Category Archives: Family History

Ragan, Hardy, Adams, Sattertwaithe, McNiff, Boyle. These are just a few of the family names in my genealogy line. To this point, most of my family history will be about the women in my line. Women whom I knew and about whom I know from pictures and family stories.

The Weaker Sex?

By Elizabeth Burr | Published: May 9, 2011

The Weaker Sex?

Strong women in Southwest Nebraska, My Grandmother

Take a close look

Take a really close look at the picture to the left.  This is a combine reel in the early 1930′s.  And that’s not wheat wound around the reel.  That’s my grandfather’s clothes.

Granddad Ragan had done what every farmer, ever mechanic knows NOT to do.  He reached in to clear something out that was clogging the machine while the machine was still running.  And sure enough, it caught hold of his clothes and started pulling them off.  Along with the clothes, it was starting to pull the man into the machine.  His 4-year-old son (my dad) was able to climb into the combine and turn it off just as it was starting to chew on Granddad’s arm.

So what does this have to do with the “weaker sex”?  Let  me tell you.  My grandmother had to take her wounded husband and put him on a train to Seward, Nebraska, across the state so that his dad, Dr. Seth Ragan, could put him back together.  As she watched the train take her husband away, she was left with 4 children, the oldest of whom was 4 years old.  She was also left with an incomplete harvest.  And this was the early 30′s in farm country in the Midwest. And it was July! Hot and windy and often miserable, watching the skies for hail storms to wipe out your entire year’s income.

Just take a minute to think about what needed to be done.  Knowing what farm people are like to this day, I assume that there were neighbors who helped complete that harvest.  I’m sure that there were women to help with the children.  But there was nobody who could really shoulder the responsibility of the farm and the children while she was there “alone”.  And there was nobody who could really feel that pain of knowing what had happened to her husband or the fear of wondering how he would be when he came home.

Bear in mind, I didn’t hear this story from my grandmother, Lucile Blanche Adams Ragan.  I heard it from my mother when we were foraging through pictures for the book that I’m writing about her and Dad.  But Grandma didn’t tell me this or other horror stories that she would have survived as a farmer’s wife in southwest Nebraska.  I never heard her tell any “woe was me” stories.  Like thousands of other young wives and mothers living on farms in the Midwest in the 1930′s, she just did what needed to be done.  And she did it well.  And she did it with pride.  And she did it with love.

That was my Grandma Ragan.

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Grandma Hardy’s Garden

By Elizabeth Burr | Published: April 22, 2011

Grandma Hardy’s Garden

Frank and Lola Hardy of Stratton NeMy grandparents, Frank and Lola Hardy, were farmers in southwest Nebraska, north of Stratton. I’ve written that Grandma Hardy was a tease throughout her life. One of her favorite targets was her husband, Grandpa Hardy. Of course, seeing how well he took the teasing and jokes at his expense, made him an easy target for us grandchildren, too.

And one of her favorite ways to tease him was through the garden. I won’t say that Grandpa was a perfectionist, but he did like his gardens nice and tidy. He would plant straight rows and would weed that garden throughout the season. That was HIS side of the garden. Then there was Grandma’s side of the garden. And let me tell you, there was never any doubt about which side of the garden belonged to whom.

There was almost a demarcation line – kind of like the Mason/Dixon line of southwest Nebraska. Grandpa Hardy’s side (whether it was on the north side or the south side of the garden) was the Yankee side. Straight lines, clean rows. Grandma Hardy’s side of the garden represented the South – the little bit of wild side, independent streak, with meandering rows (not just crooked) full of WEEDS.

More than once, I heard Grandpa grumbling about “that woman’s weeds!” And I can still hear Grandma chuckling. Except to have fresh onion sandwiches, I’m not sure that Grandma really cared about whether or not she had a garden. Well, fresh onions and wheedling Grandpa without having to say a word.

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Vonna and Her Pets

By Elizabeth Burr | Published: April 14, 2011

Vonna and Her Pets

My mother and her pets

Vonna and Her Cats

My mother, Vonna Glyndean Hardy Ragan, was raised on a farm in southwest Nebraska, about 15 miles northwest of Stratton. She had one older brother, Delbert, and a few years after this picture was taken, brothers Neil and George were added to the family.

A little girl on a farm during the early 30′s didn’t have the latest electronic games that my granddaughter loves. She and her parents didn’t run from dance class to gymnastics class to swim class to t-ball practice that kids do these days. Goodness, she didn’t even have TV to watch Dora rescue the animals and practice her Spanish with her animal friends.

However, she did have the farm animals. There were always cats around, partly to keep the mice at bay. And, as you can see from this picture, she did play with cats – several cats, as a matter of fact. She told me recently that she even played with chickens. They must have been smaller or tamer chickens than I remember being on that same farm because the chickens that I knew were more likely to peck a finger than not.

One day when her mother was hanging laundry, she found another farm animal to play with. So she took it around the corner of the house to show her mother. Poor Grandma Hardy never did remember what she did with the clothes she was hanging once she saw the snake in her daughter’s arms! Especially when that snake bit her darling little girl.

I mean, can you imagine the chaos of that moment! You don’t live on a farm in Nebraska without knowing the dangers of rattlesnakes. And in the rush of the moment, it’s hard to know whether that awful ugly thing slithering away is a poisonous snake or not. (And REALLY, does it matter? A snake is a snake is a snake. And I can assure you that had I been Eve in the Garden, Satan would have had to take a different form to tempt me to eat ANYTHING!)

