Interview with R. Lewis Imel, Bucklin, Kansas

(Note: Dayton was located in Sec. 28-25N-3W, Grant county, Oklahoma, near the Mt. Vernon Cemetery, 5 miles North and 4 miles West of Billings.)

(Polk, Oklahoma, mentioned below was at the 4 corners of Noble, Kay, Garfield and Grant counties in Oklahoma., 4 miles North and 1 West of Billings.) Lodenwald@aol.com

The interview:
We started the store at Dayton, Oklahoma, in November 1897. We had planned for some little time to start a store here. There was already a blacksmith shop owned by A. A. Langdale and his daughter who lived with her parents and ran the post office in the home.

Not having enough money ourselves, Eli Prather decided to go in with us. He had been in the store business in the east before coming to Oklahoma, where he and his family now lived on the homestead which he had staked in the Strip opening in Kay County.

A store building was bought in Wellington, Kansas, and moved and rebuilt on the southwest corner of Captain R. J. Biggs' place, where the Dayton Post office and the blacksmith shop had become a community center. But before the stock of goods was purchased, Mr. Prather decided to venture no further.

Then a new deal was planned with Jim Tears (Starr?) as partner and a stock of goods was bought from his father at Bellmont, Kansas. (See more about Belmont Kansas below this article. Lodenwald@aol.com)

I had been sticking around home pretty close, but my wife and I talked it over and decided that it might be a safe to make a trip to move the goods if I had not to stay too long.

The $360.00 was dug up and carefully sewed up in an old coat. We arrived the second evening in Bellmont. The wagons were loaded the next morning and we started on the return. The two men, who followed, each with a load, kept saying 'What made you drive so fast?".

In the evening of the fifth day since I had been away from home, we drove up in the yard at my home to hear the cry of a new baby. Our little daughter, Opal, had won the race and beaten me home. And the men that were with me said, "Now we know why you drove so fast."

Mr. Starr proved to be a very helpful partner. His straightforward, honest method of doing business made many friends. He organized a ban [sic] ball nine to play at Dayton on Saturday afternoon and also a brass band. We got the boys together and taught them music, and seemed to have a good time while he was doing it. That was a help to the community.

We could always count on Mr. Burcham, Luke Teachman, Bert Benway and others coming in after their mail about so often and staying for a chat with the crowd.

It was one day when a good crowd was in the store that S. M. Burcham gave this bit of experience. He and one of the neighbors decided to go over on the 101 ranch and plow sod. Mr. Burcham wondered what he could take to eat. That was a question. Finally his eyes fell on the old rooster. The rooster was properly prepared and they started out. They went by the store at Polk and his neighbor bought a twenty-five pound sack of corn meal, divided it and took part with him and sent a part back home, saying "It would have to run the family until he got home sod plowed." They arrived on the ranch, laid off their land and went to plowing.

Mr. Burcham said he noticed another man, on another plot, who could get up in the wagon at meal time, but would never build a fire. So they went over to him and he was sitting in the wagon, eating wild grapes. That was all he had. Mr. Burcham invited him to bring the wild grapes and come to their camp so they could all eat together. The man said he must finish the land and take the money to family who were depending on it. And yet these pioneer settlers were hopeful and cheerful.

The demand for good kept increasing as the people raised good crops and our stock of goods were gradually added to. We had a stock of general merchandise.

Mr. Starr decided to sail [sell] his interest in the store and put in all his time on the farm. We took his part of the store over.

It was at this time that we decided to try a stock of farm machinery. So a car load of machinery was bought in Kansas City, consisting of wagons, buggies, harrows, plows, wheat drills, and so on. Our stock at this time invoiced about $5,000.00 This car load of machinery sold very rapidly, mostly on time.

On account of my wife's health, we were compelled to move and change climate.

Mr. Eli Prather bought the stock of goods in the Fall of 1899. By the spring of 1900 we had collected in what was on the books.

We left Dayton, with a warm place in our hearts for the many friends we had made during the seven years we lived in Oklahoma. We are now located near Bucklin, Kansas, on a farm.

I most also mention A. G. Davis as mail carrier. Our mail route went from Polk to Pond Creek, zig-zagging to reach the different post offices. It was, I think, in the winter of 1898 that A. C. Davis (colored) made this trip with the mail to Pond Creek and back in an open one-horse buggy, changing horses twice, as his custom was, in a blizzard with high wind and snow with snow drifted roads, a distance of sixty-four miles and 20 degrees below zero. A. C. Davis never stopped for rain, mud or snow. He made the trip sixty-four miles, every day in the week but Sunday.

These names are the folks and families who traded with us at the Dayton Store from 1897-1900, taken from the ledger used at that time. We still have the ledger.

