Tammie: Your dad was the sheriff here, right In the town for the town of Rock River

Randy: My dad was born in 1922 on a homestead. About 40 miles north of Rock River. My mom was born on another homestead in 1930 and they got married in the forties and they lived on, [my dad lived] on [a] homestead with six boys and six girls. There were 12 in that family. My grandparents migrated from Olin, Iowa in the 1900s, and they went from Olin, Iowa to Colorado and stayed there for [a] year and came out and homesteaded out [here north] of Rock River. 

Misty: Do you know where they were from before Iowa? 

Randy: I did some research last summer. I went back there [Olin, Iowa] and spent a week there. And original Emersons that, that wasn't the way they spell it now…it was a different spelling. Almost the same. They were kicked outta Sweden in 1619. That's as far back as I could find. And they left and went to England because of religion and politics and whatever. My ancestors were German[and] English ancestors. Some of 'em came over and landed, and [in what is now]

New Hampshire. And then they just kind of migrated down the coast. My great-great granddad settled in Ohio, and then they moved from Ohio down to, uh, Olin, Iowa. 

Misty: You have a great memory for this. You're gonna be a good storyteller. 

Randy: When I was back here, I spent several hours and days in libraries, courthouses, cemeteries and stuff like that. I found my great granddad's headstone gravestone, and it was 1869, and he was a decorated soldier in the Civil War. 

Misty: Wow. What did it feel like to find that?

Randy: It was something different. Something [I] just always wanted to do. And just to fill in some blank spaces, you know? 

Randy: But like mine and Tammy's generation, we understand and appreciate that. Younger generations [are] coming up. I don't know if they're going to have the same grasp that we do or the same appreciation that we do of where they came from. I mean, you know like my granddaughters and Tammy's granddaughters and stuff, I don't know if they're gonna have the same enthusiasm or appreciation of the stuff that we got here. 

Misty: You never know. You might have a history buff in the family there. 

Tammie: I think just the history of his [your] mom's family that grew up out north on that homestead, and then there was the story about one of her aunts that died in that blizzard. 

Randy: My grandma's on my mom's side, her last name was Marlow. And they homesteaded out on Rock Creek back in, it had to [have] been in the 1920s, somewhere around in there.

It was kind of a hard scrabble outfit. I think they had eight children. One of [them] in 1953 or 54. Her mom and dad [was] doing something, coming to town in the old model A or whatever, and for some reason, the little girl decided to follow tried to follow 'em, and a freak snowstorm hit, and they found her the next day passed away, that she froze to death out in Prairie.

Tammie: Was her name Ada? 

Misty: Ada. So she tried to follow her parents into town?

Randy: That's a story I've heard, but I've heard several different conflicting stories also. 

Grace: What are the conflicting stories?

Randy: One of my great uncles was supposed to be the watcher. And he wasn't doing his job. And one of my great aunts was supposed to be doing something else.

You know I dunno whether they were pointing fingers at each other or it, it never did come to that, but, you know, it's just [a] family story. 

Misty: What brought people particularly to Rock River, to homestead, what drew them to this spot? 

Randy: Free land. 

Misty: Is there water nearby? 

Randy: It was 40 miles from the nearest tree out there. When they finally got settled a little bit with their wagon [or how they got here] [then] two or three of the girls started digging [and hit] an artesian well. That was the only water for, between basically Sheep Creek and the mountains up there. They had, you know, good water.

Misty: Well, and that was lucky. 

Randy: Yeah. Dug it by hand. 

Misty: Wow. And you said two of the girls, two or three 

Randy: of the girls. 

Misty: Daughters. 

Randy: No, they would've been my aunts, my dad's sisters. But I can't imagine being on a homestead with no running water. No electricity, no WiFi, raising six boys and six girls.

Misty: Do you know how the house[s] were built and insulated? Like they must have had a fireplace, but the wind blows. How do you stay warm? 

Randy: All the stuff out there [their house] was built [out of] logs and they had to go probably 25 miles with a teaming wagon to get the timber come back and warm it up.

Misty: Where'd they get the timber from? 

Randy: It was the mountain range about 25 miles away from them. 

Misty: So how long does it take to go 25 miles on a team and wagon and then bring in the wood back?

Randy: Two days.

Tammie: And I think back then, didn't they, uh, put newspaper on the walls to 

Randy: Yes. And when they could afford it, it was the black toilet paper. 

Tammy: Yeah. On the inside? 

Randy: And it kept [out] the element.

Misty: Are any of those structures still standing around here? 

Randy: No. There's [that] homestead. There was a guy from California c[a]me in and he took all the [lumber] the main house, the schoolhouse. Log by log. He was always gonna put it back together, but it's just piled [out] west and they're all rotted away now. The only thing left out there is the trees, the cottonwood trees. And they're [more] than a hundred years old. 

Misty: They were planted by your family? 

Randy: Yep. They had to [have] been.

Misty: Wow. And how were these stories passed on to you? Like sometimes a family will have a Bible or did, was it oral histories? 

Randy: Just basically oral history. 

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.