| Notes |
- If you have corrections and/or updated information on this person please contact Roz Edson at MrsEdson@gmail.com
http://livingmemories.innovative-evolutions.com/NM/NorrisMcKim.swf
Norris McKim: About me
I was born in Deloit, Iowa in February of 1907, to Claude McKim and Olive Blanche McKim (Horr). By the spring of the same year my parents loaded my sisters and me onto a covered wagon headed west; with my father's parents and brothers with a plan
to homestead tracts of land that were adjoined. We settled in Corson/Perkins Counties in South Dakota, near what is now Thunder Hawk, beside the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. All this before I had reached my first year of age. Near to us at the same time a small rail stop was turning into a town that I would later be known as Lemmon. A place I would later call home.
Our family worked the land with two oxen for the first few years, and then a team was purchased to assist in the labors. I remember being taken away by the size of the two horses.
In the following years to come, I would be given two younger brothers, this was a big thing, because up to that point I had been the only boy of three children. Gertrude was the oldest of us, then came Bertha, followed by myself, Arlo followed in the tradition of boys next, and last born was Billy.
The boys outnumbering the girls on the farm only lasted till the younger two came of age, Arlo went off to WWII and Billy went of to school and was married, staying around where he graduated.
When Arlo returned from the war, he was minus a leg and became a Parkman at Yellowstone National Park where he remained until retirement.
Billy was killed in the early 70s by a moving car, while trying to help another motorist that had been involved in automobile accident. He was the first of us to pass.
A few hills over to the east, toward the Grand River, lived two brothers that we all grew up and went to school with. It goes to say that Bertha married Henry and Gertrude married Oko to become the Waldeckers. Each moving off to be with their new families, thus leaving just me to tend to the farm: which by this time had grown in size.
As the depression of the 30s hit, it made it tough to work an already tough land. Many of dads brothers signed over the lands they owned to the remaining and headed toward the greener pastures of California and other parts.
I stayed with Mom and Dad, I remember one fall and I had ridden one of our horses over to Oko's place to visit. A snow squall had come up and as I pressed for home it turned into a heavy white out. I had no clue what direction to go; lucky for me my horse had half an idea. My folks being worried that I might not be able to find my way in sat on the back porch, dad playing his trumpet and mom the violin. As the temperature dropped to more then I thought I could take much more of, I heard that sweet duet and it guided me to the safety and warmth of the homestead.
Time moves on, as it tends to do. My father I, along with one remaining bother worked the land; hiring help from Lakota relatives living on the reservation, when we could afford to pay them. The Lakota blood in our family tree is somewhat of an enigma and was never talked much about. Our family bond to the Sioux was however always prevalent. Chief Thunderhawk and my father would talk for hours and were the greatest of friends. The Sioux were our closest neighbors to the south. I had more of my learning from them then school as I had left school to work the farm after the third grade.
I worked the land and hunted the years away, as the years passed so to did my fathers brother William This now left two people with the task of working too many acres, even with the modern machinery we now possessed. Not far after William passed, mom took sick and this all was too much for my now aged father to bear. Dad decided to move to the town of Lemmon so mom could be close to the doctors that she now needed so badly. We sold off major parcels of the once vast lands in our holding. Land and lumber was purchased and I built them a house on Lemmon's North East side.
With less land to work, I was free to work part time on other projects, it was about this time major excavation began to clear out the town of Simm; a dam could be constructed to hold up the waters of the Grand River. This project kept me employed for a few years.
Working the new lake and the farm took most of my time. From the now submerged town of Simm sprang Shadehill Reservoir. Leaving nothing, but one small
patch of island from the hill above the town.
With in a few years of moving in to town we lost mother. The added burden of a long drought forced me to work less on the farm. This did however free me up to live a little of my own life. I went to work on the same land my father and his brothers had homesteaded with sweat and blood, but now in the employ of those who had purchased it, years earlier. It was during this time I began to court Katherine Wolfe, whom I would
marry. Marriage at the age of 53 was a new experience, but one that was long overdue.
Father: McKim, Claude Darling
Born: 18 Nov 1876
Died: Mar 1966
Internment: Lemmon SD
Mother: Olive Blanche McKim (Horr)
Born: 12 Nov 1881
Died: 1958
Internment: Lemmon SD
Sibling: Gertrude Waldecker
Born: 02 Jul 1901
Died: Jan 1986
Internment: Lemmon SD
Sibling: Bertha Waldecker
Born:
Died: 1968
Internment: Lemmon SD
Sibling: Arlo McKim
Born: 25 Feb 1917
Died: 13 Dec 1994
Internment: Lemmon SD
Sibling: William (Billy) McKim
Born: 28 Sep 1923
Died: Nov 1969
Internment:
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The H600 Project Genealogy DB
1907 - 1988 (81 years)