Ed Shatswell was born in Jackson County, Wis., in 1881 and moved with his folks to Petersburg, N.D., in 1884.

After Shatswell’s mother passed away, his father, F.M. Shatswell, headed for Montana and settled in Buford in 1905. He wrote back to his son and said he had found paradise, come at once.

Shatswell arrived in Buford and ended up staying in this area but he never considered this country paradise. He worked hard in his father’s meat market for a time and then filed a homestead about five miles west of Nohly. Farming was not for Shatswell, and in 1909 he sold his homestead and returned to Buford and the meat market. If settlers lived near a sizable town, they relied on meat markets. But homesteaders had to prepare their meat once it was killed as it could go bad in an afternoon. If meat was to be kept for a few days, settlers pre-boiled or pre-roasted it, and finished cooking it before eating. If it started to go bad, they would try rubbing a little salt on it to restore its nourishing qualities. Settlers had other ways of preserving meats for longer period of times. To pickle meat, homesteaders essentially salted it to the point that it would no longer rot.

To preserve 100 pounds of beef, four quarts of rock salt pounded fine, four ounces of saltpeter pounded fine and four pounds of brown sugar mixed well. Then a layer of meat was put on the bottom of a barrel with a thin layer of the mixture placed under it. Meat was then packed into the barrel in layers, and between each layer was a portion of the mixture, allowing a little more to the top layer. Then brine was poured in till the barrel was full.

Brine was saltwater that was strong enough to float an egg. Before cooking the meat it had to be scrubbed, rinsed and soaked before eating.

Shatswell was in the store and butcher business at Buford in 1912 when the Great Northern built the Nohly bridge. Those were booming times, and camps were set- up out by the Nohly bridge to accommodate all the workers. Shatswell recalls the black gambler who killed a man at the bridge after a fight then shot the sheriff while being arrested.

Two days before the shooting, Shatswell remembers giving that same black man a ride from Buford to Snowden. “He probably was a bad man,” Shatswell commented. “But he came out of hiding when the posse yelled for him to or they’d burn the brush. A bunch of men from the North Country got worked up over the happening and that night broke in the jail and lynched him. Later they broke a hole in the ice and shoved the Negro’s body under.”

In 1925, Shatswell was married to Mabel M. Darr (maiden name McNary). Darr, born in 1882 at Martinsville, Ill., had come to Buford in 1903 on an immigrant train to live for a time with her daughters. There were 14 people living in their one-room shack near Buford when they first came. In 1904 Darr set up a millinery and dress-making shop across the street from where she lived. In 1905 she married Ed Darr, and they lived on a homestead by the Big Opening. When Ed died in a car accident, Mabel returned to Buford with her three children where she boarded teachers, did sewing and nursing to make ends meat.

The Shatswells bought some land across from the Yellowstone Point near Briars and for several years lived in the timberland. In 1934 Shatswell and family moved to Fairview. He worked as a meat cutter and butcher off and on for 14 years for John Miller in the Valley Cash Store.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Information compiled from Courage Enough and the Fairview Times.