1932 Burlington Rail Pass Found Blowing Around Town

This 1932 Burlington rail pass was found in a plastic zip-lock bag blown up against the fence of a dog run in Sutton this week (early April 2022). 

Among the fun consequences of being associated with a local historical society is that this kind of thing finds its way to our attention. Our learned,  and developed curiosity then kicks into gear.

William Chandler was born in Smith County, Kansas on 24 Oct 1904 and died in Harvard on 27 Nov 1969. He is buried in the Harvard cemetery.

William Joseph Chandler appears in the 1920 census as the 16-year old son of Vern and Rosa Chandler in Clay Center. He was in Harvard in 1940 with his wife Lottie and two children. He identified himself as an assistant welder for the Burlington railroad. 

The rail pass has been well preserved and from all appearances, has been kept for almost 90 years as some kind of memorabilia. So how did it come to be blowing loose on the streets of Sutton in 2022?

I dunno. Contact us if you lost this item, or have information about how or why it is still around.

1995 All-Conference Athletes

 

The Clay County News issue of November 23, 1995 listed these All-Conference athletes from the county.

Mystery Utinsel - A query in a recent newspaper column

We posed a question in a recent Clay County News column asking readers to identify this thing:

We received two quick replies. The thing is a "soap holder" and it triggered further conversations about its use(s).

Generally the purpose of the thing was to enable use of those bits and slivers of soap that remain when you've gotten about 94% of the use you're going to get. Some of us are ....  frugal and would like to use 100% of that soap bar before unwrapping the next one.

A collection of soap slivers in this handy-dandy little device will allow you to swish it in water and dissolve those last precious pieces into usable suds.

Or, we learned that a bunch of those slivers of soap, if heated properly, would congeal into a reconstructed, full-fledged, almost new-looking bar of soap. We've not tried this.

And yes, we did have a brief discussion about the microwave oven. Consensus was inconclusive.

Sutton's 1941 Clay County Football champs

The 1941 Sutton Football Team

The 1941 Sutton High football team and Clay County Champs that season. These town heroes are: front row, l to r: Max Leininger, Don Hurst, Lawrence Roemmich, Paul Hofmann, Wayne Lohmeier, Bob Rath, Eldon Holmes, Russ Salmen, Fred Nicolai, Jim Weston, Eddie Carl and Ken Ackerman; middle row: Chuck Worrel (Coach), Bud Vauck, Rich Bettger, Bill Sheridan, Bob Wach, Wally Bender, Art Nicholai, Roger Bauer, Harold Schmer, Lee Alberts and Keith Schwab; back row: Larry Barbee (Student Manager), Vic Nuss, Curt Jacobson, Johnny Ehly, Dean Lohmeier, Ken Leininger and Tom Sheridan. Robert Levander missed the photo shoot.

And the audience participation portion of this post is the question, "Where was this photo taken? 

It will help if you're over 70 and went to Sutton High - will help a lot.

Two Clay Co. State Championship Teams - 1991

Clay County 1991 State Champs

Twenty-five years ago in 1991 Clay County girls' basketball teams dominated Class C. The Sutton Fillies were undefeated for the season and won the Class C-1 championship with a 40-38 win over Crofton. It was the first state championship for the Sutton program coming after two previous trips to the final game where the Fillies had lost both times to Battle Creek.

The 1991 Class C-1 State Champs - Sutton Fillies

The 1991 Class C-1 State Champion Sutton Fillies basketball team: Front row, left to right: Heather Johansen (stats), Sarah Maser (stats), Jeni Hust (stats), and Lynn Wuger (photographer); Middle row: Meredith Figi, Janelle Drudick, Laurel Stoehr, Mindy Smith, Kristie Cronin, Darla Scheierman and Kim Bergen; Third row: April Bottorf (stats), Tom Newman - Assistant Coach, Denise Saathoff, Candice Bottorf, Tara Johansen, Jennifer Trautman, Amanda Liska, Crystal Nunnenkamp (stats) and Head Coach John Schoneberg.

The Sandy Creek Lady Cougars defeated Overton 56-44 to win the Class C-2 championship. Their semi-final win over Lincoln Christian included a comeback from a 14-point deficit. Sandy Creek had only two losses in the regular season, one of them to Class C-1 champs Sutton. It was Sandy Creek's first trip to the state tournament.

