SHELDON, A SENSE OF COMMUNITY

Cold and windy, but we were still anxious to get out of town. The Sheldon Lions Club offered the perfect opportunity for doing just that by sponsoring a breakfast on Saturday, and to take advantage of the opportunity we had business to discuss with George and Marlene Bunn. We have a common ancestor in the Vangsness family, and my wife Mary, the inveterate family historian, wanted to fill in some blanks. A lot of information sharing took place and Mary upon returning home went right to her computer to open her RootsMagic program and start adding.

I couldn’t help thinking about the word “community” when we drove down main street. There is very left of the time when several blocks on both sides of the street were filled with businesses. Now only a couple of the old business buildings stand along with the modern structure housing a bar. But a sense of the place remains, and when strangers ask where we are from we respond with a bit of pride - Sheldon. 

The walls of the community center are filled with community memorabilia. It is where we find hanging the pictures of high school graduates, military members, and other items pertinent to the town and its people. It is the only meeting place remaining, but since it is aged, thankfully a new building will rise to serve the town’s gatherings. Presumably the artifacts of the past will move to that location.

Upon leaving, we drove once around town and noted the old Methodist church seems to be undergoing a remodeling. New shingles are on the roof and a large dumpster sat outside. Who knows the plans? The school yard has been cleaned with all the wreckage of its demolition removed and bricks intended for repurposing set neatly piled. 

My Indian friends have a saying: Mitakuye Oyasin, meaning we are all related. Well, back to George and my sharing the line coming down through the Vangsness family. It turns out he and I are 3rd cousins. George’s sister Janice shared the same relationship and now her kids are in the mix, too. Her sons were at the breakfast, and I was able to snap the picture of just two. Matt left before we got around to it. Ryan was curious just what is our relationship? Third cousin, once removed. Pretty distant isn’t it, but nevertheless the connection is there. The group picture included here is of George and Marlene Bunn and brothers Andrew and Ryan Bartholomay. Matt left earlier.

My wife Mary is a serious family historian and looks for more information all the time. In fact she has formed a Facebook group: Anderson Vangsness Ancestry. If you think you belong on it, join.

Ukrainian Students Speak Out

 Yesterday - March 24, 2022 -

we attended a timely event where three Ukrainian graduate students at NDSU presented a discussion panel that dealt with their take on the war in their homeland. One of their shared feelings came out strongly: Ukraine will not be defeated. The fact of their attendance at school here has kept them out of the fray, but it was evident their hearts were there with their relatives and homes. 

The Rev. AAA Schmirler

Originally posted on "Sheldon - Remembering Our Past."

      I have an article written by A.A.A. Schmirler that carries the headline “First Ransom County Settler Came in 1867.” The Rev. Schmirler served the Catholic church in Sheldon for a number of years and delved in an avocation of studying and writing about the history of the area. This article is an example of his studies. It is too long to post here in its entirety, but I will summarize some of his points.

     His opening paragraph states: “The distinction of being the first bona fide settler in Ransom County has been awarded to David Faribault, who established a way-station known as Pigeon Point on the west bank of the Sheyenne River, about six miles west of the Richland County line, in 1867.” 

     I have to interject a noticeable omission he made as is usually the case in this “man’s world” of the time. Faribault’s wife was not included, but she was there.  From my reading of this history, I’ve found that she did most of the work in the enterprise. Part of her background was Native American from where she took the name Winona. The white culture knew her as Nancy. Her story is actually more interesting than David Faribault’s, but back to Schmirler.

     Pigeon Point existed to serve as a halfway point between forts - Fort Ransom and Fort Abercrombie. People could find overnight accommodations there and Schmirler found that Father Jean Baptiste Marie Genin was among the first. Genin rises in the article as a man of importance because he explored the area and believed a road would be built through Fort Ransom that would lead to the gold fields of Montana, therefore making it a hub of traffic. He also wondered if a river route on the Sheyenne could be developed as a viable source of transportation.

