NE/SD Family History Road Trip (part 4)

Day 6, Thursday, Oct. 24

Thursday we headed east for Geddes, SD passing through Yankton and Bon Homme County on our way there. Our first stop was the cemetery. It did not take us long to find the graves of another set of great-grandparents, William and Mary (Herren) Ogden. We also found the graves of Mary’s parents, my great-great-grandparents John and Julia (Adelbush) Herren.

After the cemetery, we headed out to find the farms of my ancestors in Charles Mix County. I had located the descriptions of the farms and maps of their locations at the General Land Office website of the Bureau of Land Management. I was able to use Google Maps to find them and figure out how to get there. The first one was a doozy. It was the farm of John Frederick Herren, who owned the northwest quarter of section 29 and the northeast quarter of the northeast quarter of section 30 in Jackson Township. I had expected we’d be on some unpaved back roads, but the “Minimal Maintenance” sign we passed made me question the wisdom of our quest. It was worth the effort though--his land was high on a bluff from which you can see the Missouri River to the south. Very picturesque. He farmed there from about 1895 to 1910. It was his second farm in SD, the first being somewhere in Union County.

John Herren's farm in Jackson Twp., Charles Mix Co., SD

The next two farms were easier to find. James Robert Ogden’s was northeast of Geddes in Moore Township, as was his son’s William Ogden’s. JR farmed there from about 1882 to 1895, when he headed farther west to Rapid City, where he and his wife are buried. William was on his farm from sometime in the late 1890s to between 1906 and 1910.

James Robert Ogden's farm in Moore Twp., Charles Mix Co., SD

William F. Ogden's farm in Moore Twp., Charles Mix Co., SD

After visiting all of the sites in Charles Mix County, it was on to Mitchell, SD for the night. We of course had to visit the Corn Palace. There is not much else to see or do in Mitchell. 

Heading back to our hotel room after a dip in the indoor swimming pool, we met a group of pheasant hunters who like us were from the Chicago suburbs, Frankfort, Bourbonnais and a third one that I cannot recall. 

(to be continued)