Tag / Pioneers

by Kate Treick

Little Soddy on the Prairie

I have been doing more research lately on the lives of my Norwegian ancestors. I happen to be 25% Norwegian, yet I have never had as close a connection to this part of my heritage. So recently I have been examining the lives of these pioneers.

Tollef Tollefson and his wife Anne were born in the 1820’s in Norway, and immigrated to the United States in 1849 after the birth of their first son. After eleven weeks by boat, followed by an overland journey to Wisconsin, Tollef (Ole) and Anne arrived in Spring Valley, Rock County, Wisconsin, August 15, 1849. Their second son, Henry, was born 3 December 1849.  There were seven more children born to the family, all in Wisconsin: Barbra, Martin, Ole, Andrew, Ary, Crist and John. Son Henry married Mary Engen in Wisconsin around 1868; their first son, Sever, was born 16 November 1869.

The family’s first home on the prairie was a dugout, similar to the dugout home and stable pictured above. (Photo: Solomon D. Butcher/Library of Congress)

In 1871, Henry Severson moved with his family from Wisconsin to Harvard, Nebraska. According to his daughter, Bertha (Bertie), “In the spring of 1871, they left Wisconsin by covered wagon and ox team for the west–with all their earthly possessions and very little money. When they arrived at a place six miles north of Harvard on a barren prairie they decided this is it.  Their first place of shelter was a dugout back in a bank until Father could break ground with an old breaking plow brought from Wisconsin tied on the wagon.  He built a one- room sod house, laid logs hauled from the river across the top, then sod on top of that for a roof. “

I had always imagined a soddy to be built into the side of a bank or hill, like in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s On the Banks of Plum Creek; but the process of building a soddy involved cutting bricks of sod from the wild prairie, usually 3×4 feet and three inches thick, and then stacking them into a home. There was little timber to be had, and the frame houses couldn’t stand up to the brutal Nebraska winters. The sod houses were warm(-er) in the winter and cool in the summer, and there was no end of material available.

Typical sod house

Bertie notes that the sod house “was where Oscar my next brother was born March 27, 1873; shortly after, while Mother was still in bed, the terrible April storm came, snowed them under and the snow drifted and blew through the roof and down on Mother’s bed.  I shudder when I think of it…” Grandma used to tell this story, handed down from her husband’s family. I can imagine this young woman with a toddler and a newborn baby, huddled on the bed with snow blowing in through every crack.

This storm was one of the worst ever recorded, thereafter known as The Easter Storm, or the Blizzard of 1873. It began on the afternoon of Easter, April 13, and lasted for three days. Snow blew across the prairie like a wall of white. There were no windbreaks yet built, no trees planted to stop the wind, which howled across the prairie and left families buried in their dugouts. Some neighbors were rescued by other pioneer families who only saw a little smoke trailing out of stovepipes sticking up out of the snow. The drifts were 18 to 20 feet in some places, ravines completely filled with snow. Henry, Mary, and their two sons survived the ordeal, and continued to improve their homestead.

The family eventually built a frame house. Sometimes sod was still used as insulation, with siding built around the sod structure. Henry built a frame house for his family before his daughters were born, and Bertie noted, “A part of our old frame house was built before Annie and I were born, so we can’t say we were born in a soddy.”

https://epicureandculture.com/california-farm-stay/
by Kate Treick

Ambers Brown

My dad, James W. Brown, served as a judge in Santa Barbara for thirteen years. When researching his branch of our family tree, I discovered that he was not the first judge in the family who served the people of California. Ambers Brown, born in Iowa in 1849, became a Justice of the Peace in Tranquility, California, in the beginning years of the twentieth century.

As a family historian, I spend a lot of time attempting to flesh out skeletal stories provided by census data, dates in family Bibles, and the occasional newspaper article. But one of the best finds I ever had was an article tucked into one of my Grandma Dorothy’s journals which provided not only some wonderful details about the life of Ambers Brown, but also a few other clues into the family history.

I’m going to post this glowing article below for the benefit of others researching this branch of the Brown family. The article comes from a book by Paul E. Vandor entitled History of Fresno County, California: With Biographical Sketches … Volume 1. This account provided not only information on Ambers and his wife, Mary Pike, but both of their sets of parents and their places of birth.

Ambers Brown. –The popular and efficient Justice of the Peace of the First Judicial Township of Fresno County, Judge Ambers Brown is an able, conscientious and impartial dispenser of justice, whose wise counsel and advice are eagerly sought by the residents of Tranquility and vicinity.  Judge Brown is a native of the Hawkeye State, born in Washington County, Iowa, June 3, 1849, son of James and Agnes (Johnson) Brown.  His father was a native of Kentucky who moved to Indiana, where he married Agnes Johnson, a native of the Hoosier State, and they migrated to Iowa about 1845 where they were among the early pioneers of Washington County.  The Indians were still to be seen in the country when Mr. Brown located in Iowa.  He improved a farm and followed farming until his death in 1878, and his wife passed away in 1855. [Note that Ambers’ mother died when he was just six years old. His father remarried.] James and Agnes Brown were the parents of three children, Judge Ambers Brown being the only member of the family living.  He remained at the Iowa home until he was twenty-one years of age, when he was united in marriage with Miss Mary Pike, a native of the Buckeye State, born near Columbus, Ohio.  She came with her parents, Jonathan and Louisa (Umbel) Pike, to Iowa.  They were pioneer farmers of the Hawkeye State.

In 1875, Mr. and Mrs. Ambers Brown removed to Hamilton County, Nebr., where they homesteaded eighty acres of land, twelve miles from Aurora, on the Little Blue River. Mr. Brown broke up the virgin prairie soil, and raised corn, wheat and stock, continuing his operations in this locality for about twelve years, when he sold his farm and returned to Fremont County, Iowa, where he followed farming for four years.  In 1891 Ambers Brown decided to migrate to the Golden State, and after arrival in California, he located at Dos Palos, where he purchased twenty acres and improved it by planting alfalfa and fruit trees, and also engaged in dairying.  While living there he was honored by being elected to the office of justice of the peace and also served as school trustee.  In 1910 he sold his ranch and located at Tranquility, Fresno County, where he purchased twenty-two acres.  The land was raw and unimproved, but Mr. Brown soon leveled and checked it, set out an orchard, planted alfalfa, built a residence, engaged in dairying and raising hogs and cattle.

In 1914 he was elected justice of the peace of the First Judicial Township of Fresno County, after which he moved into the town of Tranquility and bought his present home, and has established an office on the same lot, renting his ranch for three years. In 1918 Judge Brown was reelected, evidence of the satisfactory manner in which he had conducted the affairs of his office.  He is also notary public and grain-buyer for Gen. M. W. Muller Company, of Fresno.  Judge and Mrs. Brown are parents of two children: Dennis V., the owner of a ranch at Tranquility; and Robert E. residing in Hamilton County, Nebr., where he is a farmer. [Note: Robert and his wife Anna (Severson) had four sons and one daughter; their youngest son was my grandfather, Jesse Willard Brown.]

Judge and Mrs. Ambers Brown are active members of the Church of Christ and were instrumental in the organization of the congregation at Tranquility, aiding substantially in building the house of worship, the Judge being a member of the building committee and a trustee.  Judge Brown is an exceedingly pleasant and affable man and is highly esteemed in the community.

I am biased, my dad being one of my favorite people anywhere in the world. But I know I am not alone in thinking him also “exceedingly pleasant and affable” and “highly esteemed in the community.” I feel a kinship with his great-grandfather, and look forward to meeting him one day.