Life Story Written by James Martin Pendroy - (From his Pendroy family in Minn.)

LIFE SKETCH

BY JAMES MARTIN PENDROY

1862-1948

A special thanks to the Pendroy family in Minnesota for providing this additional life story. At eight pages length it contains some information in the shorter version provided by the Stickels family. Since there is different information in each one, I have left them both published on the site here.

Sauk Centre, Minnesota. February 12, 1940. To my children and grandchildren I hope this Life Sketch will be handed down for a good many generations.

Our Grandparents immigrated to America about the year 1700 A.D. from England, Scotland and Switzerland. First to Carolina, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa in 1849 to Otley. I was born October 27, 1862. I was one of a family of seven children born to (Jacob) Andrew and Margaret Pendroy. James Martin Pendroy, the writer of this Sketch. I had five sisters and one brother-Julia, Barbara, Ollie, Lizzie and Maggie, and Charles William. I am the only one left of this family living and I am 77 years old the 27^th of October 1939.

The year 1880 the family left Otley and moved to Menlo, Iowa and lived there 3 years and in 1882 the writer got acquainted with Susana Messinger and was married the 31st of January 1883. She was the oldest girl in a family of 12 children and was born close to Muncie, Indiana.

The 19^th of May 1883 with my Father and Mother, sister Ollie and her husband Marcellis Walker and sister Maggie and brother Charles we started on a long drive that we was on the road 73 days. Landed two miles north of Pendroy, McHenry County, North Dakota on the Mouse River. At that time it was 125 miles to the nearest trading point Devils Lake and Bismarck. At that time it was a vast plain from Devils Lake to the Rocky Mountains, with buffalo bones by the 1000’s scattered the whole country. Well, we all were glad when we got to the Mouse River.

My Father and Mother were getting up in years at that time. When we started on our trip my Father had 46 head of cattle and 10 or 12 head of horse had two covered wagons and one canned spring wagon. About 15 miles a day was as far as we could drive the cattle. We had a tent and camped out the whole trip. Susie and I slept in one wagon the whole trip and she drove a pair of spotted horses all the way. We slept in that wagon 6 months before we had a house to go into.

Winter was coming and we hat to put up lots of hay for all the cattle and horses. It was a long way to town. It would take two weeks to make a trip to town for flour and the groceries for all winter. By the first of December we had up two rooms 14 x 16. My Father and Mother lived in one, I and Susie in the other. So we all built fast to have a house for the winter.

The route from Menlo, Oval Lake, Sac City, Ida Grove and, Sioux City, Iowa then into South Dakota territory. North and South had been made two states but not admitted to Statehood. That was through an Indian reservation, first they were friendly.

We had a good outfit for camping, with a sheet iron stove to bake bread in. We had a flour chest in the back end of one of the wagons where the bread was always made. I don’t know how it happened to be but Susie always made the biscuits and one-day when she was making the bread a big Sioux Indian came up and looked in the wagon and scared her awful bad. But he didn’t mean any harm. The Indians had been on the warpath a short time before that up in Montana. The old Chief Sitting Bull was making some trouble long about that time. This was only four years after Custers Massacre in Montana.

Some neighbors wanted my Father to drive some cattle. So when we got ready to go we had 125 head of cattle. Uncle James Pendroy and his family were moving to North Dakota at the same time and some of the cattle where theirs. They shipped through on the train all our household goods and staked out some claims.

The Government hadn’t surveyed the land so any body could stake out a claim of 160 acres and build on it and hold it until the Government surveyed it. They could then file it, then anybody could get 160 acres and live on it for 6 months and pay $1.25 an acre. A homestead of 160 acres could be gotten by living on that land 5 years and improving it and get a deed and land grant from the government and they could take a tree claim and clear out 10 acres and in 5 years get a deed for it. I got three claims in, that was 480 acres. That was in Grover Cleveland’s time when he was president. We arrived at our destination

The 3rd of August 1883. As I said on a previous page, we was glad to get moved in our house. Well, the winter past off very good. Uncle Jim’s and Marion Pace families, that was quite a bunch, so we got along fine

Then some time in February 1884 we was expecting our first baby. On the 27^th of February the baby was born. Well, we got along fine that winter, the next spring we staked out a claim out on the prairie and put up a log house and lived there that summer and plowed up about 20 acres of sod. Then in the fall my Father bought out a squatters rights and we moved down in the timber on the Mouse River .I bought my Father’s rights and we did not built a home for a good many years. I took that as a homestead and in 6 months improved it and gave $1.25 for a acre. That was in 1885, going 125 miles to Devils Lake to the land office.

