Dateline Govert, South Dakota: Truth in Storytelling (Part 1)

History is a kit bag full of stories. Some stories are factual and some would be shredded in the courtroom of history. If genealogy or family history has any standards at all, perhaps that standard should be called "Truth in Storytelling". The family history stories we tell our children should not be confused with such creative bedtime greats as "Winnie the Poo and Tigger Too".

In family history we tell the stories of mostly everyday people. We gather the facts the best we can, we compose the story the best we can. We also adhere to the truth the best we can. Back in August, I wrote a story around Thrall Academy, a high school near Sorum, South Dakota. In winding my story, I re-wrote history. Not intentionally, mind you. Today we are going to set history straight.

In the posting for 29 August, I credited Gus Toble with moving the Thrall Academy buildings, joining them together to form an attractive home, and then planting a virtual forest of trees to create the perfect prairie abode for his wife, Elizabeth Byers Toble, near Bison, South Dakota. The man who accomplished this logistical feat was Elizabeth's first husband, Dyson Byers. Dyson died in 1927 after 20 years of marriage, leaving Elizabeth a 38-year-old widow. Dyson, himself, was only in his early 60s.

Dyson's story is good. We know where two of the Thrall Academy buildings ended their days and maybe the question was raised in your mind as to the simplicity (or the complexity) of the technology of moving them. What more do we know now? Thrall Academy closed its doors for the last time as a high school after the 1921 spring term. Financial support was always an issue, an issue that could no longer be overcome. Dyson Byers was at the auction sale on 10 September 1921. About three years later in 1924, and about 20 miles away, Dyson's youngest child, Dorothy, was born right there in that house Dyson built out of Thrall Academy.

Gus's story is good, too. He raised two families. Gus and his first wife, Amy Birdie Hinton, brought up four children together. Their youngest was 17 when Amy Birdie died in Govert, South Dakota. Then, a widower for almost four years, Gus married the Widow Byers. Elizabeth Byers already had the perfect prairie abode, so why should they live anywhere else? Together with Elizabeth, Gus parented his second family, Elizabeth and Dyson's youngest children, outside of Bison, South Dakota.

Dorothy, the youngest of the Byers children, was only two years old when Dyson died; she was nine when her mother married Gus in 1935. Dorothy, who will be 89 next month, remembers Gus with great fondness. Gus was kind to her and became the only father she really knew. Both of Dorothy's fathers were good men. Dyson and Gus never met and they were called to play different roles at different times in the lives of Elizabeth and her children.

Ralph, Dorothy, and Lloyd Byers (back); Florence Byers, Elizabeth Byers Toble, Gus Toble, Evelyn Byers (front) [Photo used with the permission of Linda Shelton]

Linda Shelton, who inspired the story, and who now assures the story will be preserved in the most correct form, also gives us additional information about her grandmother to fill in the story. Linda tells us that her Grandmother Elizabeth had a good mind for business and owned quite a bit of land. In fact, Elizabeth had at least two U.S. land patents dating to 1911, held along with additional land she purchased. Some men in the early 1900s must have appreciated an intelligent woman with good business sense, and her own land holdings. Dyson must have. Gus must have. Likewise, Govert Van der Boom of Govert, South Dakota, married a woman with a business degree and her own homestead. That would be Emma Vogt, who just happened to be Gus's niece.

The story gets even better. The Thrall Academy buildings that Dyson moved? They sat on Elizabeth's homestead. And that was where he planted 100 trees.

But wait. What about the people who have memories of attending Thrall Academy later in the 1920s, or the 1930s, or even 1940, 1941, and 1942? Some people may have a mental image of what the high school at Sorum looked like during these later years. Reconciling that mental image with the picture of the school before 1921 in my earlier posting may have left them biting the inside of their cheek. The only way the image can be reconciled is to realize the successor school looked much different than the original Thrall Academy.

What does Truth in Storytelling really mean in family history? Diligence and integrity would be a good baseline for any enterprise. That includes correcting a story where we can. Sometimes a family may have changed its narrative history on purpose, sometimes family history finds new words through the retelling, and sometimes, as in my story about Gus Toble, Elizabeth Byers and the Thrall Academy, the storyteller misunderstands the facts. This is now a story of Gus, Elizabeth, and the Thrall Academy ... and Dyson Byers ... and Dyson's daughter, Dorothy Byers, who was Gus's daughter, too. As for Truth in Storytelling, we represent the very best truth we can uncover.

Maybe in a future posting I'll tell you the story Emma Vogt Van der Boom's father created out of nothing more than fluff and air, which became a family truth for more than 100 years. No, I think I'll do that next week. Then the week after that I'll tell you another story that was true ... but no one believed it ... until the truth was revealed more than a decade after the death of the storyteller.

Listening to the wind blowing through the prairie grass. Kate

[The 29 August 2013 post is edited for new readers entering Thru the Prairie Grass on that post.]

[Written with gratitude to Linda Shelton and South Dakota State Historical Society Archives]

Govert, South Dakota, on the Move with Thrall Academy

Gus Toble's life was marked by change, more change than most of us are prepared to face. Gus was born in 1878 in West Prussia and, at the age of four, he sailed to America with his family where they made a home in rural Minnesota. The immigrant family seemed little suited to farming, as if having origins in the trades, some have said the father held a government position in Prussia.

