Central Kansas Library System

"A few years ago, as I listened one night to my mother telling incidents of her life pioneering in the semi-arid region of Western Kansas, it occurred to me that the picture of that early time was worth drawing and preserving for the future, and that, if this were ever to be done, it must be done soon, before all of the old settlers were gone. This book is the result-an effort to picture that life truly and realistically. It is the story of an energetic...

Deeply moved by his mother's memories of a waning era and rapidly disappearing lifestyle, John Ise painstakingly recorded the adventures and adversities of his family and boyhood neighbors—the early homesteaders of Osborne County, Kansas. First published in 1936, his "nonfiction novel" Sod and Stubble has since become a widely read and much loved classic. In the original, Ise changed some identities and time sequences but accurately retained the...

Rare and long-forgotten, the gems found in this work have been previously known to only a privileged and lucky few. These informative sketches, essays, and stories were penned by men and women who lived in Northern Kansas during that vibrant settlement period of Great Plains history from the 1870s to the 1920s. The narratives presented here, many in print for the first time in well over a hundred years, allow us to experience in detail the daily life...