unknown newspaper clipping
Sarah I. Stoddard Fifty Years Ago A Pioneer of Dakota Territory, Dies at Hurley, SD Aged 88 Years
Sarah Irene Frisbie was born in a cottage, in the foot-hills of the Green Mountains in Rutland County, Vermont, July 11th 1827. She was the daughter of Zenas and Olive Frisbie, the youngest of a family of four brothers and three sisters, all having long since passed to the great beyond. At 21 years of age she married Alonzo R Stoddard of Middletown, Rutland County, Vermont and for 17 years they lived near that village. One of her last kind deeds before leaving Vermont was to care for a poor orphan boy, Horace Green, who enlisted in the war of the rebellion, and had served the enlistment term of three years but still fought for the right and was pierced through the temples with a musket ball, throwing both eyes from their sockets. In this condition he lay on the battle field for three days before he was taken to a hospital and later sent back to Vermont. She dressed his unhealed wounds and ministered to his many wants until he died in her home. In the spring of 1865 the Vermont farm was sold, and the family turned their faces toward the setting sun, to seek a home in the then far west. They were in the state of Illinois, westward bound, when the news of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln reached them. They traveled by rail to Cedar Falls, Iowa, then the terminus of the railroad, and thence onward through the Iowa sloughs by government stage coach over 200 miles to Sioux City, then only a small river town. From Sioux city the only conveyance available was a freight wagon drawn by oxen and owned by Hon. M M Rich. In this wagon on the 23rd day of April the family crossed the Sioux river on a ferry boat at Paquett's erry, at or near the present site of the Milwaukee railroad bridge near Riverside, and were then in Dakota Territory. They traveled up the Sioux river to Brule creek and joined the little white settlement filing a preemption claim one mile west of where the little town of Richland now stands. Later filing a homestead entry, and making final proof on the land where the Centennial Mills (Crills Mill) now stands and now known as River Sioux. After 24 years residence on their land, she and her husband moved to Vermillion, where three years later he died. Since his death she has lived with her children. On January 6, 1916, she passed away at the home of her son, W H Stoddard, at Hurley, SD, aged 88 years, 5 months, 26 days. She was truly one of the real pioneers who endured the hardships and privations of the first settlers. She baked bread for the soldiers who guarded the settlement, and at the time of the Indian raid, when Edward Lamoure was killed, Thomas Watson, Julius Fletcher and his wife wounded, she helped to bind up their wounds and comfort the bereaved family. From her youth she was a devoted Christian, a member of the Baptist church in Vermont, but finding none of that denomination in the vicinity she joined the Methodists and remained a faithful member until her death. She was the mother of six children, all of whom are living to mourn her loss. They are Mrs. H P Flanagan, Sioux Falls, SD, W H Stoddard, Hurley SD, Mrs. D B Wilcox, Pomona CA, K B Stoddard, Parker SD, Mrs J M Clementson, Westfield, Iowa, and Mrs. E C Swoyer of Richland, SD. Mrs. Wilcox and Mrs. Clementson were unable to attend the funeral. There are fifteen grandchildren and 28 great grand children. Six Grandsons: L E Stoddard, C B Stoddard, and A M Stoddard of Hurley, SD; L K Stoddard of Parker, SD, F B Wilcox of Centerville, S D, and W B Clementson of Westfield, IA were pallbearers and laid the remains to rest beside those of her husband in the beautiful cemetery at Vermillion, SD, January 8, 1916.
* Note: Of the fathers and mothers in Brule creek settlement, so far as we know, there is only one now living in 2008.
Submitted by family historian, Alice Warner
