70 Years A Resident of Elk County (Strachan)

[genealogynut]

Howard Courant Citizen
Thursday, September 24, 1942


(Note:  I found this to be a very interesting biography and well written.  It is also historical as well.  There was a picture of Louis B. Strachan along with the article, but it copied out too dark to post it on here.  For additional information on the Strachan family, please see page 236 of the Elk County History book)

An Interesting Autobiography of Pioneer Citizen and Sportsman, Two Brothers and Their Sister Still Live On Farm Where the Family Settled After Coming Here Directly From Scotland in 1872

The following is a short history of one of the best known early residents of Elk county.  Mr. Strachan lives on the farm where he came with his parents, brothers and sisters, when a youth and where he has lived continuously since.  Louis Strachan was never married, and after the death of his parents many years ago, assumed his duties as the head of the family and with his brothers and sisters made the home one of the hospitable and popular places of the county.  Mr. Strachan was quite a noted hunter and sportsman and lover of wild game.  He was a student and devoted much of his time interesting others in an effort to save our wild game. His hunting equipment was of the best and he knew how to use it.

The Strachan farm is one of the finest in the county, containing many acres or rich Elk river bottom land with large pasture adjacent.  The residence where the family still lives was when built, perhaps the most pretentious residence in Elk county.  The material was all of the best and was hauled to the farm from Humboldt.  The buildings have always been well cared for and are still in a fine shape of preservation.

Mr. Strachan was 86 years of age last month and mentally is bright and an interesting conversationalist.  His physical health is slightly impaired from a late illness but he is improving and all hope this fine man will be with us for many more years.

I was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, about 14 miles from Aberdeen on August 17, 1856.

In the year 1871, our cousin, Alexander Strachan, visited our home in Scotland and gave glowing accounts of the wonderful country in Southeastern Kansas to which he and his son, Louis Strachan, had traveled overland and located, in the winter of 1870 and 1871.  So in April 1872, our family consisting of my father, mother, and brothers, Adam, Tom, and Will and sisters, Janet, Maggie, and Jean, and myself, sailed from Glasgow for America.  The crossing took sixteen days and was made in the ship Columbia belonging to the Anchor Lines and which used both sail and steam for locomotion.

We arrived in New York City and there entrained for Lamont, Illinois, a small town suburban to Chicago, and were met there by Campbell Strachan, our cousin.  At the time of our arrival in Illinois, the debris resulting from the Great Chicago Fire still smoldered.  We remained in Lamont with the Strachan family for a week and then continues our journey in company with our cousin Alexander Strachan by train to Hunboldt, Kansas.  In Humboldt we hired a man with a team and wagon for $20.00 to take us the ramaining distance to Howard and to the end of our long journey.

In those days there were no bridges over any of the rivers or streams and crossings were made at natural fords.   Our first set-back was at the crossing on the Verdigris river where we were forced to wait three days for the flood waters to subside.  We ferried Fall River at Jackson's Mill above New Albany, and proceded on our way to upper Indian Creek where we were met by our cousin, Louis Strachan, with a team and wagon, and from there we traveled hungry to Howard as we ran out of supplies.  We arrived in Howard on May 10, 1872 and stayed all summer in the cabin of Louis Strachan just west of Polk Daniels Lake while our home was being built and in October 1872, we moved to our present home where my sisters, brother and I now reside.

When I arrived in Howard there were very few stores.  Charley Adams and Osa McFarland had general merchandise stores and Tommy Ferrel had a saloon.  There was no school house then but a few years later one was built on the northeast corner of the block where the present school buildings now stand, and all of the lumber used in its construction was hauled from Humboldt, Kansas by team and wagon by a man by the name of Cap Barnes.

