Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

I will be covering some excerpts from my Gingrich file for the next several weeks. Many nice people have sent me additions to this family name. Among the link names to this family Sullivan, Harris, Walker, and Gingrich. I met with the Bergers, Woods, Davis, Versaws, on a hot summer day several years ago. I learned a lot from these people, as we traveled south of Riverton to view the site of the Jerry Sullivan dugout in Washington Township, the northeast quarter section 33. We went straight east to the Gingrich farm, a mile east of Riverton and five miles south. We talked about the sod house that was once there and saw its ruins of the house. We balanced ourselves walking on its foundation rising out of the ground about a foot and one half, so as to get a better look and not have to walk in the deep grass that is now growing all over the once well-kept yard. Although the sod house is almost completely gone, the place comes alive in their memories.

John Berger sent me pictures and written memories of his parents and grandparents. This is what he said: “My mother, Catherine Gingrich, was born on February 21, 1897 to Edward and Mary Ellen (Sullivan) Gingrich in a sod house a little east and five miles south of Riverton. The visit by the Indians described in my poem was one of mother’s earliest memories. It probably happened between 1901 and 1904.

Catherine told her son it was the only time she could remember the Indians coming to their house.

John said, “Mom graduated from the eighth grade from Rock Creek School in 1914. She wanted to go to high school and started at Bloomington. But they couldn’t afford the room and board and such, and she returned to the farm south of Riverton. She had heard of a girl in Riverton who had been able to go to school with the sisters of St Joseph in Concordia, KS. Mom wrote them and asked if she could come to school with them and pay the costs when she graduated. They agreed. She took the train to Concordia, graduated, became a teacher, and repaid them.

Mom was teaching out in Big Springs, NE and that’s where she met my dad, Henry Berger, and they were married on May 30, 1921. Dad was a farm boy from Melford, WI.

This is John Berger’s poem from his mother’s memory.

A Recollection

I guess I was four or five, so it must have been 1901 or ’02,
Or maybe I was older and it was ’03 or ’04.
I just got u p and looked outside, the sun was up.
They just stood there, silent two men on horses, dirty, wearing rags,
But the horses were pretty.
One deep brown with white spots,
the other a deeper reddish brown maroon with white spots.
They glistened in the sun.
Two women standing in long dresses, like sacks, dirty.
Two or three children-my age I guess.
Dirty.
One horse had a rack or drag attached to it.
I wasn’t scared. Curious, I guess.
Mama and Dad were there.
They didn’t seem scared, Why should I?
They were Pawnees. They were the only ones around there.
Mama said they were hungry. She gave them a bag of corn meal
And some bread and some of whatever we had.
It wasn’t much.
Then, they left us silently as they had come.
Mama knew what they needed. She always knew.
She knew everything.
No one ever said anything.
That’s the only time I remember any Indians coming.
The wind was blowing.
It always did. They were hungry. Mama gave them food.
Mama knew everything.

John Berger

Everything depends on those who go on anyway. Don’t stop because everything isn’t right. Robert Henri.

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

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