Memories of Ann Elizabeth Powell Hibbard - Episode 9

One of the earliest memories of my mother’s life that I remember her telling me about was of going to North Dakota in the summer. Civil War veterans were awarded homestead land. He (I assume she’s talking about her grandfather) took up some in North Dakota but he had to live on it so many months a year. So the family would pack up in the summer and go out to a sod house in North Dakota. I don’t know how many years they did that but my mother was very young and actually I heard the most about it from Aunt Anna. My mother had many pleasant memories of family gatherings with the Thompson cousins. She also remembered all night dances because they were infrequent and people had to come so far and the children sleeping on the floor to make room for everyone. She also remembered that they had oyster stew for midnight supper.  Where in the world did they get oysters in Minnesota around 1900? After my grandfather died, she and her mother moved into the town of LeRoy to a house I remember as Grandma Howe’s house. I can see it clearly in my mind and have often wondered if it is still standing. I don’t know whether Uncle Wilber and Aunt Mabel were still at home too. 

My mother taught school in a one room school house, all grades. She said some of the boys were bigger than she was. Later she worked in a store in LeRoy in the dry goods section. At the time she met my father she was working in Austin, Minn. several hours by train north of Leroy. She was thirty-one years old and not married by her own choice. She had had many beaus and had even been engaged twice to the same man but broke it off when it came time to set a wedding date. My father was thirty-three years old at this time but they both must have known what they wanted because the same evening of the picnic that Aunt Beth had arranged when my father took my mother home he proposed marriage to her. She made him wait until the next morning before she accepted him. Whenever we would tease her about her whirl wind romance she would always say “But we were engaged two whole months before we were married.” The honeymoon was a train trip to San Francisco and an ocean voyage to Manila. In spite of the many times my mother crossed the ocean over the years she was always sea sick! That first trip the ship went from San Francisco to Honolulu and then on to Manila. Also passengers on that trip were some young men who were taking one of the first motor cars to the Hawaiian Islands. During the stop over they took my mother and Dad on a ride around the island. Can you imagine the sensation that must have caused? I think there was a picture of that car with them in front of it.

Since my father hadn’t realized he would be getting married on his trip home he had to borrow $500 to take my mother back to Manila so for a while (I don’t know how long it took) both of them taught the Filipinos English in night school to pay back the debt.