100 years of Huron as seen by local woman

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HURON — Rural Beadle County and the city of Huron have gone through many changes over the past 100 years, and Hazelle (Timperly) Jones has been around to see the progression.
Hazelle was born on a farm south of Cavour in 1917, and she celebrated her 100th birthday in Huron on Saturday, Sept.  2.
Life was very different growing up then.
“Mom would take a horse and buggy to see her grandparents. They had a sleigh for the winter time or they used a buckboard wagon for the kids to ride in. They didn’t have cars,” explained Hazelle’s son, Craig Jones, and daughter, Beverly (Jones) Oliver.
From growing up south of Cavour to moving to Huron and attending high school, Hazelle has seen the ups, the downs, the progression of society and advancements in technology.
“Mom would always talk about how they didn’t have electricity, running water or telephones. It’s quite a change for her to go through. Her dad helped install the rural telephone system in Cavour years ago,” said Craig. “It’s just amazing the technology she has seen through the years. You look back and you can hardly imagine the progression she has seen.”
“When mom and dad bought their farm I was two-years-old and it was way out in the country back then. Now it is right on the edge of town,” Craig explained.
Craig stated that his parents had purchased this farm south of Huron in 1949. “They always had a huge garden; they canned to save for winter, and had a storage room where they would bury their vegetables in sand,” Beverly added.
“They called it a root cellar back then,” she said, explaining that the sand would keep the vegetables dry.

Huron did not have all the luxuries and conveniences then that it does now.
“We couldn’t go to the grocery store and buy everything we needed. We had cows and pigs, we had our own milk and eggs, plus beef, pork and chicken from the animals we raised,” Craig explained. “I asked about her longevity and she would say they ate mostly the food from the farm. I think her longevity of life is due to the process of what they ate back then.”
Farming is no easy lifestyle, but the benefits can be greater than the risks.
“I remember way back when you had to conserve,” Craig stated, “Mom would always say, ‘We gamble every day. We are farmers, with the weather, the livestock and the crops.’ That was a good saying of hers.”
“Being a farmer you had to rely on your faith in God that it would rain and the weather would co-operate,” Beverly added.
These days there is much more advance in machinery, but Craig and Beverly explained back then how different things were.
“When mom was young they were farming with horses and mules. They had no tractors back then; and now look at us — we have self-steering tractors with GPS,” Craig stated.
Hazelle and her husband, Woody, grew up in the “Dirty Thirties,” as they called it.
“The banks went bad and money was no good in the Dirty Thirties. A lot of people were going bankrupt and nothing was growing on the farms,” Craig and Beverly explained. “It was so dry; mom told us how they used to put wet cloths under the window ledges to keep the dirt from coming in. They grew up in some hard times. The people who had loans through the banks back then had no way to pay them back. The banks would take the farms and property. People would have to leave their houses with just the shirts on their back during the Depression.”
After the death of Hazelle’s husband in 1993, she continued bookkeeping and farming with the help of her children and family friends. She stayed on the property up until a few weeks before her 100th birthday when her health took a turn for the worse, and now resides in a care home in Huron.
“Mom kept the books on the farm up until about four years ago. Then her sight left her and I’ve been doing all her financials for the past four years,” Craig said. “We have family friends farming for us now.”
Hazelle started bookkeeping back when she studied business after high school, and everything was done on paper. This was even before electric typewriters.
Her children explained, “Mom used to say; “You want to talk to me, you call me on the phone.’ She did not know how to use computers and did not want to learn.”
Another interesting factor would be the family genealogy. Hazelle was very interested in discovering information about her ancestors.
“Mom was into family genealogy. She got me started in that, and we were able to trace her family back to the Mayflower. William Brewster was one of her descendants and other family members have said that we can trace back our origins to Queen Anne Bolin,” explained Beverly.
History usually holds more information than what is on the surface. “The genealogy is still a work in process,” Beverly added.
Hazelle’s story puts into perspective the advancements that have been made in the past 100 years in Huron, and it will be an interesting adventure to see what happens next.