lawrence welk was here

Wanted! Everybody to follow the crowd to the Red Front Store of Harthorn and Son in De Smet, where you can find everything in the way of dry goods, boots and shoes, hats and caps, clothing, groceries, provisions, crockery, flour, and feed of all kinds. Don't fail to call and see them, and inspect their stock. -De Smet Leader, January 27, 1883

The next time you're in De Smet and standing in front of Ward's Store - Couse Opera House during the time of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books - take a look at the building to the north, same side of Calumet. The north half of that building is where Harthorn's Store used to be. It was where the Old Indian came and warned about the "seven times seven" long winter; it's one of the places Pa sat around swapping stories during that Hard Winter, and it's the store that had only plain dull grey suspenders left to sell that Christmas.

The brick building standing there was not Harthorn & Son's "Red Front" Store, so called because of its bright red paint. Although Mr. Harthorn owned two lots - same width as the Couse property to the south and the Exchange Hotel to the north - the original store stood only on the north lot, a one-story wooden building with a front room and a back room. When a second building was added to the south for storage (the townspeople had learned from the Hard Winter), that part soon became the general store proper and the earlier building was converted to a meat market.

Both the general store and meat market were torn down in the 1890s to make way for a "Lodge Room" which soon was called what it really was, a pool hall and saloon. The building still sports its original 1904 brick facade upstairs, but the downstairs entrances and glazing have changed many times over the years. Around WWI, the building was added on to and doubled in depth, occupying almost all of both lots from street to alley. A dance hall was added upstairs, used as a movie theater and for live shows. Lawrence Welk's band once performed there.

Just how long was the store of Harthorn & Son located on Lot 11, Block 1? Laura introduces Mr. Harthorn (Edelbert) and his son Frank in By the Shores of Silver Lake as "the two Mr. Harthorns" who board with the Ingalls family in the Surveyors' House while the town is being built.

The Harthorns had been in Dakota Territory since shortly after Frank was born. Edelbert and at least two of his brothers had already been in the general merchandise business for over a decade along the Missouri River from Vermillion to Sioux City, Iowa. One can't help but speculate that Mr. Harthorn had heard of the settlements along the railroad and knew that homesteaders would be needing supplies.

Frank Harthorn was sixteen when he moved to De Smet, and he was an equal partner in the business early on. When Frank married Mabel Burd in October 1883, he had just opened his own store at Lake Preston, where the couple settled. Frank sold his De Smet interests in December 1883, but purchased them back the following year. At the time of the sleighing parties in These Happy Golden Years (historically the winter of 1883-1884, not the previous year as the series implies), Frank and Mabel were living in a home on Second Street, and they had a homestead in Clark County.

In the early 1900s, the Harthorns left De Smet. Edelbert moved to Oregon. Frank purchased the "5 & 10 cent Variety Store" in Livingston, Montana; he and Mabel later moved to Washington State.
- posted by pioneergirl at 5:44 PM