Rolla and Katies' Story
Katie Dunham and Rolla Christie first met as children. Rollie's family had
immigrated from Ontario, Canada in 1872 and rented land from Katie's father,
Sylvester Craig Dunham. The parents of the two children loved to square dance
and often the families met at dances held in the Dunlap town hall and at other
homes in the neighborhood. This was the main social event in the 1880s in
the farming country of Iowa. (5) The younger children
would sit and watch the grownups dance all evening. Rolla often sat in a corner
of the hall holding the toddler Katie in his arms. (3)
About 1882, William became a citizen and was able to buy land for his family.
The Christies moved to Monona County; S.C. Dunham and his family had moved
to West Fork twp, Woodbury Co. about 1880. When Rolla finished high school,
he returned to Crawford County to work as a farmhand. He was reintroduced
to Katie by his cousin, who told him that the pretty maiden before him was
the same little girl he used to hold in his arms at the dance hall.
(3)
Rolla and Katie married on Wednesday, February 3, 1892, when Katie was sixteen
and Rolla was twenty-two. The ceremony was held at the Dunlap Free Methodist
Parsonage (2) and after the ceremony the pair went by
horse and buggy to a great big reception at the home of Katie's parents, Sylvester
Craig and Mary Jane (Miller) Dunham.(1) The wedding
dinner featured at 45-pound turkey, which was some bird in those days. The
following Saturday, a formal reception was held by the Ladies Methodist Aid.
Sixty-eight people attended the dinner, at which oyster stew, pies and cakes
were served. (7) After a brief honeymoon, Rolla and
Katie set up farming on nearby leased land. (5) In 1893
their first child, Grace, was born.
The Christies farmed in Monona County, Iowa for 18 years. They rose at 4 a.m.
in the morning. Rolla milked the 15 to 20 cows they kept. Katie separated
the cream and churned the butter, which she sold in the nearest town. She
baked bread for her family. As the children grew up, they all helped with
the farm chores. They learned how to milk cows, gather eggs laid by some 600
chickens, and take care of the vegetable gardens. Katie raised her chickens
by setting eggs under old setting hens. (5) She sold
eggs for three cents a dozen, when they could be sold at all. Sometimes they
went to town and couldn't sell them. Then on the way back to the farm they
just dumped them along the roadside. She also sold dressed fryers for eight
cents each. (7) The girl children all learned to preserve
fruits and vegetables from the harvest: in the 1890s in stone jars covered
with wax, and by the twentieth century, in glass jars with rubber bands and
glass lids, and finally in jars with metal lids. Butchering time on the farm
meant grinding meat for sausages and slicing hams to be put in stone crocks
and covered with grease left over from the rendering. Katie made her own hominy
and sauerkraut too. Katie and the older girls washed clothes by hand on a
wash board and scrubbed wide wooden plank floors on their hands and knees.
(5) In the winter the children skied to school, which
was about a mile away, on homemade skis. They made the skis out of hard hickory
wood and leather taken off old harnesses; the children swiped every scrap
that could be used to make skis. (5) The whole family
was taught to read. This was their main pastime in the winter. (5)
Katie helped the children with their homework, and aways said she acquired
the equivalent of two high school educations and a college education by the
time the children finished school. (1) Rollie claimed
that he never did a thing without asking Katie's opinion. The one time he
did something contrary, it turned out badly. He got hail insurance when Katie
thought he shouldn't. She said "The Lord will provide". The hail came and
ruined everything after Rolla had already harvested the corn and tied it up
in shocks. The insurance agent then showed him the fine print in the policy
that specified that he couldn't collect against damages if the crop was already
cut. Katie didn't even say "I told you so" (1) The Christies
also raised pigs, which were shipped to Omaha, and cattle, which were shipped
to Chicago to sell. (7) This grew to a prosperous business.
By 1908, they already owned 400 pedigreed and stock hogs.
Then disaster struck. Their entire herd was decimated by swine colera. (7)
The Christies also grew corn and wheat crops. In 1908, Rolla was the first
farmer in Iowa to raise a crop of Turkey Red winter wheat. People came from
miles around to see this new type of wheat. (7) One
year while Cleveland was President, the harvest was so good that they sold
a quarter of the crop for eight cents a bushel, but the rest of the crop rotted
because of the oversupply. (7) The Cristies had a difficult
time recovering from the drop in grain prices and the destruction of their
swine herd.
