Isaac's Neighbors

On November 18, 2011 I posted a blog titled "Isaac's Land From the Air Today" which explained how land in Kansas was divided into square mile Sections and then divided again into four squares called quarter sections, or more simply, Quarters.  Homesteaders could claim a quarter, containing 160 acres.  In addition, a timber claim of 160 acres could be claimed by planting 10 acres in trees and keeping them alive for 8 years.  Isaac claimed both, which gave him 320 acres.  To read more about this process, as well as information about the population density on the prairie in Isaac's time in comparison to today's population density, you may visit that blog in the archives.  I promised in that blog to return to a further description of the neighbors living around Isaac, and at last, this blog will keep that promise.

First, orient yourself to Isaac's Homestead and Timber Claim identified in the center of the photograph, easily spotted because they are bright green from the winter wheat growing in the circles under irrigation.  (The gravestones of neighbors can all be found in Neeland's Cemetery, located in the image above to the north of Isaac's claims.  To see more interesting stones in that country cemetery, you may visit "Woodmen's Gravestones," 3-8-2012 in the blog archives.  Click on the images if you wish to enlarge them.)

Felix and Mary E. Clouse Goodwin's stone in Neeland's Cemetery 

To the south of Isaac's homestead is the Pratt-Stafford County Line.  Directly across the line was the claim of William and Felix Goodwin in Pratt County.  Both of these men are mentioned frequently in Isaac's journal.  William often shared work with Isaac, and when his younger brother Felix came to live with him, they built a larger dugout, which Isaac helped with installing its roof.  When Isaac's friend Lou Clouse died about 1894, his widow married Felix.  It is believed that Lou may be buried near Felix and Mary in the Neeland's Cemetery, but if so, his is an unmarked grave.

Just to the east of Isaac's claim first lived the Green family, who moved to Pratt.  Following them was the Bentley family, who moved to Colorado and later to Salt Lake City.  After a brief occupancy by tenants, Frazee moved onto the land.  Isaac was particularly close to both the Green and Bentley families, and he and Frazee often worked together.

Eliza Campbell's stone, wife of William

Just east of Isaac's Timber claim lived Isabelle Ross, a divorced lady with children who claimed that quarter as a female head of household.  Isaac was kind to Mrs. Ross, often helping her with chores she couldn't do for herself, and she and her children frequently helped him with his potatoes.

North of Mrs. Ross lived William Campbell and his family.  He was elected State Representative for his district, first for the Union Labor Party and then twice for the People's Party.  He and Isaac were good friends and often shared political conversations.  He was frequently mentioned as a potential People's Party candidate for Governor, but family responsibilities forced him to decline.  William's wife died only a few days after Isaac's death, and William did not remain in the community very long following her death.

Just west of Campbell and north of Isaac's Timber claim lived George and Nancy Henn.  They were the couple who cared for Isaac in his final illness, and their claim for payment for that care was the largest claim against his estate, an excessively large amount, considering the favors he had given them in prior years, as well as the depressed wages during the time they cared for him.  In fact, Isaac's advice may have saved the life of Nancy's son, Frank Curtis, when the boy was young.  Nancy predeceased George by several years, and no one had his death date engraved on the stone, although he lived nearby according to census records and is probably buried next to her.

Neeland's Cemetery, George and Nancy Henn

West of Henn's and of Isaac's Timber claim are the claims of brother and sister, Jerome and Persis Vosburgh.  Persis claimed as an unmarried head of her own household, although she did help care for Jerome's children after the death of his wife.  Neighbors eager to claim Persis' homestead challenged her claim, saying she didn't work the land nor live on it full time, but Isaac and other neighbors supported Persis and she retained her claim.  She died in New York state while visiting relatives, but Jerome is buried with his wife in Neeland's Cemetery.  After the death of Persis, her land was acquired by G.G. John, and during the final months that Isaac lived in his home, John looked in on him every day.

To the north are identified Emerson, where Isaac helped build the school (See "Isaac Builds a School," 10-11-2012 in the blog archives), and beyond is the Rattlesnake Creek (See "The Rattlesnake Creek," 11-26-2012).  Near the left edge of the photograph is the name of my great grandfather George Hall, whose timber claim was along the creek.  A small white dot in the trees is visible below his name, and that is the location of his house.  George and Theresa Hall were close friends of Isaac, and they cared for him briefly in their creekside home when he was first unable to live alone.

Neeland's Cemetery, Jerome & Ann Vosburgh

The Stafford County seat of St. John is identified on the horizon.  Before Isaac acquired his horse Dolly, he walked to St. John.  The towns of Macksville and Naron are not within the photograph, but arrows show their direction at upper left and lower right.  Also shown at left by arrows are the direction of the homes of Doc Dix and the Beck family.  To the far right is the Gus Gereke claim.  In the early years Gus and Isaac frequently worked together.

As you can see from the photograph, the claims that surrounded Isaac with neighbors are now nearly all open fields without families living on the land.  Most of the trees planted by the early settlers have died or been removed, and the prairie is once again nearly without trees except along the creek and at the few homes that remain.

