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.

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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.