a mule skinner. He chose that life over one of being a printer that his father had chosen for him. 

Like many of the others who freighted through this new country, his trains followed the selfsame route departing from Fort Abercrombie, passed through Pigeon Point and Fort Ransom, and then rolled on to Fort Abraham Lincoln near Bismarck. At Fort Lincoln he joined Custer’s 7th Cavalry as a mule skinner. About 100 wagons accompanying the 7th left the fort on May 17, 1876, a trip that ended with the deaths of Custer and all the men who rode with him on June 25th.

Fortunately for Hickey, the teamsters and their wagons had been ordered to stay back because Custer wanted to move quickly to surprise the Indians. History doesn’t tell us specifically if he was one of those stranded with the Reno and Benteen contingents seeking the safety of a hilltop where they fought for their lives but survived. The family biography does say Hickey roamed around the battlefield after the fighting stopped.

He made his way to Fargo after that experience and met and married Margaret Callan in 1882. In Fargo John worked in a livery stable. After moving to Sheldon he continued the vocation by buying a livery business opposite the Northern Pacific depot. I would like to have been present when he talked of life in early Dakota Territory. As his obituary stated, he vividly related his experiences in those stirring times.   

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These stories are being saved on my blog site: lynnbueling.blogspot.com

A Pistol Packin' Mama

 Story Under a Stone: Margaret Hickey, A Pistol Packin’ Mama

By Lynn Bueling

Near the west entrance of the Sheldon cemetery stands a tall slender stone marking the graves of a married couple, John T. Hickey and Margaret Hickey. Each has a story rich and unique enough to feature in separate accounts. We’ll start with the wife.

Part of her story can be gleaned from the pages of The Sheldon Progress. In August 2, 1907 we learn she underwent an operation at the Sheldon hospital. The article went on to say she is doing as well as could be expected. A week later a report stated she had been very low, but took a turn for the better. Then on August 16 her obituary appeared.

Born in Galena, Illinois, in 1862, she was just shy of her 45th birthday when she died. In 1882 she arrived in Fargo to visit relatives, met John, and married him in December. They moved to Sheldon in 1890, where they lived for seventeen years prior to her death.

The writer of the obituary referred to her popularity in the community by stating, “The casket was hidden in a profusion of flowers … No one was more ready to come to the aid of any neighbor in sorrow or trial than Mrs. Hickey. Her unfailing kindness and charity in word and deed won for her the affection and esteem of all who knew her.”

Several years ago one of her relatives sent me a short biography of the family which spoke in part about Margaret. It described her as a very small lady who carried a Colt revolver with her at all times because many unsavory characters wandered about in Sheldon. The family remembered one physical trait about her - she had small feet and had to wear baby shoes until she started school. As an adult she had her shoes custom made in Chicago because she couldn’t find them small enough locally.

One son of the Hickeys earned the nickname “High Speed Hickey” in the early days of race car driving. They said he once broke a track record earlier set by Barney Oldfield. (Someone else can find the statistics for this.) His racing career ended with an accident occurring when a wheel came off his car. He enlisted in the army at the start of World War I and served as a motorcycle courier where once again he suffered injuries from an accident. He didn’t race again.

Part II will appear in a week to feature John T. Hickey, a man who experienced extraordinary events in the Wild West.

Mike Ranney - The Band of Brothers

 

We are posting this as another “Story Under a Stone” from Sheldon, ND. Today, June 6, 2026, marks the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, an event for which a hometown boy earned fame as a member of the now famous “Band of Brothers.” Myron “Mike” Ranney became a member of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne in World War II. His father, the publisher of the Sheldon Progress newspaper, wrote this brief, yet gripping mention in his August 20, 1942 issue: “A letter came this morning from my son, Myron, saying he had volunteered for the paratroop division of the army. Myron is nineteen and a former student of the University of N. D. The letter brought a lump in my throat and made it hard for me to work. He was not forced to go. But he loves his own country greater than his own security.”

So begins the story that Stephen E. Ambrose first popularized in his history of the Band of Brothers. The book caught the eye of two Hollywood men - Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg - who brought it further to the forefront with their 10-part HBO miniseries. Both the book and the film tell a riveting tale of men engaging in the prolonged heat of battle.

We’ve learned Company E went through a tough training experience under the guidance of a cruel taskmaster Lieutenant Sobel. The men hated him for it, but on the other hand, some gave him credit for their high degree of fitness when they entered battle. Late in the evening of June 5 the paratroops loaded into 81 C-47s. When they were airborne and looked down to the huge number of invasion ships on the English Channel, one of them remarked “You had to be a little bit awed that you were part of a thing that was so much greater than you.”

Leading E Company was the respected Dick Winters who received the order to destroy a German artillery emplacement of four large cannons that was raining shells down on the landing beach. Those guns were being guarded by a fifty-man platoon, whereas Winters led only a dozen, one of them being Ranney. He divided them into three attacking groups, left, center, and Ranney’s to the right. After some fierce fighting, they succeeded in overcoming the German resistance and disabling the artillery pieces. Company E’s attack has been studied at West Point as a textbook example of an assault on a fixed position by a numerically inferior force. Many medals for bravery were earned by members of the company that day with Ranney receiving a Bronze Star.

