Excerpts:
As our grandfather liked to tell us when we were small children, “I was born in a woodchuck hole” —an absurd assertion that we received with giggles or grins, depending on our age. Yet the truth of the matter was not far off: Alpheus Appenheimer was born on January 3, 1891, to Alpheus Wheeler and Olive Witcher Appenheimer, in a one-room sod dugout in Wichita county, Kansas, during a night in which the temperature reached minus 20. A heavy snow had blanketed the entire state to a depth of up to three feet, and, in the western counties where the wind never sleeps, it was whipped into drifts for days afterwards. Tiny Alpheus was only kept from freezing by being snuggled against his mother beneath a mound of quilts.
This homestead was not the first farm undertaken by the Appenheimer family, whose luck had not always been with them. Prior to their migration into western Kansas five years earlier, they had lost a farm in Pike County, Illinois, to an epidemic of hog cholera. Lacking the means to start over again in Pike County, they decided to stake a homestead claim in western Kansas where they could obtain 160 acres by making basic improvements and maintaining a residence on it for five years under the Homestead Act.
The Realities of Homesteading
Even with favorable conditions, homesteading on the Great Plains was fraught with difficulty. Though the land was free for the working under the Homestead Act, it was practically impossible to make a living from it for the first three years, and few homesteaders could avoid going into debt. Breaking sod in the dry western counties was grueling labor, even for experienced farmers. A deep well had to be dug, and dry wells were a common result. A sod house had to be built, which necessitated even more digging in the rock-hard earth.
Kansas weather
Climatic conditions were harsh on the Great Plains at the best of times, with temperature extremes unmatched in other parts of the country. In January 1888, for instance, the temperature in western Kansas plunged to minus 42. The following July it reached 117. Such extremes were made even worse by the winds which, especially in the western counties, were notorious for their frequency and velocity. Rather than blowing parallel to the ground, they tended to slice into the earth at an angle, picking up everything in their path—dirt, sand and pebbles the size of peas. Soil from one field would be stripped off and piled onto adjacent fields in drifts.
Background: W I N D ! ! ! ~~~ [From the Annals of Kansas]
Sept 23, 1886. The Coolidge Border Ruffian reported high winds in Hamilton county: “Two quarter sections of land were blown into this office. Anyone having lost their claims during this blow can have same by removing the property and paying for this advertisement.”
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May 15, 1889. At Kansas City, a man was jailed for selling two Bonner Springs men a “cyclone cable” to prevent houses from blowing away.
~~~
From the SEVENTH BIENNIAL REPORT OF THE KANSAS STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, 1889-90
Hot winds are usually from the southwest, but sometimes are from the south or southeast. The typical hot wind almost invariably sets in at 9 or 10 o’clock in the morning and continues till 5 or 5:30 in the afternoon, when the peculiar heat is abated, although the wind may continue through the night with unabated force. The extreme dryness of the hot winds is one of its principal characteristics. In six winds reported by special observers in 1889, temperatures ranged from 100-109 degrees Fahrenheit. This high temperature, the dryness and velocity of the hot winds, all promote evaporation.
~~~
Background: Drought ~~~ [From the Annals of Kansas]
1887. A drought in July caused one of the most disastrous crop years in history.
~~~
Dec 2, 1887. Western Kansas is suffering from a fuel famine. It is claimed that the Santé Fe refused to move coal from the mines. Six cars of coal, en route to Garden City, were switched off at Syracuse by citizens. Crowds threatened to burn railroad property and rob the engines of coal.
~~~
Jan 21, 1888. A large number of tramps, employed by railroads during the summer, were looking for work, sleeping in barns & cabooses.
~~~
1888. A July drought seriously injured the corn crop in several western counties.
~~~
Jan 1, 1890. Wichita shipped 18 carloads of food and clothing to drought sufferers in Stevens, Morton and Hodgeman counties.
~~~
Jan 18, 1890. The Rev. Charles Sheldon, Topeka, pretending he was job-hunting, walked 10 miles, applied at a dozen places, and found one hour’s work shoveling coal. His text the following Sun. was “We Struggle for Existence.”
~~~
July 6, 1890. Prayers for rain were offered in many Kansas churches.
~~~
1890. A period of intense heat virtually destroyed the corn crop.
~~~
Background: Politics ~~~ [From the Annals of Kansas]
Prohibition Democrats: 1 seat.
Democrats: 6 seats.