The 1991 Class C-2 State Champs

The Sandy Creek Lady Cougars

The Sandy Creek 1991 Class C-2 State Championship team. Front row, left to right: Chris Engel, Jenni Frager, Laurie Herbek, Kima Johnson, Lisa Shunkwiler, Tonya Wilson, DeAnne Wenske. Back row: Head Coach Russ Ninemire, Sara Cosler, Jennifer Lipovsky, Jennifer Schliep, Julie Herbek, Janet Lipovsky and Loralyn O'Kief, Assistant Coach.

What Happened in Sutton, Early June, 1915?

Writing a weekly retrospective column for The Clay County News is my excuse to read old newspapers. Among the 100-year old newspapers where I find Sutton news is The Sutton Register, the Brown family paper which was established in 1880 though Francis Marion (F. M.) Brown bought the paper in the 1880's - 1886, I think. This was issue No. 1,840 in the 35th year of publication.

F. M. Brown was the publisher/editor of The Sutton Register until his death in 1917 when his son, Charles Brown took over running the paper until into the 1930's - researching that exact date remains on the TODO list.

All of the clippings in this post come from the front page of that issue 100 years ago.

Masthead for The Sutton Register

This was the usual "front page news" section on the lower left side of the Register's front page. Brown always had a broad mixture of local, area, national and international tidbits in this section plus some specific news item, this time the County Field Day. Field Day was a competition between county high schools held annually at the end of the school year.

The end of the above article including a hint at some Edgar-related
controversy that is lost in the fog of time.

Sutton had two long-term banks, City State Bank and Sutton State Bank both lasting under those names for more than a century.

The Benway Company had two locations, Sutton and Lincoln.

Yost Motors sold Fords and operated a service station on the east side of Saunders Avenue on the south bank of School Creek for a long, long time. That would be Cooney and Snort Yost.

The U. S. didn't get into World War I until 1917 but here is an indication that the war all the way Over There in Europe had in impact in Sutton at least as far as being an interruption to the normal flow of wholesale merchandise. 

The Sutton Hospital was at 901 S. Saunders Avenue, now a home. Dr. Bruno Getzlaff was the resident physician for a time. Here is our evidence that Dr. Lanphier held that position in 1915.

1940 Sutton Register article about Uranium as an energy source

This article appeared in the June 6, 1940 issue of the Sutton Register newspaper - an early account of research by physicists to unleash the power of uranium...

How many watched this space?

Rev. William J. Bonekemper died 75 years ago, March 18, 1939

The Sutton Register newspaper of March 23, 1939 carried the story of the death of Rev. William J. Bonekemper in Long Beach, California. Rev. Bonekemper was the pastor in one of the Reformed churches in Sutton from 1876 through 1908.

The Bonekemper story begins on page 265 of Jim Griess' book on the Sutton Germans from Russia.

Clipping from the March 23, 1939 issue of the Sutton Register newspaper.

 

Suffrage Petition Submitted 100 Years Ago - March 14, 1914

Nebraska’s largest ever petition was delivered to the state house on March 14, 1914 by a delegation of women with a film crew recording the event. The petition with names of 42,523 voters called for a suffrage vote in the November election. Clay County contributed 599 names to the document.

 

The Sutton Register: “The suffrage fight is now on.”

History of St. Mary's Church by Nellie Sheridan - October, 1963

As promised in our weekly column in The Clay County News for October 2, 2013, here is the article by Nellie Sheridan:

This article appeared in The Clay County News on October 3, 1963 on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Sutton. The article was written by Nellie Sheridan of whom anyone interested in Sutton's past must thank well and often for the many stories and fables of Sutton's story that she preserved.

1930-1931 Clay County Rural School Map

Below is the map of rural schools in Clay County, Nebraska during the 1930-1931 school year. The red dots identify the location of each school with the district number in black. Red lines outline each school district, typically from seven to nine square miles. Essentially every farmstead was within two miles of a school.

Note that there were no district numbers for five schools surrounding Harvard. The posting following this one identifies 1913 teachers listing five rural schools in District #11, the Harvard schools. Those five were called "N.W." "N.E." "S.E." "S.W." and "S.C." that is, Northwest, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest and South-central Harvard schools and can be found represented by red dots in those directions from the town of Harvard.

