Sod-House Days: Letters from a Kansas Homesteader, 1877-78

by Howard Ruede, John Ise (Editor)

Howard Ruede was twenty-two years old in March of 1877 when he rode on a freight wagon into Osborne City, a community in west-central Kansas. A young man of courage, common sense, and independence, Ruede was filled with the optimism and determination typical of the men and women who took up the challenge of homesteading on the prairie.

Brought together by economist John Ise and first published in 1937, Sod-House Days is a collection of the letters Ruede wrote to his family in Pennsylvania chronicling his first year in Kansas. In minute detail these letters show the hard, wearying work faced by homesteaders in the 1870s, their almost unbelievable poverty, the hardships of poor food, inadequate clothing, crowding, unsanitary conditions, the lack of decent drinking water, the bedbugs and fleas, flies and mosquitoes. We see Ruede struggling to stay out of debt, walking miles to pick up the mail or to visit a neighbor, working until his bare feet are rubbed raw by the wheat stubble of the fields, going without meat because he hasn't been able to kill a jackrabbit, cooking biscuits in a kettle over his sod fireplace. Taken together, his observations constitute a careful and graphic picture of the pioneer community in which he lived, one that joins recent studies such as Sandra Myres's Westering Women and the Frontier Experience in presenting an accurate, if brutal, picture of life on the western frontier.

In a perceptive new foreword, sociologist Scott G. McNall considers the context within which the story of Howard Ruede unfolded. He delineates the forces and factors that contributed to the rapid settlement of the Great Plains. He reads the dominant themes that run through Ruede's an almost religious faith in progress and hard work, and a tremendous concern for the idea of community. He also addresses a central What made these people stay? McNall writes, "The value of these materials has been not at all reduced by the passage of time. . . . [This] is the story of an ordinary person with heroic dimensions. Reading these letters, we see what values people had which allowed them to try, and then try again, after they had seen their efforts destroyed by drought, grasshoppers, prairie fires, and other disasters. . . . It is a story of struggle with the environment, of creative adaption to circumstance, of people as active participants in creating the society around them."

Genres: History, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

Reviews

[Fred Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a journal of a young man who moved to Kansas in 1877 from Pennsylvania. It's an almost daily account of his first year or so in a small town in the middle of Kansas. It certainly is one of the best views you will get of settlers on the prairie in the homesteading era. It shows how precarious their existence was and how much all the settlers depended on each other. Worthwhile reading if you're looking to immerse yourself in that, although it is a little repetitive. I'm working on a history of my family that homesteaded further north in North Dakota in the early 1880s but it would be much like this.

Unless you're really interested in this as a history I'm not sure I’d recommend it to a casual reader. But a great view into a piece of history many Americans share.

[Tim Vandall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book about a settlers first two years in central/western Kansas. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

[Cmiller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting view of harsh settlement conditions in north central Kansas. As a descendant of settlers in a different part of the state, this account nonetheless helped me understand the difficult labor and discipline settlers had to have if they were to survive and potentially prosper.

[Cws]

KAN-Rue

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting book.