Growing Up with the Town: Family and Community on the Great Plains PDF
Preview Growing Up with the Town: Family and Community on the Great Plains
uGROWING UP WITH THE TOWN uGROW ING UP WITH THE TOWN Family & Community on the Great Plains DOROTHY HUBBARD SCHWIEDE| University of Iowa Press Iowa City University of Iowa Press, Library of Congress Iowa City 52242 Cataloging-in-Publication Data Copyright © 2002 by the Schwieder, Dorothy, 1933– University of Iowa Press Growing up with the town: family All rights reserved and community on the Great Plains / by Printed in the Dorothy Hubbard Schwieder. United States of America p. cm. Design by Richard Hendel Includes bibliographical references http://www.uiowa.edu/~uipress and index. isbn No part of this book may be 0-87745-804-9 reproduced or used in any form or 1. Presho (S.D.)—History—20th by any means without permission century. 2. Presho (S.D.)—Social life in writing from the publisher. All and customs—20th century. 3. Presho reasonable steps have been taken to (S.D.)—Biography. 4. Schwieder, contact copyright holders of material Dorothy, 1933– —Childhood and used in this book. The publisher youth. 5. Hubbard family. 6. Great would be pleased to make suitable Plains—History—20th century. arrangements with any whom it has 7. Great Plains—Social life and not been possible to reach. customs—2oth century. I. Title. f p s 659. 74 39 2002 (cid:1) The publication of this book was 978.358—dc21 2001054840 generously supported by the University of Iowa Foundation. Portions of this book were first published as the following articles: “A Tale of Printed on acid-free paper Two Grandmothers: Immigration and Family on the Great Plains,” South Dakota c 02 03 04 05 06 5 4 3 2 1 History31 (Spring 2001): 26–52, and “Town-Building and Persistence on the Great Plains: The Case of Presho, South Dakota,” South Dakota History30 (Summer 2000): 200–22. Except where noted in the captions, all photographs are from the author’s collection. For my siblings— Donald, Ralph, Herold, and George Hubbard; Gladys Hawley; Louise Miller; and the late Ruth Iverson and John Hubbard. Thank you for wonderful, warm memories; without all of you, this book could not have been written. u CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgments, ix Descendants Chart, xvii Prologue, 1 part i. The Early Years 1. The First Generation, 7 2. A Town Called Presho, 33 3. Times of Trial, 53 part ii. A Personal Perspective 4. In My Father’s House, 81 5. The Wonderful World of Work, 103 6. A Community on the Plains, 119 7. The Business on Main Street, 145 8. Coming of Age and Leaving Home, 160 Epilogue, 173 Notes, 177 Index, 191 uPREFACE & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS T his book has been a long time in the making. The seed was planted some five decades ago when I first began to realize that the area where I grew up, the northern Great Plains, had distinctive qualities and differed in significant ways from other parts of the country. That sense of difference was nurtured throughout my years in graduate school, when I studied the history of the American West and came to understand intellectually how the region developed, its unusual characteristics, and the part it played in the na- tion’s history. But something seemed lacking in this academic experi- ence. Historians and other scholars, such as Walter Prescott Webb, Gilbert Fite, James Malin, and, more recently, Paula M. Nelson and John C. Hudson, have done insightful, impressive, and certainly appropriate studies of the region, but somehow they seemed incomplete. For me— and, I believe, for many others who grew up there—the Great Plains ex- perience was an intensely emotional and personal one, and this essence has eluded most scholarly studies of the region. Thomas Wolfe said, “You can’t go home again,” but still, people try. Authors especially. Their journeys are often circuitous; writers often write about other places—other towns, other regions, even other coun- tries—before they return to their own special place in the world. My path has been similar. As an American historian I have spent my profes- sional career in Iowa, where I have specialized in Iowa history. Through- out these years, however, a recurring mental counterpoint was, How did my home state differ from my adopted state? In this roundabout way, studying Iowa history has sharpened my perception of South Dakota. Iowa enjoys abundant rainfall, and this rain falls onto some of the best soil in the world; tall trees grace the river valleys, and the land is usually green from early spring to late fall. White settlers who began arriving here in the 1830s knew even then that this place held special promise; these settlers had soon left their mark on the land by plowing up the tall prairie grass and carving out farmsteads. By 1870, most of the state was
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