Read Online The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin - Free Book Online
Authors: David Laskin
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Groton. Nearby towns, or rather train stops that were expected to become towns, were called Aberdeen, Bath, Andover, Bristol, and Webster—every ten miles or so another reminder of the glorious Anglo-Saxon heritage. At Groton, W.C. bought a building lot for one hundred fifty dollars on what was destined to become Main Street, the first lot sold in town, and got to work. W.C. must have been a man of considerable energy and pluck because by the time he returned to Edna and the children in Minneapolis at the end of the summer of 1880, he had managed to construct a simple but ample three-room frame house of milled lumber, shingled roof, and glass windows—four tall windows running down the sides of the house and one by the front door looking out over the mud of Main Street. This was the first frame house in Groton.
In July 1881, W.C. returned with his family and furniture to take possession. It was a memorable trip. The floods that resulted from the sudden late spring melting of the thirty-foot drifts that had accumulated during the long winter had turned the James River into a giant lake stretching across the breadth of what is now South Dakota, and it was touch and go whether the tracks would be clear in time for the Allen family exodus. In any event, the train they boarded in Minneapolis on July 14 was the maiden voyage of the H & D Division of the Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad—“the Milwaukee,” as it was commonly called—bound for Groton, which was then (briefly) the end of the line. The Allens, like the Kaufmanns and their fellow Schweizers, traveled in an immigrant car—and they were just as dismayed at how crude and uncomfortable it was. Edna Allen recalled that a cow and team of horses were stabled at the front of the car, the family’s belongings (including their piano and one thousand carefully chosen books) were stacked at the rear, while she and her husband and the children occupied rough wooden seats at the center. It was “terrifi-cally hot,” so they traveled with the side doors slid back for air.
Walter, not yet two, was ill and fretful and had to be held in his mother’s arms the entire trip. Hugh and Will, though old enough to look after themselves, made their stepmother’s heart constrict whenever they got too close to an open door. The sea of waving grass outside was unbelievably green and tall and lush from the melting off of the deepest snows ever measured on the prairie.
For some reason the train went only as far as Andover, a stop shy of Groton, and the Allens had to complete the final leg of their journey by horse cart. Arrival afforded them no rest. The town, though surrounded by miles of drowsing prairie, was feverish with activity. Every lot lining Main Street was a building site—there was so much construction going on that just the scrap wood lying around the new houses and stores supplied the Allens with all the fuel they needed for their cookstove. Practically overnight the prairie boomtown had a feed and coal store, a blacksmith shop, a building contractor, hotel, lumberyard, and a business mysteriously identified as a “purveyor of liquid hardware.” By September 1881, just weeks after its founding, Groton boasted two rival newspapers: the Mirror and the Groton News, which prided itself on beating the Mirror into print by two days.
W.C. was right there in the thick of it all. Upon arrival he began practicing law out of his home, but he soon diversified into trade, local politics, and civil service. He teamed up with one Frank Stevens to open a hardware store and a lumber, harness, and tin emporium near the post office, which was also under his control, first as deputy and then head postmaster (Edna, meanwhile, ran the original Yorkville post office during the summer months). W.C. later went into the real estate business, became the town’s “police justice,” and, according to one of the local papers, “fixed up a court room at the rear of the post
In July 1881, W.C. returned with his family and furniture to take possession. It was a memorable trip. The floods that resulted from the sudden late spring melting of the thirty-foot drifts that had accumulated during the long winter had turned the James River into a giant lake stretching across the breadth of what is now South Dakota, and it was touch and go whether the tracks would be clear in time for the Allen family exodus. In any event, the train they boarded in Minneapolis on July 14 was the maiden voyage of the H & D Division of the Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad—“the Milwaukee,” as it was commonly called—bound for Groton, which was then (briefly) the end of the line. The Allens, like the Kaufmanns and their fellow Schweizers, traveled in an immigrant car—and they were just as dismayed at how crude and uncomfortable it was. Edna Allen recalled that a cow and team of horses were stabled at the front of the car, the family’s belongings (including their piano and one thousand carefully chosen books) were stacked at the rear, while she and her husband and the children occupied rough wooden seats at the center. It was “terrifi-cally hot,” so they traveled with the side doors slid back for air.
Walter, not yet two, was ill and fretful and had to be held in his mother’s arms the entire trip. Hugh and Will, though old enough to look after themselves, made their stepmother’s heart constrict whenever they got too close to an open door. The sea of waving grass outside was unbelievably green and tall and lush from the melting off of the deepest snows ever measured on the prairie.
For some reason the train went only as far as Andover, a stop shy of Groton, and the Allens had to complete the final leg of their journey by horse cart. Arrival afforded them no rest. The town, though surrounded by miles of drowsing prairie, was feverish with activity. Every lot lining Main Street was a building site—there was so much construction going on that just the scrap wood lying around the new houses and stores supplied the Allens with all the fuel they needed for their cookstove. Practically overnight the prairie boomtown had a feed and coal store, a blacksmith shop, a building contractor, hotel, lumberyard, and a business mysteriously identified as a “purveyor of liquid hardware.” By September 1881, just weeks after its founding, Groton boasted two rival newspapers: the Mirror and the Groton News, which prided itself on beating the Mirror into print by two days.
W.C. was right there in the thick of it all. Upon arrival he began practicing law out of his home, but he soon diversified into trade, local politics, and civil service. He teamed up with one Frank Stevens to open a hardware store and a lumber, harness, and tin emporium near the post office, which was also under his control, first as deputy and then head postmaster (Edna, meanwhile, ran the original Yorkville post office during the summer months). W.C. later went into the real estate business, became the town’s “police justice,” and, according to one of the local papers, “fixed up a court room at the rear of the post
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