Look to the Hills

The Northern Pacific Railway Company was chartered by Congress on July 2, 1864. The American Civil War was in full swing; the Union had secured lands west of the Mississippi and was pushing into the south. The congressional dream was to connect the commercial waterways of the east to Puget Sound in the west, creating a northern continental transportation system that would open vast frontier lands for farming, ranching, mining, lumbering and settlement. Congress granted N.P. Railroad some 47 million acres of land in a swath across the continent in exchange for building the railroad through the undeveloped territory. With much of the country’s attention on the War, the Railway Company initially struggled to find sufficient financial backing for this colossal undertaking.

By the time the Civil War was over the demand for munitions was winding down, but the railroad age was just beginning. The demand for pig iron was still going strong and the Steel Works was poised for expansion. Eben W. Chaffee, a farmer from nearby Ellsworth, was supplying charcoal for the blast furnaces from his forests of hearty chestnut trees. For everyone in the Housatonic Valley, the success of the Northern Pacific Railway was a good investment. Plus, the railroad was advertising 7.3% return on RR bonds. A small group of men and women from the community of Amenia, NY and Sharon, CT, including Nathaniel Gridley’s son and grandson, steelmasters Noah and Edward, joined their friend and associate Eben Chaffee, in purchasing N.P.R.R. bonds. Eventually, by 1870, construction got underway, but the staggering costs of building a railroad through the wilderness was underestimated. The Northern Pacific Railroad Company was soon in trouble. By January 1874, the railroad was unable to make the interest payment on its bonds, and the bonds themselves were falling in value. The Railroad had to turn to its biggest asset, its vast land holdings, and so offered to honor the value of bonds in exchange for some of its land.

Edward Gridley was elected president and Eben Chaffee secretary, and they were appointed agents and representatives to travel west to the wilderness to inspect the land and secure the real estate. They wasted no time, for within a week Chaffee and Gridley were traveling by rail as far as the new town of Fargo, Dakota Territory, where they would meet up with the Chief Clerk of the R.R. Land Office, James B. Power, and from there by supply wagon into the grasslands of the Dakota plains, to see what they could see.

Go West Young Man

The hazards connected with this assignment could hardly have been overlooked as only a dozen years before, a band of Sioux Indians had attacked Fort Abercrombie, about 40 miles away from the area where Chaffee would be inspecting the land. At about the same time there had occurred a massacre in Minnesota, less than a hundred miles from his route of travel. In fact, there were several army units operating in Dakota Territory in an effort to get all the Indians rounded up and confined to various reservations. This effort was to culminate in the tragic Custer massacre on the Little Big Horn in Montana in June, 1876, just a year after Chaffee and Gridley arrived on the scene. However, soon the Indian resistance was broken, and the white man’s invasion and usurpation of the First Nations’ homelands and hunting grounds was complete.

James Power was an enthusiastic host, and showed the Connecticut men some of the most desirable land in the Red River Valley. Other government lands were open for settler homesteading, but Power’s job was to sell over 10,000,000 acres of RR lands to potential entrepreneurs, and he had a powerful vision of endless tracts of prairie sustaining one-crop commercial agriculture on a grand scale. Already the nearby Cass-Cheney Farm, bought with converted RR bonds, was working an unprecedented 13,440 acres. Eben Chaffee was intrigued, and jotted down some impressions in the little brown notebook he always carried in his pocket:

From his notebook:

Township 141-52 -- The Rush River runs through this town(ship) from West to East – dividing the town nearly equally. A small ridge of gravelly soil runs from S.W. to N.E. through the westerly portion of the town – soil otherwise good bottom land. All good for cultivation except that taken by the River – a little wood on river. Rated 3.75

Township 139-54 -- Lying one mile south of RR out of this valley, but excellent (word unclear). Slightly rolling-having some water in a drain in S.E.corner – excellent meadow between the elevated ground. Rated 4.25

Township 138 - Range 53 -- Mostly superb bottom land – The Maple River runs into it two miles from S.E. corner and out three miles from S.E. corner – has small groves of timber and is a beautiful stream. Rated 3.50

