Elizabeth Norton: pioneer woman
By PAUL G. JANTZEN
Contributing writer
Among the majestic hills about two miles northeast of Bazaar in Chase County, a wooded creek flows toward the northwest. Northeast of the creek, the land climbs steeply to a horizontal rock outcropping capped by huge grassy mounds. The trees lining the creek have released their leaves for the winter and display only the naked limbs of oaks, hackberries, and sycamores.
A few scattered rocks remain to remind us of the cabin built here about 145 years ago. The land was settled by an attractive widow and her five sons. Born Elizabeth Coughlin in Ireland, she married William Norton and, in about 1833, sailed for Quebec. By boat, they traveled up the St. Lawrence River to Buffalo, New York, where they walked until they found employment on a farm.
After working and saving for three years, they bought a team of horses and a wagon and drove to Ohio. They drifted throughout the eastern Midwest where William was involved in completing the Erie Canal and building new railroads.
While working on these construction projects, five sons were born to the Nortons. Unwilling to raise their impressionable sons in the violent surroundings they had witnessed in the border states, they decided to move farther west. When at Tecumseh, Kansas, waiting for surveyors to settle land boundaries, their horses were stolen. But worst of all, in 1856, William died.
In the fall of 1858, Elizabeth's oldest son Michael, now 23, traveled 75 miles southwest into Chase County. Here he staked a claim on 160 acres where this small stream joins the South Fork of the Cottonwood River.
In 1859, on April 19, Elizabeth and her sons arrived at their claim on a wagon drawn by a team of oxen which Michael had broken to the yoke. The boys built a cabin of logs cut from the woodlands that lined the stream. For their winter meat supply, they traveled by ox and wagon on west, to where the cities of Newton and Hutchinson now stand, and hunted bison and butchered them.
On one hunting trip, a domestic cow attached to a bison herd saw the boys and their wagons, followed them back to Chase County, and helped balance the Norton family diet. Elizabeth, says her granddaughter Minnie, "always believed that the cow came to her boys as an answer to her prayers for care and help, and as a reward for her trust
During one cold, snowy day in the 1860s, a young Indian, his wife, and baby stopped to camp in the woods near the Norton cabin. The Nortons urged the couple to spend the night in their cabin, but the couple refused. The Indian man had cut a few boughs for shelter and found a hollow tree for their child.
As the snow got deeper and the night colder, Elizabeth dressed and trudged through the drifts and finally persuaded the young family to join her and the boys in the cabin. She provided blankets and invited her guests to sleep near the glowing fireplace.
By morning, the household was "snowed in completely," and the Indian family had to stay three weeks. The young father cut firewood, fed the fireplace, and shoveled paths through the snow. The young mother helped wash and iron clothes, cook food, and wash dishes.
For many years to follow, whenever this Indian family passed the Norton cabin on their way from one camp to another, they stopped to see Elizabeth. When neighbors were fearful of Indian raids, Elizabeth remained calm and was never molested in her cabin here at Norton Creek.
At Thanksgiving time, I like to remember the coming of the cow. And at Christmas, I reflect on Elizabeth Norton's nighttime compassion for the chilly couple and their baby.
— Story retold from Minnie Norton. 1940. The Norton Family from 1854 to 1935. Chase County Historical Sketches, Vol. I, Chase County Historical Society, Cottonwood Falls, KS.
