Memories
by Dorothy Frost Riggs

The daughters, continued teaching in Nebraska for many years. Cora taught in a nearby school and my father Arthur, as well as Ethel and Theo, went to her school. Later my mother and her sisters went to Cora's school as well.

As a child I was blessed to have my Dad's sisters live next door. They were so kind to me. They lived in the original homestead house and the eldest sister had her own house. Because they lived so close to our house I could walk over there. They taught me a lot about the Bible and they had many books and magazines for me to read. After Marion and Carrie (the two eldest) were dead the others moved to Thayer, Mo. to be with the younger sister who had married. I think they moved there about a year after I was married. Cora was my favorite of the three sisters. I was close to Jane too. She did all the cooking and made good cinnamon rolls.

As a young man my father helped with the homestead, planting many seedlings. He started dating my mother and was active in the young people's church and meetings as well as political meetings throughout the countryside.

My mother's side of the family came from Denmark. Hans Peterson was a good gardener but land was scarce. He dreamed someday he could live in a country with lots of land. His eldest daughter Marie had an opportunity to go to America and work and live with a family there. She learned dressmaking and millinery (hat making). Then her brother Peter decided to go to America and with her help and others, he got a job in the Post Office. At the time he did not speak much English but with the help of friends and by studying the dictionary daily he learned the language and word meanings. I've heard my parents say he not only learned to speak well, but could tell them what each word meant. He became the Postmaster and retired from that job. As a gift of retirement he was given a clock - it's the one we have now.

My mother was seven when the family moved to the United States in 1881. They homesteaded in Antelope Count, Nebraska, and Hans was a good farmer and did very well. The eldest daughter married another Dane, Daniel Larson, and they too had good land nearby and raised their family. Another son Fred, became interested in and studied plants. He later wrote a book about plants in Nebraska. He also traveled, even going to Panama. He did not marry and neither did Peter. When he was middle aged he was helping a sister Anna and her husband, Chris Bergh on their land near his parents. They were stacking hay and he fell off the stack onto a fork and was killed. The Berghs also lived in this Danish community.

My mother Sophie and her younger sister, Inger, did not marry Danes. Sophie and Inger taught school and later married Americans. Inger had two children, John and Elva, who later moved to the state of Washington. Inger died quite young.

My mother went to school where Cora Frost taught, (just south of our home place 4 or 5 miles) and that's where Sophie met my father, Arthur.

My mother Sophie and her sister Anne decided to go to California and got nanny jobs in Fresno, California. I think her parents thought it would be good to get away. She left by train with sister Anne from Omaha and my father saw them off. Later Arthur went to California and somehow got a job on a surveyor crew where he went the following March. He writes he was very homesick but liked the work and stayed through many trials (including a bad case of poison ivy) until he was finished on that job. Their job was running a line from the top of a mountain to Fresno about 50 miles. He made $35 per month. He was offered a job if he wanted to go to Alaska, but instead he returned to Nebraska. In April, 1892 he wrote in the journal that he and Miss Peterson were engaged. Sophie, my mother, had a school then.

My parents were married May 16, 1896, at Neligh, Nebraska, with a few members of each family there. They came from two different cultures but they lived together over 50 years. They had ten children, Hans, Karl, Edith, Ellery, Harold, Elbert, Kenneth, Donald, and Dorothy. The tenth child died at birth, apparently caused because my mother had the influenza during the influenza epidemic throughout the country. (I was about three at that time).

Dad's sisters, Marion, Carrie, Cora, Jane, Theo, and for a time, Ethel, the youngest, lived in the original homestead house, although later Marion had her own house. They were so close to us they were more like parents to us. Of course when I was young they did not teach. They read books and studied the Bible daily.

After Mother and Dad were married Arthur built a home near the original homestead. My dad planted many different kinds of trees. Although I don't find any information on how he learned to be a carpenter he was a very talented one and it seems it was a natural gifting. He built many of the barns and houses in Antelope and Pierce County. He ran a crew of men and later my brother Karl who worked for him told with pride that Arthur had a good eye for measuring distances. He would look up to a roof or high area on the house being constructed and tell the men how long to cut a board for rafters, etc, to fit. It was always the right length. He liked using the best material and took great pride in his work, but the journal does not tell us how he acquired this expertise. He ran a crew of man for many years.