They moved to northwestern Nebraska in about 1908, hoping that things would
improve with new land. The journey was made in two covered wagons. Rolla drove
one; their eldest son Guy drove the other. They only had three horses, and
had to borrow a fourth horse for the second team from the Dunhams. After they
reached Gordon in Sheridan Co., Nebraska, Guy was sent back to Iowa by himself
to return the borrowed horse. He reached Crawford County, Iowa just in time
for the harvest. So he stayed and worked through the harvest to earn money
for a train ticket back to Nebraska. When the train reached Omaha, he got
off and spent a few days "on the town", and then got back on the
train and returned safely to his family.
The Christies bought land in the Nebraska sand hills, twenty-seven miles
from the nearest railroad line at Gordon. When that wasn't successful, they
moved to Gordon, leased and lived at the Cue Ranch, from 1915 to 1918, where
Katherine and Margaret were born. Their lease turned out to be unprofitable,
and the livestock and hay they bought with the lease were of poor quality.
Drought in the 1910s caused crop failures and lack of employment. Guy went
to Europe to serve in the US Army in early 1918. When he came back, he helped
them close up the ranch, settle the lease, and move to a smaller property.
Their daughter Grace had married and moved to western Colorado with her family.
Her husband fell sick with tuberculosis and was in the hospital. Once Guy
had settled his parents on their new property, he took the train to Montrose
to see his sister Grace and her children, intending to help out briefly and
then head for California to look for a good job. He spent his last dollars
buying food and shoes for the soon-to-be-fatherless children. He spent as
much time as he could at the hospital with Grace's husband Leonard, and got
a job as an orderly so that he was allowed to sleep at the hospital and eat
there also. Leonard died in 1924.
In 1925 Rolla and Katie Christie, with their younger children, made their
way to western Colorado by train. In Ouray, Colorado, Rolla worked in the
mines for a time. Their daughter Helen worked as a cook for the miners at
the Mutual Gold Mining Company. In August of 1928, Katie took over cooking
at the mine boarding house, so that Helen could go on a much-needed vacation.
Rolla and Katie bought a piece of property near Montrose, but even with Guys's
help, they were unable to keep the property going, and it was repossessed
by the bank.
In June of 1934, Grace drove up from California for Katherine's high school
graduation. Grace had moved to California several years earlier, after the
death of her first husband, Leonard Kuykendall. In Montrose, she helped pack
up all their belongings and she and Rolla, Katie, Katherine and Margaret drove
to California to resettle in Modesto. Later they moved to Salinas and Rolla
got a job working as a janitor in the Spreckels sugar processing plant. He
finally retired in 1940 at the age of 71(4). They moved
to River Pines in Amador Co, California in 1944. (6)
Rolla and Katie moved to Sumner, Washington in 1961 to live near their youngest
daughter, Margaret (Christie) Cook. In 1966 they gave up their house and moved
in with Margaret after Katie fell and broke a hipbone and couldn't keep house
any longer. In 1967 they celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary. Their
children and grandchildren presented them with new diamond-studded wedding
rings. (1) They also received a congratulatory card
from President and Mrs. Johnson and Governor Dan Evans. That same year Rolla
suffered two strokes; Katie was slow to recover from her broken hip. They
moved to Stillwell Sanitarium in Puyallup, Washington. (2)
Rolla died after several months in the nursing home, in Febrary of 1968, at
the age of 99. Katie lived for several more years, suffering from various
ailments, and died in 1972.
References:
(1) 75th Wedding anniversary article, Tacoma P.I. February, 1967
(2) 76th Wedding anniversary article, Puyallup Paper? 1968
(3) 74th Wedding anniversay article, 1966
(4) 73rd Wedding anniversary article, 1965 Tacoma P.I ?.
(5) 72nd wedding anniversay article, 1964
(6) 64th Wedding anniversay, 1956
(7) 62nd Wedding anniversay 1954
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