Note also that several schools were destined to be swallowed up by the Hastings Naval Ammunition Depot - see the second map below for that story.

1930-1931 Rural School Map from the Clay County, Nebraska Educational Directory,
Fannie R. Haylett, County Superintendent.

The 1953-1954 Clay County rural school map reflects the configuration of county schools immediately prior to the major consolidation efforts in 1954 and subsequent years. 

Several school districts disappeared into the U. S. Naval Ammunition Depot during World War II. The 1946-1947 map showed that Districts # 33, 34 and 60 held on briefly before dwindling from the loss of portions of their districts and kids.

It also appears that only the Northwest Harvard rural school survived of the five Harvard rural schools with the others losing land, and pupils to the Naval Depot and to Harvard Air Base.

1953-1954 Rural School Map from the Clay County, Nebraska Educational Directory,
Mary W. Rippeteau, County Superintendent.

Rural school districts were not only the educational centers for farm kids but were the social centers for small rural neighborhoods of up to a dozen farm families. School districts gave isolated farm families a group to identify with forming close relationships that spilled over to shared farm equipment and labor, women's clubs, card parties, etc. How often did schoolmates in rural schools become spouses?

Clay County Teachers - 1913-1914 School Year

The Harvard Courier newspaper of September 13, 1913 listed these rural teachers for Clay County.

Education was a young lady's business; it looks like there were no more than five or six men in this list.

Cover Girl Celebrity from the past...

The May, 1962 Cover Girl for The Nebraska Electric Farmer
magazine - Terri Ham

The Cover Girl for the May, 1962 issue of The Nebraska Electric Farmer was a young celebrity from a farm near Sutton – 2 ½ year old Terri Ham, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Kendall Ham.

An article appeared in the May 31, 1962 issue of The Clay County News that told about the cover story of that issue of The Nebraska Electric Farmer magazine in which a local family was featured.

The Kendall Ham family had recently installed an electric water system on the farm that received the attention of the magazine. So among other important events of this week we have the 50^th anniversary of that story and this picture.


Congratulations Terri, on so many levels....

1940 Census - available after 72 years.

The 1940 census was released on April 2, 2012 following its 72 years in the closet. The initial product was the images of each of the pages. Indexing to follow.

The ancestry.com images for Nebraska were available on Thursday evening, the 4th. There are 38 pages of 40 names each for the city of Sutton (Sutton township portion). We'll be putting information from the census on the blog later.

Two things that stood out on the first look were associated with NYA projects. That was the National Youth Administration that was part of the WPA and operated from 1935 until 1943. The two projects that Sutton people listed as employment were "Book Repair" and "Sewing Project." One woman listed herself as a "clerk and time-keeper" for the sewing project. That needs more research before our imaginations run wild.

La Follette's brother lived in Sutton????

Another cool item gleaned from the old newspapers. 

"100 Years Ago

Mayor Bender introduced Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette as he arrived in Sutton for a reception and speech during the 1912 presidential campaign. La Follette told the crowd that he felt he was not a stranger to the people of the vicinity as his brother Bill was a former resident of Sutton. (To which I say, “Huh?” A quick check finds Robert age 5 and his brother W. T., 12, in Primrose, Wisconsin in 1860. William La Follet lived in Chamberlain, South Dakota in 1900 and was back in Wisconsin in 1910.) Robert La Follette left Sutton heading for Harvard and Hastings in that 1912 visit."

Need to do some more research on this one. It sounds like William La Follette would have been in Sutton in the 1880's or 90's, not the easiest time to find more information.

Sutton in the Census

From the U. S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2: “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.” That is the only specific tasking the founders gave us and it is time for the Twenty-Third Census of the United States.

The purpose of the census is to provide population statistics to adjust the boundaries of Congressional districts but data collection has grown as has the usefulness of the information.

Sutton’s first appeared in the 1880 census having just missed the prior edition. Enumerator James E. Marsh found 1631 people in Sutton Township. Mr. Jacob Steinmetz counted noses in School Creek Township.

Each census has asked a different set of questions beginning with early years when little more than the name of the head of the household and the number of persons was asked. By the beginning of the twentieth century the census bureau was collecting a wealth of information including age, place of birth, immigration date, number of years married, parents’ birthplace, literacy, occupation, etc. Recent forms have shrunk. The 2010 form has only 10 questions asking for name, sex, age, date of birth, racial and home ownership information.

