I was looking for a picture of one of my mother’s forebears, a fierce-looking fellow with a Spanish moustache and piercing eyes. He wasn’t actually Spanish, but as captain of a Spanish ship, he had acquired many characteristic habits and manners. My search was sidetracked by a small bundle of letters written by my grandparents in the early 1900’s. They had been living in a bleak-looking cabin in Kansas and were hoping to homestead in Colorado when two of the letters were written.
At the time, my mother was about two years old. She had a baby sister and an older brother, and before them there had been a sister who died in fancy. Even at that, my grandmother was a very young woman, having been married at age fifteen. Her name was Addie; Grandpa was George and Art, Eber and Harry were Grandma’s brothers.
“February 2, 1906 (Addie’s letter to her parents.)
Well how are you all, we are all well, haven’t been sick this winter to speak of. George starts for Colorado tomorrow at 5 P.M. from Vinton. You write while he is gone and when he gets back will write and tell you if he got a homestead or not. Now he is going to Rowley. I will take my carpets in the front room up while he is gone. Ma, why can’t you and Pa hitch on the bobsled and bring Eber and Harry and come down. Bring them all if you can. You can get someone to do the chores. You better come.
“I haven’t done my breakfast dishes yet and it is nearly 8 o’clock. Arthur and Elva must come to the dance the 22nd. Clate says he will drive and they won’t upset less than 6 times coming home. Well, be sure and write. –Addie”
A letter written the following December from Wiggins, Colorado where he and Bill (his sister’s husband) found work building a dam for a reservoir, is from my grandfather to another brother-in-law, Don Pingree in Fairbank, Iowa. He writes, in part.
“Land is on the boom down south of here. King’s wife wrote him a letter and said she thought, by spring, it would be selling for $25 per acre. Addie is batching it now and is getting along quite well. She has plenty to eat and wood to burn and water at the door, so guess she will get along without me, as I am no good at any rate.
“Bill and I get $9.60 per day. This (dam) is a big thing, the inlet ditch is 30 feet wide on the bottom and 70 on top and from 14 to 20 deep. This running full of water for 14 months will fill it, so you can see it is quite a little pond. We are 50 miles from the mountains and they look 18. We get up at 5 and go to bed at 8. We use four horses on a frame.”
My grandparents did homestead in Colorado. I found an interesting letter that Grandma wrote describing her preparations to go on the train with the children. She tells about going to a church “sociable” and some other farewell events before they left, and about wrapping her jars of canned goods in straw to protect them. Unfortunately, Grandma’s penmanship left a little to be desired and, since she wrote, apparently with a dull pencil, difficult to decipher. To make matters worse, she was inclined to add last-minute thoughts around the margins and upside-down between the lines. She was also adept at squeezing a lot of information in a small space by using abbreviations such as “hope 2 C U B4 Xmas.” I’m pretty sure she’d have been able to come up with great combinations for today’s vanity license plates and would have been a wizard at texting!
I acquired these letters several years ago when a cousin of mine decided to get rid of all the “junk” my grandmother and aunt had saved. To my disappointment, there were many more letters that had already been destroyed before I found these. But, at least, I have this little peek into the lives of some of my ancestors and have been able to see my grandparents as a young couple starting out to make a life for themselves.