Anyway, back to Mom. Here she was, bitten by her new playmate, certainly seeing the fear (and a little loathing) in her mother’s eyes and hearing the shaking in her screaming voice! The pain and the fear that she must have been going through while her mother was running her out to the field for her father-in-law to check to see if her precious daughter had been poisoned.

Well, obviously, Mom’s new playmate wasn’t poisonous. But I dare say that she was a tad more careful when choosing a new friend in the future.

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Little Lola

By Elizabeth Burr | Published: April 13, 2011

Little Lola

Grandma Lola Henderson Hardy of Stratton NE

Lola Henderson

My maternal grandmother was born and raised in southwest Nebraska. Lola Almira Henderson was born in 1908. She was the second daughter of Frank and Myra Henderson. Lola and Frank Hardy eloped while Frank was still in high school.

That seems like a really short synopsis of childhood, doesn’t it. Took her right from being born to being married in 2 quick sentences.

Grandma Lola had many wonderful qualities, and I don’t think she ever lost the child-like spark for fun. In the time that I knew her (which was into my 40′s), she could be a little ornery. You can almost see the tendency in her childhood picture. She was a tease.

And you know the best lesson I learned from her as a child? That you can catch a bird if you put salt on its tail. Really, you can. I used to spend hours sitting outside Grandma’s house with a salt shaker in my hand, waiting for just the right moment to shake just the right touch of salt on a bird’s tail so that I could catch him. And how did I know that Grandma wasn’t just teasing me? Because she always had a bird in her house that stayed in a bird cage (except when we let him out to watch him fly around the house). Anyway, I knew that was how Grandma caught her bird — with the salt on the tail. So, if I was just patient enough, I would catch another bird to stay in that bird cage inside the house.

Unfortunately, I was never skilled enough to catch a bird for Grandma Hardy. But my granddaughter has already spent hours in my back yard with a salt shaker in her hand. And when she catches that bird, I am going to get her the prettiest bird cage I can find and keep it in my living room. Just like Grandma Hardy.

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Mother and Child

By Elizabeth Burr | Published: April 11, 2011

Mother and Child

Lucile Ragan and baby Seth

Mother and Child

Have you ever noticed that when you see a picture of a mother and her newborn child, the mother has eyes only for her baby? Lucile Adams Ragan was no different when she was holding her first child, Seth. In earlier pictures, her eyes are looking into the camera. But now she has a child, a baby that she didn’t carry to full-term 9 months, but one who had to fight for life early on. A son who fit in a dresser drawer for his first bed. And she has eyes in this photo only for him. You know that she’s wanting to protect him from the western Nebraska wind, even while she wants to show him off for the camera.

In this picture Grandma Ragan was no longer the new bride or the spoiled only child. She’s the new mother who is head-over-heels in love with her child, the new life resulting from her love for Clement. She was probably thinking that no other child had ever been as perfect. Just the same as this son would one day look at his children, and his children would gaze at their new children, and those children are now gazing at their newborns. The cycle continues. And I thank God that there are still mothers who gaze with love and hope and joy when they hold their newborn baby.

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Young Lucile

By Elizabeth Burr | Published: April 8, 2011

Young Lucile

My Grandmother, Lucile Blanche Adams Ragan

Grandma Ragan, early 1920's



Have you ever thought about what your grandmother was like as a young woman, before she was your grandmother, even before she was your parent’s mother, and even before she was your grandfather’s wife? I have had the pleasure of getting to know my grandmother better over the last few months through pictures. Lucile Blanche Adams Ragan was intelligent, musically gifted, an only child of a farmer and his wife in eastern Nebraska. I’ve seen pictures of her as a young girl with long curly hair, in her “Sunday best” alone and with cousins. The pictures here show a young woman in love and on the cusp of married life. She was a college student at a time when many young girls didn’t even finish high school. I love the picture of her and my granddad, Clement E. Ragan, snuggling on the campus. Can’t you just feel the love and excitement? And the one of her standing by the car. Look at that smile and those eyes.

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Connecting to Our Past

By Elizabeth Burr | Published: April 7, 2011

Connecting to Our Past

For the last few months, I have been writing the story that I have entitled “A Life-Long Love”. It’s the story of my parents. It’s been an amazing experience, if a tad bit slow. I begin the book (one of those self-published types with lots of pictures) with stories of my grandparents and their early farming years in Western Nebraska, north of the tiny town of Stratton. And as I’ve learned more about their early lives, I am amazed at what they accomplished. I’ll write more about the family history in future blogs, but it’s interesting to go through the pictures of my grandparents when they were younger than my children are now. My paternal grandparents were especially interested in documenting the years in pictures. And while I’ve been scanning and viewing them, one in particular caught “my fancy”.

Grandmother and her tractor

Grandmother and her tractor


When we first saw this picture, we assumed that it was my dad’s father working on his 1925 tractor. But on closer inspection, we realized that it was his mother instead. This is a woman who was an only child raised by doting parents in eastern Nebraska. She had attended the University of Nebraska for at least 3 years before she eloped with another only child raised by doting parents in Seward, Nebraska. They went to southwestern Nebraska to farm on land that was owned by the family. The first year, they drove a truck full of wheat seed to plant their first crop. They had to sleep in that truck because the house which was to become their home for the rest of their lives was being rented to someone else. She had gone from being someone’s spoiled only child to a woman in love, beginning their life in the mid-1920′s in rural, and I mean rural farm country.

I have many more stories to tell about Lucile Blanche Adams Ragan. I have loved her all my life and still miss her horribly, though she’s been gone for 30 years. But as I’ve researched for a book about my parents and the love that has sustained them for over 60 years, I have come to appreciate and respect Grandma Ragan all the more.

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