Kit Carson County, Colorado
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Kit Carson County Pioneers:

Jeremiah and Comfort (Evans) Peden, Bethune



THANKS TO THE EWING FAMILY

JEREMIAH BERT PEDEN
Jeremiah was born 27 April 1871 on the farm near Floris, Davis County, Iowa, where his parents lived from 1864 to 1902. He had a limited education, completing only a few years at the neighborhood school. In his early youth, he went to work as a farm laborer and carpenter and became "head of the household" at 14 when his father was confined to a mental institution.
In 1894, Comfort Adella EVANS came into Jeremiah's life. Comfort, born 24 March 1877, in Keokuk, Lee County, Iowa, was the daughter of Noah and Emaline (BROWN) EVANS, natives of Iowa and Ohio. Jeremiah was 22 and Comfort 17 when they were married in Wapello County, Iowa, 31 December 1894.
The newlyweds' first home was up the road a piece from the Peden farm - over into Wapello County, near Eldon in Washington Township, a few miles from Ottumwa, the county seat. They rented, and that meant constant moving. Their family grew with amazing rapidity and that too meant moving to larger quarters.
After the birth of the fifth child, Wilbur, on 29 April 1901, Jeremiah and others close to him began talking of heading for South Dakota. His parents, his sisters and their brother-husbands, brother John, then 20, plus many in Comfort's family, the Evans, decided to move to Loomis, near Mitchell, Davison County, South Dakota. It seems incredible that brother Lewis and family did not join this party but the word is that son, Clarence, born in 1904, was born in Wapello County, Iowa so apparently he stayed for the time being, joining the rest in South Dakota about 1905.
Wilbur was an infant when the Pedens pulled up stakes and headed due north to Loomis.
Jeremiah remained in Loomis about four years, but in 1906 headed out again, even further north - to Huron in Beadle County, a distance of about 45 miles. His parents apparently were making their home with him at this time. Again, rented farms, and much moving. One of the moves was to "the Serles place" and it was there that Jeremiah's father died. After that, his mother, Margaret, went back to Mitchell to live with her daughter, Mary Brooks.
By 1911 Jeremiah was feeling the crunch. Eleven children and nothing to feed them. It just was not working out at all. He worried a lot. He is remembered as sitting chin cupped in hands, elbows on knees, in thoughtful pose for hours at a time. How to provide for his family.
In the fall of 1911, he had a sale of the family's possessions and fitted out two wagons, put his family aboard and headed out. He drove one, and the eldest daughter, Jennie, by then 15, drove the other.
Their destination was Missouri Valley, Iowa, a little town on the Missouri River in Harrison County. Here the family spent the winter of 1911/12. They lived in a house for which they paid $20 a month rent. Jeremiah worked when he could - unloading coal or whatever presented itself. Jennie, 16 worked out at $5 a week - helping a family with a baby. Even Comfort went to work. She kept house for people at $10 a week - with six "younguns" of her own to look after.
One of the things daughter Nora later remembered of this part of her life was going to school, but not having any clothes to wear. The Methodist Ladies came to her rescue. Then there was the time her teacher called her in and gave her a big package. When it was opened she found a big box of sandwiches. She took them home. Her dad wouldn't eat any - he was too proud, and besides he wanted the children to have them.
Nora also remembered that they would parch field corn and eat it. And Jennie would bring home grease from where she worked in wax paper and tucked down her dress front. They used the grease to fry johnnycake.
By this time Comfort's brother, Charles EVANS, and his wife, Orabelle ARMENTROUT, had arrived on the scene. The situation was so desperate that "Uncle Charley" even resorted to stealing.