Analysts use census data to learn how the country has grown and developed but no group has benefited from this resource more than genealogists. Great-grandparents seem to come to life as you see their family listed in the census and imagine the interview with the local enumerator. There are surprises lurking in these records: children who died young and were not remembered, in-laws who lived in the house, servants, boarders and gaps – people who should be there but aren’t.

We can’t fully trust everything found in the census. My great-grandparent’s family appears on the first page of the 1880 School Creek census where we’re led to believe that Anna Johnson gave birth to twins in Sweden at the age of 14. Possible, but her achievement probably would have been part of our family folklore. Family records indicate Anna was born in 1841 and would have been 38 years old when she met with the census taker, not 28 as he recorded. Curiously, he also listed his own wife as being 28 years old that year with 18 and 13 year old daughters. He might have had trouble with arithmetic, or maybe he was married twice – the census provides clues, not always complete answers.

Mr. Steinmetz illustrated another point in his own entry. He tried to record his wife’s birthplace and that of her parents but he re-wrote it a couple of times making a mess of the page. It appears he wrote “Prussia” and he clearly wrote “Hesser Castle”, probably meaning the Prussian province of Hesse-Kassel. Again, clues, not always complete answers.

I learned two things about my great-grandmother in the 1900 census. It reports that she had seven children but only six were living. My grandfather must have had a brother or sister who likely died in Sweden before the family emigrated. Also, the enumerator recorded that Anna could read and write, but did not speak English. Quite a number of older people, especially women were getting along just fine in their native language according to the 1900 and 1910 census.

Did you notice that I skipped over the 1890 census? If you research census records, you will too. That census was lost in a fire. So our Sutton research begins in 1880, then skips twenty whole years to the 1900 records followed by 1910, 1920 and you are finished at 1930, for now. Census records are “closed” for 72 years as a privacy consideration. The 1940 census will become public in just a couple more years. I am anticipating that one as my father was the School Creek enumerator starting the task on April 2^nd and finishing on April 17^th. It will be in his handwriting – and a good hand it was. That was not always the case.

Just a few years ago census records were only available on microfilm at Mormon libraries at temples and in the largest stakes. Many of us spent hours and hours in darkened rooms at the library just west of Temple Square in Salt Lake City poring over film after film. Now, it is almost too easy. Census records are online and indexed. What used to take multiple sessions can be done in minutes. The genealogy web site www.ancestry.com is a robust and easily accessible repository. There is a modest subscription fee, but when compared to traveling to spend hours or days in a library, it’s a fair price.

This article appeared in the January, 2010 Sutton Life Magazine. Information about the magazine is available at neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com or Mustang, Inc., 510 West Cedar, Sutton, NE 68979.

100 Year Flashback

This item appeared in the October 20, 1911 issue of the Sutton News:

Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Gray of this city celebrated their 36th wedding anniversary on Thursday last, Oct. 19th, the entire family being present. About ten people were seated for a six o'clock dinner after which they all repaired to the parlor where instrumental music was interspersed with songs, etc. The rooms were all elaborately decorated with a profusion of vines and flowers. It has been some time since the family were all together.

I read the piece in an image of that paper while writing my weekly column for the Clay County News while sitting at the Gray's table on one of the Gray's chairs in that very dining room of their house mentioned in the article. Kind of a cool moment. Dorothy Rabbe can confirm the story.

I often work on the column while baby-sitting the museum during our Sunday open hours. The dining room set was returned to the Gray house by a great, granddaughter in Texas representing the family in their wish to see the set back in its original home.

Very little effort needed to look up from the 100 year old news article and imagine the scene at this table in this room that Thursday evening exactly a century ago. 

John R. Maltby, Sutton Pioneer and 19th Century Adventurer

There have been a number of “characters” in Sutton’s past but drawing on almost 138 years of local history a few real Doozies stand out. My favorite Doozy is probably Mr. John Roger Maltby. Again, we are indebted to Nellie and Anne Sheridan for preserving this story in their book, “Along the County Line”.

John Maltby was born in Maine in 1830 but his father, Reverend John Maltby moved the family to Sutton, Massachusetts in 1834 where the elder Maltby served the First Congregational Church for 26 years. Yep, the younger John later gave Sutton its name. At age twenty-two, Maltby departed on a fifteen-year adventure that included seven unsuccessful years in the Australian gold fields, auctioneering in India, working on the first trans-Atlantic undersea cable and a bit of wandering about the United States.