Very few descendants of those early homesteaders remain in the community, although homesteaders believed they were struggling to save their claims to be passed from generation to generation of future descendants.  Isaac's land passed to his brother, his sister, and the children of a sister who predeceased Isaac, but they sold Isaac's beautiful farm without ever seeing the prosperous homestead he had created on the prairie.

Isaac's Neighbor Joseph

Stone in Neelands Cemetery of Harriet Tousley

 Sometimes the adventure of documenting facts while researching Isaac B. Werner and his neighbors is a story in itself!  The serendipity of a discovery may seem too implausible to be believed, but here is one of those stories.

During some recent construction, my husband and I were at Lowe's for supplies.  As Larry was loading our purchases in the bed of our pickup, a gentleman noticed our Stafford County tag and struck up a conversation.  Since the man's interest dealt with history, my husband suggested that he speak with me, where I was waiting inside the store out of the cold.  We had a brief conversation and exchanged business cards, and I promised to check my list of surnames mentioned in Isaac's journal to see if his family surname might be among them.

It wasn't, and after e-mailing him that information I expected nothing further.  He did, however, forward my blog address to his cousin in Idaho because he thought she might find my blog about the suffragettes interesting.

Four days later he received a reply from his cousin, reminding him that a common ancestor named Tousley had lived in Stafford County.  She asked him to relay her interest in Stafford County history to me and to inquire whether I could add her name to my weekly reminder list.  He forwarded her request to me, along with her comment about their ancestral link to the Tousley settlers in Stafford County.  I immediate recognized the names she mentioned as familiar from Isaac's journal.

Harriet Gerst Tousley

Many surnames appear in Isaac's journal, with neighbors arriving in the community and struggling to survive on the prairie for a year or so before giving up their claims and moving on.  Joseph Tousley's name first appeared in the journal in 1885, and although there was no mention the following year, the Tousley name appeared frequently from 1887 through 1891 when the journal ends.

One name stood out for me because during my search for Isaac's grave (See "Finding Isaac's Grave, at 1-13-2012 in the blog archives) I had noticed a stone nearly identical to Isaac's gravestone, with the following engraving:  "Harriet G. Tousley, wife of J.C. Tousley, Died April 17, 1883, Aged 38 Years."

The 1880 Federal Census identified Joseph G. Tousley, his wife Harriet, and their three children, George (age 11), Carl (age 7), and Alice (age 4), and I knew from the gravestone that those young children had lost their mother only three years later.  Eager to learn what the descendant in Idaho might share with me about her ancestors (just as she was eager to learn what I knew about them), I began corresponding with her, and now I have a photograph of Harriet, believed to have been taken near the time of her marriage to Joseph.

Joseph Tousley

Joseph Tousley and Isaac were friends through their involvement in the Populist Movement, and they shared a curiosity about the co-operative farming colony in Sineola, Topolobampo, Mexico.  I had found a Passenger Manifest for Joseph Tousley from 1907 showing his arrival in Tampico, Mexico, and the 1900 Federal Census showed George and Carl, by then in their mid-twenties, living in Oklahoma.  Since I knew the family had left Kansas, I wondered if Joseph had finally visited the farming colony in Mexico that he and Isaac had discussed so many times.  I had also discovered that by 1893 Alice had married in Lawton, OK.

Some of the information I had gleaned from these records was confirmed by my Idaho correspondent, who shared what she knew from family records and oral history.  Joseph and his family did go to Oklahoma, where he had a newspaper for a while and continued his activity in politics.  I learned that Alice and her husband raised a family, and my correspondent was a descendant of the little girl I had worried about being raised in a male household after her mother's death.  My correspondent confirmed that Joseph had gone to Mexico, her understanding being that he had some sort of contract to sell government horses there.  I had found a Joseph Tousley living in a Soldiers' Home in Idaho in the 1910 Federal Census, and she confirmed that in the early 1900s he was in Idaho, very active in the GAR as an Ohio veteran of the Civil War.

George Tousley

I was particularly curious about the older son, George Tousley, since he had worked as a hired hand for Isaac in his late teens.  Now, because of a chance conversation with a stranger in a Lowe's parking lot, I have photographs of Isaac's close friend, the woman whose grave I had visited, and the young man who worked on Isaac's farm, planted a small plot of ground there to raise his own crop, and borrowed Isaac's horses not only to hire out as a laborer but also to travel to social engagements.

As I have mentioned in other blogs, (See "Isaac as Photographer" at 6-27-2012 in the blog archives) I know that neighbors came to Isaac's prosperous farm to have their pictures taken when their own farms were too impoverished to use as a background.  I know that pictures of Isaac's neighbors working their cooperative potato field on his land were taken.  I believe many photographs of early settlers who lived near Isaac Werner in Stafford County, KS and northern Pratt County near the Byers community must exist--if only their descendants knew how much I would love to locate those photographs!

