Ben Holcomb grew up on a farm near the Niagara River just a few miles from the Falls and a short distance from Buffalo, New York. When he was grown he started farming for himself. He married Alice White and they made their home on a farm of 100 acres on which he raised small grains and had a good herd of cattle, a number of horses and other stock.
In the early spring of 1881 Malcomb Holcomb, Ben's brother, made a trip to St. Paul, to visit an old friend. He then went on into the Dakotas of which he had heard so much. He spent most of the season working near Bismarck. While there he heard much of the branch of the Northern Pacific railroad which was to be started north in the spring of 1882, also of the vast acres of prairie land which would be put on the market after the railroad was built. He was greatly impressed with Dakota and when he returned to Ontario in the fall of 1881 he told his brothers that "if you want to raise wheat, Dakota is the place to do it."
Through that winter they talked of the new country which was to be opened up soon, and became more and more enthused with the idea of pioneering into the country and getting their pick of land before it was put on the market. Before spring came they had made up their minds to go west and see what they could do. The idea of securing a large piece of land for very little money was very tempting.
By April of 1882 Ben, Mack and Li (Elias) were ready to start for the Dakotas. They were accompanied by an old friend and neighbor, Jack Bort, and a cousin, Crayton Sherk. They chartered a car in which they shipped nine horses, and a dog, a small wood stove, a few chairs and their personal belongings and household utensils. The men rode along with the car and the trip took some 10 days, having laid over a few days in South St. Paul where they unloaded and fed the stock.
They arrived in Fargo toward the end of April and found it a typical "Wild West" town. The winter of 1881 had been one of deep snows and the streets of Fargo were ankle deep in sticky black mud that one had to wade through to cross over to the other side. They often saw a horse-drawn vehicle mired deep in the mud on the main street of Fargo.
They spent a week in Fargo, putting their names in at the employment office for spring farm work. They were told to report to the Raymond-Green ranch north of Mapleton. The horses were again loaded into a car and shipped to Mapleton. The trip had to be made by train as the country between Fargo and Mapleton was all under water.
Mapleton was little more than a railroad station, a store and saloon, and the ranch was located about 12 miles north. The Raymond-Green ranch covered many sections and 40 men were employed during the spring seeding. The Holcomb men were there for a month and enjoyed the work; they were well paid and well fed.
When seeding was over they prepared to resume their journey northwest. They bought two or three more horses, two wagons and a Sulkey plow and were ready to start again early in June. They were accompanied by two more men they met at the ranch, Ed Van Vleet and George Melton.
The first night of their trip they slept in a barn near Buffalo, staking out the horses for the night; and the second night they camped on the ground near Valley City. On the third night they reached Jamestown, camping outside the city.
They spent nearly a week at Jamestown, camping at night and eating at restaurants. Jamestown was similar to all other Dakota settlements with many fine people and many of the rough ones. The town was made up of several business places and many saloons. The railroad to the north had been started but had been built only a short distance out of Jamestown. The men bought provisions for their trip north and started out again, about June 16.
They traveled some 35 miles that day, seeing no one and no houses until night when they arrived at Maloneys, a settler located about a mile east of Newport. They stayed that night and the next day continued north. There were sloughs all over the country, many of them very large. Often they looked too large to go around so one of the men would ride through on horseback to see if it could be forded. If he found it was possible, they would put two teams on each wagon and ford the water.
They made camp the second night on what was later section 26 of Carrington Township. The next morning they decided to move a little further north where the land looked more satisfactory. They arrived at section 24 and thought it was a good place to stop. The prairie grass was rich green and miles and miles of it stretched unbroken in all directions as far as the eye could see. The Hawksnest Hills, some 18 miles southwest, were clearly visible; otherwise all was green prairie grass in every direction. They tested the soil and found it rich and fertile, ideal for their purpose of raising wheat on a large scale.
The James River was some 10 miles to the east and the nearest settlement of Newport about the same distance to the southwest.
The weather was cool, the sunsets gorgeous, and the distances made Ben feel like the man who said, "Gosh, I didn't know there was so much outdoors."
Buffalo trails ran all through the country, some of them deep ruts. Buffalo bones lay all over the prairie, bleached white by many suns. It was a grand country and a grand life for husky young men eager for adventure and unafraid of hard work.
The country was in its original prairie state with numerous large sloughs and plentiful game. Trees were scarce with only two small clumps visible on the whole countryside. The new group of settlers was eager to begin farming operations at once.
The land was not yet surveyed and it was necessary to know where to take their squatter's rights, so they would not be on railroad and school land when it was put on the market later. Therefore they ran a line from the northern edge of Stutsman County to Section 12 by using a tapeline and compass and making a mound of earth every half mile. Later when the land was surveyed they found their calculations quite accurate. They had not allowed for the rise and fall of the land but many of their mounds were exact.
Each of the men, Ben Holcomb, Jack Bort, Li Holcomb, Van Vleet, Meton and Crayton Sherk picked his quarter of land and they began work on a sod shanty on Li's land.
While the shanty was being built they also dug a well. They had been using slough water which would be strained to remove the wigglers and then boiled. The well was some 14 feet in diameter and when they got down about 16 feet "hard pan" was struck. One of the men was in the well at the time and called attention of those above to the hollow sound when he struck on this hard clay.
He then struck it a hard blow with his pick and the water shot far into the air. He was quickly helped out of the hold, even forgetting to take the pick with him; and in an hour the well was completely filled with water and very good water it was. The well was used for a good many years, and often town people would come out to the well as they had trouble in town with water in those earliest days.
