School term had not yet commenced, but there was a crowd late one Friday evening in August 1885 at a country schoolhouse three miles north of Drayton, North Dakota. The box social convened that night was, according to the Pembina Pioneer Express, “an unqualified success.”
“By seven o’clock the house was well filled with old and young from this neighborhood,” wrote the local correspondent, “and the Drayton people came thick and fast until there was not a square inch of standing room to let and crowds were gracefully grouped around the open doors and windows.”
Pause a moment and picture this gathering--I imagine farm families arrayed in their best, but by no means stylish, attire, mingling with business and professional folk from town, noticeable in the mix. Thronging the little country schoolhouse. Americana, of the most democratic sort.
People came from miles around because the box social, sometimes called a basket social, was still a new thing in Dakota Territory. There were several that I know of in 1883, including one that May at a residence in Pembina. A box supper at a residence, however, was not exactly right according to custom, and last week I recounted how an early basket social put on by the Methodist ladies of Jamestown also was a little off, inasmuch as they did not incorporate the common element of romance.
The Drayton gang got it right. “Every gentleman got a box,” says our correspondent, “ and soon found its owner--in spite of the oft repeated slander that there are no girls in Dakota.” There you have it. Sociability and community are great things, but in the middle of this affair, boy meets girl, or lady, as the case may be.
“Of course,” the account continues, “some of them were married girls, but they evidently wished they were young again, as they chatted gaily with their youthful escorts, while boys with a sprinkling of gray in their beards looked almost bashful as they gallantly presented themselves to blushing maidens. There was lots of fun and each gentleman was sure he had got the best supper in the house.”
Keeping things respectable, a literary program followed the supper, and after that, a missionary from Manitoba gave an encouraging address to Sunday school workers. Sunday school students, under direction of Miss Halcrow, gave recitations. Mr. Van Camp played the dulcimer. Grandma Somers sang a solo, upon which an encore was demanded. Captain Thomson, Miss Thomson, and Messrs. George and Herbert Thomson formed a stalwart quartet, accompanied on the organ by Miss Spinning, to conclude the program.
As the custom of the box social developed in Dakota Territory over the next few years, the northeastern counties were ground zero of the bidding for boxes. The Pembina Pioneer Express, the Bottineau Pioneer, and the Langdon Courier Democrat were all spangled with notices and reports of box socials in schools, church basements, community halls, and other public venues.
As soon as box or basket socials became routine, the reporting of them devolved into that special section of the country newspaper known as “the locals.” So when the citizens of Joliette decided to have a box social in their schoolhouse, to be followed by a lecture in which Rev. J. G. Moore would expound on Pompeii and the eruption of Vesuvius, the announcement appeared in the “Joliette” column of the Pembina paper. Such doings thus were recorded for history--a history I will reflect upon in future essays.
-Tom Isern
