Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Hired Hand’s Contract Case
by Jayme L Lob
Jan. 15, 2019 — A strange court case was reported from Fargo on this day in 1904. J. H. Hanson, a hired farm hand, filed a lawsuit against his employer, Mrs. Eliza A. Francis. Hanson claimed that Francis had cheated him out of a contract, and five months worth of pay; Francis contended that the man was a lazy scoundrel that had refused to leave her farm after she had fired him for unsatisfactory work. The presiding judge, Justice Ryan, grew even more perplexed as the entire story unraveled before the court.
It seems that sometime around Nov. 20, Hanson had secured employment under Mrs. Francis working on her small farm about 10 miles south of Fargo. Additionally, Hanson’s wife was to work in Mrs. Francis’s house during the week, and Francis was to provide the couple’s son with room and board. For these services, a winter contract was made outlining the various terms of the agreement. For his work on the farm and his wife’s household duties, the Hanson’s were to receive $25 per month, and Mrs. Francis was to receive $2 per week for the boy’s room and board. The duration of the contract was set at five months.
A month later, though, Mrs. Francis found the couple’s work ethic lacking, and she asked the couple to leave her farm. Hanson refused and continued working at the place. Mrs. Francis realized that she would have to find other means of removing the family from her home; she quickly contacted her sons in Fargo and filled them in on her situation.
That day, Hanson loaded up a wagon of wheat and drove into the city. One of his employer’s sons approached him and told him that Mrs. Francis would like to speak to him. While Hanson was in conference with Mrs. Francis, the son unhitched the wagon and drove it back to the farm, leaving Hanson stuck in Fargo without a way of returning to the Francis farm.
Meanwhile, a second son drove out to the farm and told Mrs. Hanson that her husband needed her in Fargo. Mrs. Hanson and her children were taken to Fargo, and also abandoned on the streets. The Hansons secured housing in Fargo and filed suit against the employer for breaking the terms of the contract.
After sorting through the jumbled facts, Justice Ryan awarded Mr. Hanson $38 for two months salary, minus his son’s room and board. The story was reported under the heading, “Apparently, Life is Real.”
Dr. E. M. Darrow
by Merry Helm
Jan. 16, 2019 — Today marks the birthday of Edward M. Darrow, who was born in 1855 in Wisconsin. He was one of the earliest and most influential physicians in the Red River Valley.
In 1878, Darrow graduated from Rush Medical College in Chicago and moved to Fargo to begin a medical practice. In his very first year, he started up the first hospital in the region, the Cass County Hospital. Fifteen years later, Edward’s brother, Daniel, built the Darrow Hospital across the river in Moorhead.
In 1904, Edward was on the first medical staff of St. John’s Hospital, which was housed in Bishop Shanley’s former residence. Their first patient was a victim of typhoid fever.
Dr. Darrow became the first superintendent of health in Dakota Territory and was given the task of issuing to physicians their license to practice. A story has been handed down through his family that he had issued five licenses when he suddenly realized that he, himself, didn’t yet have a license. So he became the sixth licensed physician in Dakota Territory. He also served as Surgeon General under Governor Burke and was also a member of the “insanity board.”
Much of Darrow’s practice took place in surrounding towns and rural homes. It wasn’t unusual for him to have to operate on patients who were stretched out on their kitchen tables. Dr. Darrow brought with him sheets, dressings, his instruments and gloves, and all had to be boiled in a wash boiler. Patients were draped with the wet sheets; then a country doctor or family member was given the job of draping – or “dropping” – a piece of gauze, laced with drops of chloroform or ether, over the patient’s face so the operation could begin.
Darrow’s son, Kent, later said, “I was greatly surprised, when I went to Johns Hopkins in 1909, to see ether being poured into a tight cone, which was slapped on a patient’s face, practically choking him, the patient struggling violently and often turning blue. My roommate would not believe me when I told him that our patients seldom struggled when we used the open drop method.”
Besides his hospitals and private practice, E.M. Darrow left another legacy: his children. His daughter, Mary, received a degree in chemistry at the North Dakota Agricultural College and married Dr. Ralph E. Weible, another long-time Fargo physician. Mary founded the first kindergarten in North Dakota and also organized a women’s suffrage association. Weible Hall, a women’s dormitory at NDSU, was named in her honor.
Two sons, Frank and Kent, as well as Kent’s brother-in-law, and Mary’s husband, Ralph E. Weible, started the Dakota Clinic in 1926. Another son, Dan, graduated from Johns Hopkins as well. He was Professor of Pediatrics at Yale University and became an authority on various pediatric diseases.
E. M. Darrow died in Fargo in December 1919.
“Dakota Datebook” is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota and with funding from the North Dakota Humanities Council. See all the Dakota Datebooks at prairiepublic.org.
