Haymakers: A Chronicle of Five Farm Families

A Yorker’s Sojourn in Minnesota

A Yorker’sSojourn in Minnesota HAYING WITH HORSES Oliver Perry Kysor, Old Stock American Maine Township, Otter Tail County, 1883 In the coldest part of January 1883, Oliver Perry Kysor kept having dreams, dreams he couldn’t shake. He had visions of his father’sfarm near the high headland in New York, the place called Kysor Hill ever since his family arrived there from Vermont in 1832.’That hill had been the center of his life since Perry, as he was known, was three years old. His father, Charles, had taught him and his five brothers how to be good farmers there, how to care for horses, and how to harvest wheat and make hay. In the dreams he also saw his mother, Sally Sweet Kysor, who had died in 1845, when he was sixteen and shejust thirty-eight. The Kysor men laid her to rest in the cemetery at the foot of the family hill. Perry stayed and lived most of his life there, long enough to marry, long enough to lay in the cemetery one of his own sons, Gilbert, who died in 1861 at the age of seven.’ Eighteen eighty-three proved to be a year of dreams for fiftythree -year-old Perry Kysor and his family. He was in his first year of living out his dream of owning land and making a farmstead near the American frontier. Although he had owned a farm adja- ! ( , cent to his father‘s in New York, Perry had always wanted to see the West. Kenneth Kysor, great-grandson Perry, still lives in Cattarauy , not far from the family hill, told me that “wanderlust” seems to run in his family.5 However, the reasons are 49 OliverPerry Kysohproperly, in his wifeCaroline'sname, is shown southwestand northeast of Lake Leon,in thisdetail of theplat ofMaine Township,Otter TailCounty, 1884. Page 49:TheMinneapolis EsterlyMower 50 A Yorker’sSqburn inMinnesotu 51 probably more complex than that single word. The land records from Cattaraugus County reveal that an 1879lawsuit over farm property and a mortgage was brought against Perry Kysor, his wife, Caroline, and six other individuals. He may have been forced to move, or bad feelings may have helped push him away to Pennsylvania. Perhaps Perry wanted to allow his sons to take over the farm at Kysor Hill, which might explain why he lingered in Pennsylvania in 1881,until a better opportunity emerged in Minnesota. When his in-laws, the Barret B. Mosher and Solon Hubbard families,invited Kysor to buy land in Minnesota next to the homesteads they had recently taken, he could not resist. He left two of his sons in charge of the farm on Kysor Hill and in 1882, together with Caroline (also fifty-three), and his five other children, most of them grown,journeyed to Maine Township, fifteen miles northwest of Fergus Falls. Kysorfamily farm,asphotographed by Flint&Nelson Portrait and ViewArtists, about 1900. Perry Kysorstands at center. 52 The H A Y M A K E R S The Hubbards had been the first to migrate, in 1879.That year Solon Hubbard was forty-one, no longer young, but the arable land around Leon Township, in western New York State where he and other relatives lived, was nearly worn out. He sought a place where farming would not be such a struggle and found it in Otter Tail County, in western Minnesota; there the soil was wonderfully “new.”‘ The land had everything a practical farmer could want-“prairie and timber, grassy meadows and beautiful lake^."^ There was an abundance of white pine, maple, ash, and basswood trees. Importantly, there was “good soil, good water,” and “splendid meadows” for making hay6 In all, the look of the area reminded him of western New York,except its low rolling hills were not as dramatic as those on the Allegheny Plateau, and many small lakes lay hidden in valleys instead of the Great Lake, Erie, that he knew.’ The rolling hills provided assurance that the land had plenty of drainage so that crops would not be flooded out.8 Further enhancing the agreeable environment was the fact that land cost less and property taxes were lighter than back home.g But for Hubbard there was yet another comforting and attractive feature, one that had probably drawn Maine Township to his attention initially: it was a virtual replica of “YorkState,”as upstate New York was known to its locals...