While in London on the cable gig, John met and married Matilda Mary Cooke, a convert and very devout Catholic. After two years of faith-based difficulties John returned to the US, sans Matilda. After stays in San Francisco and New Orleans Maltby tried selling washing machines in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, IN 1865! He learned that the war-torn Confederacy was a poor market for high-ticket consumer products.

Meanwhile, back in London, Mary decided to join John and not finding him in Massachusetts, tracked him down in Louisiana in 1866. A year later their Boston hardware business flopped. John then left Matilda with his sister and went to Omaha where he built a track and organized horse races (you can’t make this stuff up). He dabbled in some land deals, cattle deals and fur trapping before poking around School Creek in May, 1871.

Maltby’s next adventure is well documented in Sutton’s history and we’ll save it for another day. Briefly, he and William Way “jumped” the claim of Mr. J. C. Vroman to organize much of today’s Sutton real estate. Vroman disappeared and we have Maltby and Way Avenues.

In September, 1872 Maltby took a business trip back east, ostensibly as part of the Sutton-Burlington depot dispute but actually to see Matilda and offer her a new life in the West. She agreed. London to Boston to Sutton. Quite a “Life Story”. But there was more to come.

Maltby was an early mover-and-shaker in Sutton: judge, school superintendent and in the midst of the social circles. But in 1877, just six years after finding School Creek, John, this time with Matilda, moved again but only a few miles to Fairfield. They were now both pioneers in organizing the town and the Catholic Church.

John died in 1895 and Matilda, almost penniless returned to Sutton and became the town’s librarian. She died in 1912 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery.

The Sutton Museum is proud to display several items of Matilda Mary Cooke Maltby include dresses and her wedding gloves and shoes thanks to Regina Leininger and others with the foresight to preserve these artifacts from our history. See them at the museum Sundays from 2 to 5 PM or by appointment. Contact Jerry Johnson at 773-0222 or jjhnsn@windstream.net for more information.

John R. Bender, Sutton’s Football Hero from a century ago

What could be the connection between Sutton and the Kansas State Wildcats? Answer: a native of Sutton selected that name for the K-State athletic teams – while coaching the football team in 1915.

John R. Bender was a 1900 graduate of Sutton High and lettered in football at the University of Nebraska in 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903 and 1904. He is one of only two players listed in the NU football media guide as having lettered five years – eligibility standards have changed since that era.

Bender was a star halfback graduating as the leading scorer in Nebraska football history. The 1902 and 1903 teams were dominate teams outscoring their opponents 186 – 0 and 291 – 17. Bender was a captain on the 1903 team.

Bender’s coaching career began at Washington State in 1906 and 1907 where he coached both football and basketball very successfully.

The Wikipedia entry for John R. Bender indicates that he coached at Haskell Indian Nations University and St. Louis University from 1907 to 1911. I haven’t confirmed the Haskell connection and am skeptical of it. Wikipedia also states that he was an American Indian and his nickname was “Chief Bender”, and cautions us not to confuse him with the other “Chief Bender”. Albert “Chief” Bender was an American Indian who played major league baseball about the same time. My guess is that the writer has confused them.

The 1900 census for Sutton Township shows John R. Bender to be the 18-year-old son of Jacob Bender along with three sisters and a brother, Gustaf. Jacob and John’s grandparents are all indicated as having been born in Russia. John Bender’s ethnic heritage is no mystery to most of us in Sutton today. He was not a Native American.

St. Louis University does claim Bender in the history of coaches including the tale that he had a physical resemblance to a popular charm doll of the time called a “Billiken”. The Billiken was an elf-like thing with pointed ears, named after William Howard Taft copying the Teddy Bear that was named after Theodore Roosevelt. The Billiken didn’t catch on as well as the Teddy Bear, or as the Kewpie doll that followed.

The St. Louis fans began to call John Bender’s football team, “Bender’s Billikens” and the name is still used by St. Louis University today.

Bender became head football coach at Kansas State in1915 where he is credited with initiating two long-standing traditions, Homecoming and the Wildcats nickname. His team had a 3-4-1 record and before the 1916 season he moved to the University of Tennessee as the Tennessee coach took his K-State job. Tennessee had an 8-0-1 record but World War I interrupted athletics during 1917 and 1918. Bender also coached basketball at Tennessee.