My dad was a very smart man but was not too good with money; however he was very generous with what he had - with his time, energy and finances. My mother, being of Danish descent, was very practical. She was good with money. She was a good seamstress and made clothes for us. She was good at redesigning and making over dresses for me which my sister-in-laws gave me. My parents had a nice farm but during the drought years and depression they almost lost it. In fact my brother Kenneth and brother-in-law, Gilbert Martin took it over and hired Donald to run it and he farmed for a number of years.

My two eldest brothers were David Hans (named after his two grandfathers) and Arthur Karl. Neither of my two oldest brothers, Hans or Karl went to college. As I was only a baby, I didn't know them, and they enlisted in World War I. Hans was wounded in the war and although he recovered he had a crippled leg. My mother had a dream vision one night of Hans being carried on a stretcher into a school house. She never heard from him after that. When Hans got home she asked him where he was taken as a wounded soldier. He told her they took him to an abandoned school house. He only received $25 a month pension.

My first memory of these two oldest brothers was when Hans and Karl returned from World War I. They took me with them as they visited friends and relatives. I remember stopping to see our cousin Harvey Larson's wife, Clara. My brothers were dressed in their uniforms and in their joking she spit on Karl's shiny polished boots and laughed as she did it. Hans was a good natured young man and smiled a lot. Although not severely crippled from his war wounds, he always had pain in that leg and could never do hard physical work. He was a salesman most of his life and a very good one. He worked for many years for Fuller Brushes, also sold Wearever Aluminum Cookware at meetings, and also worked for the Gideon Bible organization, distributing Bibles. He married a Brunswick girl, Gertrude Snodgrass and they lost their first daughter, Doris Elaine, when she was a baby. They later had another daughter, Donna, who gave them many years of pleasure. She married Philip Walbeck and last I knew they lived in Wichita, Kansas and had two children. I used to visit Hans and Gertrude in their home and they came home often to visit. They were living in Florida when he was killed by a truck going through a traffic light.

My second brother was named Arthur Karl, and like my father was often called A.K., but was known mainly as Karl. He met and married another Brunswick girl, a teacher named Caroline Schulte, who was also a teacher. We all loved her. They had thirteen children, Karl (Jack); Harold (Joe); twins Victor and Richard, Helen, Katie, Joanie, Frank, David, Mary Jane, Bernadette, Mike and Tom. As a young man, Richard was killed in an accident when he was helping deliver groceries in Lead.

Carrie, as we called her, was a loving mother and wife. Karl did some carpenter work with Dad and then got a job at the Homestake Mine in Lead. [Karl, Elbert, and Gilbert (Edith's husband) all had jobs at the Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, SD. Karl and Gilbert were the first to get jobs at the mine before the worst of the depression hit. By the time Elbert and Kenneth came to find work there the depression was in full swing so they stayed with Edith and Gilbert because they had to "rustle" (go each day and stand in line for their name to be called).

Karl bought their first home there and later they built a new house. They lived in Lead until the children were raised. We would visit them in the big house they lived in and Peggy and the boys would have so much fun playing with their cousins there. Later Karl and Carried decided to move to South Bend, Indiana where they raised two foster children. Clarence and I visited them there. Carrie died of cancer and a few years later as Karl was walking home on the sidewalk he was hit by two young men in a car who were drinking. He died shortly afterwards in the hospital. They left a great family, who have a reunion every few years and we were able to go to twice and keep in touch with some of the children. During our marriage we became good friends of their second son Harold Joseph and his wife Virginia, as they lived in Rapid City for some time and visited us often. Joe and Virginia both passed away a few years ago. Karl's other children visited us many times also and we have many pleasant memories of those times.

