district.
Usually seven or eight scholars showed up, never more than ten, most with Irish names. The families were large, but only one child or two from each family attended school because that’s how many pairs of shoes they had. Their parents referred to it as the Maring school because a farmer named Maring owned the land it was on—owned the entire section, all 640 acres. Ten acres or so he had in corn, another ten in oats for the livestock, a few acres of sorghum so they could make syrup and have something sweet to put on their corn bread. The rest was unbroken grazing land. Dreams of growing grain, maybe even a garden of vegetables, died hard and slowly in these parts, and Maring always talked wistfully about putting in more corn. But in most years there just wasn’t enough rain. Hay was the big thing in Holt County. They cut it in July or August and loaded it in the train cars at Emmet—in fact the native hay was the reason the Elkhorn Valley Branch of the Chicago and NorthWestern Railway stopped at Emmet. Prairie coal or poor man’s coal, they called it, and in the ence of real coal or wood or buffalo bones, it kept them warm through the winter, though the farmers and their wives and children cursed the endless task of twisting it and feeding it, hank after hank, into the hay burners on top of their stoves.
Ten days into January, Etta decided to close school. The weather had turned so frigid that the parents worried their children would get frostbite or chilblains or even freeze to death on their way to school. Families couldn’t afford to lose a child to injury or death: Out on the frontier, working children made the difference between surviving and going under. Keeping children safe was more important than educating them. So Etta let it be known that the term was over. The school would open again in spring, but Etta wouldn’t be there to teach it. She was going back to live with her family in Seward. She, too, had had enough of Holt County.
Before she left, Etta had one piece of business to attend to. In order to get paid for her last month of teaching, she had to have an order signed by the school district superintendent, which she would then present to the district treasurer. It seems urd that in a district with ten students she had to go through the formality of obtaining a signed paper attesting that she had fulfilled her contractual agreement to teach “in a faithful and efficient manner . . . to keep the schoolhouse in good repair, to provide the necessary fuel and supplies,” etc.—but rules were rules, even out on the frozen prairie. Without a signed order, the treasurer could not pay her.
So on the morning of January 12, 1888, Etta Shattuck set out on foot for the house of J. M. Parkins to get the order signed. The next day, Friday the thirteenth, with her wages in her pocketbook, she would walk to O’Neill and get on a train and go back to her parents in Seward.
Etta, like her father, was a devout Methodist. Her conversion experience had come at the age of seventeen, just before the Shattucks left Seward, and her pastor at the Seward Methodist Episcopal church affirmed that her faith was “sublime.” When she was alone, Etta was in the habit of singing hymns and praying silently or even out loud when the spirit moved her, so it’s likely that she was lost in song or prayer as she walked out to J. M. Parkins’s house that warm, breezy morning.
Later, when the newspapers scrounged for every crumb they could find, it was reported that the father of the family with whom Etta boarded shouted after her when the wind suddenly shifted and the dark cloud raced out of the northwest. The dark cloud that heralded the blizzard. He shouted for a long time, he said, hoping against hope that Etta would hear him and turn around. He shouted as loud as he could into the rising wind and the suddenly seething air, but he didn’t dare venture out after her.
CHAPTER THREE
Disturbance
Though the
Usually seven or eight scholars showed up, never more than ten, most with Irish names. The families were large, but only one child or two from each family attended school because that’s how many pairs of shoes they had. Their parents referred to it as the Maring school because a farmer named Maring owned the land it was on—owned the entire section, all 640 acres. Ten acres or so he had in corn, another ten in oats for the livestock, a few acres of sorghum so they could make syrup and have something sweet to put on their corn bread. The rest was unbroken grazing land. Dreams of growing grain, maybe even a garden of vegetables, died hard and slowly in these parts, and Maring always talked wistfully about putting in more corn. But in most years there just wasn’t enough rain. Hay was the big thing in Holt County. They cut it in July or August and loaded it in the train cars at Emmet—in fact the native hay was the reason the Elkhorn Valley Branch of the Chicago and NorthWestern Railway stopped at Emmet. Prairie coal or poor man’s coal, they called it, and in the ence of real coal or wood or buffalo bones, it kept them warm through the winter, though the farmers and their wives and children cursed the endless task of twisting it and feeding it, hank after hank, into the hay burners on top of their stoves.
Ten days into January, Etta decided to close school. The weather had turned so frigid that the parents worried their children would get frostbite or chilblains or even freeze to death on their way to school. Families couldn’t afford to lose a child to injury or death: Out on the frontier, working children made the difference between surviving and going under. Keeping children safe was more important than educating them. So Etta let it be known that the term was over. The school would open again in spring, but Etta wouldn’t be there to teach it. She was going back to live with her family in Seward. She, too, had had enough of Holt County.
Before she left, Etta had one piece of business to attend to. In order to get paid for her last month of teaching, she had to have an order signed by the school district superintendent, which she would then present to the district treasurer. It seems urd that in a district with ten students she had to go through the formality of obtaining a signed paper attesting that she had fulfilled her contractual agreement to teach “in a faithful and efficient manner . . . to keep the schoolhouse in good repair, to provide the necessary fuel and supplies,” etc.—but rules were rules, even out on the frozen prairie. Without a signed order, the treasurer could not pay her.
So on the morning of January 12, 1888, Etta Shattuck set out on foot for the house of J. M. Parkins to get the order signed. The next day, Friday the thirteenth, with her wages in her pocketbook, she would walk to O’Neill and get on a train and go back to her parents in Seward.
Etta, like her father, was a devout Methodist. Her conversion experience had come at the age of seventeen, just before the Shattucks left Seward, and her pastor at the Seward Methodist Episcopal church affirmed that her faith was “sublime.” When she was alone, Etta was in the habit of singing hymns and praying silently or even out loud when the spirit moved her, so it’s likely that she was lost in song or prayer as she walked out to J. M. Parkins’s house that warm, breezy morning.
Later, when the newspapers scrounged for every crumb they could find, it was reported that the father of the family with whom Etta boarded shouted after her when the wind suddenly shifted and the dark cloud raced out of the northwest. The dark cloud that heralded the blizzard. He shouted for a long time, he said, hoping against hope that Etta would hear him and turn around. He shouted as loud as he could into the rising wind and the suddenly seething air, but he didn’t dare venture out after her.
CHAPTER THREE
Disturbance
Though the
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