Month: January 2024

Southwest Kansans can rely on the Deerfield Brotherhood to continue their tradition of serving up the “Grand Daddy of All” groundhog suppers each year regardless of Punxsutawney Phil’s ability to see his shadow. Around 125 volunteers work together to pull off what just might be the longest running groundhog supper in Kansas. Preparations have already begun for this year’s event which is slated for February 7^th. Thirty hogs will be butchered this Sunday yielding roughly 4,500 pounds of sausage that will be seasoned with the Brotherhood’s secret recipe. Of this, 1,100 pounds of patties will be cooked and served the day of the meal, and the rest will be sold.

The supper has grown immensely since the early days when the tradition began with a single hog. Brotherhood and Epworth League records indicate that the supper started in 1938 with a profit of $27.17. The first mention of the event in the Lakin Independent was in 1940 when Rev. I. W. Woolard announced that the Deerfield Methodist Brotherhood had decided to put on a groundhog dinner on February 1. Ticket prices were 25¢ and 15¢, and approximately 125 meals were served.

Frank West came up with the idea of the groundhog supper. He and fellow Methodist Ed DeKeyser were instrumental in organizing the Boys Scouts in Deerfield which also became a Brotherhood mission. In addition, proceeds from the supper in the 1940s helped with improvements and supplies for Deerfield’s Methodist Church, bought worship books for local men serving in the war, and aided the youth camp at Lake Scott.

The suppers were originally served in the basement of the old Methodist Church. The late Max Miller wrote, “The basement could seat 50 and at times the crowd was so large that guests were seated in the sanctuary by numbers and waited until their number was called. The south basement windows were taken out so the food that was cooked at the parsonage, Harley Rector’s, and the High School could be passed through.”

Due to the growth of the supper, the event was moved to Rex Miller Hall in Deerfield’s newly built grade school in 1957. Seating capacity went to 180, and the cost for meals was $1.25 for adults and 75¢ for children. In February 1966, the Garden City Telegram reported that the supper had grown from a two-frying pan operation to a three-kitchen operation with a two-way radio system. The supper had already earned the reputation for being the best in Southwest Kansas, and in 1967, the gathering netted over $1,000 for the first time. Funds from the event in the 1950s and 1960s were mainly used for equipment and emergency expenses at the Methodist Church. The Brotherhood also made 28 wooden banquet tables which were stored at the school and used by other groups such as the Lions and Grange.

Butchering and processing took place at various locations until 1976, the first year that cut-up was done at Duncan Lockers. By 1979, the supper had become more than the Methodist men could handle. Other congregations and community volunteers became involved leading to the formation of the Deerfield Brotherhood in 1980. During the next 10 years, over 10,000 people attended the suppers and over $29,000 in profit was shared with the Deerfield community, churches, and Boy and Girl Scouts. The meal’s growing popularity throughout Western Kansas was evident by local media coverage and supporters who were willing to drive to the little village of Deerfield for what was labeled “The Original Southwest Kansas Groundhog Day Supper.”

In 1992, the event was moved to Deerfield’s Community Building where the seating capacity went to a whopping 396. Sausage was cooked in the old firehouse, biscuits were baked at the Deerfield Grade School, and gravy was stirred together in the Home Ec. Room of Deerfield High School. Still today, the old firehouse and Grade School are utilized for cooking with corn being the only menu item cooked at the Community Building. Volunteers coordinate delivery to the community center, and they have their system down pat. During the 1990s, the net profit distributed throughout the Deerfield community was $30,480, and the Brotherhood established a scholarship for local college-bound students in 1994. This tradition continues with two scholarships usually being awarded each year.

In 2005, the supper cleared $6,000 for the first time ever. In 2009, 3,600 pounds of sausage was processed, 35 gallons of gravy was used along with 2400 biscuits, the applesauce ran out before the evening’s end, and a record-setting 1,411 meals were served. Last year’s meal netted a record $14,256, bringing the total raised since 2000 to over $190,000.

“It is just amazing how much money has been raised through the years,” said Joe Eskelund, treasurer of the Brotherhood. The men meet immediately following the meal to decide how the monies earned will be used. Proceeds have helped Deerfield’s Summer Celebration, Kearny County DARE, Deerfield schools and churches, the Kearny County Historical Society, Deerfield Community Building, Chachis Place, DHS Trap, Lakin Gun Club, multiple youth organizations, community events and much more.

Up to and including the 1999 supper, a time-honored order known as ‘The List’ was used to designate future leaders. Following that year’s event, a ‘By Committee’ leadership was adopted with the work spread among committees which are headed by loyal volunteers. Ross Miller volunteered his time to oversee the big event, and Eskelund agreed to serve as secretary/treasurer. Miller, a 1976 Deerfield High School graduate, and Eskelund who graduated from DHS in 1977 both came up through the ranks, first helping back when young men in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades were required to assist with the meal. Deerfield students still help with serving but are no longer required to.

