Wednesday, November 10, 2010

W. A. HUTCHINS FAMILY

The following letter was received from Mrs. Minnie Hutchins Stone.  She is 85 years old and in a nursing home in Hastings, Nebraska where her daughter lives, although she has a home in Lincoln.  She can now walk after recovering from a broken hip.

Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Hutchins, my parents, came to Norway Township from Albia, Iowa in a covered wagon with a cow tied behind, in September of 1879.  We stopped at Concordia for three weeks, until my father rented a farm--the Spivey place, just over the bluff on the river bottom to the Mellen place, which was a mile south of Norway.  There were three of we children, Jeff, Cora, and myself (Minnie).  Jeff and Cora were older than I, but I can remember when we drove into the yard of the place which was to be our home.  The yard was very green and Jeff and Cora jumped out of the wagon, running to play in the green grass.  It was "salt" grass.  Perhaps some people know salt grass--it was full of "stickers" which are as sharp as needles.

We were there three years.  We also lived on the Brewer place in a sod house and attended Fairview School Dist. 93.  It was then called the South School and the Scrivner School Dist. 23 was called the North School.  Our neighbors were the Dickerhoofs (on farms) the Mellens, Tillers, Piersons, many Swedes and Norwegians--all good neighbors.  Frank and Sota Reynolds lived in a sod house, as did the Samp and fat Scrivners.  I remember one day, Melissa Dickerhoof (Mrs. Frank D.) brought her children to school and as she drove across the prairie on her way home, the horses ran away and she just seemed to float out o fthe buggy with her baby in her arms.

My father had no place for his corn, only on the ground.  The neighbor's cattle helped themselves to it and mother kept busy driving them away.  One night she took them a little farther than usual and ran face to face into a man.  I guess he was just as frightened as she was because they both ran.

There were not many roads going back to the South School then.  My first teacher was Chester Dutton, a graduate of Harvard University.    I still have a card he gave me.  He cut notches in the window sill to tell when it was recess and told noon time by the shadow of the sun.

I am told the Scrivner School has been built into another building in Norway and the South School was sold and removed.

While we lived on the Spivey place on the river, my father had diphtheria  There were no bridges and Jeff was not big enough to row a boat even if we had been lucky enough to find on our side of the river--which we were not.  My father was so ill we thought he would die, be he walked to the river, carried his clothes, swam the river and walked to Dr. Scotts.  The doctor called him all kinds of names but got him home and he lived although he was terribly sick.

While we were on this place I remember two big fires that came from the north.  One jumped the river and came down the valley.  My father and Bill Edgar who lived in a house nearby, tried plowing around the houses to try to save them, but one fire jumped the plowing.  It burned the tongue out of our wagon and the feathers off the chickens.  I remember that my mother and Mrs. Edgars dressed chickens far into the night.  Dances and card playing were the popular amusements of that time.  My parents and Mr. and Mrs. T. A. Nelson seemed to be "tops" at this.

I did not enjoy it as I did not like to stay up at night and then walk home.

Ella Mellen Logsdon had a picture of the Spivey house in a flood in the 30's.  Only the top was showing just before it went out in the flood.

I suppose I am one of the oldest of the Norway settlers left.

We know and loved the Dr. Scotts.  I attended North School also and Vera Crosson was my teacher.  My brother died in California and my parents and sister Cora in Lovewell.  Many pioneer friends are buried in Valley cemetery.  I am the last of my family and have lived in Lincoln, Nebraska forty years.

By Minnie Hutchins Stone, Hastings, Nebr.

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