Living in History

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John Finch arrived in America in 1930 with the Winthrop Fleet. The Fleet consisted of 11 ships lead by John Winthrop and financed by the Massachusetts Bay Company. The Fleet brought between 700 and 1000 Puritans (and their livestock) from England to New England during the summer of 1630. This was the first period of the Great (Puritan) Migration. 

Aquilla Smith was a small boy when his family moved from VA to KY in the 1790s. Trying to protect their hunting grounds, Indians frequently attacked the settlers. Aquilla barely escaped into the cabin once, his Indian attacker so close that he lost a moccasin outside the cabin door. One of his cousins was killed by a tomahawk. It seems the settlers made no attempt to identify the indigenous people of the area beyond "Indians."  But this area was home to more than 20 tribes, including  Cherokee, Chickasaw, Potawatomi, and Shawnee. 

The blizzard of '88 struck Nance County NE on January 12, 1888. It was described as having hurricane-like winds, and struck without warning. The day started out with temperatures in the 30s, which fell suddenly to 30 - 40 below. Morgan Hollister, who lived with Orrin and Sarah Vroman Finch, said Sarah had gone to the windmill for water when the blizzard struck; he and Orrin helped her return to the house. Morgan and Ernest Vroman hitched a team to a bobsled to get the children from the soddy schoolhouse about two miles away. When they arrived, they discovered one end of the schoolhouse had caved in. They took all nine students and the teacher and bundled them up on the bobsled. 

On the way, the sled broke down and all the passengers had to get off so it could be fixed. Shortly after they got underway again, the horses refused to move and Morgan had to lead them. At this point, the had no idea where they were, but Morgan could feel a corn ridge with his feet; he followed it and all arrived to the Vroman home safely. 

We know very little about my 3x great grandparents, John Fitzgerald and Mary McCarthy. They were both born in Ireland, John about 1829 and Mary about 1832. They married in Bristol, England in 1849, where their son Michael Charles Fitzgerald was born in 1851. No doubt they had gone to England to escape the famine. There are differing stories about when they arrived in America, but we know Michael married in Illinois in 1876. I'm still looking for more information.

Jim Southard graduated from high school in 1938 in St. Paul, NE, during the Great Depression. He and four friends heard that they could make good money picking apples in Yakima, Washington; they piled into Jim's dad's 1923 Hupmobile. Three of them had $15, one had $10, and one had $3. They stole watermelons to sell to buy gas, and slept on the ground, in potato cellars, and once in a city jail. 

The car broke down in Nampa, ID, and they had run out of money. They picked peaches, hulled beans, and stacked alfalfa, initially earning 8 cents an hour, which later rose to 25 cents. 

After three weeks, two of the group went home and one went to California. 

After two-and-a-half months, Jim went home, $7 poorer and without the car. He paid a man from Boone, IA $5 for a ride back to St. Paul.

My father, Jim Southard, served in the Army Air Force (see Wartime section). My mother, Marjorie Smith Southard, served, too, as a civilian in Washington, D.C. She worked for the Defense Aid Division in the Munitions Building (the Pentagon was under construction) and recalled clearly going to work the day after Pearl Harbor. Suddenly the guards were sticklers about having employees wear their identification where it was visible, and all the officers, who up until then had worn civilian clothes, arrived to work in uniform. She remembered listening to FDR's "Day of Infamy" speech on the radio that day.