These columns hearken back to other times, something for which I make no apology. We take the present condition of our lives for granted without giving any thought to the way our ancestors lived. Between the wife and me, there are a few hundred books stacked in various places in our residence. The subject matter is predominantly history, biography, or historical fiction, and we spend a good deal of time within those pages. So it can be said we give thought to our ancestors.
Fit into a timely perspective, it is accurate to say this was the edge of the western frontier. In May of 1885, the Sheldon newspaper reported, “Several prairie prairie schooners passed through town yesterday bound for the west.”
With the influx of people development started, buildings sprung up, and residents wanted services. The editor of The Enderlin Journal in December of 1892 pleaded, “For the Lord’s sake, why doesn’t a barbershop open up?”
While driving through Ransom County at the present time, it’s hard to conceive of today’s landscape without its web of roads, fields of corn and wheat, and farmsteads alongside shelterbelts. There was that time, though, when none of that existed, and the prairie would have seemed a very different place.
Old newspapers prove to be a good place to find the first written accounts of history. While doing a little inventory of past stories, the name Charley Retzlaff comes up. A farmer/boxer living outside of Leonard made news as a heavyweight, especially when he met Joe Louis in Chicago boxing ring in 1936. Accounts of that fight tell us that Charley lasted only one minute and twenty-five seconds. He came away with 17.5 % of the gate which amounted to $11,869.67. Besides the battering he took from Louis, he experienced one other indignation. A friend giving him a ride from the Fargo train station had to turn back when five miles away because deep snow blocked the road. Charlie had to walk the rest of the way.
We read in 1911 news articles about the baseball pitcher Cy Pieh who one-time played for Enderlin. Interestingly, the nickname “Cy” came from his pitch that seemed to come out of a cyclone. In 1915 the most notable event in his career came while pitching for the New York Yankees in the game where the Red Sox player Babe Ruth hit the first of his 714 homers. Pieh, a spitballer, entered the game in relief in the 9th inning and held the Red Sox scoreless for five innings to earn the win.
In 1920 this baseball headline spoke, “Freak Triple Play Is Made.” Two college teams, St. Mary’s of Kansas and Chilicocco of Texas, met in a game where the writer reported “… one of the most peculiar plays ever staged on a ball field. The side in the field did not touch the ball after it left the hands of the pitcher.” He described it this way: “A St. Mary’s batter hit the ball into the air toward short with the bases loaded and was declared out as it was an infield fly. The wind carried the sphere toward second as it descended and it hit the runner there, who was called out for being hit by a batted ball. The ball next rolled toward first and the runner there, disgusted at the luck of his teammates, picked up the leather and hurled it out of the park. He was promptly called out by the umpire.”
In The Sheldon Progress on January 15, 1914, it was reported 283 automobiles and 14 motorcycles were owned by Ransom County citizens. Horses and gasoline engines didn’t always mix, like the time a young man driving a team pulling an empty hayrack met “one of these chug, chug go-devils, otherwise called a motorcycle. The horses became frightened at the unearthly noise made by the motorcycle, ran away, and were last seen galloping down the railroad track.
Old newspapers were inclined to use off-beat stories for filler. A mystery story appeared in 1911 called “The Case of Sabrina’s Tombstone” that wondered why the backside of a tombstone inscribed with the name of Sabrina Lee being was used as an inkstone in the office of The Sheldon Progress. It turns out she was a rich spinster from New York who went home after forgetting to pay the editor for her subscription to the Lisbon paper. As a matter of principle, he sued and the judge awarded him her tombstone after she died. It so happened he had moved to Sheldon to work in the paper, so the stone was sent there. We were left with questions such as where the stone is today and is her final resting place still unmarked.
Stories from Sheldon’s papers from 1885-1886 paint a clear picture of the developing frontier. “The timbers for the new bridge across the Maple River came last week… Barbed wire is going off so fast that Karl Rudd ordered his second carload this week… P. Goodman shipped a carload of fine hogs to Fargo yesterday, the first ever from Sheldon… We notice the McCormick machines still keep coming in by freight and express… Farmers are beginning to haul home their binding twine… Two more carloads of lumber for the North Star Elevator arrived here yesterday… Twenty cars of freight passed west yesterday… Train loads of emigrants and movables continue to pass west.
Reading these old bits of history stirs the imagination to make pictures of those days in my mind.
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