Back to the Kansas Prairie

It was a drive through the Flint Hills and time...

Wednesday my family drove to Burlington, Kansas for the funeral of my great uncle Ralph Pieratt. He would have been 97 next month, and the last living of eight children born to my great-grandparents.

Twelve nephews and nieces drove in from Nebraska, Texas, and Kansas to attend the service. After saying goodbye to him and our ancestors in the country cemetery, we drove around the sections to see the family land again.

Ralph's Pieratt family was the main characters in my Trail of Thread book series. The first generation of Pieratts left Kentucky for Kansas in 1854. The second generation (the children that were on the covered wagon trip) moved to the Flint Hills after the Civil War.

My great grandpa Ira Pieratt married German descendent Kizzie Hamman in 1894. After trying their luck in the Oklahoma Land Rush, they settled back in Kansas and built a homestead from scratch.

They raised a family on this land, and welcomed three generations of their descendents for family reunions until they were in their 90s, and had to move off their farm. No one ever lived in the house again. It was burned down and turned back to prairie in the 1980s.

On this spring day (except for the fence and gate), it probably looks like the same wind-swept prairie that Ira and Kizzie walked on as they dreamed of their new homestead.

I'm just glad it's back to grass and not a shopping mall...