     Genin knew and travelled with a couple well-known Catholic clergymen whose names are familiar here - Bishop Shanley and Bishop Grandin. One question in my mind found an answer in the article. I always wondered what a large solitary cross standing in a field commemorated, and here is the story: The only monument directly related to early missionaries in southeast North Dakota is a field cross 100 yards west of Highway 81 and about six miles south of I-94. One had originally been built by Father Genin, then in 1929  the Daughters of the American Revolution replaced it. Then about in 1965 the Knights of Columbus erected a new cross. Next time I drive that way, I’m going to try to spot it again. City development has begun reaching so far that it might make it difficult to see.

     I need to dig around some more to find it, but I have a story of a priest who would walk out from Moorhead to conduct religious services. Their dedication and concern for the settlers’ spiritual lives has to be commended.

"Uncle Walter"

 I picked up Walter Cronkite’s autobiography A REPORTER’S LIFE at a recent book sale and stopped to consider what he had written about civil right’s. He tells of doing some drugstore deliveries as a teenager which in the eyes of the community was considered a job for “Nigger boys.”  As the years went on he came to full awareness that one class of Americans was intent upon keeping in servitude another class.

     He writes, “In those high school years I accepted the fact that my friends were inheritors of a culture built on slavery as as an economic reality.” A bit later he said, “the Founding Fathers, while proclaiming the right of equality for all, actually didn’t intend to include blacks, Indians, or women.”

     It seems to me this undying attitude is what is giving fuel to the so-called Critical Race Theory that is making news today.

Dr. Tom Isern is a history  professor at NDSU who with his wife produces a facebook show each Friday evening from his house in rural West Fargo. I told him I wouldn't be able to watch last night - March 18, 2022 - because the State Class B Boy's Tournament was being held. His comeback, well, then write a ballad about the tournament. I produced these two limericks instead: 

Isern said then write a ballad.

Ha, he doesn’t know in music I’m challenged.

It’ll be a debt unpaid,

But I am undismayed.

Watching Class B Boys play is valid.

Then there is this one:

He said write about the tournament,

Just use some mature judgment.

I could predict

The winner I’ve picked,

But my head might become an ornament.

Wallows

 The WPA files hold some interesting stories of the 1880s and 90s written by people from the area. One of them written by a Mrs. Alice Beard stated that about 1888, settlers gathered many loads of buffalo bones which were sold in Sheldon and shipped east. There were many so-called buffalo wallows, and the ground was covered by bones near them. It is sandy country and the shifting sands had rapidly filled in the hollows as the surrounding lands had been broken.

Their house had one large room about 12 x 12. The following summer another lean-to was added for a kitchen. She plastered the house herself using a mixture of hair, lime, and sand. She made rag carpets to cover the floors. Wood hauled from the Sheyenne River was used for fuel, and if it were fallen timber they could have all they could load for fifty cents. Using four horses and a sled, leaving before four o’clock in the morning, they drove the eighteen miles and returned home long after nightfall. The lunch that was taken along would be frozen so hard it could scarcely be eaten.

The water was obtained from an open well, drawn up by rope with two buckets on a pulley. Water was plentiful; the water level was only about ten to twelve feet below the earth’s surface. Wells were curbed about six feet down and the rest of the way was not curbed.

Wild fruit grew in profusion in the sand hills. Along the Sheyenne River an abundance of chokecherries, plums, sand cherries, wild gooseberries, raspberries, grapes, and strawberries were picked for canning. There were no sealers as are used now for canning fruits, but the fruit was put up in 1/2 gallon stone jars and sealed with cloth and rosin. This method of preservation proved to be very satisfactory.

Mrs. Beard made the clothing and the materials used were calico, gingham, flannel, denim, and woolen materials. She sheared her own sheep, washed the wool, carded it and spun it into yarns, and then wove it into blankets and cloth or knit it into stockings, mittens, and such. She also prepared the raw flax and wove it into linen toweling.

She made all the laundry soap herself, using tallow, all scraps of fat meat, and grease. She made lye by soaking wood. She had a candle mold and made candles out of beef tallow to substitute for the kerosene lamps in an emergency.

We are left to wonder what she did in her spare time.