I and my Father worked together for a good many years, put up our hay together. I fed the big cattle and fed the calves. We drifted along just like everybody else, trying to live and improve our land.

Then in 1886 Susie went back home and Gertrude was born the 3^rd of October 1886. Then the first of November that year my Father and Brother Charlie and myself met Susie and the two children, now Lizzie and Gertrude at Devils Lake still 125 miles away. We had two covered wagons taking back provision for 6 months. What a difference in the mode of traveling of today and 53 years gone by. As I am writing this with the auto’s traveling at 60 miles an hour and getting the news from all over the world right at your finger tips.

The day Susie got to Devils Lake it came about 4 inches of snow and only two stopping places in 100 miles to where Towner in McHenry Co. is now. Well, we got there in two hard days. Susie and I slept in the house and Father and Charlie slept in the covered wagon. About 3 ½ days we got home safe. The last 40 miles were hard; nothing to guide us but sod mounds stood up two feet high every 40 rods. We was all glad we got home O.K. and I sure made it a point to never have to make a trip again like that. A good many people had narrow escapes of freezing to death and a good many did freeze to death. In the next ten years I was out in a good many bad snowstorms, but I was sure to keep in sight of the timber on Mouse River.

Well, we was glad to be home again to be home again and I went about my work whistling and singing. That is what the neighbors told. And I remember that after more than 50 years as I am writing this. Well by the time there was several neighbors and it wasn’t all work and no play. Several would get together and tap the lite fancy to to our hearts content, and Susie and I could do that. A Norwegian played the violin and a colored man the banjo.

Some times several would go to Devils Lake together. One time about the first of November, 4 or 5 started for Devils Lake. There was 4 or 5 inches of snow on the ground at the time. There was a house out of Devils Lake about 4 miles it was about 14 feet square.

All of the boys were my cousins. Marion Pace and myself, when we got to go to bed all the other boys had got ahead of us and the other travelers and their families. Well, the floor was packed with the other boys and travelers so Marion Pace and I couldn’t get in the house. Well, there wasn’t anything for us to do but sleep outside on the snow, which was 5 or 6 inches deep. We had covered wagons but they were all loaded down and there was no place to sleep, so we made our bed in the snow by the side of the wagon.

Tho we had plenty of bedding and slept O.K. with all of our clothes on. Johnny, and Jim Pendroy, cousin Tom Berry said we was as tough as grizzly bears to stand cold and you had to be to live in Dakota at that time or it seemed so. A good thermometer would show lots of time down to 45 and 50 below zero. This time I related it was probably 20 above zero. I don’t remember where Marion and I slept the next night but we got home O.K. that was in 1886. I never camped out after that time, but only a few times.

The Great Northern Railroad came in soon after, that is the next summer. By this time Father and I was getting quite a bunch of cattle, that kept us pretty busy putting up hay. Cattle and hay were our main source of income. I had good 160 acres mostly hay land on Mouse River Valley that come right up to the timber and river. When we built our house and other buildings we had about 10 acres of fine timber right on the riverbank. That furnished water that was a great help and all kinds of wild fruits.

Then I built another room 14 by 16 that made two rooms that big. Then we was getting along fine. Then I put up a log barn, room for 6 horses, put on shingles on the roof. It was the first barn with a shingled roof in the township.

We lived just one mile apart and all joined. Mother bought 320 acres that lay between us and was good hay land and pasture. Then about this time I filed on a homestead and a tree claim that lay south and east of the home place. Then I got my cousin to take a homestead that joined that, all together that made 480 acres, all together mostly farm land and pasture. I gave this cousin, Sally Berry, $500.00 for that claim.

