The Depot Agent

Do you know this guy (on the right)? Matt Kapitan was the depot agent in Tenney, sometimes called the “Soo Agent,” from 1910 to 1939. Matt was married to Gertie, a local Tenney girl who is featured in THE TENNEY QUILT. So many of you knew Gertie, but perhaps not her husband, Matt, since he passed away in 1947. I had never seen a photo of Matt at the depot until his daughter, Adeline, provided me with this one a few months ago. I love the uniform; something about a guy dressing up in full uniform and hat, and walking from his sleeping quarters to his working quarters in the same building in the little town of Tenney tickles me. But it also shows the pride and seriousness in which Matt approached his position.

Matt was not a Tenney native, though his and Gertie’s family was certainly one of those Tenney families that anyone living today would think of as being there for their entire memory. Born in 1877 in northeastern Kansas, 32-year-old Matt landed in Tenney in 1909 after attending telegraph school in Wisconsin. He came by himself, and lived in the depot. It wasn’t long before Matt made note of a beautiful young 18-year-old woman, Gertie Reinhard, a school teacher who taught in a small school north of Breckenridge, but came home to Tenney frequently [by horse and buggy, I might add]. Despite a 15-year age difference, Matt and Gertie married in 1912 in the Reinhard farm house, with my grandfather, A.N. Larson, serving as Matt’s best man.

Tenney has always been, and still is, a railroad town. Its very existence is owed to the railroad and today, if not for the tax-paying Wheaton-Dumont elevator facility, Tenney certainly would not be a formal municipality. Though there were settlers in the area prior to the railroad’s arrival, including my own ancestors, the railroad reached Tenney in 1885. The town itself, incorporated in 1902, was named after John Paige Tenney, a lumber company executive in the Twin Cities, who owned the town site and gave right-of-way to the railroad. The main line of the Soo Line Railroad entered the county from the east, with the first Wilkin County stop being Nashua. It then continued to Tenney, then out of the county and into Fairmount, North Dakota. For many, many years, the railroad was the lifeblood of Tenney, carrying its freight, livestock, provisions, mail, and people in and out of the area. Today, the railroad still represents the weakening heartbeat of Tenney.

Tenney was on the Soo Line, but the Soo was not the first railroad in Wilkin County. The first pieces of railroad track in the county were those of the Great Northern, in 1870 (then called the “Minnesota and Pacific”) in Campbell. In a two-year period of time between 1870 and 1872, Campbell was the site of an encampment of railroad workers. Stories of this encampment bring to mind the gold rush days of Colorado and points beyond. Tents of various sizes, shapes, and colors provided sleeping quarters for the laborers, often with campfires burning in front of many tents in the evening. Larger tents were used for the mess hall and for shelter for the horses and mules. Large piles of harnesses could be found piled up outside the horse tents.

The encampment, with very little to show in the area of organization, was nestled in the long, wavy grass alongside the Rabbit River, tents spread willy nilly, here and there. It housed nearly 200 men of multiple nationalities speaking many different languages. During this time, Campbell sometimes took on a testosterone-induced, raucous nature, particularly on pay day when the railroad workers had cash for drinking, womanizing, and gambling, topped off with more than a few fist fights. I noted in the Campbell History book that card sharks, whiskey vendors and dice wielders made their way to town on pay day and things got pretty wild.

After two years, the group moved on as the railroad moved on to Doran and then Breckenridge. The trip by rail, fueled by wood-burning engine from St. Paul to Breckenridge, took anywhere from one to two days in the beginning. At times the railroad would be shut down for as long as two or three weeks due to high water or a heavy winter snowstorm.

Many of you familiar with the Tenney area know the very unique site close to Tenney where the north-south and the east-west railroads cross, as well as highways east-west 55 and north-south 9 crossing at the same location. This site has been the cause of many accidents—rail and auto—through the years and is still a bit freaky to me every time I drive through that intersection.

Anyway, back to Matt. He and Gertie raised their family in the railroad depot for many years, until just prior to the birth of their daughter, Adeline. Their children were, in this order, Everett, Warren, Arnold, Gordon, Douglas, Russell, Adeline, and Lowell. Though you would have to be at least 61 years old to personally remember Matt, if you did remember him you would remember a gentle, soft-spoken man; a conscientious, steady worker, a guy very well-liked in Tenney. The account of his marriage in the newspaper referred to Matt as “the obliging and pleasing Soo agent at Tenney.” He was also quite hard of hearing. His wife and children were his pride and joy. According to grandson Kent, Matt was initially unable to pronounce the name of his only daughter, Adeline, so she became “La La.” Matt loved to garden, was a friend to many, and he was truly dedicated to his job. Even though the Kapitans did not have much, they had a very happy and satisfying life in Tenney. Adeline told me that Matt only took one vacation in his life, and that was a train trip with his son Arnold to Kansas to visit his family. Matt’s hearing deficit eventually caused him to have to retire earlier than he otherwise would have. He died in 1947 at the age of 70.

For those of you that arrived on the Tenney scene after 1947, you probably recall Blanche Byrne or Joe Doyle as Tenney’s depot agent. Memories of Tenney’s railroad----standing on the platform waiting for a relative to step off the train; running from the schoolyard to help unload freight in hopes of getting a nickel from storekeeper A.N.Larson; hearing the tap-tap-tap-click-click-click of the telegraph in the depot agent's office; accompanying a cattle shipment to the South St. Paul stockyards; getting a letter written quickly so that it would be ready for the 7 p.m. train to Breckenridge—all of these things were common occurrences in Tenney in the early years. If you have any Tenney railroad stories, please share them with me.

