52 Ancestors Week 20: Travel

This prompt is a week late, and there is a substantial gap since the last post. Although this quarantine theoretically provides more time, it has been hard to establish a routine. (It’s hard even to remember which day of the week it is.) In addition to that—or perhaps because of that—I have been finding most of the prompts uninspiring. An idea may spring to mind, but then I realize either that it has already been written about, or that there is a lack of information to support my ideas. However, this theme of “Travel” brings definite ideas to mind, and ones on which it is currently quite pleasant to dwell. Aren’t we all longing to travel?

Last summer my parents and I took a road trip to eastern Washington state and into the Idaho panhandle, and the previous year we took a similar trip farther south. In the summer of 1911 my great-grandfather, John S. Brosius, also took a trip to Idaho, and saw some of the same country that we would see over a hundred years later. His impressions were reported in the Sedan Times-Star upon his return to Kansas.

Reading that article, it is clear that he and I were looking through very different eyes. I was looking for beauty in the landscape and novelty in the sights. John S. Brosius was looking through the eyes of a farmer, judging the possibilities of planting, plowing, and harvesting. “The farms are mere hilltops… and a team must be driven corkscrew fashion around the hills. No team could begin to pull a load straight up the hill or hold it back going down,” he says of the land around Weiser, where he visited John Walker, Ben Steinweden, “and other Chautauquans,” relocated there from John Brosius’ own home of Chautauqua county, Kansas.

My memories of the Weiser area are of a cute Old Town containing a decent music store and an offbeat furniture store, among other things, in the midst of picturesque velvety hills. To me, the rounded hills contributed to the charm of the place, and their steepness entered my mind only as adding a gratifying briskness to a jaunt, had I been given the opportunity to climb them. To me they appeared quite gentle. 

John S. Brosius lamented that “he does not believe the Snake river country, where many are taking claims, will be irrigated for years and years if it ever is.” I cannot speak to whether it has been irrigated in the last 110 years, although I suspect it has, because we drove over a dam, but the Hell’s Canyon area must have looked much like it looked to Great-Grandpa. While I admired the landscape, my mom’s comments were more reminiscent of John’s, if expressed in different terms. “It’s too dry,” she complained.

“Mr. Brosius says the Blackfoot country looked better to him than any other part of Idaho,” offered the Sedan Times-Star, but “He would not live there, he says, on account of the dust. It is something awful.” My family’s road trips did not extend quite so far to the east. I will be curious to one day compare my impressions of that area to my great-grandfather’s.



Here is a transcription of the entire article of John S. Brosius’ unflattering description of Idaho:

BACK TO SUNNY KANSAS
IDAHO’S LURE TOO WEAK TO TO HOLD JOHN BROSIUS.
SEES MANY DEFECTS THERE
“Corkscrew Farming” on Western Idaho’s Hills Has No Attraction for Him—Back Here to Stay.

John Brosius returned this week from a trip to Idaho and the northwest and that he very much prefers Kansas to that country is very evident from his conversation. He saw most of the Chautauqua colony in Idaho and says that nearly all of them, if not all, are satisfied and happy. But as for him, he will stay right here at Sedan. The lure of the west is not strong enough to pull him away.

Mr. Brosius visited John Walker, Ben Steinweden and other Chautauquans over near Weiser, iin the west part of Idaho. He found them happy and well although he says he would not like to farm such land. The farms are mere hilltops, he says and a team must be driven corkscrew fashion around the hills. No team could begin to pull a load straight up the hill or hold it back going down. The land is so steep that the grain is hard to harvest. Yet it produces good crops. Mr. Steinweden says he “cussed” his farm when he first went there but now he admits he “would not trade it for half of Chautauqua county.” Mr. Walker raised quite a lot of fruit last year but had difficulty in selling it as under the Idaho law fruit that is damaged cannot be sold at anything like a full price.

Mr. Brosius says the Blackfoot country looked better to him than any other part of Idaho. He would not live there, he says, on account of the dust. It is something awful. He found Chautauquans there doing well for the most part, although some of them are still hunting work.

As a whole, however, Mr. Brosius saw many drawbacks to the Idaho country. For instance, he does not believe the Snake river country, where many are taking claims, will be irrigated for years and years if it ever is. He says the farmers over at the other side of the state are likewise crying for water right now and can hardly get enough for any purpose. The whole country, he says, has a man for every job and in most cases, several men for every job. Some of the last delegation to Blackfoot are still out of work while others are in the beet sugar plant which will run only until Dec. 1. Mr. Brosius saw many men on the trains coming out of Idaho and most of them had, like himself, concluded that other countries were just as good if indeed not much better.

Citation:

"Back to Sunny Kansas," Sedan Times-Star, 7 Sep 1911, p. 1, col. 4; digital images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 26 Jan 2020), World Collection.

52 Ancestors Week 15: Fire

The Stroesser home, at 417 N. 40th, Omaha, Nebraska.

The first thought that came to mind upon seeing the prompt "Fire" was of the burning of the Hoyt house in 1948, but I already wrote about that for "Disaster" in Week 9. So this week I am going for a more lighthearted approach. (With what is going on in the world right now, I'm not exactly in the mood to write about my 2great-grandmother who burned to death.) I'll write about a different sense of the word fire. This post will be about the time that shots were fired at my Stroesser great-grandparents' house. That would be Harry and Mary Stroesser of Omaha, Nebraska.

Shots in the Night Send Watch to Jail

A shot pierced the stillness of the early morning hours in front of the home of Harry Stroesser, 417 North Fortieth street, Friday. Stroesser awakened, saw a man staggering towards the rear of his yard. Then came another shot. Police were notified.

William Pickens, block watchman living at 2014 Farnam street, was found near Thirty-first and Farnam streets, his revolver showing four empty shells which had recently been discharged. Pickens was charged with drunkeness and discharging firearms in the city.

Luckily the firing of these shots seems to have had no negative consequences, apart from the legal charges against the intoxicated shooter, which seems only reasonable.

If the newspaper article were the only source to share for this event, it would be interesting enough. But there may be more. In 2002, I received a copy of the oral history as remembered by one of my cousins, a grandchild of Harry and Mary Stroesser. An incident, heard second-hand, is recalled in that typescript. It is possible, but probably not provable, that the information given in the newspaper article is only part of the story. There may have been more to the story, which would have been inappropriate to share with the authorities at the time.

The date of the newspaper article was 26 Aug 1933, about three months before the repeal of Prohibition. "With...prohibition the rule of the day, Grandpa turned to a form of bootlegging," my cousin reveals. 

Aunt Clara’s husband Tudd Hill says he remembers a still in the basement at the family home at 417 North 40th Street, but he says Grandpa never sold the drink. He would trade it or serve to his friends who came over for hours of cribbage in the basement, while Grammy stayed in the kitchen with the kids.

My dad (Joe) remembers men coming to the side window at night and sneaking away in the darkness. One man while sneaking away, bumping into the tire swing in the backyard and, thinking it was someone apprehending him, shot the tire with his pistol.

Could this be the real story behind the drunk block watchman firing shots outside the Stroesser house? His inebriated condition could be the logical conclusion of an evening of cribbage and bathtub liquor. The friendship between the shooter and Harry Stroesser might have caused them to change a fact or two around for the authorities: i.e. say that he was approaching the house rather than leaving it, so as not to implicate Harry as a possible source of the alcohol in his system.

Of course, this is all pure speculation on my part. I have no proof, and scarcely any evidence, that the incident reported in the newspaper and that recalled by my cousin are the same. It does seem unlikely, however, that there would have been two such similar events. But if there were, it only adds to this week's prompt of "fire," with more shots fired!