We needed a lot of pasture . The way it was filed on it took about 5 miles to fence all of that land. That took a lot of post, 1600 posts. Well that was a lot of work to split all of them posts. A neighbor had allot of big post timber and I split 3000 for ½ and done all of the chopping and splitting myself. Sawed it up in 5 ½ foot cuts. Well it took about 3000 lbs. Of barb wire and I put that up the summer of 1886 in June.

Then it was time to make hay. Father rented a school section of 640 acres about 160 acres of fine hay land. He rented it for five years for $125.00 that year we had 1000 ton of hay on all of our land. We had three 6 foot McCormick mowers, hay stackers, two 12 foot rakes and two bull rakes. That was our outfit for making hay. We had 60-work horse.

We had three hired men. I think at that time brother Charlie was 16 years old. At that time Father ran the machinery some. He was getting up in year at that time, us boys didn’t expect him to do much work. He furnished the money for all the equipment at that time there wasn’t any gasoline power. People took more pride in their horses then at this day and age 1940. We didn’t go out to the field with the horses half harnessed like they do today. You have heard the song that goes like this " everybody works but Father" well that was way it was with us boys. I stacked all that hay that year.

We bought a good many cattle to feed up our hay. Father and I bought 125 head of three-year-old steers. The bigger part of hay was fed to them and what we had before, probably 250 in all. I hauled hay that winter and fed 4-ton everyday for 6 months longer. Beatrice and Cora were born during that time. Beatrice, January 8^th, 1888 and Cora was born the 15^th of January, 1891. When she was born I said to Susie we are getting quite a family, but I kept right on chopping wood and hauling hay. By that time there was quite a bunch of relatives come from Iowa, about 70 at one time.

Father had so many nephews and nieces that everybody got to calling him Uncle Andy and Mother Aunt Margaret. It was Uncle Andy every place he went, and he had a wide circle of friends and often they’d come to him for advice and money too some times. One neighbor I remember got to quarreling with his wife and told his wife he would go down to Uncle Andy’s and sell everything he had to him. Ed Gilbertson (at Velva, our closet town) was a storekeeper and we knew him very good. He said if he could borrow $500.00 for a while he wouldn’t have to close his store.

Father and I talked it over and he got $500.00. When we moved to North Dakota we fetched the first purebred Hereford Bulls that were in the state at that time east of the Missouri River. After we sold that 125 steers Father and I didn’t change much more work. It was getting so it was better to work by oneself instead of the way of changing work.

Father didn’t need me and I did without him. I had some haying machinery and 2 or 3 horses. I went right along the same way, buying cattle when I had more hay then I needed. That was when the Great Northern Railroad had come to Mouse River 25 miles down the river and Towner the County Seat was started and there were banks and money to lose. I could always borrow quite a bit on up till 1900 A.D.

Mother had poor health for several years. It had been about 8 years mama hadn’t seen any of her folks, so we felt like she should make a visit back home, that was the winter of 1893. Beatrice was five and Cora two years old. Mama and the four children went back home to Menlo, Iowa and stayed for three months. They had a good visit….. I met them at Towner and that was 25 miles from home and it was 35 degrees below zero at that time in March. Well, we was all glad to be home again.

I stayed with Father and Mother while they were gone. Mike Messinger was about 12 years old at that time…….Beatrice was five years at that time. Well everything went along for the next few years. Father and I bought more cattle and I put up a good log barn for horses, 16 by 28 and a shingled roof the first shingles to be put on a building in the neighborhood. Well we were all happy and got along very good for several years, buying cattle and raising more calves from the foundation herd. I had at that time about 75 head of my own. I did not farm any at that time 1894.

Our family was growing up and needed more room and I built another room 14 by 16. That made three rooms 14 by 16. We thought we was just fine at that time. Well I didn’t envy anybody. I made a living and made some money at that time. I had some horses and some good ones too. I was getting pretty good outfits for that time. About that time I went to Minot and bought a spring wagon and give $125.00 for it and a $40.00 set of Buggy harness and we got a lot of pleasure out of that. We would take long drives the same as they do today with autos.