The third oldest child was my one and only sister Edith (16 years older than myself), born in 1900, an easy year to remember. After graduation from Brunswick High School, she completed secretarial school and got a job in Omaha. She worked for several years and then met Gilbert Martin, whom she married. While working in Omaha I remember her coming home for Christmas holidays, bringing us all nice presents. Generally I got a doll and I loved those gifts. After a few years of marriage Gilbert became ill and for a few years they had it rough. When I was 10 they had a son, Gene. They lived in Michigan for awhile and then Gilbert got a job at Homestake Mining in Lead, where he worked for a number of years.

I lived with them in Lead and worked in a Dime Store there and in Deadwood, where I met Clarence. Edith and I became very close and she taught me sewing and some cooking. She and Gilbert were very good to us during our marriage as well, often helping us over the rough years on the farm.

When Gene graduated from Lead High School, they decided to move to Seattle, so he could attend college. He majored in geography and went on to teach that field in college. Gilbert worked for a bakery in Seattle, driving deliveries, until he retired. They moved to Corvallis, OR, where we visited them both in Seattle and Corvallis. My mother went to live with them in later years, even though Clarence and I had hoped she would come and live with us. But she felt with our family it would be better to go there and Gilbert always said she was a real blessing to them.

My next brother, Ellery, also graduated from Brunswick High School and believing strongly in education, decided to go the University of Nebraska. He worked his way through and became a good teacher. For years he was professor of mechanical drawing at a Joliet, Illinois high school. While teaching he met his wife Mildred Morse, also was a teacher. During my high school years Mildred sent many of her dresses to me. My mother would alter them and I had a nice wardrobe. She and E llery gave me a new dress for my senior activities. They did not have children and did quite a bit of traveling. Ellery was a good talker and both he and Mildred were very interesting.

When I visited them they were both teaching high school in Joliet, IL. Mildred's sister, Gretchen, a teacher, and son also lived with them in Joliet. After my graduation in 1933 Ellery invited me to return home with him, which I did. He thought I should go on to college, and perhaps stay with them and go to college there. He suggested that I could help Mildred for my room and board as she always hired help. I tried, but found out I was not really trained to vacuum and iron well enough. Her brother Bill, who was my age, also came to visit. We enjoyed visiting and walking, etc. Then my sister Edith and Gilbert came to visit them and see the World's Fair in Chicago and they wanted me to go with them to the fair. Mildred said I must first iron a big basket of laundry that needed to be done. I knew I was a slow ironer but my sister followed me to the laundry room and quietly ironed it in no time. Mildred never knew for sure who did it and I got to go to the fair and really enjoyed it. I knew by then I didn't want to stay in Joliet so I returned home with the Martins to Lead, SD. Mildred's brother Bill stayed there and went to college. Several years later he died. After Mildred's death, Ellery visited Donald's and they visited him. He also visited Peggy and Pete in Hudson, WI. When he died, Clarence and I, and Donald and Dorothy, attended his funeral in Joliet. In his will he left his money to all his nieces and nephews (about $2500 to each one).

My next brother Harold, was always one of my favorite brothers. He stayed with my mother's parents who lived in Plainview, NB, and went to high school there. After graduation he attended the University of Nebraska, working his way through. He majored in creamery work and upon graduation he got a job in a big creamery. However in a few years he tried other things. He always brought presents to us when he visited and was generous in his love and sharing. He married Helen Foss, a very pretty girl and a beautiful singer. I think she was from Columbus, Nebraska. They lived there and later moved to Wichita, Kansas, where he had a successful business in Real Estate and insurance. Helen was very active in Eastern Star, going through all the chairs to the highest one. Harold was also active in that as well as Masons. They had a daughter Barbara Kay and the three of them visited us as the years went by. One year I remember when Clarence and I had the campground we held a reunion. We also had the shoe store and everyone had new shoes when they left. We also had a reunion with this family at Duluth, MN, where Barbara Kay and husband Jim Latta hosted. It was great fun. Harold developed cancer later and died. Helen then went to live with Barbara Kay and Jim in Minnesota. She died of heart failure after a few years.

Elbert was next in age and we always called him the handsome one. He too went to work at the Homestake and met and married a Lead girl, Margaret. She had a little girl, Gertrude Ann, by an earlier marriage. Their marriage only lasted a few years and he left Lead. He met and married Frances, a girl from Nebraska, and came back and worked for a short time at the Homestake Mine.