Miller credits the success of the groundhog supper to the dedicated men who have helped and continue to help pull off the well-orchestrated meal. He said some have been volunteering for more than five decades. “I don’t know where we would be without the help we get. So many deserve praise to be heaped upon them. Many will never have their name mentioned in written word, but those who are in the know understand the efforts of these local heroes and sacrifices they made for the good of the community. It’s been a blessing.”

Beginning in 2000, letters were sent out as a call to arms for volunteers for cut up, ticket sales, set-up and the supper. Roughly 400 letters are sent to rural and town mail boxes just prior to each year’s event, and the Brotherhood welcomes anyone who would like to help sponsor the shindig or volunteer. Membership in the Brotherhood and Deerfield residency is not required; however, volunteers must be male.

While Eskelund plans to continue as treasurer, Miller is stepping down after this year’s event and 25 years of leading the charge. He has been grooming some of the younger men to take his place. Watch the Lakin Independent for more details about this year’s groundhog supper or check out the Deerfield Brotherhood’s Facebook page.

 

Special thanks to Ross Miller and Joe Eskelund. Other sources included: History of Kearny County Vol. I & II; archives of the Lakin Independent and Garden City Telegram; Deerfield Brotherhood Facebook page; deerfieldbrotherhood.wordpress.com; usd216.org; and the Winter 2006 Legend.

As one of the first residents of the Deerfield area, Samuel Harrison Corbett was deeply interested in the welfare of Deerfield and its citizens. A highly respected and a prominent member of the agricultural community, Sam was widely and favorably known as a man of sterling worth and a worthy representative of the courageous pioneers who settled the county. In fact, Corbett was once referred to as the number one citizen of the Deerfield Community by Foster Eskelund, a life-long Kearny Countian and former president of the Kearny County Historical Society. Born at Baltimore, Maryland in 1859, he was but 12 years old when his father died unexpectedly. Sam went to Boonsboro, Maryland to live with an uncle and remained in his home for a year. Later he spent two years at Sharpsburg where he rose at 4 a.m. every day to do chores and repeated them each evening after school. In return, Corbett received his board and clothes and $30 a year.

In 1877, Sam left to seek his fortune in Kansas and lived in both Lincoln and Graham counties where he worked for claim holders for board and the barest of wages. He survived on two meals a day with supper being a steady diet of only mush and milk. Sam grew extremely homesick but couldn’t gather enough money to return to the East. He started with a caravan to Silver Cliff, Colorado in 1880; however, when the group arrived at Fort Wallace, Corbett decided instead to remain there and become a sheep herder. He eventually made his way to the Arkansas Valley where he gained employment as a cow punch for the XY Ranch. He traversed the XY’s range from Garden City west to Hartland, and the spring round-ups brought him in contact with almost every hill and vale within a radius of 250 miles. That was a dangerous time, and the ranch boys had to stay on high alert. Sam grew to know all the country, the cowboys, ponies and brands from the Adobe Walls region to the Smoky Hill River and loved the stories the cowboys told around the camp fires on the open plains or sheltered from the storms in the sod bunk house at ranch headquarters.

After four years with the XY, Corbett intended to make a business of catching mustang ponies; however, his plans were changed by a charming young lady whom he wooed and won. In 1883, he married Miss Dolly Caswell who came to Deerfield in 1882 with her widowed mother. Instead of chasing ponies, Sam filed on a piece of land and established his home on the southwest quarter of section 16, township 24, range 35. He built his bride a 14×20-foot box house which was then considered a “mansion” in this section of the country. As his wealth increased, Mr. Corbett added to the house until a one-story dwelling of seven rooms sheltered he and Dolly and their six children.

While working for the XY, Corbett started building up his own ranch; thus, he had a small bunch of cattle to start with when he assumed possession of his ranch. After losing his entire herd in the great blizzard of 1886, Sam borrowed $150 and began buying and selling condemned cow horses. Stock raising became a highly profitable endeavor for Sam, and his tenacity helped to develop the open prairie from a cattle range to a fine agricultural paradise.

Corbett was also a highly successful business man. In 1902, he went into business with Fred Sower, purchasing the grocery house of George H. Tate at Deerfield. Corbett & Sower dealt in general merchandise and groceries, selling everything from pitch forks to “Moses’ best flour.” Sam bought out Sower in 1904 and built a new store building in 1907, advertising as “the old reliable.”  Corbett’s store was a gathering place for nearly every resident of the city. He also continued to sell cattle and horses and raise hay on the side. Following his retirement, Sam and Dolly moved to Colorado Springs in 1918.

