Wyoming Breezes

Four brothers - Ted, Ed, Art, Charles near Provo, SD  My Dad (second from the right) had three brothers and one sister and grew up on a farm near Provo, South Dakota. The farm/ranch is now being worked by Ed's grandson and is an official Century Farm (managed by one family for at least 100 years) More about the farm's history can be found here . My Dad and his oldest brother Ted moved to central Wyoming in the 1930s. They were eager to farm irrigated land, in the developing Midvale Irrigation District. Ed stayed on the family farm, Charles started a sheep ranch near Provo, and Sadie and her husband operated a ranch south of Provo.

Franklin Stearns near Provo, SD approx. 1922 I didn't know my paternal grandfather, as he died many years before I was born. He was born June 4, 1870 in Almond, New York and died September 4, 1927 in South Dakota. The following narrative is from the Edgemont Centennial 1890 - 1990 book that was compiled by the Edgemont Centennial Book Committee - edited by Caroline Curl and printed 1989 by Edgemont Herald Tribune, Edgemont, SD, pages 413 - 415 (I apologize for the choppy sentence structure, but this was copied verbatim from the book. I added the information in the parentheses.) Frank was a farmer, as were his father and grandfather. Land was expensive and the desire for a farm of his own brought him to South Dakota. In May, 1910 he and his brother-in-law Julian came to South Dakota (from Minnesota) by train. They each filed on homesteads east of Provo. Their families came on the train to Provo on November 1, 1910. Frank met his family with a team and wagon. There were no...

My paternal grandfather filed this application in 1910, and one hundred years later, the land is still being farmed by his great grandson. Subsequent deeds confirm it is a Century Farm. John Franklin and Annie Stearns date unknown - possibly taken on their wedding John Franklin Stearns, the patriarch of the South Dakota Stearns legacy, arrived in Provo from Brewster, Minn., in May 1910 with one goal in mind: to stake his claim on federal land and start a homestead. Known by his middle name, Frank was 40 years old. Frank Stearns' wife, Annie, arrived by train seven months later (December 1910) with their five young children: Theodore, 7; Sadie, 6; Edward, 5; Arthur, 3; and Charles, 1. The seven of them squeezed into a 16-by-24-foot, two-room tar-paper shack with no insulation, plumbing or electricity. While the children were still young, Frank contracted typhoid fever, causing him to run deliriously through fields full of cactus in the middle of the night. After finding Fran...