Mama and I had hoped we would have a son sometime so on the 16^th of March 1895, Charlie was born and we was all happy. We named him after my brother Charlie, and I will say right here we have been pretty good pals for 45 years and never quarrel much. I never said a bad word to him and he did not to his Daddy.

When he was in the World War 1 in 1918, I got a letter from his nurse when he was sick. She said "you and your son must be pretty good pals". I sure hated to see him go to that war, though I never turned a hand upside down to keep him out. People were raising money for the Red Cross at that time and I put up a horse that sold to the first bidder for $50.00 That went to the Red Cross.

We got along very good for several years and in April 1899 Mother passed away at 71 years of age, until this time we hadn’t had much sickness, but Mother had poor health for several years. She was buried at Velva, North Dakota in the family lot, the first one buried in that cemetery after it was laid out. We all missed Mother so much. I had always lived close to home, just one mile away. She was a great help in guiding us through our long pioneering. She thought a lot of Susie and the children and gave Charlie his middle name after her Grandfather Spruce who was born in Switzerland.

Then in 1901 September the 6^th, Father passed away. We all missed him because he was always visiting. Though after Mother died, him and Brother Charlie lived together and kept a housekeeper. He was always glad for the children to go to school. Some times they would stay with him. He would take them to school when they stayed with him. He was buried beside Mother in the family lot at Velva.

When Father passed away he had 960 acres of land and 225 head of cattle (Herefords) and 10 horses and a good lot of equipment for making hay.

When we first went to North Dakota there was lot of fine-feathered grouse and we had a good many hunting trips. Together we only had one gun, when one would miss his grouse the other one would get the gun. Father and Susie went to Velva and took the gun, they ran into a big flock of grouse and killed several and took them to Velva and Mary Stickels cleaned them and they had a fine dinner.

In dividing up his property Father said on his death bed that I had always helped him when he needed help and he said on his death bed what he wanted me to have and I was satisfied with what I got of his estate. 240 acres of land and 75 head of cattle, 3 horses and some other personnel property. I had 960 acres of land and 225 head of Hereford cattle and good pure bred as he had used purebred sires for 18 years. Brother Charlie got the home farm, except 80 acres that joined my land. He got 400 acres in Mouse River Valley and sister Ollie and Maggie got 75 head of cattle equally and personnel property.

The other 160 I got was in Section 6, Township 153R78, one mile south of Pendroy, North Dakota. The Northwest ¼ of section ½. Sister Maggie Marlenee got 160 acres joining on the south and I bought that from her for $800.00. That was all fenced and had a good wire fence around it. That made 1120 acres of land I had myself. Father had 320 acres of school land rented and Brother Charlie took over that lease. I had ¼ and him the other. That had about 100 ton of hay on each 160 acres and I still leased that land for a good many years, for 17 years I think. This was the first part of 1902 AD.

In 1899 I built a very good farmhouse. The main part of the house was 16 by 30 feet and the kitchen was 16 ft square. The house was L-shaped. Two stories high. We were sure all glad to get moved into the new house. I tore down our old log house. Sold one room to my brother-in-law Charlie Tockmilles, and moved the other two rooms for out buildings. Well we drifted along and we were all happy and didn’t envy anybody, not even the King of England.

Then in 1902 Juverna was born. Well she has been the baby for a long time, 38 years and she will always be the baby. We sure have been pals all these years and would not sit with her hands folded and let anybody talk about her Daddy. We had some real close relatives that thought they should give me and my family some advice, without one cent of pay. Although Juverna lives 600 miles away we keep up a regular correspondence that has kept us in close touch with one another. I said before Juverna would fight for her Daddy. I guess they all would do that. I almost had to hold Charlie one time in Sauk Centre when a man didn’t talk very nice to his Daddy. I am sure all of my grandchildren would fight for me if it was necessary.

Juverna, having rode and drove horses more then any of the other girls, maybe it was because their Mother needed the older girls in the house to help with the house work. One time a team of pretty wild horses were hitched to a spring wagon and ran away with her and she jumped clear of everything and let them go. Those horses tore all through the fence with that spring wagon. I don’t know what the wagon was worth but I sold it for $1.00 She didn’t get hurt.