Melting

Just another bad limerick:

Drifts are melting so darn fast

We knew it wouldn't last

But January

Made us weary

Of all the snow we amassed.

Starting with Nothing

 I’m always amazed by early settlers and pioneers who struggled to make a living when they arrived in the undeveloped territory of Dakota. Here is how one man established himself. Gustave Baquol Metzger, born in Alsace-Lorraine France,  came to America in 1876 where he worked as a bookkeeper and eventually worked westward to Montana by 1885 to manage a sheep ranch. The next year he decided to go into business for himself and bought a stock of groceries in St. Paul which he shipped by rail to Bismarck and then by boat to Big Muddy, now Williston, where they were thrown off on the bank of the Missouri River. He set up two tents, one of which he used for his store and the other for his home. After six months he was able to build a store and prospered there for several years before selling the business. He went on to establish a sawmill, a brickyard, and a ranch operation. He also served as the postmaster for 24 years. Lounsberry spoke highly of him in HISTORY OF NORTH DAKOTA when he wrote “His business developed in most gratifying measure and success attended the intelligent direction of his efforts.”

News Travelled Slowly

 Sometimes a good laugh materializes from unexpected places. While browsing through the immense Lounsberry HISTORY OF NORTH DAKOTA books I spotted the name George W. Newton that made me pause. It turns out it was nobody I’d know of, but he told a good story.

Newton was the proprietor of a hotel and saloon business in Williston. He never closed the saloon night or  day, for when the cowboys went to the ranches he just left the place open and went to his  home, so that when anyone wanted a drink during the night he helped himself. Mr. Newton operated this saloon for five years after the state went dry, saying that it took five years for the news to reach Williston.

Charley Wilson's War

 A chance mention of “Charley Wilson’s War” on some news program reminded me of the movie named just that. It centered around a congressman from Texas who did not perform his duties in Washington in an exemplary fashion. In fact, he was a hard-drinking playboy who liked to keep young ladies close at hand. 

Based on a true story, it centered around concern for the Afghanistan people who were being savagely attacked and murdered by the Russian army. The Afghanis had no way to fight back. Enter Charlie Wilson who served as the conduit to get U.S. aid money for modern weapons to the besieged army. Hand held missiles were sent to them which proved very effective in shooting down Russian helicopters, planes, and tanks. A biographical sketch of Wilson is available on the internet and proves to be interesting reading.

The whole point of this little post is my wondering if some people are making deals and maneuvering to get the necessary weaponry into the hands of the Ukrainian fighters. If so, I would not be surprised. By the way, the movie “Charley Wilson’s War” can be viewed on Hulu.

Daydreams Like Walter Mitty's

 It is easy to find people in our area who have a connection to Ukraine. One of my grandmothers, Tillie Bueling, came to the United States in 1904. The daughter of Samuel and Anna Weight Menge, she arrived with her family on the SS Breslau at Baltimore, Maryland. One of her brothers was Fred Menge who is known to some in the community. 

This family’s story could be placed side by side with most of the immigrants who eventually made their way to America. Invited to Ukraine by Catherine the Great because she hoped to raise the economic and cultural progress of the backward country she had come to rule over. How successful it was for the Germans can be debated, but successive rulers started cutting the promises Catherine had held out to them. And when life became unbearable they found their way to the United States. 

 

Life is becoming unbearable in Ukraine again and refugees by the hundreds of thousands have headed westward to find safety in a NATO country. They left their homes behind. It is a painful sight to see them dragging their belongings in one suitcase trying to board a crowded train. Besides stressing over it, about the only thing my wife and I plan to do is send some money to a reputable agency in their name. Since Ukraine is not a NATO member we can only dream about sending the military in which would most likely start WWIII.

Dreaming of solutions reminds me of the story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” which is about a man who spent a lifetime with his daydreams. As the story unfolded, he at first imagines himself as a pilot of a large plane that is caught in a dangerous storm. Ice begins forming on the wings and the crew exhibits anxiety but not fear because Walter Mitty is at the controls.

As he drives past a hospital he experiences his next reverie, that of a famous doctor operating on a prominent man. The lifesaving machine malfunctions in the operating room but because he is a handyman, too, he repairs it with just an ink pen.

