I interviewed Lisa Vedaa yesterday, of Norwegian background. She is Collections Manager of Historical Artifacts for the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County. This historical society is located a short walk across the Red River from Fargo, North Dakota, in Moorhead, Minnesota, basically a sister city.
Here she is holding a seed potato cutter. A farmer would pound a seed potato through the metal grid to get six pieces, hopefully all with an eye in them, that could be planted and grow more potatoes. It was invented in the Fargo / Moorhead area by E. W. and Roy Smith, and they might have had a big American dream that spawned this invention.
This is the 3" x 8" leather-bound diary of Perry Burton, a farmhand on a wheat farm in Larimore, ND. He kept the diary in 1885. It was a privilege to handle this book at the Institute for Regional Studies, part of North Dakota State University in Fargo.
The first sentence, on Jan. 1, 1885, reads: “Well Im hoping to try + keep an account of myself this year (1885) + see how I turn out by another year”. His account for January 2 indicated he’d like to quit his habit of chewing tobacco.
On Thursday, the 8th of January, his entry indicates he still had not had any. In the accounts section of his diary at the back, he wrote on the 10th of January that he spent ten cents on a fiddle bridge. On the 26th of January he spent ten cents on cigars, and on the 27th he spent ten cents on chewing tobacco. It was a constant entry from that point on. Dental work cost $7.00. It seemed that he got paid in amounts like $2.50 or $3.00.
But at the end of 1885, he wrote in his journal that he would keep another journal the next year because this was the first time he had ever come out ahead. His final balance was in the black, $124.25.
He wrote, “Though I have not made very much this year, I am thankful that I have made as much as I have…all in all I am satisfied with all my dealings with everboddy in the area …that I have had dealings with + so think that I have been blessed for another year … think I can be more honored + honorable + I thank providence that I have been blessed as much as I have.”
My friend Bill authorized me to post his letter to me about ancestor pioneers, frontiers, and absconders:
ReplyDeleteI have a story in an Alabama county history of a great-great coming into the territory in 1805 with wagons and mules and hogsheads (and slaves), and a party of more than a hundred Choctaw Indians camped in front of his cabin. The Mrs. said that they comported themselves admirably.
In just a few years, hundreds of settlers would be massacred at Fort Mims, just 30 miles away....about a good day's walk down the Alabama River, while the locals took refuge in log palisade forts...
A local boy would flee his young wife and child and a size-able debt (and perhaps a death threat) and GTT (gone to Texas) and somehow finagle an association with other Anglos into a rebellion, be named a colonel and die at the Alamo. His name was Travis. I'm not sure where the colonelcy came from except that Travis may have been a
militia subaltern of some sort with Jackson in the Creek and Seminole Wars....(hmm. .obscure item for more research)....
In my last visit to the Alamo i engaged a docent in a conversation about Travis and found out very quickly that he knew far more than me about the topic...so i shut up as to not appear too ignorant.!