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Four Families in
Illinois Settlement


By Mrs. W. C. Rosenfelt

My father and mother Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Hazen and sister, Lydia (now Mrs. Jas. Hazen) who was several years younger than I, and myself, Oma Hazen, then a child of eight years came from Seymour, Champaigne County, Illinois, the spring of 1884. We arrived in Cambridge by train. Two men by the names of Yoarty and Jess Caster met us and brought us to Orafino which was only a postoffice.
We stayed at the "Gabe" (Gabriel) Caster home for more than a week while the men worked together on each of the "sod shanties" till all were finished for the four families of us that came together. They were the W. T. Jones family, the Jobe Caster family, the Alec Trindle family and our family (Hazens). We all rode in one large farm wagan, there were twenty adults and children in all.
Mr. and Mrs. W. Taylor Jones were the parents of Mrs. Amos Hampson of south of town, and my aunt and uncle, Jobe Caster, was Tom Caster's father, but Tom came later. Lizzie Sexton and John Caster were the two children who came then. Alex Trindle was the grandfather of Ralph Trindle who lived at Moorefield (Is now in Oregon with his family).
During that week, two families cooked on stoves out in the yard. Our family ate with the Gabe Caster family in their home as he was my father's cousin. We slept around on the floor.
We moved into our sod house before the roof was on it. They laid just enough sod on the roof of timber rafters and willow crosspieces to hold up the stove pipe so mother could cook our first meal in the new "soddy." We plastered the sides with sand and clay, I think, and tacked muslin on the timber rafters to keep the "soddy" clean. It was one long room with three half windows and no screens, about fourteen feet wide by twenty-four feet long. Maybe longer, I'm not sure.
On our trip from Cambridge to where Orafino is now, we stopped at one home for a drink. They had to hitch a horse to the fifteen gallon keg (water bucket) to draw water for us out of a deep well.
We borrowed a cow to milk for the feeding of her the first year here. And we owned one hog that we "staked out," when it broke loose the whole family gave chase until it was found and brought back as we were so afraid of losing it four our "pork-barrels" sake. There were no fences in those days. We had a team of horses and had brought some machinery with us, but had no chickens until later.
The "Gabe" Caster family consisted of Jack, Mrs. Ollie Wartman, Mrs. Addie Messersmith (who passed away some time ago), Mrs. Lizzie Messersmith of Curtis and Mrs. Naomi Hill.
I hardly remember what we did for neighborhood entertainment at first. "Literary" meetings using local talent, programs came later.
The first years we were here, my mother was so homesick for Illinois and her relatives there she could hardly bear it. My parents had lost three children who were born before us two girls and were buried back there also.
When the Burlington Railroad was put through Farnam we brought in vegetables and watermelons and sold them to the people camped here who were putting the railroad through. This would be sometime between 1884 and 1892. We lived about nine miles south of Farnam on our "homestead" now owned by R. J. Lydic. Our "soddy" was about a mile southwest of the site of the present Lydic home.
We lived there for eight years and then traded with Jake Rice for the place where Merlin Hazen and wife now live. We moved there in September of 1892. There my mother died Aug. 11, 1930 an my father died in February, 1933, at the home of my sister, Mrs. James Hazen.
I was married to Charles Augustus Rosenfelt Oct. 30, 1892. We lived on the place west of Oliver Sheffield's, now owned by the Williams Brothers. Here three of my children were born: Henry Sylvester Rosenfelt who died in 1918 during the influenza epidemic at the age of 24, Clarence Boyd who was a soldier in the World War for twenty-one months being overseas a year. He returned home after the death of his brother and his father was a sick man then and until he died three years later in 1921. Those were sad times for our family and during the war we anxiously looked for letters from our soldier son they were about a month late or sometimes several received two weeks and a month after they were sent from France. He died in 1927 leaving besides our family, his wife, Mrs. Lois Ommert Rosenfelt and son, Willard (then 18 months old) and Clyde Murlen Rosenfelt was also born on that place nine miles south of Farnam, but my daughter, (Mrs. Clifford Nickerson) was born on the place we moved to later about two miles south of Orafino. So I've lived all the way from 8 to 18 miles, then 12 to 20 miles from Farnam the past 52 years. Will Rosenfelt and I lived at Moorefield and 16 miles north of Moorefield besides in the city of Farnam the past four and one half years, since we were married at Moorefield November 1, 1930. So I feel as though I'm a real "Farnamite." We've traded at the "Beat Place" almost as long as I can remember, the store now owned by W. G. Parker and sons, which was then owned by Buss and Divoll. There were very few other buildings in Farnam then.
We saw some very "hard times" in the early years here, but sometimes it seems like the past three years of "the depression" have been even worse than those days.
1886 1936

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