12/23/2004
Marilyn Dodgen Up on the hill, north of the HyVee Food Store, is an area referred to as "college hill." If a newcomer asked why, many times the person answering his query doesn't really know. Or, he remembers hearing that at one time a college stood on that hill site, but when or why it is no longer there is another question. Humboldt College was a dream of founder Stephen H. Taft, that blossomed into fruition, thanks to investors from back east, with building construction started in 1870. It operated for several years, charging no tuition, with approximately 50 students in attendance by 1872. They lost some students when it was deemed necessary to start charging $5 for tuition. Taft handpicked the faculty members, assuring a high quality of education for the students. It was a social and cultural center for the community for the next eight years, with the first class graduating in 1876. Financial problems caused it to close in 1880, and then from 1883 through 1884, a Humboldt Academy and the Normal School held classes in the building. It is described as a 40 x 60 ft., three-story building, with a basement. The first floor held three recitation rooms and a library room. The second story was all one room, but was soon to be divided into two rooms, for chapel and music room. The third story was divided into dormitory rooms. The roof was iron. The basement was fitted up for a dining room, kitchen and cellar. In 1895-96, Humboldt College took on a new lease for life, when J.P. Peterson and A.L. Ronell reorganized it under the more practical lines of a business school, with a varied curriculum, shifting to the practical line as the years went by. Peterson had two new dormitories built, along with a large, impressive home for his family at the back of the property. Students paid $32.60 in advance for tuition, board and room for 12 weeks, or $88.60 for a school year. Their motto was, " It's cheaper to come here and get an education than it is to stay at home and do nothing." By 1910, board was $1.75 or $2.25 weekly. According to one student, everyone had three prunes for breakfast, but only those paying the higher price for board had cream for their oatmeal. Free tuition for the first student from a county which had not had a student previously, rebates for the second family member enrolled, railroad repayment costs, and lower costs if tuition and board and room were paid in advance were some of the enticements offered. Work on the college farm was also available. Although there were 14 departments, the commercial was the strongest, with such practical courses as shorthand, typewriting and bookkeeping. Practical methods using simulated banks, offices and other businesses made the courses more meaningful to students. History at this point is a bit vague, but the general consensus is that promised tax breaks for the college made by the town eventually involved the tax exemption extending to county funds, and although not a large amount of funds was involved, Mr. Peterson became very upset when the people of the community and surrounding areas failed to respond in any way to the predicament. As a result, Mr. Peterson left Humboldt in 1916 and established Humboldt College in Minneapolis, MN, where it existed as a business institute for over 60 years, closing in 1978. The last class to graduate from the Humboldt College here was the Class of 1914. The buildings were used during the 1916-17 school year by the local high school, when a new facility, being built in town (on the present junior high school site), was not finished it time for the fall classes to begin. The college buildings then stood idle, until Fred and Nellie Bradburn purchased 66 acres of the original 240-acre property from J.G. and Clara Devine. He offered the buildings for sale for $1,000, and although one citizen tried hard to raise that much money, he failed to do so, so the buildings were razed and Mr. Bradburn encouraged citizens to take pieces as souvenirs. Some of the larger pieces were taken to farms in the area, the marble trim on the main buildings was used in constructing the entry pillars at Union Cemetery, and some slabs of concrete went to other towns and some for in-town use. It is not known if the college had dairy facilities, or if Mr. Devine had a dairy before the Bradburns arrived. Fred Bradburn had raised maybe a dozen dairy cows on a farm southeast of Bode and would haul his milk over to meet the creamery man on the Airline Road, which is now Hwy. 169. He finally decided that selling his milk retail would be more profitable, and that brought about his move to college hill. The house was not in good repair and had leaks on the roof around the turrets. Mr. Bradburn removed them and some of the other "gingerbread" trimming that was rotting, changing the outside appearance from earlier photographs. His son, Nathan, and his family lived at Marathon, and Fred encouraged them to make the move to Humboldt and join him in operating a dairy. Nathan and Bernice had two children when they moved to Humboldt in the spring of 1929. Beverly, in her fifth year, started school for the first time that fall. Her brother, Bob, was 2-1/2. Two more children, Phyllis and Harley, were born in the next few years after the family moved to Humboldt. They lived in the upstairs and the grandparents lived on the main floor. The main floor consisted of a kitchen, which doubled as the bottling area for the dairy; a dining room; a living room; a parlor, connected by large sliding doors, so it could be a large area for entertaining; a bedroom; and a bathroom. Upstairs there were five bedrooms, with the largest one facing south, that they used for their living room. The west one overlooked the drive and barnyard and was the