Portland Prairie is a region in southeastern Minnesota in Wilmington Township, Houston County near Eitzen, which was not leveled by glaciers and therefore is somewhat hilly. It attracted farmers because there were few trees to cut down. The area was settled in the early- to mid-1850s by families from New England, most notably Rhode Island. C. L. McNelly, born in 1883, was in … [Read more...]

We all know things. Some of us suspect more than we know. The latter group consists mainly of brothers-in-law. During my school years – grade school, junior high and high school – I spent a lot of time seated in a school bus. The ride to school took about three minutes. The ride home from school took three hours on a good day. On those trips home, the bus pulled up at the … [Read more...]

Breakfast isn’t skipped; it’s merely delayed. Nicolas Chamfort said, “Swallow a toad in the morning if you want to encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.” Although it wasn’t Mark Twain, Abe Lincoln or Yogi Berra who said that, unless you’re a snake, a raccoon or a heron, it’s difficult to challenge the efficacy of Chamfort’s words. But you won’t find toad … [Read more...]

Part four of a four-part series World War I certainly altered the lives of those men enlisting or drafted into military service, but circumstances changed for many back at home as well. Two young women left the University of Minnesota, including Dyllone Hempstead of Houston, to volunteer for farm work. Specifically, Miss Hempstead was raising chickens for Dean A. F. Woods. … [Read more...]

Part three of a series Her grandfather’s fortunate chickens dined on a freshly-baked loaf of bread, originally intended for humans. Her mother had baked the bread, not with wheat flour but with barley flour. “It was awful,” recalled Ingrid Julsrud, a Houston High School student at the time, “heavy, hard, coarse and dry, but the flavor was the worst.”  Those chickens … [Read more...]