Buckman Railroad Quarter (NE ¼ Section 17)

Buckman Railroad Quarter (NE ¼ Section 17)

John and Lizzie Buckman moved to the Reardan area in 1885 from Ohio. John met Luke Ensor on the train and together they decided that the area would be great for raising cattle. Rather than wait out homesteading requirements, John and Luke purchased some land: the SW ¼ of Section 8 from the US Government in 1891 and the NE quarter of Section 17 from the Northern Pacific Railway on 2 December, 1889. The Central Washington Railway was built through their Section 17 property and Reardan in 1888. They sold the right of way for the railroad in 1889. Luke Ensor dropped his claim to Section 8 in 1892. The two men transferred the Section 16 property to John’s wife Lizzie in March 1894.

Washington Territory was anxious in 1885 to become a state, so it performed a census every year to know when it had enough citizens to achieve statehood, which it did in November of 1889. From these censuses we learn the names of the Buckman children. There were five girls: Grace, Gertie, Birdie, Mable and Mollie. After moving here, they had two more children, Florence and Charles. Charles who died shortly after birth in 1891 and Mable died at age 14 in 1894. Their eldest, Grace, married Fred Garber on December 20, 1893. Mollie married Russel Cassels in 1904. John, Lizzie, Charles, Mable, Grace and Mable are buried at Reardan.

The Buckman name kept coming up in the Mahrt family history. The following story is from William F. Mahrt (son of Fred Mahrt). William would have been four years old at the time of the event and eighty-six at the time of the interview. He believed that this occurred in 1897 or 1898, but newspaper articles say 1896. He also missed the name of Walter Fairman. calling him Walter Freeman. The names have been changed to keep the stories consistent. Other than that the story is similar to newspaper accounts.

Walter [Fairman] was working on the threshing crew for [Fred] Mahrt on the [John] Buckman place at Reardan, Washington. Buckman thought [Fred] Mahrt was measuring wheat by the number of sacks of wheat harvested. So Buckman told [Fairman], who was sewing up the sacks, to fill the sacks fuller to put more wheat into each sack. This made [Fairman] mad and he proceeded to put less wheat in the sacks instead of more. Now [Fred] Mahrt had no intention of counting the sacks of wheat, because he had measured the bin in which the wheat was to be stored beforehand while it was empty. When the wheat was all gathered in the bin, [Fred] was going to measure the depth of the grain in the bin and thus would know how much wheat he had threshed for Buckman. But Buckman, thinking that [Fred] Mahrt was going to measure by the sack, got very angry at [Fairman] and took after [Fairman] with a knife. In defense of his own life, Freeman used a pitch fork on Buckman to try to knock him aside and hit him on the head with it and knocked Buckman down. It turned out Buckman was mortally wounded and died before the harvest crew came in to supper. [Fairman] who worked for [Fred] Mahrt wanted to flee the country, but [Fred] told him there was no need, as he would testify to the truth that Freeman was protecting his own life, as Buckman intended to cut him up with a knife. So [Fairman] stayed for a court trial and was pardoned and released by the court who said anyone had the right to defend his own life when necessary, which is what [Fairman] had to do when Buckman attacked him with the knife.

From two newspaper accounts at the time we can learn a bit more.

Spokesman-Review September 12, 1896

DIED IN 30 MINUTES

A Lincoln County Rancher Killed by One of His Employees

THEY HAD A QUARREL

Walter Fairman Struck J. H. Buckman With a Pitchfork--The Former in Custody'''.

Reardan, Sept. 11.—A tragedy occurred yesterday at the ranch of J. H. Buckman, a prominent Lincoln County man and an old resident that has thrown a shadow over at least one family.

Walter Fairman had been engaged with a crew to do some threshing on the Buckman place, and while at work, the two got into a dispute over the measure from the separator. Buckman accused Fairman of short measure, but later denied it and called him a liar. Whereupon Buckman struck Fairman with his fist, and the latter struck back, knocking Buckman down and held him there until he took it back.

Buckman then got up and went off, and a few minutes later Fairman noticed him coming toward him with a knife. Fairman then grabbed a pitchfork to defend himself with, and as Buckman came on he struck him on the head with the butt end of the fork. He fell without another word or motion, and within 30 minutes and before a physician could arrive, had expired.

Fairman is now in the custody of Deputy Sheriff Frazier, and will be doubtless taken to Davenport for trial. He expressed sorrow at the outcome of the quarrel, but says he did it in self defense. Prosecuting Attorney Brock was sent for and is expected to arrive on the morning train.

