Farm Girl by Karen Jones Gowen

Author:Karen Jones Gowen [Gowen, Karen Jones]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Sociology, Social Science, Biographies, General, Nebraska, Biography & Autobiography, Rural, Farm Life
ISBN: 9780979607004
Google: 4pxrMgAACAAJ
Amazon: 0979607000
Publisher: WiDo Publishing
Published: 2007-07-24T05:00:00+00:00

Sophie Walstad in front of their frame house

Side porch of the Walstad home

John Wilson Sr., of Winchester, Virginia

Chapter Two:

The Markers

The Markers and Wilsons came to Nebraska from Winchester, Virginia along with several other families. George Cather was the first, so the area was called Catherton Township and referred to as the New Virginia Community because of the many homesteaders from that state. However, my grandfather Hans Walstad always maintained that he was there before George Cather.

The youngest boy, Albert, got the Wilson migration started. In Virginia he was working for George Cather and one day just disappeared. He was gone several years, no one knew where.

Then one day he reappeared and told his family about homesteading in Nebraska. He had come out with the George Cathers. Now he had his own place and was proving up his claim, and he talked his brothers into coming out there to homestead. So the Wilson brothers and their brother-in-law John Marker decided to go to Nebraska, to that area called New Virginia.

John and Annie Wilson Marker brought three little children with them and then had seven more in Nebraska. Elizabeth was the oldest, then Tisha who died as a young woman of tuberculosis, and a son Joseph, who died at age two. Then came my dad, also named John. After him, there was Dora, Carrie, Bernice, Albert, Leone and Ford.

Uncle Albert was the rebellious one of the Marker children. When he was sixteen, they were living in their sod house and somehow scraping by. Setting on the porch were a couple barrels of molasses to get them through the year for their sugar. One day my grandmother found a dead cat in the molasses, so they had to pour it all out. Years later Uncle Albert admitted that he’d been the one to tip the lid so the cat could fall in. He’d been scolded for something and was mad, so he stormed out of the house past the molasses barrel and tipped the lid, sticking his fingers in for a lick.

He ran off shortly after and no one knew where, but Omaha seemed to be his headquarters. He tramped around the country riding the railroads, spending his winters in Omaha.

One day in the 1930’s, my dad came in and said, “Albert’s home.”

Uncle Albert said he would stay and help Uncle Ford on the farm, but he insisted on sleeping in the barn. After a couple months, he was gone. Another year he showed up and worked for a few months, then disappeared again.

One time an Omaha hospital called to say Albert died. Ford and Bernice buried him in the family plot at the New Virginia cemetery but refused to get a tombstone. Later, after Ford and Bernice had died, my cousin Cecil Johnson bought a tombstone for Uncle Albert when he ordered the ones for Ford and Bernice.

Uncle Ford and Aunt Leone were the youngest Markers. Aunt Leone and her husband went to Missouri during the drought and bought a farm there. Uncle Ford stayed on the family farm to work the land after the father died in 1904.

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