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Told by Miss Iva Millen of Oberlin, Kansas This prairie fire started on the Jim White homestead seven miles west of Selden and burned northwest until it Miss Millen says “We were all up early on that Sunday morning on
March 23, l89O as we were going over to Sunday School at Violenta. Violenta was then a little sod school house just west of the Emahizer ranch on the Warner
homestead. We cleaned that week as my sister Emma who was teaching school was to he married the following Thursday to Ralph Huddle. While we were getting breakfast
Pa fed and harnessed the horses. The wind was blowing very strong that morning from the southwest. After breakfast when I noticed a cloud in the northeast we
wondered about it but were dismayed when it proved to be a prairie fire sweeping down upon us from the southwest. Prairie fires in those days would some time burn
for days across thousands of acres of short grass with nothing to stop them and the sight of one on the horizon would strike terror to the hearts of the settlers.
Pa ran to the barn south of the house for the horses and he hitched them to his plow and ran the horses
across the creek and started plowing south of his fire guard and backfiring to turn the fire and run it around our barn, haystacks,. and corn cribs, but to no
avail. When the flames reached the 11 bluestem grass near the creek the horses sensed the danger and started with Pa and the plow for the barn. Very soon the wind
carried the flames to the 35 tons of hay stacked just west of the sod barn and the straw roof was soon on fire. Pa gave the horses to Emma and I and ran into the
barn for the cow and calf. We took the horses to the south of the house which was not far from the barn and unhitched them. Our father brought the cattle and we
took them to the house where we found Ma kneeling in prayer with her arms around the three children. The stock were led into the house without the least resistance.
It was a three foot sod house with a dirt roof, a window in the south, two in the west and a door in the East . For two long hours the heat and smoke from the burning corn and hay was something dreadful. The horses stood still with heads hanging
low and sweat dripping from them to the carpet. Just as the fire had burned to an ember our good neighbor to the south of us
-— your father, Mr. Warner Rodebush drove into the yard and maybe you think there was not great rejoicing
in the Millen camp. When they came over the hill they
could not see our house for the smoke and naturally they thought the home had burned up
and we had perished and when the smoke lifted and father and mother followed by us children came to the door you can imagine the
crys of joy and thanksgiving to God
that went up from these friends who had come to our rescue, and all cried out loud-.—they and we together... and all knelt down
right then and there and gave thanks to the kind, heavenly Father
who had brought us through the flames. But there was no time for delays as the fire was traveling on,
wrecking death and
destruction and the men hitched the horses to the wagons and all went to do what they could to relieve others in the path of the
fire and did not return until after dark that night. They put in a hard day fighting the side lines and helping to save school and homes until night fall and had
come to the Sappa west of Oberlin, and by that time the head fire had crossed the Beaver and the Republican River at Mc Cook and on to the Platte where it was
extinguished by the broader stream of water.
Iva M. Millen
Other homesteaders who fought fire that day were: S. J. Baughman, A. Slaven, C. F.
Rood, John Thibor,
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Stories From Early Settlers 1 |
Stories From Early Settlers 2 |
Stories From Early Settlers 3 |
Stories From Early Settlers 4 |