Clarence and I were married then and we used to get together with them and Kenneth and Marion and the rest of the family. Elbert then got a job working for Commercial Credit and Ford Motor Company. He traveled at first, so Frances stayed with her parents in Columbus, Nebraska. Elbert and a co-worker were traveling near Chadron, Nebraska, when they were hit head-on by a drunk driver, who had two other people with him, his father-in law and mother-in-law. All five were killed. Elbert was the same age as Clarence - 28 years old, when he was killed. His wife was pregnant and he never knew. She had a boy, Thomas. She later married and had two sons. Thomas and his wife visited us once in the Black Hills. He was divorced later. Donald and Dorothy lived in Blair and Frances and family lived in Omaha so they kept in touch with her and with Tommy. He died in his thirties.

Kenneth was next. He was good natured, quiet and very sweet. He, Donald and I were always close, probably because we were at home together for a longer time. Kenneth married his high school sweetheart, Marion Nagel, but not until she finished nursing school. He helped on the home farm and after they were married in 1933 he lived with us on the farm. He and I even husked corn in the fall of 1932. After he was married, Marion and I each pieced a flower garden quilt and had fun working on that together. Kenneth was a lot like Mother, not a talker and no temper. In fact I only saw him angry once and that was after Donald and my Dad had a fight out in the field and Don left home for about six months. He went to SD and got a job in the harvest fields. He came back to farm and Kenneth and Marion went to Lead where he worked for the Homestake Mine. After Clarence and I were married we got together often. Kenneth studied aeronautical mechanics by correspondence and later went into business at an airport in San Angelo, Texas. He and Marion were not able to have children, so she worked in the hospital there. He was injured in an accident flying a routine weather balloon testing flight. He suffered a broken back and never recovered. Don, Clarence, and I drove to visit him. In 1960 I flew back and saw him just before he died. While operating they discovered he only had one working kidney and it was polycystic. There was nothing the doctors could do. He returned home for a while and Donald, Clarence and I drove down to visit. It was only a matter of time. Later when he was in the hospital, I flew down and got there before he died. His face was covered with white frost because of the kidney shutting down. The doctor told me the medical people were working on a machine that when completed could have saved him - that was a kidney dialyses machine, which is now used in many cases. He died in 1962. My first grandchild, Jeffrey Steffel, was born shortly after Kenneth's death. Marion was married later to Charlie Stone, who had children and grandchildren which Marion enjoyed. She continued working at the hospital until she retired and died a few years ago after suffering a stroke.

This brings me to my last and youngest brother, Donald, also I believe the smartest one, graduating from high school at Brunswick at age 16. Learning was easy for him and although he received a scholarship he was unable to use it because of the tough hard times. The depression in our country hit in those years so the finances simply were not there for our college education. So he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, a program started in 1933 by President Franklin Roosevelt for civil engineering projects, to help young men learn and at the same time benefit the country. He was sent to Oregon and returned in 1934. He had met Dorothy Gibson, who lived in Albion, Nebraska. Donald and Dorothy were married 1936 and he decided to try farming on the home place. Gilbert and Kenneth were both working in the mine in Lead, SD, and helped out with some cash when needed so Don could keep the farm through the depression.

Donald and Dorothy farmed for a number of years and then Don became a Nebraska Soil Conservation manager and the farm was sold. They moved to the Nebraska towns of Grant, O'Neill, Syracuse, and finally to Blair, where he worked until his retirement. Dorothy also worked at various jobs and they have a nice home in Blair. The four of us stayed in touch throughout the years and got together at holidays. Don developed a heart condition and had a pace maker put in. Later he developed diabetes and passed away on my birthday, June 23, 2001.

They had four sons, Bill, Kenneth, Richard and Danny. Bill married Sharon, a Nebraska girl. He was a civil engineer and worked in Alaska for many years. He and Sharon raise their family there. They had five children. One daughter died a few years ago. They still have a home in Alaska and also one at Norfolk, Nebraska. Kenneth was the next oldest son of Don and Dorothy and he graduated from the University of Nebraska and became a mechanical engineer, married and had two children, a boy and a girl. They lived in Wichita and later Boulder, Colorado. He is retired. Bill's third son, Richard, now lives in Colorado and works for a computer company as a technical writer. They have two girls that are married. Danny was the youngest son and he and his wife Patty are both teachers. They taught for some time in Pakistan but came back to Nebraska when the war broke out over there and live in Omaha now.

