Part four of a series
Hearing the call of prairie chickens was a new and alarming experience. It was 1853 when 11-year-old T. R. Stewart and his family came west from Massachusetts to be among the very first pioneer settlers in southeast Minnesota Territory, near present-day Caledonia. Their first week was spent at a hotel in Brownsville and the second week at the home of Caledonia founder Samuel McPhail. A half-century later, T. R. wrote down what he recalled about those first few months.
During the Stewart’s stay at McPhail’s, T. R. and his brother helped dig the cellar for their new own home at a site among a grove of burr oak trees that T.R. termed, “one of the prettiest building spots for miles around.” Their father cut and hauled logs in preparation for the house raising. The house would be 14 x 24 feet, constructed with unhewn logs, since there was not time to hew them. With help from other settlers, the logs were put up and rafters placed ready for the roof in just one day.
Stewart recalled, “On the afternoon of September 25th, we took our household goods and moved into our new house, if such could be called a house, for there were neither door nor windows and just floor enough upstairs to put up a bed. Downstairs, I think there was only floor enough to cover up the where we had dug the hole for the cellar. Of course, there were holes cut through where the doors and windows were to be.”
After all was moved into the dwelling that afternoon, his father headed off to the creek to get a barrel of water. Stewart doubts his father had ever been to the creek before. There were no tracks to follow, but he knew if he followed the ravine, he would come to the creek.
Meanwhile, T. R. and his brother and mother set up the stove and put up the beds. She then prepared supper, expecting Father to be back about dusk. But it soon became dark and she began to worry. T. R. lamented, “I can well remember how dismal everything looked after we had lighted the candle. The black walls of logs with the bark left on, the unchinked spaces between the logs through which we could look out into the night, the windows and doors covered with quilts, the bare ground floor, such a contrast to the nice little house we had left in the East, the feeling of gloom that settled upon us at father’s long absence – all combined to make us feel that we were alone in a wilderness.”
Mr. Dunbar, a neighbor who had been invited for supper, was persuaded to stay until Father returned. About midnight, the guest became so worried that he left to find Mr. McPhail and get someone to help search. “Two fears were uppermost in our minds,” wrote T. R. “Either he had been killed by Indians or bitten by a rattlesnake. Both were plentiful and dreaded about alike.”
Mr. Dunbar did not get far before he heard “someone ballooing.” He answered and soon found T. R.’s father, who had been lost and wandering. It was dark when he had left the creek with the water, and with no trail marked, there were only ravines to follow. The ravines looked so much alike, and he had taken the wrong one as far as two haystacks he recognized as being on the claim of a friend, Anthony Huyck. He got his bearings and started out across the prairie, but he became lost again before being found by Dunbar.
A few days later, the family was working around the house when they heard a strange noise among the burr oak trees. Whatever made the noise, there must have been two of them. Father thought it must be catamounts. Mother objected but Father got a gun and went down to investigate.
“I remember how anxiously we watched as he skulked from one tree to another,” said T. R. “Finally, we saw him raise his gun and fire. Behold, not a catamount, but a block of prairie chickens flew out of the trees, minus one, which we had for dinner. Anyone having heard prairie chickens call will know how it would sound to those never having heard them before. The call sounds more like an animal than a fowl.”
Father was able to procure lumber enough to finish the floor downstairs and the roof, the latter merely siding or clapboards “running up and down and battened with another strip of siding over the crack. That was all there was between us and outdoors all winter. As the upstairs was not very high, it brought us boys, who slept there, very nearly out of doors.” Snow could blow through the roof at night, and the boys would waken to find an inch or two of snow on their quilts.
Father had been busy that autumn, using an adz to hew the logs on the inside, which was more difficult than it would have been if accomplished before the house was raised. He then “chinked it up,” by driving blocks of wood between the logs. The final step involved taking limestone from the creek and burning it to make mortar for plastering over the chinking, both inside and outside. This provided warmth, but he was not able to obtain windows or any lumber for the door. For a door, they used a cover to one of the shipping boxes for their household goods. The remainder of the doorway was covered with a shawl. The three window openings were covered by blankets and quilts.
I think Mother papered the living room with newspapers that we had packed around our goods,” wrote T. R. “which made it look more cheerful and homelike.“ The living room was 14 x 15, the parents’ bedroom 8 x 10 and the pantry 4 x 8. That first winter, the stairs for ascending to the loft was merely a ladder, which conveniently could be placed outdoors when more space was needed.
To be continued.
Source: The Memoirs of T. R. Stewart as published in Caledonia Pride 1854-2004
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