kitchen/dining area. Two bedrooms were used for sleeping and the fifth was a storage room, with a stairway to the attic. One time this room was used for a live-in hired man. Two men, who stayed there the longest, were Milford Huff and Wesley Gochenour, both fine men according to Beverly. She also said they were fortunate to have electricity and indoor plumbing, which a lot of people in the country and in town didn't have. This was due to the college having been hooked up to power earlier. Beverly (Bradburn) Kennedy has fond memories of those years that she helped with the dairy operation. She got up early every morning and went on the route with her father, helping him deliver the milk. She remembers that one time, her dad was sick for a week and one of the hired men drove the route. Well, at one corner, the horse tried to turn down a street and Beverly, who knew the route by heart (she thought), said that there were no customers on that street and the man drove on. Every day the horse tried to turn at that corner. It turned out that at the end of that street was one lady customer, who got missed for a week, because only the horse knew she was down there at the end of the block waiting for her milk delivery. The following week, she asked Beverly's dad if he had been sick, since she had not received her usual delivery. Few people had telephones back then so she couldn't call the dairy. She was nice about it. After all, Beverly was only five-years-old. She said, that after the route was finished, her dad would drop her off across from the Mineral Springs Coca Cola Bottling Plant at the Hansen filling station house, where she took off her coveralls, and Mrs. Hansen always checked to make sure her dress looked alright so she could go to school. She also had some nourishing food for Beverly to eat before she headed out on foot for the school, several blocks away. After school, Beverly walked home, up the college hill. Some of her memories of the dairy include the time that someone at the Old Mill Farm Dairy in Dakota City (across from the present Humboldt County Museum) spread the word that the Bradburn Dairy was watering down their milk. Beverly said her grandmother was really upset over those rumors. The Bradburns raised Holstein cows and their milk was less rich, so it looked thinner, but one of their customers was veterinarian Dr. Windrath, who had to come out and inspect the milk and test it, finding it was just the nature of the milk from those Holsteins. Grandfather Fred was a county supervisor and spent a lot of time at that job. Dad and the hired men took care of all the farm work, putting in and harvesting the crops, as well as doing all that was necessary for the dairy operation. The cows had to be milked twice a day. Bernice and Nellie, in addition to their regular household chores and caring for children, got the milk ready for delivery. They filled the milk bottles and sealed them with a cap that said Bradburn Dairy. Milk wasn't pasteurized in those days, and there were few, if any, regulations regarding sanitization of any of the equipment. Of course they were careful and handled everything with cleanliness in mind, but not all dairy operations were known for such care. Mom and grandma were so thankful that one customer, the Weigert Caf, carefully washed, brushed the inside and returned the clean bottles, ready for the next filling. Many of the customers sent the bottles back with rings of sour milk inside, not rinsed. The Bradford ladies used a product called BK (Bacteria Killer), which was measured and added to hot water. People had to depend upon the integrity of the producer to have a safe product. The depression had set in by 1933 and the dairy had to close, either from management problems or the economy. Customers couldn't pay their bills and times were hard. Fred and Nellie moved to southern Iowa and Beverly's family moved into town, to the Chesty Moen house, where the owner owed her dad for past milk deliveries and made room for their family in her big house. They lived there for one winter, and when her dad got a government job with the WPA they found a house to rent. Then he got a job through the county engineer's office at the courthouse, because dad had a good head for figures and wrote a fine hand, something the man working as time keeper at the county's gravel pit didn't have. Later, Dutch Bjornson hired him and he sold implements for International Harvestore. The children grew up and Beverly married Lawrence Kennedy. They lived at Rolfe. He died in 1970 in a vehicle accident while delivering his mail route. Beverly moved into Humboldt with her two youngest children, Ardis and Alan, who were still of school age. Both graduated from Humboldt High School. Beverly has been an active member of the community for many years. Their five children are: Laura McVay of Des Moines; John Kennedy of St. Joseph, MO; Joanne Englehardt of Des Moines; and Ardis Kennedy and Alan Kennedy, both of California. Beverly has 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. The next time you pick up a quart of milk at the grocery store, in a waxed paper container, remember that there was a time when a dairy man would have come to your back door with a glass bottle, squeezed in at the top, making a compartment for the cream to settle in, and on really cold days it would freeze and push the cap right up above the top of the bottle, with the cap still sitting on top. And some of it was bottled at the Bradburn Dairy, up on college hill. And, yes, there really was a college on that hill that was the dream of our founder, Stephen H. Taft. |
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The Humboldt
Independent • Official paper of Humboldt County
Telephone: (515)
332-2514 |
