had 4 sons who were already teenagers or older to help with the dawn to dusk work.

          Samuel Grenz filed a Preemption Claim for 160 acres in Campbell County, South Dakota, SW section 28-township 127-range 74 on 13 July 1885.  He settled on the claim June 18th, 1885 and built a lumber and sod house 24 feet by 50 feet (1200 square feet) dug a 12 foot well and broke up 40 acres initially.  To prepare to build a sod house, oxen pulled a sod plow that allowed the farmer to cut 1 foot wide, by 4 inches deep strips of sod which were held together by the continuous mat of roots.  The farmer then went along the strip and cut it in 2 foot lengths (sometimes 3 foot lengths) with a shovel.  These pieces of sod, which could weigh about 100 pounds each, were then used to build the house.  The average of size of a sod house was 350 square feet.  The Homestead Act specified that a sod house had to be at least 10 feet by 12 feet.  So Samuel had quite a large house for the times.

          The Preemption Act of 1841 preceded the Homestead act of 1862, and permitted settlers to stake a claim of 160 acres to public land and after about 14 months of residence to purchase it from the government for as little as $1.25 an acre before it was offered for public sale.  Under the later Homestead Act, a settler would have to have waited 5 years before he could purchase the land and receive the land patent.  Samuel was able to pay up at the Land Office at Aberdeen on Dec 18, 1885 for the sum of $1.25/acre, a total of $200, which the records indicate he paid in full.  On the same day, he filed his Intention to become a U. S. citizen.  Later, as noted in the attached Homestead map, Samuel acquired more acreage attached to his initial claim.  He ended up with about 3 sections of land.  The first was a Preemption Claim, the second in September 1893 was a Homestead Claim for 160 acres.  The third, also for 160 acres, in 1894 was a Timber Culture claim, where the farmer agreed to plant trees.  These are all recorded at the Bureau of Land Management in Billings, Montana.

          The spring of 1885 had been an exceptionally dry one, but frequent rains revived the fields and made possible a crop that fall.  Unfortunately, the next year, 1886 was also very dry, and many crops failed.  It has never been easy being a farmer, being always at the mercy of the weather and the rain.  Christina must have been thankful for the daughters who could help around the house with the cooking, cleaning, washing, babysitting the younger ones, and sewing all the clothes.  Almost everything had to be home-made.  At first, there were almost no neighbors, no schools, no churches, no hospitals.  There were no towns in all of what is now Campbell County!  There were often strong winds, dangers from the Indians and sometimes prairie fires.  Can you imagine no refrigerator, no washing machine, no air conditioned farm machinery.  No Wal-mart!!

           And, well, we all know about those South Dakota winters.  They were often beyond description and not for the faint of heart!  In some winters, the snow drifts practically covered the buildings, hiding them so that people drove over them with their ox team without being aware of it.  It was not unheard of for the oxen to break through the roof-can you imagine that?  Sometimes tunnels from house to barn were a necessity.  The men had to carry all the feed by hand and they often labored in the barns all day.  Lights were required in the daytime because of the snow blockade.  In the winter of 1888, there was an especially severe blizzard.   People talked for years about the blizzard that struck on Jan 12,1888  and that was saying something!  There is a very interesting book written about it by David Laskin entitled the Children's Blizzard.  It was called the Schoolchildren's  Blizzard because so many of the victims of the sudden storm, that struck without warning, were school children coming home from school.