THE McCRALINES
As before mentioned, I was given largely to observation and to reading
and was fairly well posted on current events. I was always a lover of
success and nothing interested me more after a day's work in the field
than spending my evening hours in reading. What I liked best was some
good story with a moral. I enjoyed reading stories by Maude Radford
Warren, largely because her stories were so very practical and true to
life. Having traveled and seen much of the country, while running as a
porter for the P----n Company, I could follow much of her writings,
having been over the ground covered by the scenes of many of her
stories. Another feature of her writings which pleased me was the fact
that many of the characters, unlike the central figures in many stories,
who all become fabulously wealthy, were often only fairly successful and
gained only a measure of wealth and happiness, that did not reach
prohibitive proportions.
Perhaps I should not have become so set against stories whose heroes
invariably became multi-millionaires, had it not been for the fact that
many of the younger members of my race, with whom I had made
acquaintance in my trips to Chicago and other parts of the country,
always appeared to intimate in their conversation, that a person should
have riches thrust upon them if they sacrificed all their "good times,"
as they termed it, to go out west. Of course the easterner, in most
stories, conquers and becomes rich, that is, after so much sacrifice.
The truth is, in real life only about one in ten of the eastern people
make good at ranching or homesteading, and that one is usually well
supplied with capital in the beginning, though of course there are
exceptions. Colored people are much unlike the people of other races.
For instance, all around me in my home in Dakota were foreigners of
practically all nations, except Italians and Jews, among them being
Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Assyrians from Jerusalem, many Austrians,
some Hungarians, and lots of Germans and Irish, these last being mostly
American born, and also many Russians. The greater part of these people
are good farmers and were growing prosperous on the Little Crow, and
seeing this, I worked the harder to keep abreast of them, if not a
little ahead. This was my fifth year and still there had not been a
colored person on my land. Many more settlers had some and Tipp county
was filling up, but still no colored people. My white neighbors had many
visitors from their old homes and but few but had visitors at some time
to see them and see what they were doing.
During my visit to Kansas the spring previous, I had found many
prosperous colored families, most of whom had settled in Kansas in the
seventies and eighties and were mostly ex-slaves, but were not like the
people of southern Illinois, contented and happy to eke a living from
the farm they pretended to cultivate, but made their farms pay by
careful methods. The farms they owned had from a hundred and sixty
acres to six hundred and forty acres, and one colored man there at that
time owned eleven hundred acres with twelve thousand dollars in the
bank.
Wherever I had been, however, I had always found a certain class in
large and small towns alike whose object in life was obviously nothing,
but who dressed up and aped the white people.
After Miss Rooks had married I was again in the condition of the
previous year, but during the summer I had written to a young lady who
had been teaching in M--boro and whom I had met while visiting Miss
Rooks. Her name was Orlean McCraline, and her father was a minister and
had been the pastor of our church in M--pls when I was a baby, but for
the past seventeen years had been acting as presiding elder over the
southern Illinois district. Miss McCraline had answered my letters and
during the summer we had been very agreeable correspondents, and when in
September I contracted for three relinquishments of homestead filings, I
decided to ask her to marry me but to come and file on a Tipp county
claim first.
To get the money for the purchase of the relinquishments, I had
mortgaged my three hundred and twenty acres for seven thousand, six
hundred dollars, the relinquishments costing in the neighborhood of six
thousand, four hundred dollars. October was the time when the land would
be open to homestead filing, and Miss McCraline had written that she
would like to homestead. After sending my sister and grandmother the
money to come to Dakota, I went to Chicago, where I arrived one
Saturday morning. I had, since being in the west, stopped at the home of
a maiden lady about thirty-five years of age, and in talking with her I
had occasion to speak of the family. Evidently she did not know I had
come to see Orlean, or that I was even acquainted with the family. I
spoke of the Rev. McCraline and asked her if she knew him.
"Who, old N.J. McCraline?" she asked. "Humph," she went on with a
contemptuous snort. "Yes, I know him and know him to be the biggest old
rascal in the Methodist church. He's lower than a dog," she continued,
"and if it wasn't for his family they would have thrown him out of the
conference long ago, but he has a good family and for that reason they
let him stay on, but he has no principle and is mean to his wife, never
goes out with her nor does anything for her, but courts every woman on
his circuit who will notice him and has been doing it for years. When he
is in Chicago he spends his time visiting a woman on the west side. Her
name is Mrs. Ewis."
