Dunseith
Pluma’s Growing-Up Years
When Grandmother Pluma’s health began to fail, her granddaughter Pluma and grandson Roy went back to live near their dad’s homestead east of Dunseith, North Dakota. They moved back and forth between their Anderson aunts’ and uncles’ farms: Uncle Bill and Aunt Myrtle’s, Uncle Clint and Aunt Hattie Anderson’s (who later operated a creamery in Dunseith), and Aunt Frankie’s (9). Edna Fern wrote that her mother, Pluma, had been well taught her many domestic skills by her grandmother Pluma Anderson and her aunts:
“Mother said that Aunt Frankie gave them good and practical rules to live by. She told of one escapade she had as a young girl that showed not only her convictions but daring as well. Aunt Frankie had told her of the dangers that whiskey can cause and one day Mother found a case of whiskey and dragged it to the river, pushed it over the bank and watched it sink … she must have gotten away with it since she didn’t describe having had any punishment.”
Pluma quit school after the ninth grade, though she was very intelligent and capable as a student. One of the prizes that Pluma earned in school was for her handwriting: Edna Fern wrote that her mother used that skill with wonderful results as she kept her adult children and extended family and friends connected throughout her life with her faithful letter writing.
Lela remembered her mother telling her that she had learned to set type after she left school, so it is likely that Pluma had worked for a local print shop. Lela said that her mother was always a stickler for spelling and that this experience might have accounted for that. Pluma also took on cooking, housekeeping, and baby-sitting jobs to support herself, and she had a job in a local candy store when she met Joseph Arthur Haverfield, whom she married three days before she turned eighteen.
“Mother said that Aunt Frankie gave them good and practical rules to live by. She told of one escapade she had as a young girl that showed not only her convictions but daring as well. Aunt Frankie had told her of the dangers that whiskey can cause and one day Mother found a case of whiskey and dragged it to the river, pushed it over the bank and watched it sink … she must have gotten away with it since she didn’t describe having had any punishment.”
Pluma quit school after the ninth grade, though she was very intelligent and capable as a student. One of the prizes that Pluma earned in school was for her handwriting: Edna Fern wrote that her mother used that skill with wonderful results as she kept her adult children and extended family and friends connected throughout her life with her faithful letter writing.
Lela remembered her mother telling her that she had learned to set type after she left school, so it is likely that Pluma had worked for a local print shop. Lela said that her mother was always a stickler for spelling and that this experience might have accounted for that. Pluma also took on cooking, housekeeping, and baby-sitting jobs to support herself, and she had a job in a local candy store when she met Joseph Arthur Haverfield, whom she married three days before she turned eighteen.
Pluma (foreground) reading with the daughters of her aunt Frankie and Frankie’s husband Mahlon Bailey, circa 1906. The couple had four daughters: Chelsea Estelle, Doris Lillian, Frances Lois, and Wanda Joy; however, the identities of the three shown here have not been established.
Marriage of Pluma and Joseph Arthur
Joseph Arthur and Pluma, 1909.
As a young man, Joseph lived the same transient life that his parents had before homesteading at Lonesome Butte in southern Saskatchewan. Mostly he lived in towns along the Northern Pacific Railway just south of the Canadian border, working on the railway as a mail sorter. Joseph was almost eleven years Pluma’s senior, but he was tall, dark, and handsome and he gave her the prospect of having her own home after a childhood of being shuffled from one relative to the next. With a good and steady job, he would be able to provide for her and any children they would have.
Joseph Arthur Haverfield and Pluma Mae Anderson were married April 12, 1909, in Dunseith, and their first child, a daughter, Leah Berdella, was born there on February 1, 1910. Their love for Berdella is very evident in the studio photo taken when she was about six months old: they were devastated when their beautiful dark-haired, dark-eyed girl died three months later of whooping cough. Leah Berdella was buried near her grandmother, Lura Lyman, in the Riverside Cemetery east of Dunseith.
Joseph Arthur Haverfield and Pluma Mae Anderson were married April 12, 1909, in Dunseith, and their first child, a daughter, Leah Berdella, was born there on February 1, 1910. Their love for Berdella is very evident in the studio photo taken when she was about six months old: they were devastated when their beautiful dark-haired, dark-eyed girl died three months later of whooping cough. Leah Berdella was buried near her grandmother, Lura Lyman, in the Riverside Cemetery east of Dunseith.