The war raged on for several months beyond D-Day. May 8, 1945 (V-E Day) marks the end of the fighting in Europe. In Hitler’s mountaintop hideaway Company E enjoyed drinking Hitler's private collection of cognac and wine. Japan signed its unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945. The next day my wife’s mother gave birth to her and they had a difficult time finding a doctor in Mandan because they were thought to have been celebrating the end of the war the night before.

In 1982, Ranney wrote a letter to his old commanding officer Dick Winters. A passage from that letter become famous after Winters quoted it in the miniseries. “In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I’m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, “Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?”

“No, I answered, “but I served in the company of heroes.”

Legendary stories of paratroopers entered the language and imagination of youngsters like myself who adopted a bit of hero worship in the years following the war. As one of their traits they tucked the bottoms of their trousers into their boots. In years following that style of boots became available in the shoe stores and young fellows could buy them outfitted with a large leather top and two buckles on them. Yup, I had a pair.

Ranney's Story Beneath the Stone

 While attending a recent event, we heard one couple sing a song they had written titled “A Story Buried Beneath the Stone.” We’re undertaking this little project dealing with stories under the stones in the Sheldon cemetery. When asking if readers wanted more stories like the “Alaskan Scout” story,  responses showed an strong interest in our doing just that. How much interesting background can be found is unknown, but we know everyone  buried under those headstones has a story. So we will keep posting them as long as we can find them. And if readers know good stories about individuals beneath the stones, let me know.

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The grave marker for a man named Russ Ray Ranney stands on the west side of the cemetery.  Starting in 1937, he published The Sheldon Progress newspaper until 1942. An interesting inscription on it tells us that in World War I he served as a PFC attached to the 221st Aero Squadron. The military’s use of airplanes then was in a rudimentary stage with its rickety bi-wings - think “Red Baron.” Russ Ranney probably didn’t fly, but would have instead served in a support role. 

Aero squadrons were not very old. Only two years prior to our entering the war in 1918 a historical event occurred that first placed them into active service. The Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa with 500 men raided the U. S. town of Columbus, New Mexico, and killed 17 people. This, of course, could not go unpunished, and Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing organized a force to pursue Villa into Mexico and destroy him and his followers. Included in that army group  was an aero squadron from Fort Sam Houston at San Antonio, Texas, where it had been established and stationed.  This was the first time the United States had ever placed a "tactical air unit" in the field. On February 5, 1917, the expedition officially ended. Though Villa was never captured, General Pershing's men were exposed to military training. As for the Mexican bandits, they simply melted away into the hills.

A biographical sketch in Sheldon’s red history book written by Mr. and Mrs. Ranney’s son, Mike, tells us what we know today about his parents. He stated his mother Lucy is buried beside Russ, but no marker had been placed identifying her. The newspaper probably wasn’t making a great deal of money which caused Mike to say that when the publication of The Progress ended,  Russ started working as a rural mailman in 1942. He added that Minnie and Lois Douglas worked for his dad at the paper, and while visiting recently with Steve Bowman, said his mother worked there, too. Ranney needed extra help because the Progress had not modernized and still printed by hand-setting the letters on each page. 

 Mr. Ranney wrote a brief, yet gripping mention in the August 20, 1942 issue about his only child Myron. He wrote, “A letter came this morning from my son, Myron, saying he had volunteered for the paratroop division of the army. Myron is nineteen and a former student of the University of N. D. The letter brought a lump in my throat and made it hard for me to work. He was not forced to go. But he loves his own country greater than his own security.” Even though Myron is not buried in Sheldon his story will appear in a few days as part 2 of this post. He became known as a member of the now famous “Band of Brothers” in World War II.

 

Early Days in Sheldon

 The early days of Sheldon make for interesting study. The town came into being with the construction of the Northern Pacific rail line in 1882. The purpose of the large land grants given to the railroad companies was to provide land for people to come settle. They needed to sell it for two reasons: to finance building of the lines and to insure an income from carrying freight. How much was it worth? To determine values, the railroads sent out land examiners, one of whom noted his impression of Sheldon as he rode through on June 3, 1883 from Fargo on the new railroad. 

“The only station of any account is Sheldon where there are about 25 buildings large and small in including a good R.R. station and elevator. The road is still rough and has a very incomplete aspect.” Now with the railroad, citizens and businessmen could ship in lumber to build even more. But those 25 existing buildings obtained lumber a different way.

Turning to the red history book for Sheldon’s Centennial published in 1981 we find mention of how they managed to get the material

om Buffalo. A teamster, William McConnell, brought building materials from Buffalo. Frank Connelly’s WPA statement informs us that in 1881 a lumberyard was established in Buffalo from where he hauled the first load of lumber that started the building of Sheldon. 

In its first year of publication, The Sheldon Progress reported that freight business on the railroad was rapidly on the increase. Twenty cars of freight passed through yesterday (March 30, 1885). Lumber comprised a good part of that freight.

It’s unknown how many of the first buildings still stand. The house on the south side of the old  Methodist Church certainly belongs on the list. Mrs. Lillian Wall visited the Register of Deeds office in Lisbon and found that the earliest record of it occurred on April 21, 1883 when E. E. Sheldon sold it to a Wellington Gram. Given the dates, we know it existed before the railroad came.

This picture shows the house as it looks today.