The timeworn house, lonely and abandoned, stands sentinel on old highway 16. Located southeast of the Catholic Church, the building silently watches the road that leads to the Plankinton cemetery. Boarded-up and empty for decades, that old house holds the memory of a pioneer family to whom nineteen children were born. Shipping the lumber from Iowa, Dr. Hiram Shouse erected the building in 1885, relocating there with his wife Jennie and their five children, ages newborn to ten. In the years following, Jennie gave birth to six more children, mourning the three who died young. And then in 1904, the children lost their mother. One year later, Dr. Shouse, now aged 61, married 23-year-old Bertine Flotreen, and the family welcomed another eight children, one of whom died infancy. Having reached the age of 88 years, the doctor died in 1933, ten years after the birth of his youngest child. The last surviving child, Eileen Shouse Wise, lived another eighty years, passing away in 2013.
For close to eight decades, the Shouse family enriched the community of Plankinton. Hiram’s military service, medical expertise, religious zeal, educational advocacy, community pride, and love of family defined him as a man of honor and integrity. His children, some of whom returned to work in the community, continued to display their father’s dedication to community.
Hiram lived long enough to become the last resident civil war veteran in Aurora County. When the war began in 1861, Hiram, not quite 16 years old, enlisted for 90 days and then re-enlisted in the Co. G. 11th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Seriously injured in his right leg, right elbow, and left hand in 1862 in the Battle of Fort Donelson, one of the first major battles of the war, Hiram remained unattended on the battlefield that first night, listening to the cries of other wounded and dying men.
When finally taken to the makeshift hospital, Hiram received no medical attention. Then Mary Newcomb, a woman from his hometown who was there caring for her injured husband, recognized him and cleaned his festering arm. When the surgeons came to amputate Hiram’s arm, Mrs. Newcomb protested vigorously, “I persist that the boy’s arm shall not come off! I don’t care who sent you nor what authority you work under.” Fortunately, the surgeons decided to wait. Although he didn’t lose the arm, it never fully healed. In addition to the shattered bones in his right elbow, Hiram lost the thumb on his left hand. Upon recovery, he reenlisted and served until the end of the war, four years after he first joined.
During that harrowing night, lying injured on the battlefield, Hiram resolved that, should he survive, he would study medicine. Honorably discharged, the former soldier earned a degree from the Illinois Soldier’s College, Fulton, Illinois, and then studied homeopathic medicine at Hahnemann Medical College in Chicago. In that era, before science understood germs and viruses, homeopathic practitioners avoided harsh treatments, such as bleeding and ineffective drugs, that were favored by regular doctors.
Starting his medical practice in Davenport, Iowa, Hiram soon married Jennie Jacobs, and their family grew to five children. Leaving that practice, he transplanted the family to Dakota Territory, seeking opportunities in the land boom. As a country doctor, Shouse mostly visited patients in their homes. As noted in his obituary, “he traveled great distances in an open buggy through winters’ blizzards and scorching heat over the prairie trails to minister to the suffering. No person was too remote or too poor and the weather was never too severe to prevent his cheering, kindly ministrations to the sick.”
Dr. Shouse delivered many babies, once promising to gift a $50 bond to the 500th baby that he would deliver. When that delivery in 1907 produced the twin sons of John and Adele Miller, the doctor gave each baby a $50 bond. He also performed surgeries. For example, in the spring of 1888, the doctor repaired the cleft lip of a weeks-old infant. In her memoirs, Edith Davis Rowe, older sister of the baby, wrote about the event, “The day of the operation Father carried Ratio into another room at the boarding house and stayed with him while Dr. Shouse performed the operation. Mother and I both cried. When they brought him [Ratio] out his little face was covered with tape and bindings and his pitiful little weak cry as he regained consciousness tore [at] my heart.
In addition to saving lives and delivering babies, Hiram, engaged in community life by actively participating in the G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) organization for civil war veterans, associating with several fraternal organizations, serving as superintendent of the county board of health, and showing a strong interest in political issues. While refusing to run for political office, he often served as a delegate at local and state conventions, and once as a delegate to the People’s party national convention during the era of Populism.
As a zealous member of the Baptist church, Hiram organized their Sunday school program, quickly enlarging the membership to 165 pupils. At different times in his life, he established similar programs for Lutheran and Methodist churches. He also drove to the rural areas of the county to aid in organizing Sunday schools in one-room school houses. One time he spoke at a joint Aurora-Jerauld County Sunday school in favor of temperance (abstaining from the use of liquor). His obituary reported, “Many a young person has followed the gleam of the beauty and the glory of the spiritual, as they were inspired by the results of his tireless efforts.”
Hiram’s strong belief in the value of a college education led him to encourage of all his children to attend college. He also persuaded other parents to make sacrifices so as to give their children that benefit. With the gift of higher education, an uncommon advantage at that time, his children pursued careers as teachers, a lawyer (Willis Shouse of White Lake), a dentist (Arthur Shouse of Plankinton), a college Dean, a newspaper writer, and other professions. His oldest child, Alice, graduated from college when only 18 years old and then won elective office as Aurora County Superintendent of Schools three years later , in 1896. The youngest daughter, Eileen, joined the first class of the Navy Waves in World War II, and the youngest child, Henry, joined the Army Air Force during that war and worked as part of a dog team search and rescue sqaud, helping to save downed military crews in Greenland and Newfoundland.
A prominent figure in the early history of Aurora County, this country doctor, father of nineteen children, civil war veteran, Sunday school teacher, and civic leader led a remarkable life and left a remarkable legacy. If only that Shouse house could talk!
It Happened Right Here: Saving Lives and Delivering Babies, by Ruth Page Jones, Published in the South Dakota Mail, Plankinton, South Dakota, September 24, 2017.
RPJ Histories - Ruth Page Jones 