Sam Corbett never took an active part in political affairs, but he served as clerk of the first school board of the township. He also served as Deerfield postmaster for over five years and was instrumental in establishing a rural route with over 80 boxes on it. Although he was raised under Catholic influence, Sam became a Sunday school leader and active member of the Methodist Church to which his wife and children belonged. He was also a wide reader of history, both ancient and modern. During retirement, Sam wrote stories of his life on the range and sent them with letters to his friends. Samuel Harrison Corbett died in 1931, and his body was brought back to Kearny County for burial in the Deerfield Cemetery. Dolly died in 1949 and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs.

SOURCES: A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans by William E. Connelley; Diggin’ Up Bones by Betty Barnes; Southwest History Corner by India H. Simmons; History of Kearny County Vol. 1; Museum archives; and archives of the Kearny County Advocate and Hutchinson Gazette.

 

Weather forecasters predict arctic temps in the days ahead along with a chance for more snow, but Kearny County still has plenty of the white stuff left over from Monday’s blizzard. Just what kind of winter is in store for Southwest Kansas, and could it be reminiscent of the winter of 1918-1919? Snow blanketed Kearny County with a two-foot snow fall on December 16, 1918, and with temperatures averaging in the 20s, the snow didn’t go away any time soon. Oldtimers who had been here for 30 years or more claimed that they had never saw snow so deep.

On January 3, 1919, a reporter in the Prairie View area north of Deerfield reported that their neighborhood had been snowbound for two weeks with a foot and one-half deep snow and seven-foot drifts. Perhaps the saddest incident reported was the death of John Bender who lived north of Deerfield. The 35-year old father died of pneumonia after a bout with the flu. “When undertaker Nash reached there Sunday (December 29, 1918) there were four bad cases in the home and the father lifeless.” An effort was made two days later “to get a casket to the home and the trip was abandoned after a mile or two of the way covered.”

By January 10, the Advocate reported that the greatest problem in Southwest Kansas was getting feed to the stock, “and it is one of the busiest times our stockmen have ever experienced.” With many cattle to feed and no grass in sight, a large number of cattle were shipped to market and others were driven to the river where feed was shipped in. Four or five hundred tons of hay had been purchased in Colorado and was being shipped to Kearny County by rail which furnished some relief to anxious stockmen. Many tons of straw, alfalfa and cottonseed cake were shipped via the Garden City railroad to Wolf siding from eastern Kansas. Farmers constructed their own sleds of various sizes and shapes to transport feed to their livestock and bring coal home to heat with. With each issue of the paper came more news about horses and cattle dying or being thin and weak near death. Farmers made wooden scrapers and drags to bare the ground, and locals were eager to see the snow go. By January 24, the sentiment was “it is enough for one winter … it will take a lot of “Old Sol’s” heat to melt this deep snow.” Elsewhere in the January 24th Advocate was the report that Dr. Richards had walked eight miles from Deerfield to Lakin on account of his patients as the snow was still a handicap to travel out of broken paths.

Mail delays had become the norm, and at least one carrier abandoned his automobile and resorted to a team and buggy. On February 7, the Advocate reported, “We ascertained Saturday from a trustworthy source that twelve hundred tons of hay had been unloaded at this point in the past five weeks and one hundred tons of straw.” Fortunately, coal dealers had stocked up enough and were able to provide a steady supply of black diamonds to their customers.

“Four degrees above zero Sunday morning . . . we are promised a warm wave by the 18th. We hope it will be warm enough to melt the snow,” was the report in the February 14 Advocate from Prairie View. That same issue carried the news that “Herman Ladner was out riding in his car Sunday, the first car to run in the hills since the 18th of Dec..” On February 21, a Deerfield citizen reported that they still could only see “two or three bare spots of ground.” There were still students who were not able to get to school because of road conditions. “The long distance, mud, snow and slush make it a drudgery for many a pupil and teacher.”

Then came another snow. On February 28, the Prairie View reporter wrote, “We thought that last week, one more day of sunshine would make a finish of the snow, that fell the 16th of December, but on Tuesday night and Wednesday and Thursday, a rain started and wound up with six inches of snow, which seems in no hurry to leave us.” Many complaints were coming in to the county health officer of unburied cattle carcasses and other animals that had perished in the severe weather.

Spring-like days in mid-March, “assured us that the snow would soon be a thing of the past.” Snow in South Kearny had all disappeared except in a few spots where there were heavy drifts. The weather was looking fine, farmers were going to work listing and planting their fields, and the rural people were coming into town again. Mail carriers were once again able to complete their regular routes in a timely fashion. Thinking that winter was over, some ranchers moved their cattle to pastures that had no protection. The Prairie View Sunday School which had been closed since October on account of the flu and impassible roads was scheduled to begin meeting again on April 6.