Most of the hills were covered with tall blue stem grass and so tall was the grass that a man riding horse-back caould barely see oer the top in many places.  The trees grew mostly along the stream banks ans consisted chiefly of oak, walnut, and hackberry; but as the years passed trees took root over the countryside where they had never grown.  Wild game was abounding.  Deer, antelope, wild turkey, quail and prairie chilcken could easily be found in great numbers in the early days.  The sportsmen in the early seventies used to have great sport running wild turkeys with horse and hounds up and down Wild Cat creek.  These birds when flushed would fly about a half a mile before lighting, and then would run.  When repeatedly flushed their flights became shorter until they ran, rather than flew, from the hunter.  On one occasion, after a heavy snow the prairie chickens moved in from the prairie during the day and sat by the thousands in the trees along Elk river, and then returned to the prairie in the evening; and on a trip to Indian Territory, where the town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, is now located, I saw great flocks of quail that covered the ground along the Caney river, like flocks of blackbirds.  It was no trouble to get game for the table and I have stood in the door of my house and shot prairie chickens.

Mink, otter, racoons, wild cats, muskrats, and skunks were plentiful among the furbearing animals.

Fish were plentiful in the streams.  They could be caught easily and would lie on the riffles in plain sight and would strike any bait thrown to them.  There were lots of bass, hickory-shads, red-horse, buffalo, shovel heads and a few land lock salmon, but there were no crappie, nor channel catfish.

Then, the western part of Kansas saw the great migrations of hundreds of buffalo and buffalo robes were selling a $2.00 when we first arrived but by 1874 the price had risen to $5.00 per robe.

The bank of Elk river gave evidence of huge encampments of Indians having spent considerable time up and down the river and Chief Upwalla of the Osage Indians told Eugene White, a former old settler of the country, that he and his people used to hunt along Elk river many years before the white man came.

To the best of my knowledge the first frame building built between the head of the river and Elk Falls, was constructed on what is now the Jontra farm. A man by the name of Garrison Bowen homesteaded the site and went into the woods with only an ax and saw and hued out the planking and siding for the building.  The building was put together with practically no nails or iron of any kind, even the hinges on the door were made of wood.  The house was two- roomed when completed and his family of six sons, two daughters and wife lived in it for many years.

It was necessary in those days to make occasional trips to Independence, Kansas for supplies and it was a three days' journey.  We would start early in the morning the first day and make it to a camp site nine miles from Independence; the second day day we would arrive at Independence and do our trading and return to the nine mile camp site; and then the third day we would drive home.

The closest mill in those days was located on the creek about where the Moline Solvay Process Company plant is now located, and it was owned and operated by John Hansen.  Initially the mill possessed only a corn-cracker, but later equipment was installed for grinding wheat into flour.   Still later, the mill was built at Elk Falls, Kansas by Lige Hall,, who was managing the mill at New Albany when we stopped there enroute from Illinois to Howard.  This mill when completed was the best in mies around and was patronized by people living considerable distances from it.

In 1874 I watched the first funeral procession enter into the present Howard cemetery bearing the body of Crockett McDonald and which was interred just south of the Memorial monument in the center of the original cemetery area.

The first settlers on Elk river as I remember them were as follows: A man by the name of Leedy owned a cattle ranch at the foot of the Flint hills; Bascom Nesbit and Bill Pyle owned farms on down the river; Stewart Hawthorne (Fleak place), Tom Carter, Isaac Benefield, Joe Huffer, Phil Crawford, Lot Bowen, Garrison Bown, Mott French (Hitt place), Joe French (Kilpatrick place), Adam Clark (Fleak farm), Bill Pierson (Pickell farm), McBeth, John Hughes, Pete Hughes, Ruthruff (Barber farm) Humphrey, Pittman, Longfellow (the mill site), Alex O'Neal and a man by the name of Eddie who homesteaded the Osborn farm, were also among the early settlers along the Elk river.

I homesteaded eighty acres of the land of the farm where my brother Will Strachan and my sister Maggie Strachan and I now reside, and I believe we are the only persons now living on Elk river who homesteaded the land  in the early seventies, where they now reside.

LOUIS G. STRACHAN