As he enters the parking lot, he gets into a bit of an argument with the attendant after which he sees a news headline that updates a famous trial taking place and Walter quickly becomes a defendant in a trial where he is accused of being a sharpshooter. The questioning attorney calls him a “miserable cur” which jolts Walter to remember he needs to go buy dogfood.

While waiting for his wife he finds a magazine containing an article debating whether or not Germany can rule the world with just air power. It leads him into a fantasy where he pilots a plane on a successful mission to bomb an ammunition factory.

Lastly, he waits for his wife outside a drugstore and lights a cigarette while leaning up against a brick wall. Now he becomes a war criminal facing a firing squad while proudly accepting his fate. We’ve not stated yet but Walter is a very henpicked man who slides into these reveries while anticipating his wife to criticize or order him about for some reason. It is his coping method.

James Thurber wrote “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” as a short story which can be found with a search on the internet. The movie based on the story can also be watched on YouTube. We talk about all these things in this article because so many solutions about the Ukrainian conflict run through a person’s head, and yet we feel powerless. Maybe we are piloting a plane to drop a bomb on Russian military, operating on a wounded victim, or standing defiantly against a brick while staring into Putin’s eyes waiting for him to give the order to fire.

After the burial in Owego

(As posted in "Sheldon - Remembering Our Past" - March 11, 2022)

To continue with the last post - The Touching Story of a Child’s Burial - we learned of the Ward family who were haying and trapping along the Sheyenne River in 1872. They had their eyes on a bigger places though and soon moved on to Jamestown and finally Bismarck. The Northern Pacific railroad had reached Bismarck in 1873 and big things started happening.

The Wards proved an ambitious lot by establishing a dairy herd near Bismarck where  a ready-made market existed for the milk, cream, cheese, and beef they produced. But even bigger things rose to attract their dreams of profit. Gold was discovered in the Black Hills and a few hardy souls with their wagon trains began to haul goods from Bismarck to supply the miners. 

Dairy products would be popular, so the Wards made plans to trek down there while driving both dairy and beef cattle numbering 70 head. The Wards were three brothers - Henry, William, and George - along with wives, children, and a hired man. Next day they were met with another party bringing the total of men to twelve. Then they were stalled for a week by a snowstorm.

This was March, 1976. Remember that an event called the Battle of the Little Bighorn was to take place about three months later, and Indians were not friendly to trespassing. Miners in the Black Hills enraged them as did these wagons and cattle. In fact, the cattle looked very enticing. Their meat would be almost as good as buffalo.

Little skirmishes broke out making the Wards fight to defend themselves and their herd, but Indians were successful in stealing some of the cattle. This prompted attempts to recover them, and here tragedy struck. The youngest brother George Ward was killed. His body was brought back to camp and buried in his clothes and wrapped in a blanket.

As the party continued on next morning two wagons had to be left behind because the oxen had been killed. They had lost 40 head of cattle as well as a dozen head of horses, but nevertheless made it to the hills to stay until fall. On the way home they discovered their brother George’s body had been dug up by Indians to take his clothes and blanket and leave him lieing on the prairie. They reburied him and took livestock to trample all around the area so as to disguise the actual spot of burial.

Next spring Henry returned hoping to find the grave, but so much traffic had passed through that it was impossible. So the story will end here, the sad story of a settler who once lived on the Sheyenne near Sheldon and ended up buried in an unmarked spot known now only to God.

***

I enjoy telling these stories about Sheldon and the vicinity and the people who once lived here and can tell many more of them, but please don’t let me hog the space. Everyone must have some old time stories about the area that they heard their parents or grandparents tell. Leon B did us a favor when he established this group, and I’d like to see it grow and be supported.

Uncle Sam's Hand Is Out

 Another Limerick in a growing list of misbegotten rhymes —

We drove to the taxman in Bismarck

that city named for a monarch

business to tend

our taxes to lend

to Uncle Sam. He eats like a shark.

