As promised last week, this week’s column covers the childhood home of Dorothy Thorpe Weber. Dorothy’s father, Thornton Clarence Thorpe, was the eldest child of E.R. and Irene Zink Thorpe. Born in Medicine Lodge, he came with his parents to a sod hut just south of Lakin in 1888. After graduation, he went to California and attended Stanford University in the fall. In 1907, he married Ella Wright, also a Lakin native, while still at the university. They moved back to Lakin shortly afterwards. What follows are excerpts from a story written by Dorothy in 1984.
“At the time my Dad came back to Lakin from California, my Grandfather had started investing in cattle, as well as farm land. My Dad took over the cattle business for him. He liked it, except that the ranch where the cattle were (was) several miles from Lakin where his family was. After the ranch was making a good profit, my Dad decided to build a home out there for us and in 1918, we moved into the new ranch house. The name of our ranch was the T Lazy T.” This ranch was located six miles west of Lakin.
“We only lived in the ranch house about two and a half years. My Mother had the flu just after my youngest brother, Thornton, was born in 1918, and she was never very strong after that. In 1920, my Dad decided we should move back to Lakin so she would be closer to a doctor and be nearer to her folks, and in October 1920 we moved back into town. Our new house in Lakin was built from the same floor plan as the one used for the ranch house. The only difference was that the ranch house had a side porch, and our house in town didn’t.
“I don’t remember my Mother being up very much after we moved back to Lakin. We were always welcome to go into her room any time, and she was always glad to see us and talk. We had only lived in our new house a year and half when my Mother died on April 8, 1921. She was not quite 36 years old.
“About a year after Mother died, Dad married again. He married Ione Enslow. She was a nurse, and she had taken care of all of us when the whole family had the flu in 1918. Just a few weeks after they got married, I had a very bad case of scarlet fever and our house was put under quarantine. My brothers and sisters and Dad had to go stay with Grandmother Thorpe and not even my Dad was allowed to come into the house with me and my stepmother. My Dad would come by every evening and talk to us through the window, and sometimes he would leave me a present on the porch. I remember especially a doll with a china face and arms and feet and bright red cloth body. I thought she was beautiful. After I got well, that doll and all the things I had played with had to be burned up, and our house was fumigated.
“I loved our house in Lakin. There were three bedrooms upstairs and two bedrooms downstairs. Margaret and Edith and I shared a big room upstairs, and Edgar and Thornton shared one. The other room upstairs was the guest room. Downstairs there was a living room with a big fireplace, a dining room with a built-in china cabinet with glass doors, a den for my Dad, a big kitchen and bathroom and the master bedroom and a smaller bedroom.
“Our house had a big front porch with a door into the house at each end of the porch. One front door went into the living room and the other went into a hallway with three openings, one led up the stairway, one into the den and the other into the dining room. There was a big porch across the back of the house too. The house was heated with a central coal-burning furnace. There was a big floor grill opening in the dining room which was really the center of the house and then there were floor grills in each of the bedrooms upstairs to let the heat up there. One of the nice things about it was that we could look down through the grill from upstairs in the bedrooms and watch what was going on downstairs in the living room and dining room. This was especially nice at Christmas when we could watch and see what presents were being put under the Christmas tree and in the sock hanging from the fireplace.”
Dorothy’s father, stepmother and younger brothers left for California when she was 12, and she moved in with her Thorpe grandparents. Her childhood home has had multiple owners over the years but still stands at 403 N. Hamilton Street.
SOURCES: Dorothy Thorpe Weber; History of Kearny County Vol. I; Archives of Kearny County Advocate and Lakin Independent; and Museum archives with special thanks to James Clyde (Jerry) Thorpe, son of Edgar Wright Thorpe.