Her father, Frank Dickerhoof, was born in Clearsprings, Maryland, in 1852, and moved with his parents, George and Mary Ann Brewer Dickerhoof, brothers and sisters to Illinois at the outbreak of the Civil War. He came on west to Kansas in 1867, when he was 15 years old. He worked as a cowboy near Grantville, which was near Topeka, for three years. In those days there were no fences, and the cattle were herded from place to place. He and another boy stayed with the cattle, riding horseback by day and sleeping under their wagon at night, even in midwinter and during snow storms.
When Frank was 18 years old, he came to Republic county, where his brothers and cousins had homesteaded. He rode his horse as far as Washington, Kansas, the first day, spent twenty-five cents for overnight lodging for himself and his horse; rode to Clyde, Kansas, the following day and again spent twenty-five cents for lodging. On the third day, he arrived at his relatives homes in Norway Township.
As he was not eligible to obtain a homestead until he was 21 years old, it was not until 1873 that he acquired his 160 acres, in Norway Township, three miles south of Norway, Kansas. His was the last homestead granted in Republic County, and covered land on both sides of the Republican River.
Frank Dickerhoof marred Melissa Belden in 1877, and they lived on his homestead in a sod house for two years, where their first child, and only son, David, was born. The following year, they built a four-room frame house, where my mother, May, was born.
After living six years on their homestead, mother and her brother moved with their parents to Norway, on the Republican River. Occasionally a few Indians, following the river trail, would come to Norway. Mother vividly remembered once hiding under the dining room table when some Indians came in without knocking, and by pointing and grunting, made it known that they wanted food and various articles about the room. Grandmother gave them what they wanted as she was afraid of making them angry.
In the winter when the family went to visit relatives, or made a rare trip to Scandia, they rode in a lumber wagon or a two-seated buggy. They had fur lap robes and each member of the family had a hot brick to keep his feet warm. Mother and her little sister Lottie, wore three flannel petticoats and long wool stockings, and grandfather wore a great coat made of horsehide and fastened with wooden pegs.
Many winters while the children were growing up, their meat consisted of prairie chicken, rabbit, and squirrel. Mother always maintained game must be cleaned and hung out to freeze before it could be cooked and eaten. A delicacy they sometimes had was possum pie, but mother did not care for it. She said it was too greasy.
Washing was always done out of doors using a great iron kettle to heat the water. White clothes were always boiled, and the soap was homemade from lye and lard after butchering. They kept the butter in a bucket on a rope hanging down in the well and later in the cistern.
An amusing incident occurred when mother was nearly seven years old, and her sister Lottie, was three. Their mother was going to visit a relative and planned to take the two little girls. She drove a team of spirited horses she had difficulty in controlling. When she started, she placed the girls in the back seat of the buggy and told them, in no uncertain terms, to be quiet and not to bother her while she was driving. The weather was warm and, after riding a few miles, the girls became bored and began grabbing at branches and sunflowers that came within reach as they rode along. Soon Lottie leaned too far to reach one and was pulled out. Mother sat horrified for a full mile, and then finally said, in a smell, meek voice "Ma, Lottie is out of the buggy." Needless to say, they had to drive back and get her.
The Republican River had to be forded at that time, as there was no bridge across it at Norway until 1887. One summer day, mother's parents and the children went with another family in a lumber wagon across the river, the current took them a little farther down stream, and the wagon box began lifting from the running gears. They all reached out and held on to the upright bolsters at the sides of the wagon to keep the wagon box on its wheels until they reached the other side of the river and were on dry land again.
When mother was a young girl in her teens, she spent many happy hours skating on the Republican River. The boys at that time thought nothing of skating to Scandia, seven miles away, and back in an afternoon. Everyone, even the grownups, had ice skates.
When mother was about fifteen years old, grandfather used to take the horse and buggy, and take my mother eighteen miles to Concordia so that she could take piano lessons at the Catholic Convent there. Her parents set a great store by book learnin' as they termed education in those days. Mother finished rural school and in 1896 attended the Great Bend Normal and Business College. In 1898 she attended the Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia.
During her first year of teaching the school house burned down, and she finished the term teaching in an upstairs room at the Bil Dunlap home, in the school district. Mother was eighteen when she began teaching school and often some of her pupils were boys who were older than she was as they went to school only when there was no work to done on the farm. Her year of teaching at Hungry Hollow was very frustrating. That year she had an unusually large number of young men in school who frequently decided to crawl out of the window and go have a smoke.
In 1904, mother married my father James Carney, whose father had homesteaded in 1872 in Beaver Township, also in Republic County. Mother and father celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1954. Their entire married life, with the exception of three years, was spent in Republic County, Kansas. At her death in September 1956, she was laid to rest only eleven miles from her childhood home. In every sense of the word, mother was a true Kansan.
Eva Carney Johnson
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