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| This is the house in Gann Valley that housed the Post Office. |
OLINTHUS TRIPPETT DYE married Annie Ellen Harker at Missouri Valley, IA on 08 OCT 1884. In March 1885 they came to Buffalo County, DT, to the place he had homesteaded in 1883 on Elm Creek...a spot on the prairie where there was a stream, wild choke cherries and plums and a few trees and shrubs.
In July of 1884 a wind storm destroyed the shanties O.T. and his brother Homer had built on their adjoining claims and they were able to recover only enough material to rebuild one in which Homer and his wife lived.
When O.T. and Annie arrived in March they expected to move in with Homer and Maria but Caroline Sanders who had the claim just south of Homer's was staying with her sister and let them borrow her furnished place until they were able to build a shanty of their own.
Times were tough, summer droughts, winter blizzards, praire fires, etc., made farming unprofitable so in August 1890 O.T. closed the place on Elm Creek, put Annie and four children in the wagon and took them back to Missouri Valley to live with her widowed mother, great grandmother Harker.
In October 1891 he decided to move the household goods to Iowa and try to rent a place there. His father, Robert Emmett Dye, advised him to keep his land in SD if he could. So O.T. spent summers working for farmers in the Madison, Aberdeen, and Bristol areas of SD returning to his family in Iowa to teach school during the winters.
Finally, in the spring 1893 they all returned to Elm Creek where they made a permanent home. O.T. taught school in Buffalo County for many years and served at least one term as County Superintendent of Schools
Annie did what she could, managing the home, gardening, selling farm produce and keeping the Post Office, Richards, SD, in her house for eleven years. Here they reared nine children:
1. Elisabeth margaret (Bessie), born 22 OCT 1885.
2. Elva.
3. Leon.
4. Edwin Clinton, born 25 JUN 1890.
5. Grace.
6. Pearl Anna, born 29 JAN 1894.
7. Gladys.
8 Emmett.
9. Lynette.
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