Pine Country
By Sarah Costello

Our next trip was to Hinkley, Minnesota, a small town between St. Paul and Duluth. It had been in the heart of the Great North Woods, a great lumbering center. In 1894, it was swept by a forest fire. Over five hundred people lost their lives in the fire. It left thousands of acres of forestlands just a burned out waste of blackened tree stumps and roots. Fireweed came up everywhere and helped somewhat to cover the bleak blackness.

The place Father bought was on the old Government Road about six miles south of Hinkley. The fire took place in 1894 and we moved there in 1896. After the fireweed sort of thinned out, about 1897, the meadows become covered with a luxuriant growth of red clover.

This land of the Great North Woods had at one time grown great trees but they had by now been logged off by the lumbering companies or the forest fire had destroyed them. The trees had immense roots that took much labor and dynamite to uproot them. This was hard, slow, backbreaking labor to clear enough land to raise a small garden.

Father erected a nice and spacious house near the old Government Road. This was then the only road in that vicinity leading through to Duluth. It was the old military road, and it was mostly through wilderness. We considered ourselves fortunate that our land bordered this road. With the help of his two little boys, Cole, 14, and Jim, 12, Father cleared enough land to raise a garden. At this stage, he had no money to buy a horse or cow and no pigs nor anything for meat or milk except a few chickens for eggs.

Father and the boys used to rent a sleigh, go into the swamp, and wade waist deep in the snow to cut tamarack, about the only trees not taken by the fire. This was because they grew in swampland, and for that reason they could only be cut in the winter when the swamp was frozen. These trees had to be cut down, cut into four-foot lengths, split four ways, loaded on the sleigh, piled four feet high, four feet wide and four feet in length, which was about the length of the sleigh. This was then driven to the firewood buyer at Mission Creek, three miles away and load it on a waiting freight car to be taken to the cities where it was needed. For all this, they received eighty cents a cord.

This eighty cents helped to buy the barest necessities, to live through the long winter. We weren't the only ones to live like this. All new settlers shared the same lot, but somehow most of them survived.

Dr. Shellman, a prominent old time St. Paul doctor, and I were talking sometime ago about pioneer days in the North Woods Country. His people had similar experiences on arriving from Finland. He told about him and his brothers cutting cordwood. They got $1.25 a cord in Hibbing. Their market was better on account of being in the iron-mining region. He said he'd never forget about getting out in the thirty below zero weather, and just about all of the family working with him to make a cord of wood a day and sell it. At that, he and his brothers did well. As times improved, they became doctors and lawyers, one becoming a judge in the North Country. It took unusual strength and courage to survive, however.

I, Sarah, was then sixteen years old, and was anxious to get to work. I had hoped to get a job teaching a country school. I took the examination to teach in August, was informed that I had passed the test and was issued a certificate to teach. To get a school was quite a chore, driving over rough country roads into new districts. Our superintendent, Dr. Stephen, said that at that late date, it would be useless to look for a school, as the teachers were hired in June for the school year starting in September. My youth and lack of experience were a handicap. Teachers, too, were seemingly plentiful, coming in from the other towns on account of so much unemployment there. The superintendent said he would keep me in mind. However, I couldn't afford to sit around and wait for a vacancy.

I then decided to go to back to St. Paul and look for work. Housework was preferred as clerking and factory work paid so little that after deducting for room and board, there was very little left. For that matter, housework paid but very little, and was drudgery as compared with today, as there were no electric appliances in those days.

I think the Lord heard my prayer, as I got a teaching job quite unexpectedly.

We lived on the main road between Pine City and Hinkley, a road that ran through to Duluth, one of the oldest roads in the state, the old Government Road. Now and then, a peddler or other traveler would arrive at our place too late to make Hinkley, six miles away, before nightfall. These six miles were mostly wilderness. South of us was a Bohemian settlement. These people usually refused shelter to any traveler. In doing so perhaps, they were wise, as no doubt there were all sorts of characters, good and bad, traveling the woods and that road. However, Mother would never refuse food or shelter to anyone, and always without charge. Most of the travelers were poor settlers, bound for lands farther north.

Just as I had planned to leave the farm in a few days, a peddler on foot, worn and weary, stopped at our place. It was nearing nightfall and business had not been good with him. He was probably not more than eighteen and slightly crippled. Mother gave him supper and told him to stay for the night. The poor boy was so grateful that he tried to think of something that he could do for us in return. When he found out that I was looking for a school job, he told us of a possible vacancy near Pine City. The teacher who was to take the position had drowned the day before he had left there. This was but a few days ago. He advised that I apply at once. I took the train to Pine City in the morning. On arriving there, I found that the school was seven miles west of the town. The road there leads through a wood, and I was scared as I traveled it alone. It was close to evening when I reached my destination and the kindly family asked me where I was going. I told them. I was ashamed to tell them that I had no money for railway fare, so I walked that day not only the seven miles to town, but thirteen miles along the railway tracks to Hinkley, then three miles more to the farm.