In the spring the two families decided to head south for the haying season. In April they were off. They camped out that entire summer, living in tents and out of their wagons. They stuck close to the river all the way to Kansas City, Missouri, the men working in the hay fields when they could, putting up hay on the river bottom and hauling it in.
The children walked alongside the wagons on the way, and stole apples to feed their empty bellies. Earl EVANS, son of Charley and Orabelle, was born on the floor of a covered wagon during this trip.
When the caravan was south of Kansas City, they went east to Creighton, Missouri. They set up camp along the Grand River for a prolonged stay.
But things were slightly disrupted one day when they experienced their first tornado. The men were out haying and the women and children were left in camp. The camp was not hit directly, but they felt the effects. Tents were blown down and possessions scattered in all directions. The river rose and though the men hurried back to get the wagons loaded, still the water was high when they did, and the horses had to swim out from the flooding river.
The schoolhouse on the bluff above the river was the refuge for them and many others. They were taken there and spent the night. Injured were brought in. People's belongings that had been picked up, were brought to the schoolhouse awaiting owners to claim them.
One thing that remained outstanding in Lola Fae's mind was having seen a plate with a straw driven through it by the force of the wind.
After Creighton, the "gypsies" headed further south. They got within 20 miles of the Ozarks and then veered west to go over the state line into Oklahoma near the Indian village of Quapaw to put up hay.
It was there that Jeremiah gave it all up. Comfort got typhoid fever from the water they had been drinking along the way. The doctor told her to go back north. She was homesick, and tired and pregnant and cried a lot. She was in bed and could not do anything but write letters home to her father. Finally she said she was going to leave Jeremiah and the children and go home. The children all cried to keep her - and Jeremiah started back north.
They "wintered in," that winter of 1912/13, at Fremont, Douglas County, Nebraska, which is just across the river from Missouri Valley, but early in 1913 they were back in Huron.
But they were not to stay. Jeremiah wanted to try Colorado. Again, a sale, but this time they would be going by train and shipping their cattle.
The 10th Peden was born in December 1915. The following March they were off for Bethune, Kit Carson County, Colorado. Jeremiah and the older sons rode on the freight train with the cattle. Comfort and the younger children rode on a passenger train. Lola recalled that the infant Lawrence cried all the way with three-month colic.
Jeremiah had bought a half section (360 acres) of land at Bethune, 20 miles from the Kansas state line. It was prairie land, and there was "free range" - public grazing lands for the cattle.
They lived there five years. In 1921 Jeremiah who had acquired great skill at carpentry and lathing, decided to go into carpentry full time, so they sold the place and moved to Mosca, Alamosa County, in South Central Colorado - high country. Here Jeremiah and his sons did carpentry and lathing work and added building of adobe homes to their trade.
Jeremiah's mother, Margaret lived with them at this time.
On Thanksgiving Day in 1931, November 26, there was a big family gathering. Comfort, her daughters and daughter-in-law, and Margaret, prepared an elaborate dinner. Jeremiah sat down and gave thanks for his lot, his family and the feast before them. Dinner over, he went to the kitchen, poured a drink, stepped out on the back porch to down it - and died of a heart attack.
He was 60 years old at the time. Comfort was 54. After his death her sons built a house for her in Mosca, and she lived there for 16 years. Toward the end she had several strokes and died in a nursing home on the 16th of September 1948 at the age of 71 years. Both she and Jeremiah are buried at Monte Vista Cemetery, Mosca, Alamosa County, Colorado.