Allen, Wm
Chaney, Chas
Foust, Geo
Allen, Geo
Clay, Henry
Fearing, Albert
Bateman, Henry
Carter, A. H.
Fuls, John
Benson, John
Corn, John
Gilbert, Sam
Benway, Bert
Cobb, Thomas
Gilmer, Morrison
Burohaw, S. W.
Cross, Bros.
Gilbert, Wm
Bobbitt, J. W.
Gruse, Floyd
Garner, Gib
Brown, Tom
Campbell, R. J.
Graham, W
Booher, W. T.
Collins, W. A.
Gray, A. L.
Baird, A. L.
Caywood, Art
Huffman, Mrs. Mattie
Brown, N. J.
Dodson, J.T.
Hockman, Lyman
Bobbitt, Howard
Dodson, Geo
Hockman, L
Bobbit, George
Dixon, Clay
Hockmar, E. O.
Briggs, H. J.
Datis, A. C.
Housel, John
Bland, W. M.
Denford, Lee
Harney, Lee
Burcham, Ethel
Denford, Chas
Henshaw, Lee
Bocher, Frank
Denford, Frank
Harney, J. A.
Brady
Dixon, John
Howard, Wm
Bland, John
Dickman
Hoisington, Mrs.
Barmon, Wm
Dunn, Will
Henshaw, Pearl
Brown, Geo
Dorsett, Elmer
Howard, Lizzie
Barclay, James
Dorsett, J. R.
Harney, A. T.
Cowen, Geo
Edmondson, J. H.
Herron, Clint
Inguire, W. M.
Meece, Iney
Johnson, J. W.
Morris
Kirkpartrick, R. F.
Null, Rachel
Kitts, J. A.
Noble, M. B.
Langdale, A. H.
O'Mealey
Lee, Mack
Prather, Elie
Long, Wm
Peebler, Herbert
Lynch. W. W.
Pruitt, Walter
Long, A. L.
Porter, D
Lusk, M. J.
Porter, Findley
Lansford, A. C.
Porter, Wallace
Moulton, Frank
Prather, John
Majors, James
Prince, John
Mosher, Henry
Race, Chad
McNeil, J. B.
Romino, A. B. (could read Romizo)
Miller, Eli
Royse, Geo
Miller, Jim
Smith, Wm
Miller, Wm
Smith, James
Miller, W. S.
Snider, Alva
Mowbray, Geo
Shamp, Lester
Martin, W. P.
Snavely, Levi
Marston, James
Snavely, John
McAlister, Levi
Simpson, J. A.
Marston, Henry
Smith, A. B.
Marston, S. A.
Starr, J. N.
Majors, S. L.
Snider, Glenn
Meece, G. M.
Steel, P. M.
Miller, Dave
Servise, Floyd
Mason, C. P. (O. P.?)
Thomas, James
Miller, Willie
Otterback, J. I.
Reece, Jeff
Yacim, J. O.
Tyree, Henry
Woolcot, W. H.
Teachman, Sam
Wade, E. W.
Vacin, Frank
Zody, W. K.
Waters, N. T.
Hugh Prather
Wooley, Joe
Warren, Susie

I was not present when the Sunday School was first organized in the sod school house south of the Dayton store a half mile, but my wife and I did attend after they had it in good running order.

There was a Sunday school in my sod shanty during the summer of 1894, but it only ran through the warm weather. This Sunday school was organized in 1894, in May after the opening of the Strip. One Sunday afternoon a large number of folks, neighbors were in the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Prather. Will, Tom and Anna, young folks in the home, made things very lively and the folks who could sing gathered around the organ and Miss Anna played and they sang church songs. I t was very fine. All parts were sung soprano, alto, tenor and bass.

It was that afternoon that a plan was made to have Sunday school. Then the next thing was to decide where to have it. No school house was yet built and there was no public places of worship. Finally, it was decided that they would meet the next Sunday 2:00 p.m. and have Sunday school in my half sod dugent, with comb roof shingled and plastered inside.

So far so good, but how could be seat a crowd. Usually when more than one person came, he or she, sat on the bed. I say this was a question on Monday as I viewed the situation alone. No lumber to make seats and over twenty miles to the railroad and no funds to but with. I looked over the wood pile, selected the best small cottonwood logs, split them in the middle, bored holes and put in legs. They were rough but would beat standing up.

We told everybody we saw about the Sunday school on the following Sunday, which was a beautiful day. The bedstead, table, and so on were moved out and the log seats put in place. A horse was saddled and we rode up the Salt Fork Valley and made a circle swath, going from house to house. The people generally received the news gladly.

Transcribed for OKGenWeb by Catherine Widener, May 2002.