This recalled to my mind that during the spring I had come to Chicago I
had become acquainted with Mrs. Ewis' son and had been entertained at
their home on Vernon Avenue where at that time the two families,
McCraline and Ewis, rented a flat together, and although I had seen the
girls I had not become acquainted with any of the McCraline family then.
Orlean was the older of the two girls. What Miss Ankin had said about
her father did not sound very good for a minister, still I had known in
southern Illinois that the colored ministers didn't always bear the best
reputations, and some of the colored papers I received in Dakota were
continually making war on the immoral ministers, but since I had come to
see the girl it didn't discourage me when I learned her father had a bad
name although I would have preferred an opposite condition.
I went to the phone a few minutes after the conversation with Miss Ankin
and called up Miss McCraline, and when she learned I was in the city she
expressed her delight with many exclamations, saying she did not know I
would arrive in the city until the next day and inquired as to when I
would call.
"As nothing is so important as seeing you," I answered, "I will call at
two o'clock, if that is agreeable to you."
She assured me that it was and at the appointed hour I called at the
McCraline home and was pleasantly received. Miss McCraline called in her
mother, whom I thought a very pleasant lady. We passed a very agreeable
evening together, going over on State street to supper and then out to
Jackson Park. I found Miss McCraline a kind, simple, and sympathetic
person; in fact, agreeable in every way.
I had grown to feel that if I ever married I would simply have to
propose to some girl and if accepted, marry her and have it over with. I
was tired of living alone on the claim and wanted a wife and love, even
if she was a city girl. I felt that I hadn't the time to visit all over
the country to find a farmer's daughter. I had lived in the city and
thought if I married a city girl I would understand her, anyway. I
could not claim to be in love with this girl, nor with anyone else, but
had always had a feeling that if a man and woman met and found each
other pleasant and entertaining, there was no need of a long courtship,
and when we came in from a walk I stated the object of my trip.
Miss McCraline was acquainted with a part of the story for, as stated,
she had been teaching in M--boro at the time I went there to see Miss
Rooks, and had seen her take up with the cook and marry foolishly. She
had stated in her letters that she had been glad that I wrote to her and
that she thought Miss Rooks had acted foolishly, and when I explained my
circumstances and stated the proposition she seemed favorable to it. I
told her to think it over and I would return the next day and explain it
to her mother.
When I called the next morning and talked with her and her mother, they
both thought it all right that Orlean should go to Dakota and file on
the homestead, then we would marry and live together on the claim, but
her mother added somewhat nervously and apparently ill at ease, that I
had better talk with her husband. As the Reverend was then some three
hundred and seventy-five miles south of Chicago attending conference, I
couldn't see how we could get together, but we put in the Sunday
attending church and Sunday School, and that evening went to a downtown
theatre where we saw Lew Dokstader's minstrels with Neil O'Brien as
captain of the fire department, which was very funny and I laughed until
my head ached.
The next day was spent in trying to communicate with the Reverend over
the long distance but we did not succeed. Fortunately, at about five
o'clock Mrs. Ewis came over from the west side. I had known Mrs. Ewis to
be a smart woman with a deeper conviction than had Mrs. McCraline, whom
she did not like, but as Mrs. McCraline was in trouble and did not know
which way to turn, Mrs. Ewis was approached with the subject. Orlean was
an obedient girl and although she wanted to go with me, it was evident
that I must get the consent of her parents. She was nearly twenty-seven
years old and girls of that age usually wish to get married. Her younger
sister had just been married, which added to her feeling of loneliness.
The result of the consultation with Mrs. Ewis, as she afterward
explained to me, was that it was decided that it would not be proper for
Orlean to go alone with me but if I cared to pay her way she would
accompany us as chaperon. I was getting somewhat uneasy as I had paid
twelve hundred dollars into the bank at Megory for the relinquishment,
which I would lose if someone didn't file on the claim by the second of
October. It was then about September twenty-fifth and I readily
consented to incur the expense of her trip to Megory, where we soon
landed. While I had been absent my sister and grandmother had arrived.
On October first, all three were ready to file on their claims, and
Dakota's colored population would be increased by three, and four
hundred and eighty acres of land would be added to the wealth of the
colored race in the state. Hundreds of others had purchased
relinquishments and were waiting to file also. A ruling of the
department had made it impossible to file before October first, and when
it was seen that only a small number would be able to file on that day,
the register and receiver inaugurated a plan whereby all desiring to
file on Tipp county claims should form a line in front of the land
office door, and when the office opened, the line should file through
the office in the order in which they stood, and numbers would be issued
to them which would permit them to return to the land office and make
their filings in turn, thereby avoiding a rush and the necessity of
remaining in line until admitted to the land office.