Partying in the New Year is an old tradition in the Jamestown area.

Limpy Jack was part of a mobile party that was rolling from place to place on the subzero night of Dec. 31, 1877. He fell off the back of the wagon and wasn’t missed for several hours.

By the time he was found he had developed frost bite to several fingers and toes but was too “anesthetized” to notice.

He was returned to his dugout cabin where he planned to recover on his own.

Unfortunately gangrene set in and his condition deteriorated until it was critical.

He was taken by Capt. Forbes to the hospital at Fort Totten where some fingers and toes were amputated.

We don’t have a lot of other stories about New Year’s celebrations from that era. The records of Fort Seward include only the correspondence between the post commanders and the Headquarters of the Department of the Dakotas in St. Paul.

Little things like drunken soldiers were handled locally rather than referred to headquarters.

The biggest thing to happen at Fort Seward in January of 1875 was the arrival of a bail of 200 pounds of “stockings.”

Evidently it was the first of the year and time for everyone to change socks.

Another entry of note dealt with communications of that era.

The commanders at Fort Seward were ordered by headquarters to send a roll of telegraph wire along with any winter scouting party that might be traveling along the Northern Pacific Railroad to the east or west of Jamestown.

The army had a communications problem. The NPRR didn’t run trains west of Fargo during the winter and didn’t have a need or the resources to keep its telegraph lines operating.

But the army kind of liked to keep in touch with places like Fort Seward and Fort Abraham Lincoln by telegraph. Those posts were assigned the responsibility of relaying messages to the other army posts, places like Fort Totten, Fort Buford and Fort Rice, by messengers or scouting parties.

We know how difficult travel can be in this area during the winter. Even with modern four-wheel-drive vehicles and snow plowed roads there are times when moving from place to place is difficult or even dangerous.

Consider the challenges of traveling by horse and wagon through the blowing snow of a North Dakota winter.

And then make sure you have some wire along to fix the Internet cables along the way.

I suppose the first Christmas celebrated in North Dakota was in Fort Pembina in the last years of the 18th century. That fur trading post was established in the 1790′s and was the first place in what is now North Dakota where Christians were gathered.

But we know more about the Christmas at Fort Mandan celebrated by the men of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Christmas Eve was a working day, as it is for many today, at Fort Mandan. The crew was finishing the construction of the fort. If you’re still building the home you are going to spend the winter in on Christmas Eve there is reason to keep working and not start the holiday early.

But the corps of Discovery took Christmas day off. Even the day before the Captains had told the Mandan Indians to stay away. They wanted to make it a special day.

But Christmas at Fort Mandan was more like a rowdy office party than an observance of a major religious holiday. Triple rations of rum were served by 10 a.m. And the booze flowed through the day.

I don’t believe there were gifts and any religious moments of prayer or reflection were private among the men of the group.But in a way the day was like the modern holiday.

The men of the Corps of Discovery had traveled together since spring. And before that they had spent months training and preparing at a military camp outside St. Louis.

They were family. They had worked and lived side by side for a year. Most had been part of the military or the fur trade brigades previously. Aside from the officers, most of the men probably had no family other than their companions.

Our modern world allows many people to combine both types of gatherings. Many businesses have Christmas parties to allow co-workers to celebrate the holiday together.And families will gather to a share the holiday.

May you spend the season with colleagues, in our world of work we sometimes spend more time with co-workers than with family.

May you spend time with family. The simple joy of sharing time and too much food with people should be the greatest joy of the season.

And may you have a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year with the best wishes of Keith and Jane Norman on this joyous holiday season.

And yes, I write something like this every year because it’s cheaper than sending out Christmas cards.

Weeds are always a problem in agricultural areas. They seldom rise to the level of holding a region wide convention like thistles did in 1893 in southern North Dakota.

That’s when the “Cactus Convention” was held in LaMoure to deal with the infestations of Russian thistles that were occurring. The Russian thistle is known by a lot of names but I suppose the most common is tumbleweeds.

About 200 farmers journeyed to LaMoure in November to try to find a way to deal with the weeds.

The farmers blamed the recently constructed Soo Line Railroad built through the area although tradition also blames immigrants who brought their own seed wheat from Europe for the infestation.

Farmers at the Cactus Convention complained that even if they managed to control the thistles on their fields the tumbling tumbleweeds would blow across the land and spread seeds.

They were right. According to plant specialty sites on the Internet a Russian thistle spreads about 250,000 seeds while it rolls across the farm land.

I doubt any of the farmers in North Dakota in 1893 had counted them.

But Dr. Merchant of Dickey County had a solution.

He suggested a wire fence be placed completely around each township in southern North Dakota. Cost for the fence was estimated at about $1,200 per township. The fences were to be built with a gap or lane between each fence to provide common roads outside the townships.