We all rode horseback a lot driving cattle and I have been thrown off of wild horses a good many times but never got hurt much. I have had horses turn head-over heels and I would jump off as they turned over and run out of the way of them. I have had riding horses that I could tie a wild steer or a bull to the saddle horn and they would brace all four feet and hold them for a long time whether I was in the saddle or not.

When I was a young man I thought I was pretty good with the lasso, that is a long 30-foot rope with a loop on one end to throw over the steers head as they ran past you. My cattle brand was J.D.(P?) on the left hip, the brand was 5 inches, and it is on record at Bismarck, North Dakota. Everyone had to brand their cattle so they would know them when we would fetch them home in the fall of the year. We put them out in big herds, maybe 5 or 600 head and one man would round them up every day, where there was water and plenty grazing land. That was from 1883 to 1895 A.D. before the country was all settled up.

One fall there was a bad snowstorm the last of September. The storm drifted our cattle 25 miles and we had a hard time getting them back home. Charlie was about 10 years old, mama and him went in the buggy, and I went on horseback. We all got awful cold but we got the cattle home. In one day the cattle went in two bunches. Charlie and Mama went one way and I went the other. Some times when a big snow storms would come up before some big herds would be down in and the Herders maybe not have them around up they would go with the storm and if they would happen to come to a lake they would go straight in the water, and maybe 30 or 40 would drown before they would stop piling on top of one another. I never lost any myself that way however.

To brand cattle the letters are made out of iron and let in the fire and then burn the hair and the hide. So the brand will always show. It would always take 5 or 6 to brand. They would have to throw down and hold the cattle while one put the brand on and we would have a lot of fun sometimes. One time at home we was branding some wild 3-year old steers and one big steer got mad and took after I and another young fellow and we started to run and he fell down. I was right behind him and I ran right over him. We both got out of the way of the steer without getting hurt. This happened about the year 1896. We branded our horses on the left shoulder unless it was a matched team then one was branded on the right shoulder. Then both brands would be on the outside.

We had a team at this time and a fine pair, their names where Sweetheart and Bill. Charlie took a lot of pride in them horses. Charlie was always a good feeder and as long as he was at home I had good harness for him to work with. The color of these horses was gray, Norman breed.

I sold several horses that went into the First World War in 1914. In 1902 we had our first big flood on Mouse River. We was all scared we thought all of our cattle and horses would be drown. It came so fast. I was taking the children to school about a mile from home we were in the edge of the timber and I looked up the road about 20 rods and the water came in a big wave 2 ½ feet deep and one mile and a half in some places. I had 150 head of cattle at that time. We got all our cattle out on high ground. A good many had some deep water to go through and some calves had to swim out.

Charlie carried some calves on the horses back he was riding. Uncle Jim Pendroy had a big pasture we put our cattle and he had a house we moved into and three other neighbors, all cousins. We got along fine and didn’t have any loses by drowning. Some houses the water was three feet deep in them. But our house was on higher ground and the water came up within a few steps of the house. We was sure glad of that, but we already carried our furniture upstairs.

We soon moved back home, the cattle we didn’t fetch them home until late in fall, put them in different pastures. I had 320 acres of pasture. I went back and forth on the high land. I, Charlie, and Cora went out a mile from the river; we saw a big fish in shallow water. The water had gone down and it couldn’t get out. That fish was 2 1/2 feet long. I jumped out and caught him and it was hard for me to hold the biggest fish I have ever seen before or any time in my life. The high waters made a good big crop of hay, so the water made us money instead of being a loss for us.

Well we drifted along the children were old enough to begin to think about getting out for themselves. Our oldest daughter Lizzie Pearl was married to James R. Meaghes at home on April 13^th, 1903. Well, we were all happy for more than two years and our first sorrow came. On September 13, 1905 our Lizzie passed away and left two children, one 21 months and the other baby a few days old. Their names were Mary and Francis. Lizzie was 21 years 6 months, 14 days old. Well it seemed like our sorrow came thick and fast after that. We took the baby home and kept it for two years.

This is the end of his writing. Wish he would have gone on and finished it. I tried to type it just as he had written it, but some of Grandpa’s writing was hard to make out, so I done the best I could.

Bernice Pendroy.

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