Belmont Kansas History below added by Lodenwald@aol.com
Belmont, a little village named by A.B. Fell, a Philadelphia developer, is twelve miles southeast of Kingman in Eagle Township.
Belmont post office, organized in 1879, was located in the homes of the various postmasters, Warren Whitney, John Brown, William Elliott and John Starr. In 1885, the post office was located in the Washburn Brothers General Store, with Abel Washburn, assistant postmaster. Before the railroad was built, mail reached Belmont biweekly via stage from Belle Plain.
Belmont's organizational approval by the Secretary of State was September 14, 1885. Forty acres of William Starr's land was set aside for a townsite. $10,000.00 in stock was issued, divided into a hundred shares at $100.00 per share.
Belmont grade school opened in 1881, north of the townsite and moved into Belmont in 1890. Later, a larger two-room school was built to accommodate the enrollment. In 1968, it closed, due to dwindling enrollment and consolidation of county schools.
In the 1880's, Belmont had two general stores, a hotel, restaurant, cobbler, mason, plasterer, livery stable, three carpenters, milliner, dressmaker, blacksmith, physician, and railroad express and telegraph agent. The Denver, Memphis and Atlantic Railroad, later known as Missouri Pacific, was built through Belmont in 1886.
The Washburn Brothers built the first house. Pioneer shanties were soon replaced with several one-story frame houses and two large two-story houses.
Turner Hall, built in 1887, was one of the first community halls in the county. It was used by: GAR Post; Modern Woodman; Anti-Horse Thief Protection Association; Odd Fellows and Royal Neighbors.
Prior to the erection of the Christian and Methodist churches, their congregations worshiped in Turner Hall and the schoolhouse. The Christian Church was closed in the early 1930's. The Methodist Church organized in 1888, and their sanctuary was occupied from Easter Sunday 1892 until May 1972, when it closed because of small membership.
From the turn of the century until the "great depression", Belmont thrived with more businesses: another hotel, cream station, variety store, meat market, public library (438 books in 1920), lumber yard, two grain elevators, telephone exchange, two grocery stores, hardware, barber shop, filling station, garage, section house, blacksmith shop, bank, restaurants, post office, moving picture house, and skating rink.
Eugene Wallace, M.D., practicing physician and surgeon, whose motto was "My Ford Is Always Ready", was a prominent citizen from 1909 to 1928, during which time he operated a drug store and hospital, before moving to Norwich.
Belmont High School opened in 1919 as a subscription school. With Dr. Wallace's backing, the school and gymnasium were built. The 1928 and 1939 basketball teams were state champions. Senior classes were graduated from 1923 until 1949, when the doors closed. The school's south wing was converted into the grade school lunch room. Virginia Dunkelberger managed it eighteen years. The north wing was remodeled for a Community Room. The school building and gymnasium deteriorated, and were sold, to be torn down in 1984.
Fire, bank robberies, bank failure, loss of Dr. Wallace and the depression led to the decrease of Belmont's population and businesses. After World War II, only a grocery store, filling station, elevator and post office remained. Now, a few people live in Belmont, but everything is gone, except Methodist Church building, some houses, elevator and the post office in the home of Edna Pugh, postmistress.
Dwane Wallace, son of Dr. Eugene and Grace Cessna Wallace, followed in his uncle, Clyde Cessna's footsteps in the 1930's to design, develop, and produce Cessna monoplanes in Wichita, building Cessna Aircraft into the world's largest producer of light planes. Dwane was 1981 recipient or the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy. Clyde Cessna lived a few miles south of Belmont. He built his first plane and piloted it in 1911.
Belmont residents found time for music and fun, including Saturday night dances, being entertained by music furnished by Billy and Merry Start, Grover and Clara Dunkelberger, and Pete and Zora Thiel.
For forty years, Belmont's softball teams and tournaments were famous in Kansas and the midwest. Don Lock, son of John and Agnes Lock, played several years in professional leagues.
Those of Belmont pioneers' children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who live in the area and those who live elsewhere but hold Belmont as "home" will have good memories of bygone days.

Adapted from:
Kingman County, Kansas, And Its People.
(Kingman: Kingman County Historical Society. 1984)
Used by permission

Mrs. Holmes Sees Cherokee Strip Race From Wagon
Submitted by Carole Spencer
Mrs. John L. Holmes was a pioneer of that part of Noble County surrounding the town of Billings, OK.

On the day of the opening of the Cherokee Outlet, September 16, 1893, Mrs. Holmes, with her four small children, watched the race from the family wagon stationed near the old cattle stockade at Hunnewell, KS. That evening with Mrs. Bert Kinney, a neighbor with whose husband Mr. Holmes had made the race, drove down into the strip to spend the night on claims which they hoped their husbands had obtained near the old Lone Tree, a famous land-mark known to all cowboys. It turned out that Mr. Kinney had been successful. Mr. Holmes, however, had no such luck.

