By Nancy Larsen
For those of you who are interested in history, biographies, poetry and life in the country in the late 19th and early 20th century, I recommend the following:
“The Soft Wind Whispers”, the saga of the other George Washington and Martha Morgan Hauser, is told through diaries, scrapbooks, photographs, poetry and letters dating back to the late 1800’s. On their farm, “The Maples”, George and Martha reared eight children, including a PRODIGY and a POET.
Martha was born on August 11th, 1853 in Stokes County, North Carolina. According to family records, her parents “Were northern sympathizers- - -employed a family of three Negroes and paid them wages”. In 1864, her father was dragged away by the Home Guard to serve in the Confederate States Army, at the age of 47. He became a guard in a POW camp, where as a result of his hatred of slavery and active resistance to orders, he was to be court marshaled and shot.
At the last moment, he was saved by his two nephews, who were confederate officers, and his wife Elizabeth. Upon returning to his family, he finds that the locals despised his family because of their beliefs. In 1869, he sold his life’s work, a 240-acre plantation for $500.00 to three freed slaves, “as no white man had any money”. Nearly destitute, the family moved to Iowa, where Hardin became a cobbler.
George was born on April third, 1853 in Owen Co., Indiana. Prior to his birth, an epidemic claimed the lives of three of his siblings and many other family members. The remaining family moved from Indiana to Iowa in 1864 when George was 11. There, they obtained land for farming and woodland for heating and cooking.George and Martha met and “developed a relationship” while in school in the town of Liscomb, Iowa. They married and moved further west to undeveloped prairie land to begin farming. In the beginning, it was a bleak and desolate existence. But with time, it became a pleasant, prosperous and peaceful home.
Sadly, in 1930, as result of a series of bad business decisions related to one of his sons, at the age of 77 and after 50 years, George lost the farm. The book opens with George’s diary, which he began writing in 1937 at the age of 84 while living with a daughter. There, he makes the best of his poverty and lost independence by being “useful around the farm”. But illness takes its course and in the end, he speaks little of the past and wishes only that he could live on for one more season.
The Wind Whispers
The soft wind whispers gently
On the grass tangled trail,
Where the tread of grazing Bison
Mingles with the Coyote’s wail.
Wild life loiters undisturbed
And rules the prairie without fear,
While the soft wind whispers – listening
For the coming Pioneer.
Daughter, E. Beulah Hauser
Next is the story of the Morgan family and their life in North Carolina. Several of the many children chronicled their childhood memories including the death of a brother who fell from a tree and many other great adventures. Interspersed throughout are pictures, old documents and author’s notes on concurrent world events, to give one perspective of the era.
Last, the most excellent family letters take us through WWI, smallpox, the flu epidemic of 1918, loves won and lost and daily life between the 1860's and 1938. The letters are sorted by topic, including the good times and the bad times and war stories.