Nevertheless, as an adult, Gus settled into farming in Minnesota, even had his own farm for a while. Then, sometime before 1920, Gus turned his back on the barn and the haystacks and moved his family to the lake town of Bemidji where Gus sold "Travelers Auto Assurance". In 1929 Gus turned around again, packed his car with his wife, two youngest children, and every possession he could wedge around them, and drove to Govert, South Dakota. This was April, before the Stock Market crashed in October, almost as if Gus knew what the future had in store for America.

Gus was old in terms of starting over yet again; he was already 51 when the Tobles left Minnesota. His three older daughters chose not to join this family exodus; life in rural America held no appeal for them. Maybe son Eugene who was 17, and daughter Evelyn who was 15, would have stayed in Minnesota, too, had they been given the choice.

Gus Toble's greatest talent was not farming, although he had some farming skills, and his greatest talent was not ranching, even though he was seen working on ranches in the Govert area. His greatest talent was picking up the necessary "know-how" to persevere, and to find a measure of success in any environment.

What does any of this have to do with the Thrall Academy in Sorum, Perkins County, South Dakota? After I tell you about Thrall Academy, I'll restore Gus to his rightful place in the history of the Academy.

Thrall Academy was a high school, a missionary project of the Congregational Church. The Academy was organized in 1913 at Sorum, maybe 28 miles from Govert, assuming you conscientiously followed the roads. Young men and young women throughout northwestern South Dakota attended Thrall Academy, some returning to their family homes at night if the distance and weather allowed, while other students boarded at the school. Perkins County hosted Thrall Academy, not Harding County, but Thrall Academy had Harding County connections in the community of Govert.

One of the Govert connections was Katie Lale (pronounced with a short "a" and long "e"), a boarding student at Thrall Academy. Katie climbed through every grade the Govert country school offered ... but for high school, Katie would have to leave her family behind on their Govert homestead. Fortunately for the Lales, Thrall Academy wasn't far away. When recently set to the task, cousins Katie Lale and Marie Kulisich, whose fathers both homesteaded at Govert, came up with the names of near a dozen neighbors who attended Thrall Academy: Alva Bekken, Amanda Bekken, Signey Adela Bekken, Dixie Blomberg, Mirelda Grandpre, Chris Lale, Katie Lale, Ralph Meyers, Edward Meyers, Herman West, and Richard West.

Herman and Richard West were the adopted sons of Forrester West, a Govert rancher. With his sons boarding at the Academy, Forrester spent the school year alone on his Govert ranch more often than not. His wife, Louise, was the Academy cook and housemother. Their three-year-old, Evaline, and her wee baby sister, Alice Mae, had their own jobs at the Academy as favorites among the Thrall Academy students. Today Alice Mae and Evaline rave about their mother's cooking, as if only yesterday their mother urged them to play quietly so the cake in the oven would not fall. These two grown women, together with the youngest West daughter, Shirley Jean, make the strongest among us yearn for even a whiff of one of Louise's cakes.

Thrall Academy has another Govert connection as well. Linda Shelton brings Gus Toble back into the story. Linda has a picture taken in about 2009 of a house near Bison, Perkins County, South Dakota. This was Gus Toble's last house in South Dakota. Little more than two years after the Tobles unpacked their car at Govert, Amy Birdie Hinton Toble, the woman who loved Gus enough to follow him from Minnesota to South Dakota, was killed when their Govert home burned. That was 1931. The entire town of Govert was horrified by poor Amy Birdie's death. Gus was devastated and mourned Amy Birdie without ceasing. After four years, Gus was given another chance at marriage when he wed the Widow Byers, who was Linda Shelton's Grandmother Elizabeth ... Amanda Elizabeth Williams Byers.

When I saw Linda's picture, something about the house was familiar but, I knew with absolute certainty, I had never visited this place where Gus Toble, formerly a resident of Govert, lived with his second wife, the Widow Byers.

According to Linda, her Grandfather Byers moved two dormitory buildings to the home site outside of Bison using logs and two teams of horses. These buildings he joined together to make a home for Elizabeth. "Dormitories" was a good clue, fully substantiated by an article about Thrall Academy in my files. In the picture below, the girls' dormitory is on the left and the Academy building on the right, with the boys' dormitory on the upper floor of the Academy building.

Thrall Academy circa 1915 (The American Missionary, January 1916, page 623)

Rearrange the buildings, placing the Academy building on the left and the girls' dormitory on the right and you have the Byers house outside of Bison, South Dakota, where Gus Toble and Elizabeth Byers lived after their marriage.

Toble-Byers House circa 2009 (Photo used with permission of Linda Shelton)

Match up the windows and doors and you may agree with Linda and me that Gus and Elizabeth passed the years with both the laughter and the angst of South Dakota teenagers ringing in the rafters. Gus Toble died in 1957 at the age of 79. Amanda Elizabeth Williams Byers Toble died in 1969 at the age of 80.

You'll see a perhaps surprising fringe of trees in the picture of the Toble-Byers house. The prairie is not known for an abundance of trees. Pretty much, if you wanted a tree, you had to plant it. Linda's Grandfather Byers planted a hundred cottonwood trees ... not 10 or even 50 trees, but a hundred trees ... making the home a soft green oasis to a visitor driving up the lane.

Linda was disappointed her grandmother's house had completely disappeared before she drove by in spring 2013. So am I. But I'm grateful someone took one last picture of the Thrall Academy ... just in time.

Listening to the wind blowing through the prairie grass. Kate

[Written with gratitude to Marie Kulisich, Katie Lale, Linda Shelton, and Evaline, Alice Mae and Shirley Jean West]