Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1870-07-27

hapS the most numerous are the Nor
wegians, a half-fishing and half-farming
people, used to hardship and low rations
just the class of men to settle a prai-
RE country, after they have served an
apprenticeship, as most of them have,
With their longer settled countrymen in
the older States. Hollanders, too, and
Swedes, nationalities but thinly repre-
scented in Ohio, are numerous here. OF
the emigrants from this country, those
from the more western States, being
more accustomed to "roughing it." are
the most likely to be successful as
h-Omesteadists.
The emigrants come in every style of
land vehicle in use since the days of
Noah, and drawn by every variety of
t~eam-horses, mules, oxen, horses and
oxen together, oxen yoked and oxen
harnessed like horses. The single men
usually come from the nearest railroad
station on foot. The Yankee or Yorker,
with a large family, perhaps, buys a
team in the eastern part of the State and
ulANNo ~ III a AiChAg BaLA1ICug III
covered wagon, with considerable style
at first, which diminishes as he goes
westward, till, by the time he has
reached government land, it is not WISH
BILE to the naked eye-the style isn't.
The more experienced westerner m
with a few heavy yoke of oxen, well
knowing hat the slowness of their gait
will be more than compensated by their
superiority to horses in sloughs and
moist places and by the cheapness of
their keeping, for they only need liberty
to Craze a little on the always abundant
prairie grass, while the horses must have
grain, difficult to get and expensive
when off the line of railroad.
Through this part of the State every
alternate section IA section is a square
mile of land has been granted to rail-
road companies. Some of the other sec
tions have been granted to schools and
for other purposes, so that less than
half is open to settlement. OF the land
within railroad limits, as most of it is,
ClEuLN lClCo NdAl Dt LOlAiESlCd0CNs lit
promise of eighty acres of us good land
as the west contains, with the certainty
of railroads and all the conveniences of
civilization in a few years, on the simple
condition of living on it for five years,
would seem enough to tempt any n
not owning a home of his own, to come.
But the matter is scarcely as easy of exc
cution as it appears. In the first place,
the land is usually preempted or home
steaded 4 dozen or two miles beyond the
settlements, and but few wish to go that
distance from neighbOrs, on the track
less prairie. The homestead and pre-
emptiOn claims are invalid unless the
party is living upon them; but if the
actual settler goes on one, though he
may defeat the title, the process will be
veXatiOus and expensive before he ac-
quires the title himself. Spectators
take advantage of this and take out
numbers of preemptions in fictitious
names, which they readily sell to set
tiers, who would rather purchase what
they know to be their right than to
spend their time and money litigating
for it. And this traffic the s~peculators-
"land sharks they are called here
carry on under the very noses of the
officials of the United States Land Office,
at Sioux City. The homestead and pre-
emption acts, though good and righteous
in their way and day, need either n
revision or a different way of admins
tering, if they protect the settler from
the self-styled Gland agents." who are
the curse of a new country.
The distance to supplies of every
kind, is the second great drawback to
demonstrating. Nor is this remedied by
the approach of railroads, for however
fast the line may be built, the settlement
will keep so far in advance of it. Last
season most of the land in this vicinity
was preempted or homesteaded. The
nearest base of supplies wa then fifty
miles distant, and supplies to a prairie
settler means more han to one in a tim
bered country, such as Trumbull county
was. The settler i'll the woods may sub
sist on a little corn and what game he
can kill, build a house of logs, and
clothe himself with skins and home
spun, so as TO want for nothing, if he
does not see another face, except those
of his family, for half 4 year. But with
the prairie settler the case is different.
The lumber for his house must come
forty or fifty miles, and a trip to the sta
ton for lumber, last season, when the
wet weather had made the prairie roads
well nigh bottomless, meant a weeks
hard work. The larger game, elk and
deer, were too shy and hard to approach,
on the open prairie, for any one not an
experienced hunter, to depend on for
meat, and the prairie chickens, though
plenty, and fine eating, require too
much time to kill enough of. The team
busy breaking the sod for next years
crop must have feed, and so the supplies
were quite an item, both in time and
purse, when hauled half a hundred
around the edges. Sometimes the sup
ply of provender would be extremely
low. al and my team worked four
days with nothing to eat bu. bran" said
a homesteader. At another time the
same man had for himself and family
but boiled wheat for three days, being
kept from town by a snow storm. The
men who, for the sake of having a home
for themselves and families, endure the
privations of the prairie settler, are not
the drones of society nor are they usu-
ally the great or rich of this world, and
though at times you may notice the
sparkle of a diamond or the rustic of
silk, which indicate that the broken
merchant, banker or speculator have
e~ndeavored to leave and forget their for
mer haunts, while as homesteaders they
in an humble, but honest way, retrieve
their broken fortunes. While such cases
are met, the bulk of the homesteaders
are hard-handed men-men who waste
no time complaining of better days, but
work while it is called the day, with a