The following article is part of the Diamond Club Member group that began in the January 7, 1943, issue of the Rock County Star Herald. Members of this group consist of persons of age 75 and older.
February 11, 1943
The name “Drake Station,” unfamiliar to the majority of Rock countyians born after the turn of the century, was a place of significant importance to the early day residents of eastern Rock county and western Nobles county.
According to Mrs. Frank Peschon, Luverne, who lived in Westside township, Nobles county, in the 1870’s and 1880’s, the little store at the station saved her father and his neighbors many trips by ox team to Luverne for provisions for their families.
There, too, was the postoffice for the settlers of the community. Before the railroad was built in 1876, a postoffice known as the Westside postoffice, located on the Worthington-Sioux Falls overland route, served the community. After the railroad was built, however, it was replaced by the present village of Magnolia. Mrs. Peschon remembers how a neighbor would go to Drake Station to get the mail for the residents living in the vicinity of her father’s home, and how the settlers would go to this man’s farm to get letters and news from the “outside world.”
Mrs. Peschon was born Dec. 2, 1867, at Waterloo, Ia., the daughter of George S. and Sophia Meyers Barclay. She was one of a family of nine children. She doesn’t remember how they came to Rock county in 1874, she states, as she was then only a girl. Inasmuch as most of the pioneer settlers came by covered wagon, she assumes she, too, made the trip here from Iowa in that type of convenience.
The Barclay family settled on a farm near Luverne, and had lived there only a short time when fire destroyed one of the buildings in which they kept many of their belongings such as trunks, some furniture, etc. These belongings were lost in the fire as were family records.
From Luverne, the family moved east of Magnolia into Magnolia county where Mr. Barclay filed a homestead claim. This was Mrs. Peschon’s home until she was married and moved to Luverne.
Because they lived so far from town, the children, girls especially, very seldom made the trip. Mrs. Peschon believes that she was almost a grown girl before she saw Luverne again, after the family had moved to the homestead.
She attended school in the rural district a mile away from her home. Because she was the oldest of the girls, it became her duty to help with the work at home, so her education opportunities were limited. During that era, work generally came before education and she recalls that she earned the first money she could call her own by caring for a sick child of a neighbor family.
Upon reaching young womanhood, she married Frank Peschon of Luverne on Dec. 8, 1882. She and Mr. Peschon took up their residence here and since that time Luverne has been her home.
She states in looking back over the years she has lived in and near Luverne, she can see nothing that would make her want to live her life over again in a different way. She has been contented with what life has given her, and it is her philosophy that one’s life can be a happy one if a person seeks happiness and enjoys giving happiness to others.
Of the nine brothers and sisters in the Barclay family, Mrs. Peschon and three others are living. They include herself, a brother, G. M. Barclay of Sioux Falls and two sisters, Mrs. E. L. Grapes of Minneapolis and Theresa Barclay of Luverne.
Mr. and Mrs. Peschon quietly observed their golden anniversary here last Dec. 8.
Donations to the Rock County Historical Society can be sent to the Rock County Historical Society, 312 E. Main Street, Luverne, MN 56156.
Mann welcomes correspondence sent to mannmade@iw.net.