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Madge Margaret Adelaide Glessner was born on the 10th of October 1876 in Waynesburg Ohio. When she was six years old the family pulled up stakes and moved towards the promise of free land and prosperity in the Dakota Territory. Josephine, Madge’s mother, was originally from Liberty Pennsylvania and she wanted to keep moving west to avoid the coal mines. Men who worked in the coal mines died very young and Josephine wanted a better life for her sons. In the spring of 1883 she sent her young son Charley and her husband, J.W., to find a new home on the prairie. John Wesley Glessner, Madge’s father, was a civil war veteran. In 1861, when Lincoln initially called for 75,000 volunteers to serve three months to preserve the union, J.W. was one of the first in his area to sign. He was 20 years old, unmarried and probably very patriotic. He was initially mustered into the 19th Ohio Infantry Volunteers for the three months then reenlisted as a veteran in the 80th Ohio. He served with the 80th until August of 1865 and was their Principal Musician. J.W. was well educated in the law and he spoke Greek and Latin. He was a second generation cabinetmaker, an accomplished musician, a jeweler, an undertaker and even Mayor of Waynesburg for four terms. When it came to the Dakota Territory though... J.W. was a tenderfoot. It is said that Josephine sent 11 year old Charley along to take care of him. Unfortunately, the little boy and the tenderfoot paid a high price for a team of horses that had been fed bran and didn't have the teeth to eat grass. One of their horses soon died out on the prairie. J.W. reluctantly replaced it with an Ox but he wouldn't be seen driving a team like that so he made young Charlie drive. They must have looked funny traveling across the prairie with that mismatched team. Somehow they ended up in the Okobojo Valley. According to Madge's daughter Cathy,
J.W. was an intelligent and well educated gentleman but he was not cut
out for Okobojo life "...he and Grandma lost their homestead. Then they got a
pre-emption (bought a quarter that someone else had abandoned), lost
that and got a tree claim, then lost that and got a "dug-out"
house and quarter section. The day finally came when Uncle Charley,
Uncle Hal, and Uncle George were able to buy land and operate a
successful ranch." Madge's first few years in Okobojo must
have been rough. Will William Henry Green was born in Flora Illinois on November 26, 1870. Will's parents, John S. Green and Sarah Jane McGannon Green, had both grown up in the Old Vernon Township of Jennings County Indiana. The Greens and the McGannons were neighbors and John S. and Sarah had probably gone to school together since they were children. It appears that John S. moved with the McGannon's to Clay County Illinois in 1960, where, a few years later, John S. and Sarah's little brother Alexander enlisted in the Civil War together. John S. kept a diary during the war and he writes of marching across the south. He tells of how many miles they made each day, what the weather was like and occasionally what they had to eat, but, he never wrote about how he felt or what the battles were like. He was in some pivotal battles including Kenesaw Mountain and Atlanta. He was also with Sherman's army on the famous "March to the Sea" which culminated in the Siege of Savannah. Though they wouldn't meet for twenty years, his future neighbor and in-law J.W. Glessner was also in the "March to the Sea" and at Savannah. After participating in the Grand Review on the streets of Washington John S. returned to Illinois and in late 1865 he and Sarah were married in a small church service in Flora. Unfortunately, Alexander, Sarah's little brother, like so many of the men from that era, did not return from the war. It is unclear if it was three or four children they lost in those first few years but it is clear that they had some very bad luck. Only two of the children lived long enough to be named and they were Sherman and Grant. In 1875, When Will was four years old he and his baby brother were loaded into a covered wagon and the family headed west for Dakota, and the promise of free land. I think they traveled with at least one other family from Clay County, the Charles Branch family, who became their neighbors in Hutchins County. Hutchins County was the farthest the settlers dared go into the Indian county that lie just west of them. The Green family farmed here and lived near the little frontier town of Olivet Dakota for 7 years. They probably would have stayed there and been prosperous farming those fertile lands were it not for all the Greens and the McGannons from Illinois that started moving up to the Yankton area in 1882. The word was out that the Government was going to open up the free range grasslands between Yankton and Pierre for settlement and the Green's and the McGannons were all going to get in on the free land. It's hard to determine how many families came that year but in her memoirs Della McGannon tells that there was 11 