Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast KansasBristow, John T.
Philosophy
Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas
Bristow, John T.
Nemaha County (Kan.) -- History; Wetmore (Kan.) -- History
Matilda Isaacson, a very pretty girl, later, married Alfred Hazeltine.
By reason of his living in a farm home on the opposite side of town,
Alfred was also considered as belonging. Well, in fact, Alfred did live
in town several years prior to his marriage. We roomed together at the
Overland Hotel when he was engaged in business, partner in the Buzan,
Hazeltine & Hough Lumber Company, and I was clerking in Than
Morris’ store. Our family was then — ten years after first coming to
Wetmore—doing a three-year stretch on a portion of the Charley Hazeltine
farm west of Alfred’s place, beyond the timber on the south side of the
creek. And I was working out a store bill. Father still worked at his
trade in town, but he could go home before dark; and, anyway, he wasn’t
afraid of Erickson’s ghost—nor panthers. More about Erickson’s ghost and
the panthers, later. My work kept me in the store until 10 o’clock, at
night. After marrying, Alfred Hazeltine built a home in town, the house
now owned by Adam Ingalls. And later he bought the Charley Hazeltine
120-acres adjoining his farm, and moved back to the country. His brother
Charley and family went to Payette, Idaho. Alfred Hazeltine was a fine
man. He was deacon in the Baptist Church. One time when a protracted
meeting was in progress, he said to me, “By-damn, You, you ought to join
the Church.”
Andrew J. Maxwell, with his wife Lizzie and two children, Demmy and
May, and, at this time, the estranged wife of Elisha Maxwell, lived on
a homestead adjoining town-and, like the Isaacsons and Andersons and
Alfred Hazeltine, were regarded as town folk. Elisha Maxwell, brother
of Andy, lived part time with his mother in town, as did also his
wife. Elisha’s wife was the daughter of Matt Randall, then living near
Ontario, seven miles south-west of Wetmore. There was much in common
between the town folk and those borderites. Let it be a picnic or a
dog-fight they were all on hand. Altogether they made one big-shall I
say—happy family. This, however, strictly speaking, would not be quite
right. Gus Mayer built the first residence in Wetmore—the Neville
dwelling on the corner where the First National Bank now stands. His
daughter Lillie (Mrs. Peter Cassity) was the first child born in the
town—though Irving Isaacson was born earlier in a temporary shack near
the present depot before the town was established.
There was a one-room school house on the site of the present City hall,
with one teacher, John Burr—in 1869. I was nearly eight years old
then, and my brother Charley was a little over nine. This was to be our
first—and last — school. Charley died at the age of eighteen; and I was
out of school—not graduated, not expelled, but out—before the shift to
the present location on the hilltop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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