Egan
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by Alice Chamley
Egan man Joe Stombaugh has been long gone, but in 1974 he was still a spry man when he turned age 100.
I remember a lot of the stories he always had to tell, including those of how people survived the awful winters with blizzards that never seemed to end. He was a relative of my husband, Dave, which is how I learned of the stories. Our coldest days of winter with below zero temperatures are a heat wave compared to what those pioneers endured.
Joe didn’t have time for schooling, attending only about three months of the year. The rest of the time, the boys had to work.
At age 10, Joe was given the additional responsibility on their farm, caring for all of the cattle. He said his father wasn’t much for schooling.
Joe’s father was a veteran of the Civil War, and Joe was told that his father ran away from home at the age of 16 to fight for the Union.
Joe also vividly remembered the blizzard of January 1888. The day that it struck, he was at the Gale Ridge School south of Lone Tree. The children were ordered to stay at the school and when the storm hit, but they only had half a hod of coal.