In 1904 my husband William J. Murphy, came from Nebraska to Lyman County and filed on a homestead in Edna Township. For a while, he worked for Bill Place who owned a sheep ranch across the road from his homestead. At that time the railroad only came as far west as Chamberlain, so their provisions had to be hauled from there with a team and wagon. Then about 1906, the  railroad was built through Kennebec as far west as Murdo, so they could get their lumber, fencing and other supplies from there.
     At one time, Kennebec was called Hotch City, and the post office was at the Houchin place on Medicine Creek. Then they started to improve their homesteads.
     I, Beatrice Duffy, came to Lyman County in 1907, and married William Murphy in 1908, in Presho, South Dakota. We were the first couple to be married in the newly built Catholic church, which later burned down.
     Our neighbors at that time were my aunt, Anna McMullen, who came to Lyman County in a covered wagon in 1906. Her brother Edward came later. Other neighbors were William and Myrtle Opperman, Herbert and Grace Ashcraft, John and Edith Walker, Charles and Ethel Fredrick, Newie Norton and his father William Norton, Mr. and Mrs. Knute Swensen and their family, Charles Lyon, his father and sister Lulu, Mike Jasper, Claude and Elizabeth Paine, Fred Anderson, Mr. and Mrs. Levi Dungan and family, John and Pat Kerwin and their sisters, Ann and Bee and Mr.and Mrs. William Miner. Mr. and Mrs. Miner ran a little store and the Edna Post Office.
     Mrs. Miner was also a midwife for the Indians across the White River on the Rosebud Reservation. Of course later on, others moved in but these were the first settlers.
    In 1906, William F. Murphy came to live with his son, William J. and in 1908, Joseph Duffy and Mrs. Rose Kineen and three sons came to Edna Township. We had a little old log school house in which my cousin, Molly McMullen (now Mrs. Robert McNameee, of Portland, Oregon) taught. After that Clara Brewer taught. Then about 1912, they built the Edna School House and that is still standing. The desks are now in the Historical Museum in Presho. You will find my son Joseph's initials carved on two of them. When I think of that little old school house and the teachers that taught in it, and compare them with what the teachers have today, it doesn't seem possible.
    Among the teachers we had were Agatha Moynahan, Maggie McAreavey, Miss Nims and Miss Sears. They taught 20 to 25 children from the first to the eighth grade and were their own janitors, carried in their own kindling and coal, started the fires, carried in their drinking water and cleaned their schools for the large sum of 30 to 50 dollars a month, and they really taught the things that counted. I still have several Spelling Certificates that my children received. Six of our nine children went to that school.
     Doctors, too, had a hard time in those days, no roads, just trails. Doctor McClellan came to our house from Kennebec, 15 miles, through snow, ice and bad roads with a team and buggy. He delivered all nine of our children and charged the large sum of from 25 to 40 dollars. Try to get a doctor to come today at any price.
     When the Miners gave up the post office at Edna in 1911, Charles Fredrick took it and William Norton ran it for him until it was discontinued. Mike O'Malley and his sister Maggie had the Houston Post Office down on the White River. We had a Star Route at that time and when the O'Malleys decided they didn't want the office any longer they were going to discontinue our route (the Edna Post Office had already been discontinued) so I agreed to take the Houston office and I had it for about a year. When they made a Rural Route out of it we no longer needed a post office. John Davis was our first mail carrier, then Bill Moynahan carried it for several years with a team and buggy. No one envied them their job, many times they had frozen hands and feet.
     They had to get out and shovel snow in the bitter cold wind and got very little pay. Of course a postage stamp was only two cents then and a postal card a penny. Poor Bill is dead now and buried out in Idaho.  
     In those days people were like one big family—what happened to one happened to all. One morning a terrible tragedy happened in our neighborhood. John Walker and two of his little children were burned

to death when their home was destroyed by fire, leaving his wife and four children homeless. It was as if it had happened to us all. A       few years after, one of their boys was struck by lightning and left a wife and three children. Many sorrows and many happy memories too.
     In those days we had no radios, T.V. or even telephones, so we had to make our own amusements, which we did. In the summer the neighbors would drop in on Sunday and the men would play horseshoes and women would visit. It was nothing to have a dozen or more unexpected guests for dinner or supper. In the winter they would play cards or sing and play the piano, violin and guitar, or maybe they would have a dance. Where they went they took their children with them, there was no such thing as a baby sitter. We had a literary society and during the winter we had a debate twice a month in the Edna school house. We chose our teams and we had some lively debates on politics, or any other subjects they happed to think of. It was entertaining and enlightening too.
     During the threshing or haying season the men exchanged work and so did the women. It wasn't easy then, they had old horse power threshing machines and they were hard on the men and the horses too. And the women didn't have it very easy either. They baked their own bread, pies and cakes, churned their own butter, cured or canned their own meat and raised and dressed their own chickens and raised their vegetables. They had no bakeries to go to, no frozen food to purchase. We had no electric refrigerators, but we did have our own ice which the men cut and hauled up from the White River in the winter and packed in our ice houses. And we made home made ice cream and it was surely good. We had no water in the houses—we had to carry it from cisterns or wells. In early days we hauled it up in barrels from the dam, in the summer it was hot and in the winter it froze. We had no electric or gas stoves, just the old cook stove, which we fed with wood, coal or cobs, that we had to carry in and then carry out the ashes. We had no hot water, only what we heated in the tea kettle or in the reservoir on the stove. No electric washers or dryers - just the old wash board and tub and the clothes line. In those days you had to make the best of everything.
     One Christmas we couldn't get a Christmas tree so we brought in a big Russian thistle and the children had a wonderful time decorating it. They strung pop-corn and cranberries and we put tinsel and decorations on it and it was the nicest tree we ever had. You can do a lot of things if you have to.
     Ethel Fredrick and I used to take long horse back rides. We would ford the White river (there was no bridge) and we would ride over the green prairie in Tripp County. Ethel was a great horse woman. Often a bunch of us would cross the White river to the Rosebud Reservation on Saturday night to watch the Indians dance. They were the Sioux Indians. Sometimes we crossed on the ice and it was mighty cold.
     Those were the "good old days". But people were happy and healthy. They were not running to the doctor every day, nor were they demonstrating. We had a lot of good years and a lot of bad ones. Years when we barely got our seed back, when the hail ruined our crops, when the cattle died with anthrax and the hogs with cholera. And then the grasshoppers came and the dust storms and one by one we lost our homes and moved to other places to start again. We moved to Oregon.
     I wouldn't want to go through it again, but I'm not sorry for having spent those 25 years there. You had to be tough to take it and I guess we were. We were very seldom sick and we had wonderful neighbors. No one ever thought of locking their doors. We didn't even have a key for ours. If you were not at home and someone came along, especially in a storm, they were welcome to go in and get warm and fix something to eat and stay all night if necessary. That is how it was when we first came there. Of course later on when more people came it changed some.
     We had lots of things to fight. Rattlesnakes (I killed a lot of them), blizzards, drought, dust storms, grasshoppers, crickets, and wind, but we lived through it and it gave us a greater appreciation of what we have today. Of all the people who were in Edna Township when I came there, I am the only one living today.