History Player
in the
Classroom
Activity Book
Mary Dodge Woodward
Diary Keeping
Mary Dodge Woodward kept a diary of her everyday
life working on the Dodge Bonanza Farm. She wrote
about the weather, her garden, events, what she saw and
the business of running the farm. She included stories
about her family and even poetry.
November 12, 1884
Another bright day. I washed the flannels and calicoes, „twas such a nice
day for drying. Two years ago we were having a terrible blizzard. One
would have a different opinion of Dakota this fall. I went with Walter to the
Hayes place which gave me a good shaking up [in the wagon], but then, I
was out for pleasure. The school closed today and there will be no more
until spring. Last winter the attendance was so small that it was thought
advisable to have no winter school.
Write a diary entry about your day.
Date____________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
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Census
Every ten years, the United States‟ government takes a
census. A census is a list of all the people living in an
area at a certain time. It often includes other
information, too, like you address, your age, your job and
where you were born. Do you remember the government
taking a census in the year 2000?
The government took a census in 1885 including the
workers on the Dodge Bonanza Farm and neighbors of
Mary Dodge Woodward.
Take a census of your own family and neighbors. Fill in the
census box below with as much information as you can.
Name
Woodward, Mary
Olson, Matilda
Green, Harry
Martin, John
Age
17
Sex
Female
Female
Male
Male
Occupation
Domestic
Domestic
Farmer
Farmer
Name
Place of Birth
Sweden
Ontario, Canada
Michigan
Age
Sex
Occupation
Place of Birth
Play Pigs in a Pen
Students in Mary Dodge Woodward‟s time played games
such as hopscotch, marbles, checkers and jacks. Pigs in a
Pen was another popular game at the time. Below are the
directions for how to play the game Pigs in a Pen.
1. Find a partner to play with.
4. When a line is drawn that completes
a square, that player writes their initials
in the square. That means the pig is in the pen.
2. One player goes first by drawing a line
5. The player who completes a square
connecting any two dots. The line can be
up, down, or across, but not diagonal.
gets another turn and draws another line
3. The players take turns, each drawing
6. Players continue taking turns until all the
one line at a time.
dots have been connected. The player who has
the most pigs in the pen is the winner.
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Write a poem
Mary Dodge Woodward often wrote bits of poetry she had
read in other places and sometimes wrote her own little
poems too. On one stormy cold February day she wrote
about the weather and her dog Roxy:
Outside the tempest shrieked and roared,
Inside, old Roxy wheezed and snored;
It seemed to me a din eternal,
Kept up from regions of the infernal.
Write a poem or song about the weather or a pet.
_______________________________________
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Design a Quilt Square
Mary and her daughter Katie would make quilts that they
called “comfortables”. These quilts were the main thing that
kept them warm on cold winter nights on the prairie. Mary
once said in her diary that her quilt patterns would reflect
how she was feeling at the time she was making them. There
were many types of patterns some had names like: Birds –
eye, log house, and crazy quilt. These patterns were made in
separate blocks fabric blocks then all sewn together.
Design your own quilt pattern in the square below. Cut out your square.
As a class, arrange all of your quilt squares on the floor or a large table.
After you find and arrangement you like, tape the squares together. (You
may want to glue them to a larger piece of paper.) Finally, hang up your
class quilt.
Recipes
From spring to fall cooks on Bonanza farms were
constantly cooking food for the big crews of men who
would come to help. Recipes would be handed from
family to family and given to children when they moved to
their own farms so that traditions would be passed on.
The Bagg Bonanza Farm in Mooreton, North Dakota is preserved as a historic site for
visitors today. The still living relatives of people who owned and worked on that farm
made a cookbook of the recipes they would have used to feed the farm crew: Apple
Crisp, Fricassee Rabbit, Green Tomato Jam, Beet Pickles, and Sourdough Bread.
Sweets were always welcome and sometimes they would make up to 18 pies a day.
Below is a recipe from the Bagg Bonanza Farm heirloom cookbook.
Awful Good Cookies
By Ester Puetz Mertes from Mantador, N.D.
This recipe was given to Mrs. (J.B.) Bernadine Goerger – third generation
1 cup brown sugar
3 tsp. vanilla
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp. Baking soda
½ cup butter
1 tsp. Cream of tartar
½ cup Crisco
½ tsp. salt
3 eggs
4 cups flour
Oven Temperature: 350 Pan Size: cookies sheet Baking time: 12 minutes
Mix Brown sugar, white sugar, butter and Crisco together. Then add
remaining ingredients, roll into balls and dip in white sugar. Bake.
With an adult‟s supervision, try making the Awful Good Cookies at home!
If you have worked very hard all day what would be your favorite foods
to eat at suppertime? Write them below…
_______________________________________
Would these foods give you enough fuel to get up and do another days hard work?
_______________________________________
Boom Advertizing
Bonanza Farms came about through the failure of the railroad. The men
who owned the railroad spent more money building it than they had to
spend. So the investors who had given them money were given land in
return to farm or sell. The whole scheme would only work if people bought
huge pieces of land that became farms which grew only one main crop.
The railroad owners and investors advertised their land in a way that they
called “Booming”. “Booming” advertising might exaggerate the benefits
without really talking about the disadvantages of a product - in this case –
the harsh winters!
Here is an example of two boom
advertisements that described
great return and cheap land.
Boom Advertising
Design your own advertisement for a piece
of land, your school, or place (it could even
be your house!) using the ideas of
exaggeration of the good parts and avoiding
the possibly bad parts.
Read the photograph
This is a picture of a Bonanza Farm during harvest.
Look at this photograph and answer the questions below.
List three things you see in the photograph
1)_________________________________________
2)_________________________________________
3)_________________________________________
What is different about this photo compared to the time that you live in today?
__________________________________________________________________
Are there some things in this photograph the same as today? ________ If so, what
are they?_____________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
Tools of the Domestic Manager
The tools used in a farm kitchen looked different from the tools
we may use today. See if you can match the tool from the 1895
Montgomery Wards catalog to the item it would have been used
with.