INTERVIEW OF JOHN HARDER
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My father came from Germany in 1883. He was then a young man and was looking for opportunity in a new country. He wanted to have a stock farm, so he went “out west.” He located first on the Snake River and raised horses, later moving and buying railroad land.
The little town which he founded was called Hardersburg, and later was changed to Kahlotus. He bought 15 sections of railroad land. We always raised stock and farmed. My father introduced irrigation into Franklin County, and raised the first alfalfa. We belong to the Lutheran church. In the early times we had no churches. We even conducted funerals without a preacher.
I was born February 3, 1894, in Franklin County, Washington. I was married October 15, 1917. We had a house of rough lumber and our furniture was home-made, when I was a child. The railroad had reached the Snake River at the time my father arrived, and by the time I was born people enjoyed about everything we have now, excepting airplanes and automobiles. We rode horseback, as a rule, and traveled miles for our mail. For a long time my people used cattle chips for fuel. We had plain clothing, and raised our own food. Father helped build the first school here. We played one old cat, ante over and drop the handkerchief, etc. In 1905 there was a cloudburst and Lake Kahlotus raised ten feet. We fished in both the Palouse and Snake rivers. I recall some queer old characters. One man hung his hardware on the kitchen wall. We had little recreation, and our schooling was limited. I quit school at the age of fourteen years and began farming. Our Fourth of July celebrations were usually spent at Washtucna, where the principal sport was horse racing.
I served as county commissioner of Franklin County. I live on the ranch that my two brothers, sister and I inherited from the man who looked ahead, and bought when land was cheap. In “Hoosier Schoolmaster,” we find a pioneer woman advising her husband to “git a plenty while you’re gittin’” and that’s what my father, Hans Harder, did.
It was 72 miles to the post office and 60 miles to the nearest doctor, when my father came from Schleswig-Holstein and settled near to what is now Kahlotus. Often he and his brother saw no other white man for six months at a time.
When father sold his horses at $2.50 a head, he bought railroad land at 10 cents per acre, the railroads being anxious to encourage settlers. He bought 50 sections and started raising cattle and sheep. He was one of the first settlers in this vicinity and his choice included a fine spring, enabling him to practice irrigation and alfalfa growing.
Some of the less fortunate settlers in the county hauled water 20 miles as there were no wells at first.
There was very little money in those days, and we used to trade wheat for hogs, living mostly on wheat and roasting barley for coffee.
Funeral services were conducted by the women, who sang and read the Scriptures. Burial was on the ranch, there being no cemetery. Father made the coffins of rough lumber.
Our family started plowing the land and raising big crops of hay for winter feed. The country developed, and five ministers came, to file on homesteads. They stayed one night at our ranch, and it being a dry season, that night the preachers joined in a petition for rain. Their payers were answered in a downpour which continued eight days and ruined the hay which the Harders had cut and left drying in the fields. After that, father never kept any preachers while we were making hay.
Cattle and sheep wars were common in the early days. Sheep were killed and the camps destroyed. Near Sulphur Lake, an entire field of barley was burned and a flock of sheep literally starved. The scarcity of feed led two men to drive their sheep onto Indian land. The men were armed but it did not take long for the Indians to disarm them, as they were new to the business. The Indians then ran the several bands of sheep into a corral and asked forty sheep as payment for damages. The Frenchmen went to Walla Walla for legal advice and were told that they would have to settle with the Indians the best way they could.
Our family fared better when a thousand head of cattle were driven through our alfalfa. Neighbors helped disarm the cowboys and took possession of the cattle, keeping enough of them to pay well for the damage done.
When our family began raising wheat, they brought in wild horses from the range and broke them for plowing. When the season was over, we turned them out again.
We camped in the hills, two men in each camp, when we started our spring work. It was too far to travel back and forth from the ranch house, so we did our own cooking and went home occasionally to stock up on mother’s bread and other provisions. We turned the horses out to graze at night, and in the morning we got up at about 3 o’clock. While one skinner rounded up the horses, the other got breakfast.
Compared with life today, we went through many hardships and had few of the wonderful advantages offered young people now. Yet I believe that in spite of those hardships, or maybe because of them, we were better fitted for life than young people of today, for this reason: hardships are stepping stones to people of ambition.
