Call
BradAbout Highland Ridge
The Family, starting from Wisconsin, in 1857 fitted themselves out
with ox teams, some with one yoke and some two, our subjects being
among the former, and thus equipped with the necessary requirements,
or such as their means justified, the little colony embarked over
the "prairie schooner" line for the wilds of Kansas. After a journey
of seven weeks, made more or less eventful by varied experiences,
they arrived on the beautiful but unsettled prairies of Kansas. As
the First settlers of Shirley Township, now Cloud County Kansas, The
Family found the Mecca of their dreams.
The following year they raised a small crop of sod corn on the ten
acres they had broken, hauled the proceeds one hundred and fifty
miles to Ft. Kearney to buy the requirements of the household, and
when they homesteaded in the spring of 1863, he felt like a duke,
would scarcely have exchanged his possessions for a baronetcy. But
later when the settlements fell victims to the Indian raids, the
grasshoppers and the droughts, life on the frontier became a lonely
dread.