It was after the family had moved to Bethune, Kit Carson County, Colorado, that Nora found Clarence KLINE. Clarence was a native of Centreville, Michigan. He was born 26 April 1889, and was the son of DeWitt and Mary (CARR) KLINE.
Clarence and Nora were married on 24 October 1916 in Burlington, near Bethune, Colorado. They lived in Colorado until 1930 when they moved to Michigan. They were divorced there in 1936. Clarence died 12 December 1959 at Kalamazoo, Michigan and is buried at Riverside Cemetery, Three Rivers, Michigan.
Nora married, second, Frank LOMISON on 25 April 1943. Frank died on 12 December 1953 and then she married Joseph H. GUESSINGER.
Nora died 21 December 1971 at Three Rivers, Michigan and is buried at nearby Schoolcraft, Michigan.

Lola was born 2 Sept 1899, near Ottumwa in Wapello County, Iowa, the fourth child of Jeremiah and Comfort. The family moved around a great deal in her early years and Lola's schooling suffered because of it. Sometimes she had to spend two or three years in one grade.
But after the move to Bethune, Kit Carson County, Colorado in 1916, they settled down. Lola got a job at the local paper, the Bethune Tornado, writing society news and a column of humorous quips. She also had the job of putting mail bags on an arm for the moving trains to snatch as they came through Bethune, for $9 a month.
In the fall of 1917, Lola went to the county fair and there she met Karl Luther THOMAS. Karl was born 30 March 1892 in Clay County, Iowa, near Sioux Rapids, to Vanranciler and Margaret (SKELTON) THOMAS. Karl and his parents lived in Clay County until his father died. Then Margaret sold and moved to Phillips County, Kansas where she married again.
Karl and Lola were married at Bethune, Kit Carson County, Colorado on 17 April 1918. On 5 August 1918, Karl left for a stint in the Army. He went to Fort Logan, Colorado and then was sent to Waco, Texas for 30 days of training. Then his unit was shipped to France, but by then the war was almost over. At its end, when the unit was sent home, it was aboard the great Leviathan.
When that was behind them, the Thomases settled down and started having a family. Their son, Robert, was born 31 May 1920.
In November that year Lola was the victim of a terrible tragedy. She attempted to start a fire with gasoline. The can exploded, and her clothes and hair caught fire. Karl pulled her burning clothes from her. Her left knee and right leg were badly burned. For 11 days she remained at home with the neighbors caring for her. But infection reached her heart and she fell into unconsciousness. She was rushed to the hospital in nearby Bulington, where five doctors worked over her at once. She was in the hospital a month.
By January, 1921, the leg had began to heal some, but she still was unable to walk. She wasn't able to walk for two more months. On 8th of January that year Lola went to Mosca, Alamosa County, Colorado in the San Luis Valley, to stay with her parents. In March Karl joined her there.
Karl set about building them a house in nearby Hooper. It was a six-room adobe house. Two rooms had been finished when Helen Marie THOMAS was born 21 April 1922. Cleo came along in 1923.
In February 1925 they sold the house and moved to Cody, Cherry County, which is so far north in Nebraska that it is almost in South Dakota. They were there 11 months. After that they lived in a succession of locales along the North Platte in Western Nebraska. Here Karl worked for the Reclamation Bureau. Later he worked on the highways, cutting weeds. He also built rip-rap walls in many of the irrigation canals in and around Morrill County.
In 1936 the whole family worked as a hay-stacking team. Lola drove the mower and Cleo the stacker with Karl on top of the stack. Wayne handled the weep and Helen the rake.
Meantime there was also the farm to run, but Lola took care of that. She had a beautiful garden in which she raised just about everything they needed to eat. They raised their own meat too. In those days lots of food was put up in crocks - pickles, sauerkraut, pork chops and sausages. Lola also made head-cheese when they butchered. She would can some 400 jars of food each summer.
And this most remarkable woman was also an expert seamstress. Women came from miles around to have her make clothes. One of her outstanding creations was made from ostrich feathers. Her sewing machine - a Singer, treadle-type, is still in the family and so is their old butter paddle and the flat irons they used way back when.
Relatives of Lola, her uncle, John Henry PEDEN, and his wife were writing from the State of Washington that jobs were plentiful there. It sounded good to Karl and Lola so they had a public auction, and in March of 1937 were off to Washington State. They drove a 1929 Chevrolet and pulled a trailer with two tons of belongings.
Karl built a home at 1110 S. Seventh Avenue in Yakima, Washington, in which the family lived for many years.
In January 1938, they had a bit of a surprise. It had been almost 15 years since their last child was born, but suddenly there was Donald!
About the same time, Lola was suffering greatly from arthritis, and it became necessary for Helen to end her schooling - her junior year in high school. Karl worked as a carpenter until his retirement.
Karl died 2 January 1966 at the age of 74 and is buried at Yakima, Washington. Lola was 67 at the time. The following year on 5 October 1968, she married William Clyde CARPENTER. In 1976 she was visiting her son Robert and family in Waynesboro, Augusta County, Virginia when on the 18th of March she died at the age of 76 years. She too is buried at Yakima, Washington.

Robert was born 30 May 1920 in Bethune, Kit Carson County, Colorado. He started school when the family lived in Nebraska, and completed it on graduation from Yakima Senior High School, May 1939 in Washington.
Robert lived in New York City from 1945 to 1949. While there he met Virginia Lee LANTER of Wytheville, Virginia and they were married 28 May 1949. Virginia was born on the 5th of December 1924 in Butter, Tennessee, the daughter of Lemuel and Rosa Lee (PHILLIPPI) LANTER.
The newlyweds went to Virginia to make their home. Robert is an excellent carpenter, like his father, and he became foreman of a construction crew at Charlottesville, Virginia.
Getting close to retirement Robert and Virginia settled in Wytheville, Virginia.

1921 Mosca, Colorado items "J. B. Peden and the Cooley Brothers were caring hay for the Farmers Milling Association this week."


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