Then, without warning, came a raging blizzard. The April 11 Advocate said that snow had started falling on Tuesday, April 8, “and up to the hour of going to press was still at it.” A reported 1,000 head of cattle in Kearny County were lost in the April storm alone. The late Henry Molz and his father, Adam, lost 112 head after moving 200 to their pasture two miles northwest of Lake McKinney just prior to the blizzard. In milling around, the cattle either pushed the fence over or packed the snow until they could walk over and drift to the Amazon Ditch. The first ones could not get out, and the rest walked over them. Twelve head drifted into the lake. The Molz’s gave the hides to skinners for removal of the carcasses. “Lydia has received the shock caused by winter number 2,” cried the April 25 Advocate. The report came from the West South Side that “dead cattle are to be seen any way you look, while going along the roads.” Stockmen started hauling hay, cake and chop again as the snow storm found a number of them somewhat short on supplies and weary of a repeat. All in all, an estimated 30% of the cattle in Kearny County were lost during the winter of 1918-1919.

 

SOURCES: Diggin’ Up Bones by Betty Barnes; History of Kearny County Vol. II; archives of The Advocate, Museum archives, and courier-journal.com.

Dr. Grant Hastings saved multiple lives and delivered hundreds more into the world during his tenure at Lakin. His arrival here was announced in December 1921 when he purchased the medical library, office furniture, fixtures and instruments that belonged to Dr. George C.W. Richards. At the time, Hastings was in practice in Garden City with Dr. Sanford Bailey. His Lakin office, which he shared with dentist L.W. Hopkins, was over the Kearny County Bank on the southwest corner of Waterman and Main. A graduate of the University of Kansas Medical School, Dr. Hastings had built up a reputation as a careful and competent physician and came to town very highly recommended.

A month later, county commissioners appointed Hastings as county physician of Kearny County. The good doctor who still lived in Garden City and retained an office there was also Finney County’s appointed physician and health officer. Hastings was believed to be the first to hold the office of county physician in two counties at the same time. “The work in the two counties will keep him on the jump but the doctor is young and active and likes to work,” reported the Garden City Herald, “he could if necessary take one or two more.”

Dr. and Mrs. Hastings moved to Lakin in June of 1922, and in the summer of 1926, work was underway on Dr. Hastings’ new building just to the east of the then Lakin State Bank on East Waterman Avenue. The Independent announced that the brick structure was conveniently located and “will be quite an improvement on Waterman.” The doctor made his office on the first floor in the west wing. The Chamber of Commerce rented the upper floor for a club room, and the other rooms were rented out as the dental office of Dr. P.L. Woods and a barber shop. A radio was installed upstairs in the club room which had plenty of windows for light and ventilation.

In October of 1927, the Independent announced that the Chamber of Commerce had consented to using only half of the second floor, and the other half had been converted to a hospital as Dr. Hastings had found that driving to Garden City to treat his patients was very inconvenient. There were four rooms, each with an outside window and steam heat. “With the assistance of Dr. Woods in surgical operations and Mrs. Lavina Shinkle, a trained nurse, many cases formerly taken to the hospitals in Garden City can now be conveniently taken care of. The doctor has been particularly successful in surgical work, and all minor operations will be given attention here as well as many of the major operations. All of which tends to show that you don’t have to go elsewhere to be sick; you can have a first class illness right here in Lakin.” The Chamber of Commerce decided to give up their club room in the Hastings building in January 1928, enabling the number of hospital beds to increase to eight.

Dr. Hastings began dividing his time between Lakin and Garden City in January of 1941 when Dr. Herman Sartorius of Garden City was called to active army duty. In October that year, Hastings located permanently to Garden City. His Lakin office was taken over by Dr. E.M. Ireland. Other doctors to utilize the Hastings building included Rudolph Sabo, Fred Dietrick, and Gordon McAfee. The hospital continued to be used until the Kearny County Hospital (now the building that houses the Kearny County Senior Center) was opened in 1952. Although he no longer lived here, Dr. Hastings actively worked with the hospital committee to help secure funding for the new hospital.

Dr. Hastings retired in 1965 and died in December of 1967 at the age of 78 in Garden City. Among his pallbearers were his Kearny County friends B.C. Nash, Edd Murray and Ralph Hutton. A World War I veteran, he served as a medical adviser on the first Kearny County draft board and was active in several organizations including the Lakin Masonic Lodge, president of the Chamber of Commerce and chairman of the festivities for the dedication of the Kearny County Court House in 1939. Dr. Grant Hastings and his wife, Agnes, had three daughters: Jane, and her twin sisters, Ann and Ellen.

SOURCES: Archives of the Lakin Independent, Garden City Herald and Garden City Telegram; Museum archives; History of Kearny Co. Vols. I & II; and Ancestry.com.