Birthday Book

I came upon some little treasures that I have been studying in detail since my mother handed them to me a month or two ago. They are the “birthday books” that belonged to my grandmother, Audrey Polifka Larson, and her sister, my great aunt, LaVanche Polifka Solvie Gill. Perhaps you or your mother or grandmother had such a book. These little books are about 3” x 4”, sometimes made of leather or faux leather, bound just as a larger book.

Birthday books were very popular at the beginning of the 20th century. On the cover of the three books that belonged to LaVanche and Audrey were the titles, “The Girls Birthday Book,” “My Friend Birthday Book,” and “Favorite Poets Birthday Book.” The books are divided into the months of the year, with a small space after each day of each month, in which friends, relatives, and dinner or house guests would sign their name and in most cases, the year they were born. Very often notes and dates were written in at some point afterward indicating perhaps a death date, or a married name added to a girl who was single at the time she signed. In many cases, the date that the person signed the book was also recorded.

At the beginning of each month there is often a poem by a famous poet, with proverbs, poems, or Bible verses scattered throughout the book. I love the little proverbs for which that era famous, whether those little sayings greeted the children as they came into the school room each day, or they found their way to the pages of these little birthday books. Here are a few examples:
· People who talk much say nothing.
· Let not your tongue cut your throat.
· Dry bread at home is better than roast meat abroad.
· A man without reason is out of season.
· The secret of success is constancy of purpose.
· A place for everything, and everything in its place.
· Little brooks make great rivers.
· Business may be troublesome, but idleness is pernicious.
· Muddles at home make husbands roam.
· One lie begets another.
· Four things that never return: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.
· An old fox is not caught in a trap.
· There is great distance between “said” and “done.”
· Glasses and lasses are brittle ware.
· Birds are entangled by their feet, women by their tongues :-)

I can remember very clearly these little books sitting in prominent places in both my grandmother’s and great aunt’s homes. In fact I, myself, signed these books in the January 27 spot. I had forgotten that, at some point in my teenage years, in loopy teenager handwriting, I had entered the name of my beloved big fat gray cat, “Benjamin Figaro Leaf (1972)” in the appropriate spot – April 20. I had later entered “77,” indicating the year that Benjamin went to kitty heaven. I can imagine my sweet Grandma Aud looking over my shoulder, or perhaps leafing through the book later, with an amused grin on her face realizing I had entered the family pet into her treasured birthday book. Grandma was no fan of pets of any sort, but as special as we were to her [and her to us], I know she didn’t mind and, in fact, probably got a charge out of it.

Though I don’t remember anything about the contents, I remember leafing through these little books as I grew up, looking for familiar names as only a person with my fixation on names and dates would enjoy. The fact that in LaVanche’s birthday book are also listed important family facts and dates, attests to the importance of her little birthday book. For example, she lists the names of her great grandparents, Anna and John Polifka (born in 1816 and 1809), the date they were married, and that the “came to America from River Rhine, Germany.” It is the type of information that one writes in important places, similar to what you might see in a Bible. Grandma Aud’s book lists, in the front, in her handwriting, her travels and the year she took those travels. She mentions a trip to Oregon in 1945 (no doubt to visit her sister, Myrtle), Montana in 1967, East Coast in 1971 (with our family; I remember it so well), a Ready reunion in Montana in 1979, etc. Clearly these birthday books were treasured by both of them.

What a thrill, now, to leaf through these books and see the handwritten signatures of so many of the people who I have gotten to know so well in the process of writing THE TENNEY QUILT. Mrs. Parks (Elizabeth), whom I learned was the “postmistress” of Tenney for a period of time, signed LaVanche’s book in beautiful writing, citing her birth year of 1864. Gertie Kapitan, one of my favorite Tenney women, though I never knew her personally, signed the book, as did several of the other women I highlighted in THE TENNEY QUILT: Linna Gordhamer, Marie Hadwick, Nellie Dalgarno Dopp, and others. I saw for, the first time in my memory, the signatures of my great grandparents, Helen and John P. Polifka. There is something about knowing that they had a pen in their hand and wrote the actual signatures that are in these books that is special to me. Yes, I am a sentimental, sappy fool, but what came to mind as I read these signatures, was a mental image of Lydia Kath running her fingers over the contours of the Tenney Quilt a month or so ago in Tenney, touching the embroidered signatures of her husband and other loved ones as she focused so intently. Such things have a way of transporting a person to another place and time.

I saw the Tenney names that have become so familiar; there were Jankes and Kuentzels. There were Waites and Hiatts and Gores and O’Laughlins. Who would have thought that seeing the name Ethel Roach would be such a kick? And there was Harry Pithey and Lois Wittman, who signed the book as a young, single woman, just as she was when she signed the Tenney Quilt. Jennie Waite, who appeared front and center on my favorite Tenney photo, appears, with her birth year, 1856, next to her signature. Myrtle Janke and Jack Richardson and Madge Dawson signed the birthday book. Jeanette Iler, my mother’s childhood friend, appears on the May 13th spot, along with Tenney farmer John (Jack) Glock. Lillie Scott, with 1878 next to her name, lived in the Tenney Church parsonage for a time, and signed Audrey’s birthday book, along with her twin offspring, Percy and Elsie. There are Vosses and Pitheys and Dopps.

What a treasure! I feel as though I know these people. Tenney has become very real throughout the process of writing the book and, even more so, through meeting and talking with so many of you who, like me, have a fond connection to Tenney. Keep in touch, and keep sharing those Tenney stories with me. I love to hear them.