As soon as the shanty and well were dug a sod barn was started. This was built like the shanty but the walls were a little thicker and measured 16 x 40 feet: It also had wooden doors and a wooden roof. The men all lived on this quarter during the summer of 1882, spending enough time on their own places to prove on them.
The other men did most of the building and Ben Holcomb did the "toting". It was necessary to have someone on the road a good part of the time, securing provisions, mail, going to Jamestown one day and returning the next. Ben would usually stop at Plow Lake for a meal. Plow Lake was located about six miles east of what is now the town of Pingree, about 20 miles from Jamestown. A family by the name of Plow lived there and it was generally a stopping place for travelers.
When the buildings were completed on Elias Holcomb's quarter so the men and horses had shelter and good water, improvements were started on the other quarters. All the men built sod shanties except Ben who bought lumber in Jamestown and built a small temporary shack in which he spent a little time that year. The men lived together; Van Vleet being the cook and a very good one, too. A well was dug on each quarter and then they began breaking land and putting up hay for the winter's feed for the horses.
During the summer the men broke about 100 acres of land on the seven quarters; Ben Holcomb having about 40 acres broken on his land. They put up some 50 tons of hay, using a scythe and hand rake for this work. The land was well scattered with buffalo bones and these were thrown off as they worked. The next year they were gathered and sold.
The men enjoyed hunting. Wild game was plentiful, antelope were to be had at almost any time and it was their main meat supply. There were also many white geese, ducks and snipe of all kinds, although prairie chickens were scarce until later when the land was seeded to grain. Occasionally they would go to the James River where large pickerel could be caught. Once that fall Ben went to the river and stayed at the home of William Larrabee, the first settler in the county, and paid 501 for sleeping in the barn that night.
Early in the fall Crayton Sherk returned to Canada. He had been very lonesome. About the first of August Li and Mack Holcomb and Jack Bort returned to the Red River Valley where they harvested and threshed at the Raymond-Green ranch where they had worked in the spring. Van Vleet and Merton also left that fall and never returned, selling their rights later to Ben and Li. Li, Mack and Jack Bort returned to the homestead shack in November and Ben left to spend the winter in Canada.
During the winter of 1882-83 the men on the Carrington township homestead saw no one all winter and received no mail. It was a winter of deep snows and continuous blizzards. When Ben returned in the spring of 1883 the town of Carrington was in its beginning. A building was going up to be used for a hotel run by H.A. Soliday. There was a saloon and a few other business places. The railroad had reached Carrington in December 1882 and a few had spent the winter there. Mr. Soliday and his family, Bruce Waring, and L.W. Harriman who had a real estate firm and two or three cars.
Ben's cousin, Crayton Sherk returned to Dakota with him being hired to work for Ben that summer. With the help of a third man, named McIntyre, they rebuilt Ben's house. They made it a little larger and built it more carefully this time, although it was unsealed that first summer.
On June 1, 1883, Mrs. Holcomb and three children arrived in Jamestown. The first thing she saw on leaving the train was the old red stagecoach leaving for Fort Totten. The stagecoach line was discontinued shortly after that when the train went further north from Carrington. Ben often noticed the stage road on the east side of the James River but never happened to see the stage. It made a stop at the Larrabee's home on the east side of the river and also at a place called Eslers near Jamestown.
After his family spent the night in Jamestown and came to Carrington in the wagon the next day. Mrs. Holcomb's impression of North Dakota was of, bareness and distance. However she was happy to be making a home again and remained contented through the years.
After his family arrived Ben bought a cow from John E. Moore in Carrington for $50 and went southeast of Jamestown to buy a dozen hens at a dollar a piece. Chickens and eggs were scarce in Dakota in those days.
In the summer of 1883, Ben Holcomb spent a good deal of time on the road helping Charlie Wing of Newport locating settlers.
In the spring of 1883 Ben Holcomb and Crayton Sherk planted trees on a tree claim in Lake Washington, in Eddy County now, although it was in Foster County at that time. They planted boxelder that grew well the first summer but were killed in the unusually severe winter that followed.
In 1884 Ben summer fallowed new ground at his Carrington farm and in 1885 planted cottonwood and ash shoots. He took very good care of them protecting them from prairie fires and having the children cultivate them carefully in the summer. He had over 10 acres of beautiful trees, one of the nicest groves in this part of the country. He also planted some four or five acres of trees on the homestead a few years later. In the summer of 1883 Ben's sisters, Ellen and Evelyn came to Dakota keeping house for their brothers Li and Mack in the sod shanty that was built in 1882. By now the sod shanties were a pretty sight, green to the roofs, warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
Carrington was booming, settlers thronging in on every train, many of them fine eastern people and permanent residents of the county, and many others here one day and gone the next. The town had more saloons than any other business places. During the spring of 1883 the Strong & Chase general store was opened, also Durbrow Brothers Hardware Store. The post office was in a small frame building on main street with Mr. Halsey postmaster. There were also many small buildings little more than shacks, housing all sorts of offices and trades, a newspaper, a bank, real estate, blacksmiths and others.
During the '80s brother, Malcomb Holcomb had married Mary Buchanan of Carrington. In about 1911 they left Dakota to make their home in Alberta Canada where Mack died at the age of 73 years. The other brother, Elias left Dakota about 1898 moving to Snohomish, Washington where he died in 1908. The sister, Nell moved to Ohio in 1908. The cousin who had come with them from Canada, Crayton Sherk returned to Canada in the fall of 1883 and died some years ago at his old home near Niagara Falls. The fifth man to come from Canada in 1882 was Jack Bort, who stayed in Foster County for the rest of his life.
Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 48