Homesteads and Headstones

 July 19, 2011 Tuesday

On Tuesday we departed Ellsworth AFB and headed to Aberdeen,SD.  Nice to have a windshield without a big crack running across it.    We headed east on I-90 and then North on 83 to Pierre.  The countryside is beautiful with all the rain; green grass, ripe golden wheat fields running for miles.  We see very few trees.  When we get to Ft. Pierre, the flooding starts.

Sandbagged McDonalds

 Water is coming up to the side of the road and the McDonalds we stop at is surrounded by  sandbags.  We keep going North and go through a town with hundreds of round shiny grain bins.  It’s a town of 83 people and we wonder if it’s been a really good year for grain or if they’re manufacturing them.

 As we turn east again on hwy 12 we come to Roscoe.  A sign says there is one lane a mile away.  We are behind a semi truck and can’t see the road ahead  but are waiting for the cars to come from the other direction.  From where we sit, all we can see is a huge lake in front of us.  When it’s our turn, we realize gravel has been piled up on the highway to keep the road open and the lake is fields.  Don’t know how the semi stayed on because it was pretty scary for us.

Joe Engelhart and Ruth Lundin -Cousins

My cousin, Joe Engelhart, met us when we got to Aberdeen and loaded us and all our paraphanelia into his truck and headed for his home 15 miles away.  Everywhere we went there were roads closed because of water.  Whole fields covered with water were a common sight, as were parks and cattle yards.  Those poor farmers.  When we finally got to Joe’s house it felt like we were on an island. The James River runs right through his property.  He served us a wonderful dinner of smoked chicken, baked potatoes, corn from his garden, bread he had baked, and cucumber and asparagus pickles.  And cookies for dessert.  He is a great cook. 

Joe Engelhart's House

Shelter belt at James E. Hickenbotham Homestead

We talked until midnight about families and geneology and asked him to take us to Great Grandpa Jimmy Hickenbotham’s homestead which he thought he could find.  The next day after a breakfast of home made pecan cinnamon rolls,  we set out.  Joe had some plat maps and we figured out where to go from those.  After  running into more closed roads, we finally went the long way around and found the property.  A different family owns it now, but they said yes this was the place. 

Christy took some pictures of the old house we think was the original. We were pretty excited with our first find.

Original house on Hickinbotham Homestead

Summer Kitchen

 Then we went looking for the houses in town we had addresses for.  We found a couple but didn’t have house numbers for some others. 

Grandma Mary and Grandpa Walter's Home

Sacred Heart across the street

324 Jackson St. (picture to right)

We stopped at the Sacred Heart cemetery and found Joe’s parents grave, Aunt Edith and Uncle Joe Engelhart, and Grandpa Walter and Grandma Mary Hickenbotham. 

Crazy picture that refuses to cooperate.  Use your imagination
Mary and Walter Hickenbotham

After that, we did our good bye hugs and Joe left and we got in our truck.  We stopped for lunch and then hit the library.  That’s when we found out we were in the wrong cemetery for GrGramps.  So we headed over to Riverside cemetery.  We never did find him.   Finally we got in the truck and headed for Milbank.  Checked into the Super 8 and had microwave dinners in our jammies so we didn’t have to go out again.  We worked on geneology stuff until our brains were fried, about midnight.  We were tired.

Foof