Female hotelkeepers played an important role in helping people transition to pioneer life during the early years of settlement in Aurora County. Although wives provided a significant amount of the labor, the named proprietor was often only the husband. Six Plankinton hotels were advertised in the Dakota Advocate newspaper in March of 1884, including the Plankinton House, opened by Theodore C. and Adelia Granger in 1880, and the Mansion House, built the next year and operated by John H. Brooks. Confirming the essential partnership of proprietors and their wives, Brooks closed the Mansion House soon after his wife Lucy died.
In 1884, the newspaper listed E. H. Nelson as proprietor of the Iowa House, but four years later, Mrs. E. H. Nelson was proprietress of another hotel, the Commercial House. In an 1888 advertisement in the Plankinton Herald newspaper, Nelson claimed that recent improvements and clean beds made her establishment “the leading Hotel of the city.”
In White Lake Township, before the town was established, William H. and Mary Alice Hoopers’ home, with a sod addition, became known as the “sod hotel at 36.” One of the first to arrive, Hoopers built their home near the railroad siding, thirty-six miles from Mitchell, and that home quickly became a popular rendezvous point. Mary Alice Hooper, no doubt, contributed to the hospitality by doing much of the cooking and cleaning. Names of hotels built in the early years of White Lake included J.M. Handlin’s boarding house, the Baker Hotel, White Lake Hotel, and the Standard Hotel. No wives names are mentioned in the historical accounts.
John Bourret built the first hotel in Stickney, in 1906, and, again, no wife was mentioned, but a Mrs. Myers held the position of cook at his establishment, the Stickney Hotel.
The women running hotels delivered care above and beyond serving food and providing housing. Granger, the first woman to move to Plankinton during the homesteading years, operated the first hotel in Plankinton with her husband, and was recalled in a 1931 newspaper for her kindness. “For Mrs. Granger, recently passed to her reward, was one of the most motherly women whom we have ever met. Not one of the myriad of young women and young men claim-holders ever appealed in vain to her for physical aid and comfort. She never was lacking in sympathy nor was she tired or out of sorts and many a chronically depleted larder was made to show a semblance of prosperity through her beneficence.”
Ella Severson Sweep moved to Aurora County as a newlywed in 1882. Several years later, after teaching in rural schools, becoming parents, and operating restaurants in different locations, Sweep and her husband rented a small hotel in Plankinton. In 1906, the couple bought the Commercial House in Plankinton and changed the name to the Sweep Hotel. Although her husband died in 1914, Sweep continued to run the hotel until 1920.
Writing about Sweep’s ability to create a warm and hospitable environment, Ella Todd Wilson noted, “She was a wonderful manager. In the pioneer days she fed most of the people round Plankinton at one time or another, and her hotel was home to many young couples until they were able to get their own. Many of the early day teachers, also bachelors, stayed with her till they left or married. None of them ever forgot her as she made them all feel at home and they kept in touch with her as long as she lived.”
The testimonies to their lives indicate that Granger and Sweep, and likely other female hotelkeepers, fostered a sense of community by showing a level of motherly care that meant a great deal to the newcomers adjusting to life in Aurora County.
It Happened Right Here: Hotels Deliver Motherly Care, by Ruth Page Jones, Published in the South Dakota Mail, Plankinton, South Dakota, August 25, 2016.
RPJ Histories - Ruth Page Jones 