On the Prairie
In the 1930s, George Strester remembers his father, a preacher who tried farming in Nebraska
in 1873.
The Strester family celebrated a memorable Thanksgiving when their livestock ate a crop of rotten
onions:
Father said we'll have to have something beside vegetables to eat, so he
decided to butcher
the cow. She had gone dry anyway (probably because of eating so many onions) and was nice and
fat and would make
prime beef and enough to last all winter.
We children all shed a few tears when Old Broch was killed, for she was a family pet, but we
had to have
something to eat. That was the day before Thanksgiving, and the next day mother planned a real
Thanksgiving
feast -- a large roast of meat with potatoes and carrots laid around it. Something we had not
had for years.
But there was a peculiar odor that filled the house while it was cooking. Mother said she might
have spilled
something on the stove which in burning, caused the stench.
The table was set and the roast brought on and how delicious it looked, and father, after
giving thanks for
the prosperous year and the many blessings that we had enjoyed, carved the roast, placing a
liberal helping of
meat, carrots and spuds on each plate. Mother took a bite and looked at father; he took a
taste and looked at
us kids. I took a mouthful and my stomach heaved, and horrors of horrors, there was that
familiar taste of
rotten onions. So our dinner was entirely spoiled and all we had to eat was johnny cake
straight with nothing
to put on it or go with it. Still
father did not say any cuss words and though sorely tried, was still able to say 'well,
well, that surely is
too bad.
Well we took the remains of Old Broch and buried them out in the field, and my little
sisters laid flowers
on her grave. Father decided then and there to quit farming, and although this all happened
over 60 years ago,
to this day I just can't say that I'm very crazy about sorghum or onions.
For the full story, in American
Life Histories,
1936-1940, search on preacher,
farming
to find the document,
"
A Preacher Tries Farming."
A Close Call
In 1938, Mrs. Hulda Esther Thorpe remembers the dangers that settlers faced on the prairie
in the 1800s,
and the many reasons settlers had for giving thanks:
One of the best Thanksgiving dinners we ever knew of was when a
family of settlers
had their nice wild turkey dinner taken by the Indians, who came in silently and just shoved
the folks back
and eat it up.
They did not harm the white people though and after they were gone the women made a big
corn bread and
with what few things the Indians left, they had a feast, the best as the daughter tells, that
she ever eat.
This was because they were so happy and thankful that the Indians spared them. |
View
of an
American Indian camp with four large tipis standing at the edge of a wooded area.
Frame
with
pemmican or hides hanging at the right; two figures, facing camera, standing to the left of
center
Kansas Territory [between 1844 and 1860], from
America's First Look into the Camera:
Daguerrotypes, 1842-1862 |
This is one of many stories Mrs. Thorpe remembers from her pioneer childhood. To read more,
in American Life Histories,
1936-1940,
search on Hulda Esther Thorpe to
find
the document entitled,
"Mrs.
Hulda Esther
Thorpe."
The Worker's Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving didn't always mark a joyous respite from work. Here, in a Depression-era
interview, a marble
worker in Vermont tells the story of a Thanksgiving Day uprising at the Proctor marble quarry,
staged during
the early days of labor organizing:
| The time we took over Proctor we showed them our strength, though. It was
Thanksgiving, and mighty little Thanksgiving for some of us. Some of the men and women wanted to go
out to Proctor while the Proctors were enjoying their big dinner, and show them how little their
workers
had to be thankful for. I tried to discourage them, but when I found they were determined to go,
I went
along, with a lot of my friends, to keep them from getting tough. So hundreds of us landed
into Proctor . The
sheriffs and deputies tried to stop us, and we got the bunch of them and locked them up and
took the town over.
Then we paraded all afternoon through the streets. The next day the company unloaded a gang
of deputies into
Proctor and from then on nobody could stand on the corner, or collect in even twos or threes,
without being
busted up. |
Marble
quarry,
near Rutland, Green Mtns., Vt.
[between 1900 and 1906],
from Touring
Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920 |
To read more about marble quarrying in Vermont in the early 20th century, in
American Life Histories, 1936-1940,
search on marble Vermont. Among the
documents retrieved will be
Interview
No. 7
from which the above excerpt was taken.
Thanksgiving in the Civil War
|
