Family/Spouse: Gertrude Pearl Steele. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Family/Spouse: Private. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Family/Spouse: Private. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

"I was born April 8, 1931. At the time, my father was thirty-two years old and my mother twenty-nine. My sister had to walk about a mile and a half to the country one room school-house. I re-member going with her one day to visit school. I was about four then. When I was five, my par-ents borrowed money to buy forty acres of land about one and a half miles north of Badger, Minne-sota. My father did not have a steady job. But neighbors would work back and forth helping each other when they could and sometimes my dad was able to do some work for cash. Cash was very hard to come by. Dad cut and grubbed trees on the forty acres to clear the land. Then there were rock to pick - many, many, rocks as the land was very rocky. We had two huge rock piles before he finished. We had some cows, and horses, chickens, geese, a few pigs and sheep. Dad built a saw rig and sawed the trees into cordwood to sell to get cash. We had wood stoves for heating and cook-ing. Our house had four rooms - two rooms downstairs and two upstairs. No bathroom; no water; no electricity. Mother heated the hot irons on the kitchen range to iron our clothes. We had kero-sene lamps and had to pump our water and carry it into the house. We had an old wooden washing machine that you had to operate manually and a wringer attached with a crank on it. When the land was cleared it had to be plowed, disced*, dragged, seeded and cultivated all with the use of horse drawn machinery and horses. My dad hunted and brought home wild fowl for us to eat. (Prairie Chickens mostly and grouse). We planted a large garden and mother canned the vegetables and bought fresh fruit in season and canned that also. We got our first new wash-ing-machine in 1936 when my sister was born. It was a Norge with a gas motor. I can remem-ber when we got our first battery radio. Our house did not have a basement but a cellar, under the kitchen. I remember it being so cold that the water froze in the pail on our wash stand in the kitchen. We did not have storm win-dows - but Dad covered the windows with plastic** on the outside for the winter. He also covered the lower three feet of the house with tar paper and slats and banked up the house with flax straw. I can remember sugar rationing. My Parents voted for Roosevelt.(FD)*** Remember them talking about WPA. We did not have to go on relief. When I started school we went by car when the weather was nice and in the winter by horse-drawn home-made school buses, called ca-booses. My father was a driver for awhile and we had to start out very early to get to school on time. He had to pick up children from about six families. So we had to ride about five or six miles. I remember when my parents bought a coal stove - that was much better as it held the heat longer. And my dad bought a piano for us at an auction sale for $40.00. My youngest sister was born in 1939."

Family/Spouse: Unknown. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]