I cannot give up hope that if a stranger in a different city managed by happenstance to lead me to these images of the Tousley family, perhaps others will appear to provide a path to more neighbors' stories and photographs!

(Please go to "Did Your Ancestor Know Isaac?" at 4-26-2012 in the blog archives if you had an ancestor living in the south part of Stafford County or the north part of Pratt County.  That blog contains a partial list of Isaac's neighbors.  If you find a family surname or know that your ancestor lived in the area during the late 1800s, and you have a photograph or story to share with me, contact me at txfen@msn.com or leave a comment at the end of this blog.)

Isaac Claims a Homestead

"He could not breathe in a crowded place--

He wanted his air and his open space--

He watched while civilization neared on the path

through the wilderness..."

William B. Ruggles, "The Pioneer"

The pull westward for Isaac B. Werner had begun while he was still a teenager, and soon after his father died in 1865, Isaac left his father's rich Berks County, PA fields in the Lebanon Valley.  Leaving behind the picturesque Pennsylvania-Dutch community, Isaac and his older cousin Henry traveled first to Indiana, but the promise of the western frontier pulled Isaac onward to Illinois.  In Rossville, IL Isaac established a prosperous business as a druggist and later a milling partnership, but after a few years the gradual civilizing of Illinois reawakened a longing for "his air and his open space," and in 1878 he claimed his homestead and a timber claim on the Great Plains of Kansas.

Posters enticed settlers

Isaac was not some dandified small town druggist without calluses on his hands nor lacking farming experience in his background.  Experience in the milling business had added some agricultural knowledge to his youthful experience on his father's farm.  Yet, not even the Illinois prairie years had prepared Isaac for farming in Kansas.  Foremost was the limited rainfall, which caused crops that were lush and promising in the spring to wither and die in summer's heat and drought.  Next was the fierce wind, which propelled the blast-furnace heat into tender crops.  Fields of corn that had managed to receive the necessary rain and escape grasshoppers and chinch bugs often succumbed to the wind's gritty sand that shredded leaves and blew the essential pollen away before it could fertilize the waiting kernel, ruining the crop for both fodder and the development of the corn.  Add to that the sandy loam soil, and nature's trick of hiding patches of gumbo in unexpected places, and Isaac and other settlers faced unanticipated agricultural challenges.

Original 1933 Cover

 Isaac was not alone in his decision to leave the more settled parts of America and start fresh on the vast prairie lands which had previously been the domain of Native Americans and a few trappers and hunters.  Many American children have been introduced to the saga of Western expansionism through the "Little House" books of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  In Little House on the Prairie, Laura's family built their log house near what is now Independence, KS, having moved into Indian Territory in anticipation of the land being opened for settlement in the near future.  In Little House in the Woods the family returned to Wisconsin to settle on a pre-emption claim.  In Little Town on the Prairie, the Ingalls family moved to South Dakota where Laura's father finally claimed a homestead and they remained, participating in the growth of the town of DeSmet.

Replica homestead

Each of the Wilder's attempts to claim land relied on a different means.  Briefly, these are the three situations.  The Homestead Act of 1862 was signed by Abraham Lincoln, but it did not open all of the Western land for homesteading.  Some eager settlers moved onto land that was not yet opened and attempted to fulfill the requirements for homesteading--building a structure in which to live, making improvements to their property, and physically remaining on the property the required amount of time to mature their claim as if it were homestead.  If that land were subsequently opened for homesteading, they had a head start on other claimants, usually having claimed the most desirable, more fertile land by pre-emption, and they could remain.  Pre-emption could also apply to buying a claim and finishing the requirements started by someone else.  In the case of Indian Territory, those settlers were not always rewarded by their early settlement, as the case of the Oklahoma Land Rush and the term "Sooners" shows.  When the government made a new agreement with the Indians in Oklahoma, and that land was opened for homesteading, early settlers were not allowed to prove up the land they had settled and improved.  Instead, they had to return to the boundary and participate in the Land Rush with everyone else.  Those who hid and pretended to have "rushed" for the land they staked were called Sooners, (whether they were new settlers or preemption settlers trying to secure the land they had developed), given that name because they jumped the starters' guns the morning of the rush, taking advantage of getting to their claim sooner than those who began the rush at the designated starting places and time.

Stafford Co. Map 1885

Isaac came to southernmost Stafford County to stake his homestead in 1878 on land officially open for homesteading.  He built his residence, initially a dugout, and began making improvements by planting trees and breaking sod, and he remained on the land for the requisite 5 years necessary to prove up his claim.  In order to secure his patent, he took two neighbors before a local judge to swear with him that he had lived on the land for the required time and had made improvements.

According to the US Department of the Interior statistics, more than 270 million acres of public land, or about 10% of the land that made up the 48 contiguous states, was transferred to private ownership under the Homestead Acts.  Isaac claimed 160 acres, the maximum allowed under the Homestead law, and received his patent from the government, signed by President Grover Cleveland.

(Remember, you can enlarge the images by clicking on them.)