| Notes |
The story of the Rev. John H. Dills, given by grandson George G. Schiffsen on Nov. 11, 1975:
When we came West from Virginia in 1902 and I was stationed as pastor of our Corbin Park Methodist Church, at Spokane, I had not the slightest idea of getting entangled with land or becoming a pioneer homesteader and pioneer preacher.
In fact, I sold my 266 acre farm bequeathed to me for $3,500 and used this money on my education and part of our support while serving my apprenticeship in the Old Baltimore Conference. I had a burning desire to humbly consecrate my life to help build up the Christian cause in this western land. However, I had not been in the West long before it was suggested to me that we should get a homestead. My brethren were insistent on our doing so.
They said it was very simple and easy, all I had to do was find one, file on it build a shack, have Mrs. Dills and the two small boys, John and Paul, live on it for a few months, hire someone to plow a few acres then commute, a word I never had heard of before, meaning that we pay the Government $2.50 per acre, and that we could borrow that easily.
The idea, which at first was dismissed, after a while began to look feasible and desirable. I began to piously think that since I had given up a farm for the sake of the gospel, that the good Lord was willing to restore a farm. Paul Priest a sturdy farmer and one of my official church members offered to help find a homestead.
We first went to Coulee City, stayed at a typical village hotel. In those days sheets and pillow cases were washed only when the proprietor happened to think of it. We slept in the same bed. The room was cold, the covers were few, the lumps in the mattress were many and where the lumps did not hit you, the wire bed springs would stick you in the side.
So we put in quite a bit of the night talking about our quest for land. Upon the advice of the real estate man at Coulee City, next day, we set out to walk to Wilson Creek, a boom town and about 20 miles distant, which meant straight across the unbroken prairie pasture land.
The day was bright and crisp. It was March. Remember, I was a real tenderfoot. Paul Priest knew directions. There before us stretched a vast panorama of grass and sagebrush, here was a dead cow, there a dead horse, then a jack rabbit would bound away, and in the distance there was the nerve shattering howl of the coyote. We walked beside the walls of deep coulees and along great crumbling rock, left there by the ancient glaciers.
Along about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, we came to a bachelor homestead shack and told him we were hungry. He said all he had in the house was some cold flat cake, which is biscuit bread not cut out, and molasses and we would be welcome to that. It certainly tasted good.
He had a small patch of wheat stubble and I asked him about how many bushels per acre he had harvested. He said 20 bushels to the acre. I afterward realized what a good booster he was, for the stubble clearly showed that he got about five bushels to the acre. I soon learned that the early settlers were experts in exaggerating about the yield of wheat.
Before nightfall we reached the town of Wilson Creek, two small hotels, three barrooms, quite a few real estate agents, a few business houses and a dwelling here and there.
One agency in particular, had sleeping quarters for their clients, held them as near as possible from contact with others till they had shown them the railroad land and clinched a deal. This method did not last long.
Next morning we hired a team and drove south 20 miles and Paul Priest advised me to locate on the Southeast quarter of Section 34.20.29. Someone had previously filed on this land and I had to buy the relinquishment, which was also a new word, and I paid the bank $125 for this and $22.50, which was the Homestead filing fee.
We returned feeling pretty good and I reported that we had a wheat ranch. I am writing this after 48 years. We still have the homestead, but much dust has blown across the fields since then.
In July I bought lumber in Wilson Creek. The boards showed considerable decay before it was sawed and it had plenty of knots, many of them loose, which gave each board a personality.
The load of lumber cost $18 and the delivery fee was $10. I secured the help of a German neighbor who became a leader of his homesteading community. To them, I was a novelty, a preacher and homesteader. Very soon he found out that I was a Methodist and a democrat and that finished me with him.
You see, when the land hungry Europeans at the request of Jim Hill, the great Empire Builder, came to the Dakotas, then migrated to Washington's Big Bend Country. Hill told them that when they were entitled to vote, that they should always vote Republican. Most of them did. We soon had the one room homestead shack built.
|
1866 - 1956 (90 years)