So that brings us to Dorothy - the youngest of the Frost children - and also the only one living of my family of brothers and sister. I too was born on the farm in Nebraska. My dad built the house we lived in. It had no bedrooms downstairs and only two big bedrooms upstairs. I think my parents slept downstairs on a day bed. When mother inherited $10,000 when her father died (he left each of the children $10,000) Mother took a portion of the inheritance to use for building an addition of another bedroom and enclosed porch on the first floor. She washed on that porch afterwards. They also bought a Ford Car, with curtains that you draw, instead of glass windows. Then the stock market crashed in 1929 and the banks went broke and she lost the rest of her money. She had loaned her sister some money but she couldn't pay it back. That was about the time I got my first store-bought coat and it had a fur collar. Mother had either made my coats or a few were hand-me-downs.

I was the youngest in the family so I was a little spoiled. There were only two times when I remember being disciplined. My dad did a lot of business over the phone at home and I knew I was not to talk when he was on the phone. When I was quite young, about 3, my dad was talking to someone on the phone and I just felt like being ornery and said something. My mother took me outside and spanked me on the seat.

When I was about 7 or 8 my brother Don and I were out hoeing in our garden. It seemed he was always giving me a bad time. On this occasion I got angry and I threw the hoe at him and it hit him right on top of the head and the wound bled. I ran into the house in the front floor and went right upstairs, hoping no one would see me. It turned out Dad was watching the incident and when I entered the door Dad kicked me in the back. He didn't say a word and I went up to my room and cried.

My mother was very quiet and had good discipline and she had a quiet way of disciplining. I always looked up to her and when faced with decisions any I always thought "what would my mother think about that?" And then I would do it.

Mother would sit down and order our clothes in the catalogue and if she didn't have enough money she would take off things she wanted or things for dad so we'd have enough for school clothes. She was a good planner and organizer. She read the Bible a lot and sang hymns when she worked in the garden and inside the house. When I was little I would lay down and take a nap and I would like to feel her neck it was so soft. Later I would fix her hair when I was bigger.

I used to sit on dad's lap a lot and he would say that rhyme "When you are good you are very, very good, and when you are bad you are horrid." He was very loving. I remember many times looking down the hallway and my mother and dad would be giving each other a kiss. My dad and I played a lot of rummy, even after I was in high school.

I graduated from Brunswick High School in 1933. I earned two scholarships, but like Don, could not use them because of the depression. In the fall of 1934 I went to Lead, S.D. to help Karl's wife, Carrie, take care of their new baby girl Helen, who already had four brothers. Later I got my first job at a dime store in Lead, and stayed with my sister Edith and her husband Gilbert. I was transferred to the Deadwood store, where I met the love of my life, Clarence Riggs, and we were married in March 1935. We were married at my parent's home in Nebraska and I was the only child they saw married. I had come back to Brunswick in February as my mother was ill. Then we decided on March 3 for our wedding. Gilbert loaned Clarence a car to travel to Brunswick and Edith rode down with him and returned with us when we got back from our honeymoon. My brother Donald, and my girlfriend Mildred Rasmussen, stood up with me. We had about ten guests. A woman minister from the Congregational Church in Brunswick came out and married us. Clarence tried to get flowers but they told him they didn't have any flowers because the flowers were all frozen at the florist shop. Helen Bergh, my cousin was there. Edith made the wedding cake.

We went to Sioux Falls for our honeymoon. When we got down the road a hundred miles or so I started crying. Clarence thought that I regretted marrying him but it was because my mother was sick and I was afraid she wouldn't live long and I might now see her again. We drove to Sioux Falls and got a room at a hotel. We went to the movie "David Copperfield" and we didn't like the story so we left early. The next morning we left for home in Deadwood. Clarence was working for Home Furniture and already had the apartment furnished with a bed, lamp, big gold chair (we had it many years and sold it to Alberta Jeffrey later) and a kitchen table and chairs.

