By Louise Griffin
President T.B. Ferguson Home
A couple from Weatherford came for a visit this week. They said they really enjoyed seeing the home.
There’s a notebook at the museum with people that Frank Beneda interviewed and I thought it was typed up by a Boy Scout. I can’t find the paper I read that on so can’t tell you the Boy Scouts name. I thumbed through it and the name Grace Ball Fairview, Oklahoma caught my attention. A Mrs. Ball lived a block and half from me growing up in Fairview. I wonder if it is the same Mrs. Ball. I asked my 93 year old mother if she could remember Mrs. Ball first name and she said no, that she was always just Mrs. Ball. I remember she was a tiny lady, very short, and a slight build. Mom would take jeans to her and the lady would make quilts from them with a wool blanket for the batting and backing. She used a treadle sewing machine and tied them. I had five brothers so there was plenty of jeans. This was in the early 1960’s and as I recall she didn’t have electricity. They probably lived in the house before electricity and never modernized. I remember the large vegetable garden and fruit preserves she made. I would walk to her house to visit and she taught me to crochet and embroidery, that was probably when I joined 4-H at 10 years old. In her interview she said she lived with her parents between Seiling and Chester. Her brother and her future husband’s brother both lived near Chester and their land was adjacent to each other. They were both visiting family at same time and met. They went to old brush tabernacle for a camp meeting the first time they went anywhere together. They lived on his father’s homestead until they moved to Fairview. She talked about waking up to a snake being curled up on top of the dresser. She went to the barn to get something to kill it with and when she came back inside it was crawling down. She killed it but couldn’t sleep well at night for a while. Her sister was there visiting but left the snake killing up to her.
Mrs. Ferguson tells in her book, they carried the Torch, about visiting her parents in Sedan, Kansas, and making the trip in a covered spring wagon. According to Encyclopedia Britannica a spring wagon is a four wheel vehicle, with a square box and between two and four movable boards, usually drawn by horses. The Cherokee Strip land run took place September 16, 1893, while they were there. This was 17 months after the Cheyenne Arapahoe land run and 11 months after the Fergusons came to Watonga. She said Mr. Ferguson wanted to participate so he could get a town lot in Pond Creek. They went to Caldwell, Kansas, and camped until opening day. Mr. Ferguson made the run on horseback to the town site of Round Pond which was later named Pond Creek the county seat of Grant County. She said just before noon he loaded the camping gear and prepared for the start. Mrs. Ferguson drove the covered wagon in the run. She says it was a “thrilling adventure” for a young woman and two small boys and had an “element of danger”. She found Mr. Ferguson at the end of the day near sundown at Round Pond. He had staked a claim on a town lot. Water was scarce but they were able to buy a full bucket paying one dollar for it. They stayed long enough to erect a small house. The house was stolen and moved off after they left and the lot sold for $10.00 late that fall. They had left the Watonga Republican with W.L. Baldridge who worked for them a number of years. Baldridge grew weary of the new territory and returned to Kansas and was connected with the Arkansas City paper for a few years.