Col. William w. McIlvain

The obituary writer for Col. William W. McIlvain found much to remember when he printed a

longer than usual death notice for him. Of course, McIlvain is best remembered as the first

commandant of the North Dakota Soldiers Home, but he had lived a full life prior to that post.

McIlvain’s “Colonel” designation was apparently an honorific much like auctioneers use today

since the only military ranks found in his record were corporal, sergeant, and 1st lieutenant.

We learn that as a younger man he had seen active military service and served his country in the

so-called Border War in Kansas Territory when that population fought bloody skirmishes among

themselves. The issue was trying to decide if they should allow slavery or prohibit it when they

achieved statehood. McIlvain went on to enlist in the Michigan infantry during the Civil War

where he participated in a number of engagements.

Colonel McIlvain first came to the territory of Dakota in 1883 and settled in Fargo where he

worked as a land agent for the government. Among his duties he inspected homesteader claims.

Said to be a hard worker, he was given credit for many pioneers successfully coming here. But

the life of a bureaucrat didn’t interest him enough to make a lifelong career of it, so he came to

Sheldon the following year and started farming two miles west of town. He was practicing what

he preached you might say.

He established an 800 acre operation with his son Frank. In the 1880s it is important to

remember power was furnished entirely by draft animals, i.e. oxen and horses. How much of his

land was tilled, I’m left wondering. If he plowed and seeded a large amount, he must’ve hired a

large number of field hands. We can surmise from an April 7, 1885 item in The Progress that a

good deal of his land was in pasture, too: “We notice that Frank McIlvain has been hauling

barbed wire homewards. Guess there is to be some fencing done on that farm.”

After working hard to turn his virgin sod farm into a successful operation, William turned to the

business world and established an active general merchandise business in Sheldon with his son

Frank. In 1893 McIlvain received the appointment as commandant of the Soldiers Home in

Lisbon and was present when it first opened its doors.

He was present to greet the first veteran who entered the facility on August 2, 1893. He was

George Hutchings, a veteran of the Civil War and a resident of Ransom County. A Hutchings

family narrative appears in the Sheldon history book. Written by Eunice Hutchings Joubert she

states, “The Hutchings family history goes back to the first government, a trading post, in

Shenford Township, run by George Hutchings. He served in the Civil War from Minnesota,

reenlisted and after being involved in Indian troubles in Montana, he was sent to Dakota

Territory. George is now buried in the Soldier’s Cemetery at Lisbon, ND.”

NDSU PRESS PARTY

 Yesterday we had the pleasure of attending another of what has become an annual affair, the NDSU Press Party. Authors whom they have published during the year come in to read from and talk about their work. We bought two books of poetry written by onetime North Dakota  poets. The author of one, Debra Marquardt originally from Napoleon, ND, lives and teaches at Iowa State University and serves as that state’s poet laureate. David R. Solheim, an associate poet laureate of North Dakota, spent thirty years as an English professor at Dickinson State University. Given the opportunity, there’s a good chance we’ll attend again next year. They serve a nice lunch, too. An extra bonus for us as we left was hearing the church bells of the Newman Center ringing a block away. We’d been wanting to attend a service at this new church anyway, so now this morning I can take it easy while Mary is making pancakes with our Cracker Barrel flour. Pix show Marquart with Mary, fellow Germans from Russia, and David Solheim.

Random Thoughts - April 11, 2024

 RANDOM THOUGHTS - April 11, 2024

Who’s Pete and why do we always do things for his sake? … “Win or lose, be a good sport” was sportscaster Bill Weaver’s sign off each day … North Dakota is 135 years old … John Moses was governor when I was born … The state political conventions concluded without many conclusive choices … Never wrestle with pigs cuz you both get dirty and the pig likes it … Cloudy, no eclipse here, but save the glasses to use in 20 years  … The bull and the bear carving was done on commission for a stock broker in 1997 … NDSU Press Dept is holding a press party on Saturday that we plan to attend where several of this year’s publications and authors will present … Glad to see positive talking Merrill Piepkorn in the mix … And til we meet again, goodbye. 