Merchant argued that if the farmers of a township managed to eradicate the Russian thistle on their own lands the fence would prevent the weeds from reseeding as plants that grew far away blew across their land.

But not everyone agreed.

J. J. Deisch of Stutsman County thought the fences would make it too difficult for farmers to get to town.

In the end the Cactus Convention took no action. A committee was named to try to find a solution and to seek both Federal and state assistance in fighting the weeds.

But I don’t think they resurrected the fence around each township idea.

rrr

It’s hard to believe the Christmas holiday is so rapidly approaching.  

I’ll be doing a book signing from 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 18 at Simply Home located down the strip mall from the Dollar Tree. Stop by and talk a little about the history of Jamestown.

Maybe we can resurrect the idea of a ski jump here in the Buffalo City.

It’s not every day that three national champions come to Jamestown and challenge the locals to a little competition. I’m guessing it hasn’t happened since the winter of 1909 when the biggest names in ski jumping put on an exhibition in town.

It would appear back a century or so ago Jamestown had a ski jump hill. According to the Jamestown Alert it was located near the mill which was obviously located near what we now know as Mill Hill.

Ski jumping was a winter time hobby for amateurs and evidently there were enough locals who took part in the sport to keep the hill operating. There must have been enough interest to make it worthwhile for the champions to put on an exhibition too. Top prize for the challenge was a $100 for any “local boy” that beat the champions.

I’m not sure how you would work up the courage to try ski jumping back then. After all prohibition was the law of the land in North Dakota although that wasn’t always an obstacle.

Barney Riley was probably the least well known of the champions. Barney was from Virginia, Minn. and was the Class B national champion in 1910 and 1911. The Class B didn’t indicate he came from a smaller town but jumped on the smaller hill. The intent was to keep the less skilled ski jumpers from getting injured on the bigger hills.

Evidently only flying through the air between 80 and 100 feet is much safer than the 120 to 130 feet the regular jumpers accomplished.

John Evenson was the 1908 and 1909 National Champion on the big hill. Evenson was from Duluth and set a national record of 131 feet, landing in good form, at the national competition held in Duluth in 1908.

Evenson was inducted into the American Ski Jumping Hall of Fame in 2009.

But the best known of the stars at the Jamestown Professional Ski Tournament was Ole Feiring.

Feiring was born in Norway and was winning ski jumping tournaments there as a teenager before immigrating to the United States.

Feiring won his only American championship in 1906. He picked up $100 for his effort. Although it was his only national title he was a consistent competitor and, according to the website of the American Ski Jumping Hall of Fame, was the most popular ski jumper of the early 20th Century.

With no big money prizes I suppose the exhibitions the champions put on were their livelihood. Here in Jamestown admission was 50 cents for adults and a dime for children.

We don’t know how the event turned out. The paper didn’t cover the results or the attendance and the only reference to the event seems to be a paid advertisement. Ski jumping was largely a Norwegian sport and they weren’t the major population factor in Jamestown that they were in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  

But we can assume the crowd here in Jamestown chanted the same thing the Ski Jump Hall of Fame said was Feiring’s personal cheer.

“Yump, Ole, Yump.”

We’ve dealt with the first snow of the season. It appears everyone survived the first brush with old man winter.

The climate of North Dakota can be deadly any time of the year but especially when the snow flies in a strong northwest wind.

There were probably more ways to die in the winter weather back about a century ago. I came across two incidents in the winter of 1910 to 1911 that I found rather strange. I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone getting killed in this manner over the past decades.

In December a man was sitting his horse along the railroad tracks of the mainline of the Northern Pacific watching the locomotive mounted snow plow. Evidently he was very close to the tracks and you can probably figure out where this story is going.

While our soon to be deceased rider didn’t know enough to stay away from the tracks when the snow plow was working his horse did. He got dumped as the horse spooked and before he could recover and get out of the way he was buried by the snow pushed away by the plow.

There were people around, there always seems to be innocent bystanders, who tried to dig him out. Unfortunately he was dead by the time they worked their way through the snow.

The next incident happened near Hastings and involved someone who should have known better.

F.G. Wales was a road master for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Wales was overseeing the snow removal from the track on New Year’s Eve. He ordered his workers to get away from the track as the locomotive engine backed up to take another run at the bank.

Why he didn’t follow his own instructions is unknown. All that is known is that when the snow cleared after the plow hit the bank all that could be seen of Wales was a foot sticking out of a snow bank about 50 feet from the track.

Doctors from Kathryn were rushed to the scene but to no avail.

Winter still can be dangerous on the northern plains. It seems all too often a traveler perishes in a storm.

But I don’t recall hearing of anyone getting killed by being buried by the snow pushed up by a snow plow recently.

So maybe in 2010 we have as much common sense as a horse from 1910.