Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Helen Elizabeth Lizzie Everling was born Sept. 5, 1881, in Eagle Creek, Minnesota. Helen was one of the daughters of William Wayne Everling (1850-1890) and Mary Ann Kaup (1856-1946). Helen told stories about growing up in Shakopee, and her daughter, Dorothy King McIntosh, told the stories in a book called The Family of Maria Muno and Johann Peter Kaup.

Helen noted that she was born on Sept. 5, 1881, in Eagle Creek, which she noted is “on the outskirts of a little town called Shakopee, in the state of Minnesota. We later moved into the town of Shakopee.

“The Minnesota River flows nearby, and some Indians lived across the bridge and towards the right. One Sunday afternoon, after Sunday school (we had Mass at church in the morning and in the afternoon, we had Sunday School) my sister and two of our girlfriends decided to walk over to where the Indians lived. When the young Indian boys saw us coming, they had a fire going and danced and sang songs in a circle around the fire. The little Indian girls were playing together and we watched them.”

The Dakota girls took Lizzie and her friends to their log cabin where the woman was busy fixing some whole green beans for supper. “The woman was so happy to see us and she gave us some little woven baskets she had made, and they were embroidered with fancy thread and were made to be hung up. When we left, she invited us to come again.” Then Lizzie noted “My mother was so worried when we came home and told her where we were, as people were afraid of Indians in those days.”

Lizzie also remembered “Indian Lucy” (Hapstiŋna Black Flute Lucy Otherday), who “would gather watercress in the creek in the Spring and Summer and twice a week would walk into town and sell it to the townspeople. She was quiet but friendly.

“Old Shoto” was the Dakota Indian John Shoto, who came to town occasionally, according to Lizzie. “Old Shoto walked with a cane. He would walk into our town and shout ‘Whoo whoo Hah Hah’ over and over. Old Shoto was so friendly and nice and all the children loved him. They would gather around him whenever he walked into town and beg him to count…which he did.” And so, John Shoto would count: waŋží [1], núŋpa [2], yámni [3], tópa [4], záptaŋ [5], and šákpe [6]!

Lizzie also remembered her mother, Mary Anna Kaup Everling. She recalled that she “would walk two miles into the country to buy a pail of home-made molasses for fifty cents. The lady made the molasses by growing sugar cane, then stripping off the leaves and putting the canes in a great big press.” Later, Lizzie’s uncle, Nick, made molasses, and so they got molasses from him.

After Lizzie returned from school, her mother would spread a piece of bread with butter and molasses and give it to Lizzie along with “lemon soda.” “She put some sugar, vinegar, and baking soda in the bottom of a glass and filled it with water, and it would fizz and we thought it was wonderful.

“On Sunday afternoons in the summer she would churn sone ice cream and bake a big cake which we would have. And then for supper we were allowed to invite our friends in and my mother always had a big plate of sandwiches and more cake and ice cream. In the winter on Sunday afternoons, she would pop a big kettle of large kernel popcorn which we had with sugar cookies.

“The fairgrounds was right across the street from our house, and after supper all the children would gather there to play tag, ring-around-the-rosie, pump-pump pull away, run-sheep-run, and drop-the-handkerchief. In the winter after supper, we would go sliding on a big long bobsled my brother made, on the hills nearby.

“As I grew older the evening pastime was to go walking. Everyone went walking after supper. When I went to the dances, my sister and girl friends and I would walk about five or six blocks down to the railroad tracks where the handcars were used in the day time by the men to repair the railroad tracks, but at night we would pump them four miles to the next time of Chaska, where the dances were held. We would dance until 5 o’clock in the morning. One time, when we were going to get back on the handcar, it rolled down the bank and we had to go back to the dance to get some boys to pull it up again, and then they pumped the handcar back to Shakopee for us.

“In the summer we would walk out to the country and pick wild plums, gooseberries, and green crab apples, which my mother made jam out of. We had stove heat in the dining room and kitchen, and registers in the ceiling to the bedroom upstairs, for heat. The parlor was also closed except for special occasions when company came. All the rooms had wall-to-wall carpeting, except for the kitchen and boys room which had large braided rugs.”

“When I was 18 my mother let me buy a bicycle,” noted Lizzie. “They sold new for $39.00, but I saw this black one with chrome handles in the window of a jewelry shop and the owner sold it to me for $25.00 because he had used it a few times to ride back and forth to his house for lunch.”

Helen married William Splaine King (1884-1944) in Shakopee on September 11, 1906. Lizzie died on May 30, 1979, in St. Paul.