Remembering Roots

 

Memories of times past just refuse to fade away. People like to celebrate common roots and

attend events like community centennials, school reunions, and family reunions. Car shows

appeal to lovers of the old classics. Horse shows, flower shows, and art shows attract their

distinctive crowds. Nostalgia for old steam engines and threshing machines draws people to walk

in the noises and smells from that time.

We can’t begin to describe all the groups or reasoning behind these gatherings so we’ll be

selective and pick one that’s gained in popularity among a few, i.e. tractorcades. When organizers

of them establish the route and the point of departure the participants and their pet tractors gather

ready to unleash and ride in a caravan for twenty miles or so. They arrive on those small tractors

that some of us grew up driving, sitting under the sun, in the wind, swatting mosquitoes.

Representative models of all the tractors ever made join these convoys. Decal letters on their

hoods denote them as A, H, WD, U, or numbers like 77 or 300. Perhaps one needs be a farmer to

know their meaning, but an older farmer knows just how big and for what they were best used.

Through the years their replacements have grown increasingly larger, more powerful, and more

comfortable with climate controlled cabs. But the early tractors evoke memories and a strong

longing to ride once again in the openness of the countryside, smell the exhaust, and listen to the

melody of meadowlarks over the sounds of the engines.

One Sheldon farmer who is since deceased took such things like collecting classic tractors

seriously and found every John Deere model he wanted. I’d forgotten the particulars of his

collection, but I asked his brother how many he owned. Forty-three was the answer and one year

he ran them all to McLeod for a celebration, although a few stalled along the way. One year

when fuel was so high he laid out $1400 for the diesel and gasoline.

Those of us older folks realize we are not so far removed from the time when farmers relied on

real horse power to work the farms. But horses ate a lot, even when they weren’t earning their

keep in the winter, and took many acres of crop production for their feed. An Australian brochure

printed in 1923 informed “How One Case Tractor Replaces 12 Horses.” Maybe that ratio can be

argued by students of such things, but it bounces around the actual figure. With the arrival of

tractors a farmer could reduce his horse herd, to where today the horses in a pasture usually

indicate pleasure riding.

Fort Ransom Sodbuster Association celebrates the draft horse culture a couple times each

summer. At Sodbuster Days a visitor can watch teamsters demonstrating threshing machines,

haying, and plowing. They don’t forget the homemaking aspect. We generally hear about the

threshing crews, but they needed to be fed by the ladies with heaping platters of food prepared

each day over hot wood burning stoves.The long line of classic tractors farmers are bringing to these cavalcades did not always bear the

familiar brand names we think of like Farmall, Oliver, or John Deere. A Farmall was once more

commonly known as a McCormick-Deering manufactured by the International Harvester

Company. In recent times it morphed to the Case IH brand. John Deere tractors originally made

in Waterloo, Iowa, bore the name Waterloo Boy. As the years passed John Deere developed the

familiar two-cylinder engine which it built from 1934 until 1960.

A Minneapolis-Moline tractor painted in its familiar “Prairie Gold” color was first identified as a

Twin City from 1930 until 1934 when it became known as M-M. In 1963 the company joined

White Farm Equipment where the Oliver and Cockshutt brands also resided. The “Persian

Orange” Allis-Chalmers line dates its roots to 1847 England, but in more modern terms it was

1901 when Edward P. Allis joined with several other companies to create the now familiar name.

The Fordson brand of tractors begs for recognition as one of the first general-purpose tractors

when it came out in 1917. Competitive companies cut into its sales and Fordson moved to

England in 1928. The Ford brand re-entered the market in 1939 with its 9N model featuring the

Ferguson System of a simple three-point hitch that other companies adapted.

In 1929 Hart-Parr merged with several equipment companies to become the Oliver Farm

Equipment Company. It is through the Hart-Parr brand that the term “tractor” originated. They

coined the word in 1906 to describe its self-propelled gasoline tractor to replace the term that had

been in common use - gasoline traction engine.

There are other tractors that could be mentioned, but those named above cover a cross section.

When farms were small, these small tractors did the work of planting and harvesting the crops all

the while displacing the draft horses. Their builders did such a good job of building dependable

power machines that many of them still run well and can be found parading the countryside on

tractorcades.