Early Stratton homesteader recalls living in a dug-out

It always pays to go through files, though I don’t get it done very often. Taking the time these last few days has led to some gems I put aside for future articles and then promptly lost in a myriad of papers! I started this quest looking for one thing and ended up finding everything but what I was looking for.

This story will be in two segments, the first concentrating on their homestead days and the second on Stratton.

From the September 30, 1937, issue of the Stratton News written by Mrs. E. D. Craw. At the age of 22, I left Albany, New York, and headed for Stratton, Nebraska, with our two little girls, Laura and Admira. Mr. Craw had gone on ahead to prepare our home for us. If ever there was a homesick person, I was one on arriving in Stratton and viewing those barren hills and then my future home. I have often thought how well our oldest girl, Laura, then three years old, expressed my own thoughts when she, on entering our “dug-out” exclaimed, ‘Well, such a looking hole, I never saw.’ “

“ In November of 1884, we located on a homestead one-half mile northeast of Stratton, now owned by Mr. Henry Kyle. From there we moved onto a preemption on the Muddy Creek. Neighbors joining us were Jud Post, Mike Brady and Dan Swayze and other near neighbors were Wards, Whistlers, Daileys, Loops and Howell’s. We all lived either in soddies or dug-outs. Our mansion was an eight by ten dug-out, protected from the wild, long horned range cattle by a barbed wire fence electrified only by the winds. ( Whoever heard of a storage battery in those days.) At that time there were no herd laws, and the cattle roamed the prairies everywhere. Many a time I have been chased into the dug-out by them. Those cattle had horns so long they looked like tree branches to me and when I went to get fuel or water, many is the time a white sheet hung in the ever blowing wind would put the cattle with their long horns on the run and sometimes to near stampede. I would hurry to get my fuel and water before then returned to scare me stiff. The herd law was passed in 1886 and was I glad.”

“Range cattle was not the only pest we had to put up with. I had to hide the children’s clothing at night, where the pack rats couldn’t reach them, or there was nothing for them to wear the next morning. I have passed many a sleepless night, killing fleas, bed-bugs, rats and mice and seeing rattle snakes on the banks and in the pole rafters of the dug-out. You are right, I kept as far away from them as I could. Oh, that was some life!”

“Our furniture was not the kind that we feared for scratches on it. For a cupboard, I had a cracker box fastened on the wall with wooden pegs and a newspaper for a curtain. Our other furniture equaled it in every way.”

“We used to haul water from the C. V. Bailey well, where his little log cabin and store were located. That was the first house built in Stratton and was located on the southeast corner of Porter’s place in the east part of town, where a grove of trees now stands. A few years ago, it was moved by Ed Ernest, to his farm northeast of town, and made into a barn. How I regretted to see it moved, a land mark that should have remained for the younger generation of Stratton to see.”

SWNGS library is located at 322 Norris Ave., the Temple Building, Rooms 2-7 on the second floor.