In all, Land Clerk James Power aided Chaffee and Gridley in locating forty-two sections of lush Red River Valley land near Casselton, Cass County, Dakota. On July 30, they purchased 27,831.66 acres, valued at $104,009.81, in exchange for $92,600 face value of their bonds. Although it was the original intention of the Amenia and Sharon shareholders to make a turn-around sale to settlers as quickly as possible, as a farmer, Eben Chaffee grasped the economic potential of the fertile prairie. Armed with Power’s agricultural vision, he returned home to Connecticut to convince the rest of the company to turn the land into a production machine. Since it was already mid-summer and the sod was too mature for breaking for the season, it was decided that Chaffee would return to Dakota the following spring and oversee the first busting of sod on company land.

Eben Chaffee carefully recorded his expenses for that second trip to Dakota, in the spring of 1876, in his little brown notebook. He was gone a total of 20 days, and spent $270.02, including 50-cents for a Railroad Guide, $17 in Fargo to hire a team of horses & wagon for 3½ days out on the prairie, and $4 for outfitting his camp. Chaffee hired Peter Seims, a professional sodbuster, to break the first 640-acre section of land for $3.50 per acre, with the backsetting (second breaking) to take place in the fall. The first crop of the Amenia and Sharon Land Company wheat was to be seeded the following spring, 1877.

Prairie Sod Breaking, described by Jacobus Teunis Vandemark in Vandemark's Folly by Herbert Quick (Globusz Publishing, 2001)

“The plow itself was long, low, and yacht-like in form; a curved blade of polished steel. The plowman walked behind it in a clean new path, sheared as smooth as a concrete pavement, with not a lump of crumbled earth under his feet--a cool, moist, black path of richness. The furrow-slice was a long, almost unbroken ribbon of turf, each one laid smoothly against the former strand, and under it lay crumpled and crushed the layer of grass and flowers. The plow-point was long and tapering, like the prow of a clipper, and ran far out under the beam, and above it was the rolling colter, a circular blade of steel, which cut the edge of the furrow as cleanly as cheese.”

Mr. Peter Seims wrote a letter acknowledging receipt of payment for the second breaking:

Fargo, D.T.

Nov 8^th / 76

Mr. E. W. Chaffee, Esqr.

Cornwall Bridge, Con

Dear Sir,

Your letter of Oct 19^th with Draft for sixteen hundred and sixty dollars is received (Thanks) the Hay is putt up all in one stack south of the Stable, about 200 feet, the Plowing extends North of the Buildings about 300 feet and is well secured from fire, in regard to Grasshoppers, I do not Know what to say, some of our Farmer wher(sic) trouble with them, and some of them they didn’t do any harm, evenish crop I think was about from 16 to 17 Bushel per Acre some more or less, Farmer are in good Spirrits here, and have done a great deal of Breaking this season, I think this County alone is about 15000 Acres broken this summer. Mr Dalrymple has somme wher near between 4 and 5000 Acres broken, and is going to put it all in to wheat and 3000 Acres more in the adjoining county, which he intends to put in, and in regard to putting Your 640 Acres to crops, myself or Mr. Armington will be down East this winter, and see You, or we will let You Know in time, what we can do. at the same time You might let us Know if You want to let the hole work out by the acre, grain the deliverd on track, us furnishen the Machinery & seed, or you furnishen seed & machinery, and if You will have any more breaking done next season, hoping to hear from You again soon.

Yours very Truly,

Siems & Armington

When Eben Chaffee returned to Dakota for the season in March, 1877, the Amenia and Sharon Land Company bonanza farming operations were begun in earnest. The Dakota prairie would never be the same.

CHAPTERS OF OUR STORY

Introduction

Chapter 1: Chaffee Origins

Chapter 2: From the Mayflower to the Ousatonic

Chapter 3: From the Hills to the Plains

Chapter 4: E.W.C. and the A&S Land Company

Chapter 5: Herbert Fuller Chaffee - Genius of the Bonanza

Chapter 6: End of an Age