Sod-House Days: Letters from a Kansas Homesteader, 1877-1983

By Howard Ruede, John editor Ruude, Howard & Ise, Howard Ruede

Book Overview

Howard Ruede was twenty-two years old in March of 1877 when he rode on a freight wagon into Osborne City, a community in west-central Kansas. A young man of courage, common sense, and independence, Ruede was filled with the optimism and determination typical of the men and women who took up the challenge of homesteading on the prairie.

Brought together by economist John Ise and first published in 1937, Sod-House Days is a collection of the letters Ruede wrote to his family in Pennsylvania chronicling his first year in Kansas. In minute detail these letters show the hard, wearying work faced by homesteaders in the 1870s, their almost unbelievable poverty, the hardships of poor food, inadequate clothing, crowding, unsanitary conditions, the lack of decent drinking water, the bedbugs and fleas, flies and mosquitoes. We see Ruede struggling to stay out of debt, walking miles to pick up the mail or to visit a neighbor, working until his bare feet are rubbed raw by the wheat stubble of the fields, going without meat because he hasn't been able to kill a jackrabbit, cooking biscuits in a kettle over his sod fireplace. Taken together, his observations constitute a careful and graphic picture of the pioneer community in which he lived, one that joins recent studies such as Sandra Myres's Westering Women and the Frontier Experience in presenting an accurate, if brutal, picture of life on the western frontier.

In a perceptive new foreword, sociologist Scott G. McNall considers the context within which the story of Howard Ruede unfolded. He delineates the forces and factors that contributed to the rapid settlement of the Great Plains. He reads the dominant themes that run through Ruede's letters: an almost religious faith in progress and hard work, and a tremendous concern for the idea of community. He also addresses a central question: What made these people stay? McNall writes, "The value of these materials has been not at all reduced by the passage of time. . . . This] is the story of an ordinary person with heroic dimensions. Reading these letters, we see what values people had which allowed them to try, and then try again, after they had seen their efforts destroyed by drought, grasshoppers, prairie fires, and other disasters. . . . It is a story of struggle with the environment, of creative adaption to circumstance, of people as active participants in creating the society around them."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0700602348
• ISBN13: 9780700602346
• Release Date: November 1983
• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Fabulous book and story of a courageous young man homesteading alone

I loved this book and this young man's courage and work ethic! He homesteaded alone in North Central Kansas and walked miles to go anywhere or get equipment or supplies. He was so proud of himself for making great corn muffins out of cornmeal and water. He never complained. I read hundreds of pioneer memoirs and this one, alone impressed me so much that I called the historical society there and connected with a man who sent me more information and some photos of Howard. I really admired this amazing young man. Another amazing book is Days of My Life, by Flo Menninger. My other favorite! She travelled from Pennsylvania to the Kansas prairie. In PA, they grew and preserved and made everything including growing their own flax and making their own linen from it. Her grandmother said their linen was much nicer than the store-bought linen! Flo's husband and son created the famous Menninger Clinic in Topeka Kansas. At some point, she grew and sold many varieties of peonies and was a teacher.