At the coroner's inquest held this afternoon at Buckman's home the body of J. H. Buckman was viewed by the jury. Six witnesses, who saw the tragedy, were called and examined, and found that death was caused by the stroke of a pitchfork in the hands of Walter Fairman.

At the preliminary examination, held tonight before Justice of the Peace Garber, the defendant waived examination under the charge of murder in the first degree, and was bound over to await the action of the Superior Court, his bond being fixed at $1500.

And from the Lincoln County Times, a predecessor to the Davenport Times.

Lincoln County Times September 18, 1896

TRAGEDY AT REARDAN

J. H. Buckman gets into a Quarrel with a Threshing Hand, and receives a Fatal Blow

A tragedy took place near Reardan, last Thursday afternoon, the victim in the unfortunate affair being Mr. J. H. Buckman, one of the best know settlers in that part of the country, who owns a fine farm just west of the town of Reardan.

The threshers were engaged taking care of Mr. Buckman’s grain, and it appears that Mr. Buckman conceived the notion that Walter Fairman, the man who was filling the sacks from the machine, was not giving him good measure, and they soon got into high words which terminated into a hand to hand fight, in which Buckman was easily worsted. It is claimed that Fairman let him up only on his promise that he would refrain from further fighting, but that soon after getting up, he procured a knife and again started for Fairman, declaring he would now fix him. Fairman caught hold of a fork, and as he (Buckman) approached, struck him across the head with the handle. It was told at the preliminary hearing that Mr. Buckman did not immediately fall after receiving the blow, but first walked away and leaned up against the machine, and a little later fainted, and in a few hours expired without ever speaking or regaining consciousness after he fell.

Mr. Fairman was placed under arrest, and Prosecuting Attorney Brock notified. The following day the preliminary hearing was held in Reardan, Attorney H. A. P. Myers, of Davenport, appearing for the defense and Attorney Brock for the prosecution. Murder in the first degree was the charge preferred against the defendant, after the examination of witnesses, and a spirited debate between the attorneys, the prisoner's bond was fixed at $1500 for his appearance before Judge Mount at the November term of the superior court. Not being able to give the required bond however, he was committed to the county jail at Sprague.

Mr. Buckman, the murdered, man, was a pioneer citizen of Lincoln county, who had accumulated considerable property, and who was in many respects a worthy citizen, although much given to quarreling about small matters. His wife and family are highly esteemed by neighbors, and much sympathy is expressed for them. Fairman, the man who committed the deed, is a comparative stranger and without friends in this part of the country. He is said to have worked around Davenport for a while, and has no particular vocation except to do a day's work here and there as he moves around the country. The impression seems to prevails that he acted in self-defense when he struck Buckman, and that he had no intention of striking a fatal blow.

By courtesy of the publisher of the Sprague Herald, the TIMES is in receipt of an advance proof of a detailed statement of the trouble as recited by Fairman, which does not materially differ from the above account.

A footnote to this story. There was an election in Lincoln County in November 1896 to move the county seat from Sprague to Davenport. Sprague had been a large town while the Northern Pacific railroad was under construction. However, once construction was complete, Sprague quickly lost its population. Davenport, on the other hand, had grown to be the largest town in the county and was nearer to the center of the county. This may be the reason for some of the confusion as where Mr. Fairman was taken. There is a jail cell is in the parking lot of the Lincoln County Museum in Davenport, which dates back to this time. It is possible that Walter Fairman was held in that cell. Unfortunately the Lincoln County Clerk has no record of Fairman’s trial.

fig:By happenstance the Mahrt family archive includes a picture of a threshing machine complete with a detailed caption. The threshing machine was owned by the Mahrt brothers, John and Fred, and was one of the first threshing machines in the Reardan area. The brothers disbanded their partnership after a bumper crop in 1897 which ended in November snows. This threshing machine could well have been the same threshing machine and the same scene as the 1896 Buckman murder. The following description is adapted from those dictated by William F. Mahrt to Leah Marht in 1978 to show how complex and manually intensive harvest was back then (and how there were six witnesses to a farming incident). He also notes that the picture may have been taken on the Buckman place as it was less hilly that the Mahrt land.