families on the boat from Yankton to Pierre. It sounds like it was the women, children and old folks on the boat and the men brought the livestock by land. She says that her father and two uncles brought the two wagons loaded with household supplies - John S. would have been one of those uncles. Also in her memoirs Della describes a picture taken in front of the Okobojo School and lists Will's little brother Charlie as one of "those relatives who came up on the boat with us" so we know that Charles Branch Green, who would have been about seven-years-old, did not travel by land with the men. There is no information about whether nine-year-old Hugh traveled by boat or by land to Okobojo but I believe twelve-year-old Will went with the men.. Della's father, Issac McGannon was probably the one that scouted and chose Okobojo as he claims to have been a squatter there a month before the land was opened for settlement. John S. and Sarah's father, Hugh McGannon, squatted a week before land was opened and they chose neighboring quarters (160 acres of land) in the north half of section 29. John S. also claimed an adjacent quarter in section 30 as his tree claim see map. They were two miles from downtown Okobojo. Will, twelve years old in 1883, would probably have been put to work farming and building with the men. The first winters were hard and the homesteaders thinned out substantially in the ensuing years but the Greens, the McGannons and the Glessners all toughed it out for Generations. Madge and Will The records of Okobojo’s first school show that Will and
Madge were in school together since Madge was just six years old.
They started classes there together on January
21, 1884 with Miss Ethel Colby as the teacher. Madge wrote Will at least a dozen letters during the year-and-a-half that he was away to war. In her letters she makes frequent inquiries about the Filipino girls and she fills Will in on the Okobojans and what they're up to. It also sounds like she misses Will a lot. In one letter she mentioned a town gathering and made a reference to how she "wasn't tired after it was over" She spent the winter of 1898 teaching in a nearby community and she would write him about the students and how they could make her laugh so much she couldn't stop. She likened one of her kids to Will when he was in school and said he was the worst. In another letter she jokes that she is going to marry a preacher in order to get her own piano. She often sounded very patriotic - in one letter she tells that she's learning the 1st South Dakota March in anticipation of his return. The letters are fascinating and I will try to get more of them online soon. Will wrote about the war, as his father had before him, but Will worked at The Okobojo Times so he considered himself a professional. There's no evidence that it was ever published but he apparently wrote his war story as an article for the newspaper. Will did a lot more writing on his way to war than he did after he got there. His story ends a few days after he arrived in Manila. His mom and dad wrote him frequently and Will kept all the letters. They provide some insight into what Will, and his brother Charlie, were going through over there, but we don't have much of what they wrote themselves. Will did keep some very important notes in a small notebook where he recorded when he contracted malaria and where he was treated. He wrote that he contracted the disease on or about the 26th day of May 1899. He spent that summer in a Field Infirmary and was transferred to the hospital on board the transport Sheridan in August for the trip home. He was discharged on October 5th 1899 in San Francisco, probably at the Presidio. He came home to Okobojo in a hammock weighing less than 100 lbs. Before he left for the war he had made arrangements to buy his father's homestead and by this time his father had moved into Pierre so nobody was caring for the homestead. The details of Will's recovery are scant but on February 14th 1902 he went to the Glessner homestead to ask for Madge's hand in marriage. They were married that summer and set up housekeeping at the Green homestead that fall. I'm not sure how they made it thru that first winter on the prairie but in September of the following year they had their first child. By this time, John S. was in his sixties and had taken up working as a part time janitor in the Capitol building. On January 30th of 1899 he wrote Will, who was in the Philippines, of an old friend of theirs from Olivet, Charles Branch's brother, who was "chief clerk of the enrolling and grossing" at the Capitol. Somehow, four years later, in 1903, Will got the job of Chief Clerk of Enrolling and Engrossing at the Capitol. There is no evidence that these items are related but it is quite a coincidence. Will would probably stay at his father's house in Pierre while the legislature was in session and go back to his growing family at the homestead when it was not. Almost 20 years later he would return as a Legislator from Sully County. The Will Green Family more to come... |