John Bender, son of Jacob Bender in this story is not the John Bender, son of Jacob Bender and born in 1915. The first Jacob Bender was born in 1854 in Russia. The second Jacob Bender was born about 1885 in Germany and immigrated in 1907 with his wife Catherine (or Kathryene – the 1920 and 1930 census vary)

A third Jacob Bender was born about 1895 in Russia and came to Sutton in 1912 to join his brother Henry J.

Sutton - Home of the Round Baler

Sutton enjoys a number of distinctions or “Claims to Fame” among of which is the invention of the round baler.  The Clay County Historical Society included that story in their Summer 1984 newsletter so the tale may be ripe for repeating.  The story also appears on a couple of internet sites, including that of the Patent Office.

The invention of the round baler is credited to Hugh Luebben and his sons Melchior and Ummo of Sutton.  Work on the invention may have started as early as 1892 with the patent being issued in 1903 or 1905.

The origin of the idea for the baler was described by a William Watts who arrived in Nuckolls County in 1874 and reported that fuel was often in short supply during the harsh winters.  He said, “The buffalo chips were gone, coal was not to be had, and our prairie was devoid of wood.  We began using straw as a source of fuel, twisting it roughly into the shape of a rope which could then be rolled into a ball and burned in a stove.”  The Luebben’s adopted and mechanized this process to build a device that attached to the back of a threshing machine and shaped the straw into round bales.

The Machine - Sutton's own contribution to agricultural mechanization.

This first device was not successful as it had, in today’s engineering terms, a low MTBF – Mean Time between Failures – it kept breaking down.  A later, improved model was a standalone machine with its own engine and worked for hay and alfalfa and a capacity of four to seven tons per hour.

The Luebben’s arrived in Sutton around 1890 where Melchoir was as a banker with the First National Bank of Sutton.  By 1900 he was bank president and among the town’s elite drawing mention in the local newspapers for social activities as well as his business endeavors.  Ummo Luebben appears to have provided much of the inventive genius for the baler while Melchoir handled the financial arm of the enterprise.

A side story of the baler’s invention involves the Melchoir’s financial dealings in support of the baler and a $79,000 question that led to the closure of the bank in 1910 and ten year sentence for elder Mr. Luebben.  The scandal also involved a Mr. Masters of a Harvard bank who was still fighting his conviction in 1921.  After Melchoir Luebben was released from prison he moved to St. Louis and then to California.

Ummo was not impacted by the scandal and continued working on the baler.  He moved the business to Lincoln in 1910 and to Omaha in 1920.  The company produced from two to sixteen machines a year from 1920 to 1940 when Ummo sold his company to Allis-Chalmers.  He continued to work on the baler until his death in 1953.  As of 2000, Allis had sold over 77,000 round balers.

Sutton’s round baler invention is identified by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers as one of their 50 Historic Engineering Landmarks.  That list is at: http://www.asabe.org/awards-landmarks/asabe-historic-landmarks/luebben-round-baler-31.aspx along with a video describing the invention.

Another reference appears at agupdate.com   (Blog entry updated July 10, 2019.)

Sutton enjoys a lesser connection to another of those 50 landmarks, the UC-Blackwelder Tomato Harvester.  The item only briefly describes this dual-pronged invention.

Early attempts to automate tomato harvesting resulted in smashed tomatoes and lots of red juice on the ground.  A three-way partnership between the University of California at Davis, Blackwelder Implement and the H. J. Heinz Company tackled the problem.  While the Blackwelder engineers worked on the machinery, UC-Davis developed a thick-skinned tomato that would withstand the mechanical picker.  Heinz ketchup processors had a major financial stake in the project and the Heinz representative to the project was Homer Anderson of the Tracy, California Heinz plant.  Homer was born in Saronville, Nebraska in 1910.

The Anderson family was among the first from our area to migrate to California in 1919.  As farms became larger and farmers became fewer, Sutton Germans migrated to Lodi, California and Saronville’s Swedes chose Turlock as their new home.

My source for the tomato harvester story?  Several delightful conversations with my father’s first cousin, Homer Anderson during the 21 years we lived in Tracy, California.