FLETCHER SURNAME
UNDER CONSTRUCTION!
FOR A START I GIVE
YOU THE FOLLOWING:
My FLETCHER Connection
Albert W. Fletcher, my great-great grandfather.
In 1885, Albert joined a group of comrades from the War of 1861 to settle
a Vermont Colony in the Dakota Territory. "Pa" Fletcher, as he is
known in our family, and his son, Azem, traveled along the Chicago,
Milwaukee,
and St. Paul railroad with the 'colonists' and settled in Edmunds County,
Dakota Territory. A settlement known originally as Vermont City and
later as Loyalton became their home.
Young Azem sent a letter home. A
very early typed transcription of the letter remains.
[note: Azem did not use much punctuation]
Parts of the letter read:
"Loyalton Dakota
June 28 1885
Dear Cousin Mercy
I take my pen in hand to let you know that
I am well and hope this will find you the same. We started for Dakota
May 25th and landed here the 29th after a very pleasant journey,
We met a colony as St. Albans [author's note: Vermont town]. There
was 33 of us in all and we had two special cars from St. Albans to Chicago
then we changed and took 2 more cars wright through to Ipswich [author's
note: Dakota Territory later South Dakota]" ...
"The first week was a little tough for me
had to lay cold and wet sometimes we had our shanty blown down over our
heads [unreadable] there was not a nail in the whole thing we put it up
for the first night to sleep in and it stood a day or so when one night
we had a little wind and away she went" ...
"Tell Uncle Sylvester he had better come
out this fall with mother and the rest of the family. The land here
is very nice and rich and not very mountineous it is some rolling but not
to much. There is a few stone but they are small and they are all
on top of the gound there is not a tree to be seen any where around.
There is not any Indian with in 75 miles of us." ...
"Nobody is sick here, all look healthy.
If I had gone through what I have here in Vermont I should have been a
sick a bed. Anybody can take up 160 acres by paying $16.00 and staying
on it 5 years and the time a Souldier was in the army is deducted from
this 5 years." ...
"Give my love to Uncle Sylvester and Aunt
Rachel and Cousin Will
Your Truly
Azem O. Fletcher"
"Ma" Fletcher and their 3 other children followed the Fletcher
men to Loyalton, Dakota Territory in the fall of 1885. Less than
a year later Azem died of typhus at age 20 while he was working away from
home. His last letter to his mother was sent to her after his
death and showed his sad, sad decline. His sister Emma died young
also at age 22. Their brother, Guy Churchill Fletcher, lived and
married in South Dakota and later moved to California. Their sister
Bertha, became a printer's assistant and like her Mother, a poet,
then a reporter. She married Charles Douglas and they gave birth
to my grandfather, 'Vern, and in my granddaughter's eye, a gentleman, a
poet, a scholar.
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