We later moved to Spearfish and lived in the Upper Canyon house. We had five children. Peggy was born in Fargo, North Dakota in 1937. At the time Clarence was working at a furniture store there. It was so different than the one he had p reviously worked at in Deadwood that we decided to return to Spearfish when Peggy was 3 months old. Four other children were born in Spearfish, Ronald, Keith, June and Charles. What a wonderful marriage!

Clarence tried several different vocations and wanted to try farming. But bad luck with the weather made it hard to make a living. Our second child Ronald Gordon, was born in 1940, followed by Clarence Keith in 1942. We had grasshoppers, hail, and drought so Clarence had to go back to selling. Later he had a sawmill. WW II was going on then and he made grain doors for the government and did very well, but decided to sell out so he could be home more. He went into the moulding mill business, He had a mill across the road from our house. We were doing fine and I worked with him in the mill until I became pregnant with June in 1949. Clarence hired men to help him. He and a friend purchased a dry kiln between Belle Fourche and Spearfish, and were doing well until one night it burned. We knew it was arson but it couldn't be proved. We had to sell our farmland except for 15 acres, in order to pay off the loan on the dry kiln.

June was born in 1950. She was the delight of her big sister and brothers. Charles was born in 1954 and again the family rejoiced. Peggy was a senior in high school that fall, Ron a sophomore and Keith in eighth grade. Clarence decided to sell the moulding mill and go into the shoe business. Later the campground was established.

In 1959 Peggy graduated from the University of SD and worked as a social worker in Mankato, MN where she met her husband Pete Steffel, who was attending college at Mankato State. They were married in 1960 and had three children, Jeffrey, Julie, and Cari. Pete worked as an adult and juvenile parole and probation officer; followed by 30 years with 3M Company in human resources. After retirement they moved to Port St. Lucie, Florida and now have eight grandchildren. Jeff and Violet are ministers in Port St. Lucie, FL; Julie is married to Steve Sileo, a minister in Virginia Beach, and Cari is married to Brandon Lyons, a Christian marketing analyst in Tulsa, OK.

Ron went to the University of SD for two years and then married his college sweetheart, Linda Schuelke and worked for Brown Shoe Company, St. Louis. They had two sons, Troy and Todd. Ron later had his own shoe business in Spearfish and they lived next to our home. Linda died of multiple-myeloma cancer at the age of 39. Ron remarried Kimm, who also had two sons, Rob and Jeremy, whom Ron adopted. Ron suffered a broken neck in a logging accident and suffered with many other complications. He died in 1998. Troy received his doctorate from the University of Nebraska and teaches at Union College in Jackson, TN. He's married to Shelli and they have four children. Todd is career military. He has one son Zane, by his first marriage to Stephanie. He married Rita, a woman he met in Germany, and they have two children and live in Oklahoma City.

Keith attended Yankton College and graduated from Brown University. He married Nami, a young Italian girl he met in Italy on a trip to Europe. He took a job with TWA in their offices in Paris. They had one son, Fionn (David), who now lives in Olympia, Washington. Keith and Nami were divorced and Keith married Caroline, a woman he met in France who had two daughters, Stephanie and Severine. Keith and Caroline have one son, Bryan. Keith retired from TWA and he and Caroline live in Villerville, France.

After graduating from Spearfish High School, June attended Black Hills University where she met Tom Harvey. They were married and had two children, Jennifer and Heath. After spending their earlier married years in Spearfish, they moved to Oregon where Tom and his son have a logging business. Jennifer married Tony Bray. Tony works with Tom in the logging business and Jennifer works in the forensics field. Heath married Kim and they have four children. Heath is in business with his father.

Our youngest child, Charles went to college, graduating from the University of Oregon at Eugene. He met and married Debilyn while working at a restaurant there. He has his own business in Portland, doing carpentry, remodeling and finish work. His wife helps him part time.

Clarence passed away January 20, 2002 and I now live in an apartment in Spearfish. I hope you all enjoy reading my short history of my family.

Dorothy Riggs
February, 2004