Republicans:
26 seats.
Farmer’s Alliance: 92 seats.
Feb 14, 1891. “Women & Indians are the only people who would scalp a cold corpse,” Senator Ingalls remarked when he refused Mrs. Mary E. Lease an interview.
~ ~ ~
June 28, 1891. The Legislature elected William Alfred Peffer, Topeka, Populist, US Senator, to succeed Senator Ingalls. It was believed Ingalls’ opinions on woman suffrage defeated him. Eugene F. Ware wrote in the Kansas Bandit: “We think his epitaph should be: ‘Up he was stuck and in the very upness of his stuckitude, he fell.”
1893
1893 would turn out to be a year of calamities not only for the farmers of western Kansas, but for the entire nation. The Panic of 1893 affected every sector of the national economy, and had a number of inter-related causes: the over-extension of railroads, the collapse of commodity prices (especially wheat), with a resulting run on banks that led to bank closings everywhere. In western Kansas, farmers reeled from the double blow of price collapse and drought.
The Appenheimers would stick it out as long as they could, well into the hottest part of the summer. Then, on the 3rd of August, a small notice appeared in the Western Kansan: “Clifford Morris and A. Appenheimer, accompanied by their families, started on an overland trip to Illinois Monday evening.”
They
had, by this time, proved up their claim, and should have been able to sell their 160 acres
for a tidy sum—but after extended drought and ruinous prices throughout the
western counties, abandoned home-steads were thick on the ground, and there
were very few buyers to be had.
Background: Panic of '93 ~~~ [From the Annals of Kansas]
November 27, 1893. Scott county commissioners told Gov. Lewelling that state aid was essential if settlers were to survive the winter.
~~~
Jan 20, 1893. Farmers in Rice county fed wheat to hogs rather than sell at 40 cents a bushel.
~~~
June 30, 1893. Farmers in Wichita and Gove counties, where crops had failed, asked the Governor to provide some means for them to get seed again.
~~~
July 15, 1893. Bank failures caused people to keep their money in old teapots, fruit jars and socks. The First National Bank of Cherry Vale was closed. The Northrup Bank, oldest bank in Kansas City, failed.
July 17, 1893. Five more bank failures were reported to the Bank Commissioner.
August 20, 1893. Farm hands were scarce in Wichita County. $20 a month room & board were standard wages.
~~~
August 17, 1893. The State Board of Railroad Commissioners said the railroads would distribute seed-wheat donations to needy counties.
~~~
Sept 19, 1893. Gov. Lewelling opposed a special session of the Legislature to give aid to western counties.
~~~
November 18, 1893. The State Board of Railroad Commissioners provided free transport for 42,330 bushels of wheat for western Kansas.
~~~
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"Populism" is from Stark County Poems by BJ Omanson. (Monongahela Books, 2019). It was also published in Illinois Heritage: The Magazine of the Illinois State Historical Society.
Populism
In the autumn of 1893,
Alpheus Wheeler Appenheimer
and his wife Olive arrived in Stark County,
Illinois, after having traveled
from their earlier Illinois home in Pike County
by way of Leoti, Kansas.
They arrived in a covered wagon drawn
by a pair of worn-out mules conveying
a girl and two boys, implements, blankets,
a plow and scythe and a chest of clothes,
tinware pots, some kerosene lamps
and a Mason jar of seeds interred
in early May and exhumed in August,
still unsprouted— it’d been that dry.
They almost starved on their journey back.
In Missouri they stopped at a lonely farm
and asked at the house if they might pick a few
ears of corn to boil for supper.
Go ahead, help yourselves, the woman barked.
No one else even bothers to ask.
It was hog cholera that had wiped them out
and sent them westward to make a new start,
and it was drought and the ’93 Panic
that wiped them out for the second time
and sent them back east to begin again.
They’d gotten their fill of living in sod—
dirt in your soup and dirt in your bed.
Their youngest son was born on a night
in January that covered the state
in three feet of snow as the mercury plunged
to twenty below. He was kept from freezing
by his mother’s warmth and a crackling stove
that was fed from a pile of unshucked corn.
At ten cents a bushel it made more sense
to burn it than sell it and, anyhow,
the buffalo chips were long since gone.
In later years, when anyone asked,
old Alpheus never had much to tell
about losing two farms in two different states.
In an unguarded moment he said aloud,
You can pray to God. You can vote for Bryan.
In the end it don’t matter a hill of beans.
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