Ira Hamlin "Hammie" Kent talks about the Kent and Kaiser sides of his family. (11.5 minutes)
(note: Kent also talks about ranching pre-newlands project on the "Ranching Life" page in this exhibit. His oral history also contains a bit more on his grandfather, I.H. Kent, feel free to check out the full oral history for more of that, but note it is very long.)
SA: I first want to learn a little about your grandparents, and let's start with your paternal grandfather. First, what was his name?
IK: Ira Herbert Kent.
SA: Where was he born?
IK: In Lykens Valley which is about twenty miles above Harrisburg, in Pennsylvania
SA: And what was the date of his birth, do you know?
IK: He was born on August 15, 1855.
SA: Now tell me about your father's mother, your grandmother on your father's side.
IK: Her name was Mary Kaiser, and she was born on January 15, 1859, in Fallon, Nevada.
SA: In Fallon, Nevada! So my goodness, you are a third generation?!
IK: Yes, I am.
SA: Tell me how she happened to be born here, before it was even incorporated.
IK: Well, Fallon really didn't exist at that time. She was born down here at Stillwater. Of course, later years, Fallon was started in 1902. Of course we use the word "Fallon," because people don't know what we're talking about when we say ''Stillwater," which was originally the county seat of Churchill County.
SA: Now, do you know how she happened to be born in the Stillwater area here in Nevada?
IK: Yes, her father, Charlie Kaiser, was born in Baden, Germany, in 1830. He left Germany when he was twenty years old, and he crossed the Atlantic Ocean, landing in New Orleans, in the year 1850.
SA: When did he come to Nevada?
IK: He later went to California in the fall of 1850, and he located near the Yuba River in Yuba County, and engaged in mining. In 1870 he left Sacramento and traveled to Stillwater in Churchill County where he took up ranching.
SA: He must have been a very enterprising man. Did your grandmother talk a lot about him? Did you ever know him?
IK: No I didn't. He had died before I even knew anything about him. But he was a state senator here in Churchill County for some twenty years.
SA: You came from a very prominent beginning here. That's your father's parents?
IK: No, that's my great-grandfather on my grandmother's side of the family.
SA: OK, and your grandma was Mary Kaiser?
IK: Right.
SA: OK. And your grandfather was the first Ira Kent?
IK: I.H. Kent, right.
SA: You're named after him?
IK: That's correct.
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IK: What we call the Stillwater Slough—the Carson River actually—the Carson River flowed into what they called the government pasture, down by the old Grimes Ranch, which was a lake of about a thousand acres. When it filled, it flowed to Stillwater, and we had a rock dam right back of the house where we backed up the water and irrigated all of our place. And what is called the Freeman Ranch, which was my great-grandfather's place, Charlie Kaiser had originally, and later sold it to Freeman. But there was cottonwood trees all the way up the slough there, the Stillwater Slough. They're practically all gone. People have cut 'em down, and there's hardly any left. And then right in Stillwater, there was a lot of cottonwood trees. In fact, there was a big grove of trees that had been planted by the early settlers that come in here. They were planted in rows. They used to have their picnics in there in the summertime, and you could drive your teams down through the rows of those trees, and they had places to barbecue and everything there, in that grove of trees, but they have all been cut down.
SA: Did you see that when you were a little boy? Was that still there?
IK: Oh yes! Yeah, the trees weren't cut down until about 1925.
[cut]
IK: …My grandfather insisted that I come to work at the store.
SA: Oh, OK, I want to hear about that.
IK: After school, we'd get out at 3:20, and I'd be down at the store at 3:30. I worked in the hardware from 3:30 until 6:00. He closed at 6:00.
SA: Oh my, so grandfather was a disciplinarian.
IK: Yeah. And some Saturdays that they were pretty busy, he'd ask me to stay in town and I'd work on a Saturday.
SA: So now I want to hear about that in detail. By then you were how old?
IK: Fifteen.
SA: First I want you to describe the inside of the store. Tell me what was in that store beside the hardware.
IK: Well, on the south side of the store was one department. It was all groceries, and you could charge your groceries in there. In fact, everybody charged their groceries, and they delivered 'em at that time.
SA: How many worked in the store?
IK: On that side there was probably six or seven men.
SA: Wow! All men?
IK: And women. They had a candy counter—just one girl worked there, and it was probably, oh, forty feet long, all kinds of different candies.
SA: Really?! Were you allowed to take any?
IK: All you wanted to eat, but you didn't eat very much—you got all you wanted! [laughter]
SA: I didn't know that—so they had all these candies!
IK: Yeah. And then in the back part of that, they had a meat department where they sold meat. And then they had a cashier's desk between it and the hardware. And they had overhead… what do you call them… tubes to send the money.
SA: Oh, where it looks like pipes. Is that right?! That big a store?!
IK: Yeah. Then in the center was the hardware. And then on the north side was what they called the "cash and carry." They didn't charge anything at all—everything was cash and carry.
SA: Oh, they just set the place where you could just pay and take it.
IK: In other words, you went in there and the prices were probably five percent cheaper.
SA: Oh, how interesting! I'd never heard that.
IK: Then on the other side, where they let people charge. And then in addition to the store, across the street they had a big warehouse where they had all kind of farm machinery and things like that.
SA: Oh my gosh, they sold that too?!
IK: Yeah. And then down on the northern part of town, they had the lumber yard and a feed yard where they sold mixed chicken feeds and seed.
SA: Now how far from the store was that area?
IK: It would be four blocks. It was right on the railroad track.
SA: So how many people worked for your grandfather?
IK: Oh, there was about a hundred and twenty.
SA: Wow, that was a big operation for those days.
IK: And they had an alfalfa mill where they ground alfalfa meal. In fact, they had two of 'em at one time there.
[cut]
IK: "I.H." as everyone knew him, was really a shrewd man. He was very, very outspoken. I've heard him stand and cuss somebody up one side and down the other, and then turn around and pat 'em on the back. He was a very strong politician. He was a Democrat, and I've heard him sit there and pick up the telephone and call Key Pittman on the telephone, who was a Nevada senator, and just give him holy Hell about something, and he wouldn't back up. I mean, what he thought, he said, and he never backed up an inch.
SA: How old was he at this time when you started working there with him?
IK: He was about seventy-two, seventy-three years old.
SA: Youthful, energetic man?
IK: Oh yes. He was over there every day to the store. Of course his son, Ira L., was also in the office there and took care of the credit and so forth. And I.H.'s son-in-law, M.H. Walsh, was the head of the groceries and hardware, and he was a really sharp businessman and knew merchandise real well.
SA: Was your grandfather the head of all of this? Was he the one who oversaw?
IK: Yes, he was, until, oh, the last few years of his life. He would come over and have his two bits to say every day, and then go home. But lra L., my uncle, took over active management of it probably, oh, I'd say probably around 1936, 1937, he really started takin' over the active management of the whole operation.