Joseph Arthur, Pluma, and Leah Berdella, 1910.
Pluma’s Brother Roy Anderson
Pluma and Roy, circa 1940.
Edna Fern’s memory of her Uncle Roy was that “he had pure blue eyes with a permanent twinkle.” She wrote that Roy liked to have a bit of fun with people who dismissed him because of his limp. He told her about how he got farm jobs through the years: “He would drive up to a farm in a wagon or hay-rack and while still in the seat would ask the farmer if he needed help. Almost invariably the farmer would say that he did. Then Roy would get down from the wagon and the farmer would see that he was crippled, but the farmer had given his word so would not back down. Then Uncle Roy had a chance to show that he was a good worker in spite of his handicap.”
Roy and Pluma’s half-sister Lucretia Gardner Ward had grown up and raised her own family in Lockport, New York, where she had been sent after her mother Lura died in 1898. Lucretia did not meet Roy and Pluma again for almost sixty years. The three were eventually able to make contact because Roy had stayed located in his place of birth and he and Pluma had always written letters back and forth as Pluma’s life took her further west.
Roy and Pluma’s half-sister Lucretia Gardner Ward had grown up and raised her own family in Lockport, New York, where she had been sent after her mother Lura died in 1898. Lucretia did not meet Roy and Pluma again for almost sixty years. The three were eventually able to make contact because Roy had stayed located in his place of birth and he and Pluma had always written letters back and forth as Pluma’s life took her further west.
Reunion of Lucretia Gardner (Ward) with Pluma and Roy, Williston, North Dakota, circa 1955 (l. to. r.): Percy, Roy, Pluma, Ruth Haverfield (Goodrich), Nathan Goodrich, Lucretia.
Roy Anderson, Pluma, Percy (l.to r.) in front of Roy’s home in Dunseith, North Dakota, 1930s.
For most of his life, Roy worked as a hired man on nearby farms and “at various odd jobs for many of the merchants along main street” in Dunseith. One of Roy’s longest jobs was cleaning up at the local bar after the clientele had left for home, and for some time he lived across the street in a shed at the back of the bar owner’s home.
Roy never married, but he kept in contact with his nieces and nephews, his sister Pluma’s children, even after her death in 1965, and when he died on November 20, 1976, he left his savings to be divided among Pluma’s living children. He managed to do this even after a lifetime of living in one-room shacks and supporting himself with menial jobs. Roy G. Anderson was a resident of the Dunseith Nursing Home when he died less than two months short of his 85th birthday.
During my first visit to Dunseith in the summer of 2005, thirty years after Roy’s death, I stopped in at a restaurant in Dunseith where some locals were having their morning coffee and asked if they might have known Roy Anderson. They remembered him well, as he had been a fixture of the Dunseith community all of their lives. They remembered that he had a limp—the result of a leg that was crippled during his birth.
In 2014, when I again visited Dunseith on another Haverfield pilgrimage with my cousins Karen Limbaugh (Dening) and Judy Limbaugh (Ball), their husbands Dave and Gary, and my cousin Kathleen Haverfield (Wolff), I spoke with a man on Main Street who remembered Roy even forty years after his death. He said that Roy used to go the pool hall across the street and play cards in the afternoon for loose change.
Roy never married, but he kept in contact with his nieces and nephews, his sister Pluma’s children, even after her death in 1965, and when he died on November 20, 1976, he left his savings to be divided among Pluma’s living children. He managed to do this even after a lifetime of living in one-room shacks and supporting himself with menial jobs. Roy G. Anderson was a resident of the Dunseith Nursing Home when he died less than two months short of his 85th birthday.
During my first visit to Dunseith in the summer of 2005, thirty years after Roy’s death, I stopped in at a restaurant in Dunseith where some locals were having their morning coffee and asked if they might have known Roy Anderson. They remembered him well, as he had been a fixture of the Dunseith community all of their lives. They remembered that he had a limp—the result of a leg that was crippled during his birth.
In 2014, when I again visited Dunseith on another Haverfield pilgrimage with my cousins Karen Limbaugh (Dening) and Judy Limbaugh (Ball), their husbands Dave and Gary, and my cousin Kathleen Haverfield (Wolff), I spoke with a man on Main Street who remembered Roy even forty years after his death. He said that Roy used to go the pool hall across the street and play cards in the afternoon for loose change.