At the moment of his arrival at the claim of his choice, made on a ride into the strip before its borders were closed to the public, a man, obviously a Sooner, armed with a rifle, came up from a draw leading a cool horse which had clearly not made the run and ordered Mr. Holmes to move on. So that night was spent on the Kinney claim.

Returning to his rented farm near South Haven, Kansas, Mr. Holmes started immediately to look for another claim and soon located and purchased one in what is now Noble County, then "P" County, 13 miles north and nine west of Perry and one mile north of the present town of Billings. The seller demanded and received as part payment for his claim, a young brood mare which Mr. Holmes had counted on to help stock his farm as well as to take part in the farm work.

At midnight on October 24, 1893, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes with their four children arrived at their new home, having come in a covered wagon by way of an old trail which crossed the claim. Not a building, not a fence post, not a furrow was on the place. In a few days, neighbors and friends from Kansas brought in supplies and materials for the building of a one-room house. While the building was going on Mrs. Holmes cooked for her family and builders over a fire out in the pen, served meals out-of-doors, and slept in a tiny dug-out which Mr. Holmes had made in a hillside, an up-ended table serving as a door.

That winter, with Mr. Holmes gone frequently to Kansas for supplies and other materials necessary to the starting of a new home on a bare piece of land (the trip took at least three days and one for the transaction of business), Mrs. Holmes stayed on the claim, caring for the home and children, milking the cows, feeding the pigs and chickens, and in the evening teaching the children their lessons.

From October 1893 to March 1894, without a building or a form of improvement in sight, Mrs. Holmes was the only woman for miles around and saw only two women, one Miss Kate Nelson, sister of A.D. Nelson, whose claim was nearby, the other Mrs. James Young, mother of Calvin Young (Calvin Young is buried in the Billings Union Cemetery). These were overnight visitors only, having no houses on their claims.

In March 1894, other settlers began to come in and build houses, some of them sod houses. The settlers immediately started breaking sod and putting up fences. Roads were established on the section lines, the settlers doing the necessary grading and culvert work. Wells were dug, the water used up to this time by the Holmes family had been hauled to barrels from a branch a mile away.

In the early days groceries and other necessities were obtained at a little general store owned and operated by George Meece at a junction of the four counties, P, O, L, K, now Noble, Garfield, Grant, and Kay counties and mail was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Holmes at Polk, Oklahoma Territory. The post office took its name from the four letters which named the cornering counties.

Soon the settlers organized a community Sunday School which in summer was held in an arbor of poles and tree branches brought up from Red Rock and erected on the southwest corner of James Noonan's claim. Wagon seats and planks laid across nail kegs served as seats. In the winter, the school was held at various homes.

Until the public schools could be established, the parents of school age children arranged with Pleasant Hurst to conduct a three-month term of school, the father paying the tuition of their children by breaking sod on Hurst's claim. Other early teachers of three-month terms were Mrs. Wilkins and Mr. Murdock.

When the first one-room school house was built on Noonan's claim, a literary society was organized. The programs consisted of music, songs, recitations and debates. Mrs. Holmes was often one of the debaters.

In this first school house, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, Mr. and Mrs. A.D. Nelson, Charles M. Sheldon and others organized a Christian Church which, upon the coming of the town of Billings, became the First Christian Church of Billings.

Box suppers were often held in the little school house and the receipts of one of these affairs were used to buy bracket lamps to take the place of the lanterns brought by settlers. The lamps were installed and used at one literary meeting only, because before morning, a small tornado came out of the west and scattered schoolhouse and lamps over Noonan's fields.

Not all, in fact very little, of the settler's life was of a social nature. . .

Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, as well as their neighbors, plowed and planted, built fences, barns and sheds, endured drouth, heat and hot winds, fought cinch bugs, greenbugs and grasshoppers, and raised their families.

Mrs. Holmes often helped in the field and with the other women of the neighborhood, cooked for harvest hands and threshing crews. And in the six years after the opening of the strip, Mrs. Holmes gave birth to two more children. In each instance, the attending physician was Dr. S.F. Brafford, a true pioneer doctor, who for years made all calls on horseback.
Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, after proving up on their claim, lived there until 1917 when they sold the farm and moved to Billings. Mr. Holmes died in 1924. Mrs. Holmes died 20 December 1956 at the age of 99 years.

Mr. Holmes was the son of John Quincy Holmes and Barbara Bozzell.

John Quincy Holmes died 25 September 1901 South Haven, KS. At that time his wife was Catherine Adamson.

Mrs. John L. Holmes was formerly Zillah Ellen Smith, the daug
This article from the BILLINGS NEWS 18 August 1977 re-printed from the Perry Daily Journal 14 September 1953.
I copied this exactly (misspellings and all) except for the last 3 paragraphs which I added. Zillah was my great grandmother. <BR
Carole Spencer