Ukraine Is Desirable

 “With the Ukraine, Russia is a USA; without she is a Canada - mostly snow.” As found in the book World War One: A Short History by Norman Stone. I have nothing further to add to this quote that refers to a different time but seems appropriate for today’s situation.

A Child's Burial ...

 (As posted on "Sheldon - Remembering Our Past.")

     

     A CHILD’S BURIAL - I have a story that pre-dates the city of Sheldon by 10 years, but it is well within the area and might interest some who read this Facebook group. It takes us back to 1872 and the Owego area where a small community had started to form. A historian of those times named F. A. Baguhn related it in an article with the title “The Touching Story of a Child’s Burial.”

     Two families, the H. R. Wards and Oscar Wards, and a relative, a Mr. Griffith, were haying and trapping along the Sheyenne. A man came and asked them to come the next day to his cabin three miles way and help him bury one of his children.

     Word of this spread through the sparse population and about 15 settlers attended. Upon arriving they found the father had constructed a crude coffin and dug a grave under a tree. The coffin containing the child rested on a couple of stools in the cabin, and as people do, they walked in for a viewing. Then what? Nobody knew what came next and hung sheepishly back. No one had a Bible or knew any  words to conduct a committal service.

     Here is where the story takes a strange turn, but it might’ve happened since Metis families coming through the area were commonplace. A pair of Metis children lived about a mile away and entered the cabin and noticed the situation at hand. It is reported they walked to the coffin, knelt and made the sign of the cross before reciting words the settlers didn’t understand.

     The coffin was carried to the gravesite  and placed on stools. There it was, all set up with no one knowing what to do next. Again the strange kids took over and as Baguhn wrote, “She knelt and offered up one of the finest prayers many there had ever heard. With her brother she sang two verses of a hymn.” It was said to have made a profound impression on those who looked on. Everyone who saw and heard this little girl and her brother that day left better men and women. Beguhn ends by saying no one seems to know who the bereaved family and the Metis children were or where the child was buried.

     The Ward family left the area the following year, finally ending in the Bismarck area. If the administrator of this web group permits it, next we’ll tell their story with its tragedy. And I’ll add, if it doesn’t bore readers, there are many stories like the one above that I can tell that somehow relate to Sheldon.

Pictured are Dennis Bjugstad and Larry Strand standing on ground in neighborhood of the story.

Frieda

 The name Frieda Bohnsack will be familiar to most who read this. Her ranch east of Sheldon bears the name Bohnsack Ranch and is now owned by her daughter and husband - Bonita and Lynn Laske. When gathered at a family reunion last summer, Bonita invited us to come out to the ranch for a quick visit. It had been several years since last visiting so we accepted the invitation and followed them out. 

Frieda has been inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame and a brief write-up of her career can be found at their website. While visiting the ranch I spotted a Fargo Forum clipping pinned to a wall that caught my eye. The headline read, “Sheldon Woman Rescued from Wrecked Liner Yukon.”

In the month of February, 1946, the SS Yukon was heading to Seattle from Seward when it encountered mountainous waves and fierce gales that caused it to crash on rocks and break apart. The after-section drifted away and capsized. Luckily the skipper had herded passengers and crew numbering around 500 people into the forward section. 

Rescue operations soon began, but the fierce weather hampered it. Frieda apparently had to spend many hours on the wreckage before being one of the last to be rescued. She was quoted, “Fourteen hours of darkness that night, spent with all of us crowded into the fore part of the ship seemed unbearable. We could not go out on deck for fear of being washed overboard. Besides, after the split there wasn’t much deck left.”

The rather lengthy article told how after rescue, Frieda got her first food, soup, in about 40 hours. She said, “I wasn’t hungry though, I was too scared to even think of food.” She didn’t have much praise for the ship’s crew: “They got drunk and stayed drunk. We’d have been better off without them.”

When they got back to Seward the Red Cross saw to it they were fed, given clothing, and provided with a place to sleep. Likewise, upon reaching Seattle, they met them at the dock and gave them accommodations for a place to stay. Back at her ranch, the reporter assumed she’d no longer want to travel by ship. She answered, “Oh, no, I love a boat trip and I’ll take one again. But not one like the Yukon, please.”