However, the school teaching job was a lifesaver. The farm home where I boarded was a nice place on the lakeshore. I taught there three terms. I received $27.00 a month, paid $9.00 a month for board. After paying my board the first month, I had $18.00 left. With it, I bought a cow, which not only furnished the family with milk and butter, but became the mother of our herd. The next month with my money, I bought a pig, which we butchered, as we had no stock to use as food. This was the meat for the family for the long winter. The pig cost me $6.00. With the remaining money, I bought much needed winter clothing for the family and myself. By spring, I had enough money to buy a rather dilapidated old horse, but he served the purpose. He did our plowing and was used for hauling an old worn out buggy to take us to town. Next, we bought a team of horses.

Among our neighbors was the Gregg family. Mr. Gregg with his wife and baby had arrived in our neighborhood early in the fall. They were without money or possessions. Our boys had run across a deserted cabin in the woods, so the Greggs moved into it. Mother sent them whatever she could spare in the way of provisions and milk for the baby.

We would have gotten along very well if we owned the land, but about all we could do was pay the interest and taxes. We then got a notice that all the delinquent payments must be met at once or the mortgage would be foreclosed. We were unable to get a bank loan on account of so many people needing loans at this time.

Back to Mr. Gregg. Since Mr. Gregg was a rather frail man, he never made enough to support his family. Mother would help them with whatever she could spare. That went on all the winter. Mr. Gregg hoped to continue his journey in the spring. There were no snowplows on the roads in those days. Father told him of our plight and how we too would have to move as we were about to lose our place. Well Mr. Gregg said that he might be able to help us. He said, "I could sell this little tip on this homestead that I know about, but what you folks have done for me is worth a lot more, so I am glad to help you a little bit. Twenty years ago or so you could pick up a good homestead around here but no more. Now with no money and a family of young children of school age, you wouldn't consider the ones that are left, mostly out in the wilderness, and far from towns and schools. This place I have in mind for you is hardly a mile out from Hinkley, so the children could go to school. Here the school is three miles away; the road is an old trail, impassible part of the year."

Under the homestead law, a settler was allowed 160 acres, and five years to improve it. That is, after the five years, during which he paid no taxes or money, the land would be his.

Mr. Gregg gave Father a description of the land, took him up to the place, and told him to say nothing about it until he had filed a claim in Pine City and had built a shack on the place. All this Father did. As soon as news got around that, a homestead still existed within a mile of Hinkley, also on a good road, a dozen or more people tried to file on it, but it was too late then. We had it.

The place had a spacious cleared meadow of red clover. We were fortunate that it had not been picked up years before. It would have been, but Mr. Scott had put in four years of the required five on it. He had filed on the place twenty years ago. He was given the privilege by the U.S. Land Office of either holding it until released from prison or selling his relinquishment to someone else. No one had asked him about it, because all who knew about it had either moved away or perished in the fire. The new homesteader would have to put in five years on it to secure ownership of it. This rule worked to our advantage, as during the five years proving up period, we would have no taxes to pay.

Mr. Scott was a timber cruiser for some of the big timber companies. This work often took him away from home for weeks at a time. Coming home unexpectedly one evening, he found a stranger in company with his wife. In a fit of jealous rage, he shot the man dead. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to be hanged. Mr. Scott was well liked by his neighbors, so they petitioned that his sentence be changed to twenty years in prison. The twenty years were now up. I'll never forget how Mr. Scott looked as he was released. At that time, little was done for the prisoners. His face seemed expressionless. He said the prisoners were not allowed to talk to each other. He wore the same clothes that he wore when he entered twenty years before. They were brown with age. He had dinner with us that evening and was leaving the next day to be with some friends and relatives, where he hoped to spend his remaining years and become a forgotten man.

Hinkley had been rebuilt after the fire, and by now, 1898, had a fine school and a nice Catholic church, good stores and two good hotels. The town was served by two railroads, the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific, having four trains a day between St. Paul and Duluth. The twin cities were only seventy miles away. There were enough logs left from the fire to build a nice house and a barn as well as to sell a few as lumber to the mill. Red clover had replaced the fireweed. Father, as usual, landscaped the grounds around the house, so that we had a fine lawn, some trees, flowers, a garden, and an apple orchard.

There was a high ridge in back of the house that was covered with blue berry bushes. In the summer, we used to can as many as a hundred quarts of blue berries. Bridget, Mary, and I would come up and can as many as we wanted during berry season. Below the ridge was a little swamp where fine large cranberries grew. While some of the neighbors would steal the berries, we still had plenty for our needs and more to give away, some to perhaps the very people who had helped themselves.

A fine road led from the farm to town, very convenient for Mike, Jim, and Nell to walk to school. A good creamery nearby was also an asset, and as our herd grew, our monthly cream checks used to run as much as $100.00 a month, which was a great amount at that time. And so we prospered. We spent many happy years there.