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fig:Wheat was cut with a reaper or with a header pushed by six horses. The wheat would be cut by the teeth of a sickle moving back and forth, then a reel would lay the stalks down on the draper. The stalks with heads were then moved by the draper, a canvas conveyor belt, to a horse drawn header box, a special wagon with a short inside side rail and tall outside side rail. The header box was driven to the site of the threshing machine and the cut wheat stalks were unloaded with the aid of a Jackson Fork or by hand. The reaper or header is powered by its wheels using the power of horses to run the sickle, reel, and draper as well as to move it forward.

The “Jackson fork operator”, in this picture John and Fred’s younger brother, Henry, had the job of operating the Jackson Fork, to lift wheat stalks from the pile to the derrick table, and then to move the fork back to the pile. The horses are used to power the Jackson Fork.

fig:On the derrick table are two men called “hoe downs” who use pitchforks with the tines turned down to move the wheat stalks onto the draper, a canvas conveyor belt that carries the stalks into the thresher.

Another man operated the steam engine that powers the thresher. He wanted a big enough fire to make steam to power the thresher and not so big that the boiler explodes. This steam engine burned wood as fuel as seen on the far left. The steam engine was only used to power the thresher, but not to move it. The thresher was moved with horses.

fig:Fred Mahrt is standing on top of the thresher. His job is to operate the thresher by making sure that the wheat stalks are fed into the machine evenly. The grains of wheat are flailed out of the heads by the teeth on a rotating cylinder. The wheat kernels are then separated from the straw and the chaff through a set of zinc sieves with holes in them for the wheat to fall through. A blower blew the straw and chaff into a pile behind the thresher. Forkers would assist in piling the straw and chaff. The straw and chaff would be left in the field to feed cattle during the winter.

On the front side of the thresher, a man would collect the wheat in sacks and pass the filled sacks to a loader. The loader would load the sacks into a wagon and drive the wagon to the barn or to a warehouse in town. If the wheat was handled in bulk; the sacks would not be sown, but left open so they could be easily dumped at their destination.

Life on the farm could be hard work and very lonely. Fred Mahrt’s wife Emma missed her family and the life she left behind in Wisconsin. So Fred and Emma invited her mother to come out for a visit. Emma’s mother had remarried and was in the process of raising a second family. William Frederick Mahrt (a son of Fred Mahrt) recalls in 1978 to his daughter Leah Mahrt:

“In the winter of 1896-7 Grandpa and Grandma [Henry and Anna] Meyer came out from Wisconsin [to Reardan, WA]. It was after New Years. Fred Mahrt took a bob sled to haul them out from Reardan. Had a whole bob sled full of people of the Meyer family. They stayed with us for three months. They had 3 boys and 4 girls [in addition to the four Mahrt children at that time]. We had a lot of fun. We slept on the floor all over the house. We has a lot of fun while Meyer’s lived with us. I don’t think they ever got through laughing.

“They moved to the Buckman place and farmed that place for about two or three years or longer. And then they bought ten acres of bottom land on the edge of Reardan. He had hogs and chickens and a cow or two and garden.”

Henry and Anna and three of their children (Henry David Meyer, Ella Meyer Collis and Fred’s wife Emma Mahrt) are buried at the Reardan cemetery. Another son, Charles age 22, may also be buried at Reardan, as he died of Bright's liver disease, undifferentiated liver disease, in 1903. Henry died in 1920 also from Bright’s disease and Anna passed in 1931.

John Mahrt bought the Buckman place from the widow Lizzie Buckman in 1906. This is the same year Fred Mahrt's wife Emma died.

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The Buckman place sometime near turn of century (note car).

In 1916 John sold to his sister and brother-in-law, Mary and William Koeller. While they lived at the Buckman place, many Emanuel Lutheran Church picnics where held in the so-called Koeller Grove. The Koellers appear to be living here in 1914, although they were still at the Prince place in 1910.

William and Mary’s son Roy married Helen Barline in 1921. They farmed this quarter and two more purchased by William and Mary Koeller, the school quarter (SW ¼ Section 16) and Fred Mahrt’s railroad quarter (SE ¼ Section 19). At some point William and Mary moved to Reardan and Roy and Helen took over the house. They may have stayed until the land was redistributed upon the death of his parents in 1941. They moved to Sequim, WA where he sold insurance and eventually retired.

In 1941 the property then passed to Roy’s brother Emil, who in turn sold the land in 1963 to the Wendlandt family whose heirs own it today.

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”Our Western Home” sketch of the Buckman place by Edwin Koeller probably done sometime after 1910.

William and Mary’s son Roy married Helen Barline in 1921. They farmed this quarter and two others.