Emma A. Person

Emma A. Person

Funeral services for Emma A. Person, age 82, were held Saturday, May 6, 1995, at the Bader Funeral Home in Lusk with Rev. Helen E, Oats officiating. Burial followed in the Lusk Cemetery.

Miss Person died Wednesday morning, May 3, 1995, at the Niobrara County Nursing Home in Lusk. She was born May 23, 1913, in Yankton County, S.D., the daughter of Ellen Katrina and Peter Oscar Person. They lived in South Dakota until 1914 when they moved to the Rawhide Butte area, south of Lusk where her father filed on his homestead. She attended school at Rawhide and the Lusk High School.

Following her parents deaths in 1949, her Aunt Selma Whitaker came from Washington State to make her home with Emma. After her aunt Selma's death, she stayed on the place and worked at the Lusk Cold Storage.

Emma sold her ranch to the Brozovich family and moved to an apartment in Lusk where she worked at the Covered Wagon Motel. When her health declined, Emma entered the Niobrara County Nursing Home.

Emma loved music; she enjoyed singing and always enjoyed a good joke. She was a member of the Royal Neighbors of America and had belonged to the Rawhide Club.

She is survived by her sister, Anna Larsen of Harrison, Neb.; two nieces, Lilly Larsen of Harrison and Linda Gunia and her husband Ron of Alliance, Neb.; several cousins and many friends.

For those who wish, memorials to the Niobrara County Nursing Home would be appreciated by the family.

Bader Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

The Lusk Herald
October 31, 1990
Person is life-long ranch woman

Emma Person has been a life-long ranch woman in rural Goshen County. She was born in 1912 in Yankton County, S.D. to Oscar and Ellen Person and moved to Wyoming in 1914 with her family. Person has one sister, Anna Larson, who lives in Harrison, Neb.

"I came to Wyoming in 1914 when my family moved to Wyoming," she said, adding that her dad homesteaded by Rawhide Butte in Goshen county.

"Dad homesteaded the land. It was mostly government land until the settlers came and filed on the homestead," she said.

Person attended Rawhide School for her first two years and walked three miles to school. After that, the school was consolidated with Sunshine Valley and was the schoolhouse located about a mile south of the Niobrara/Goshen County line on the county road.

"I attended a small school, Rawhide School, directly south of where our place was, then it was consolidated and they hauled children to school. I don't remember what year that was," she said. "I attended that for all the grades (through 10th grade). I went to Lusk one year of high school. I decided I was no big brain, so I quit," she said.

Person worked on the family farm and ranch after high school and did everything needed to run the family operation. She has experience using four horses to plow with and learned how to drive the family's old John Deere tractor they purchased to replace the horse.

"We raised about everything. We had some winter wheat, a little corn, too. We had a little bit of alfalfa. On dry land, sometimes in a good year you get two crops," she said.

Person said she hasn't seen too many changes in ranching. She remembers the expansion of land holdings, though.

"They (homesteads) used to be little shacks. At first you owned about 320 acres in a homestead, then they (government) gave them (homesteaders) 320 more (acres). We got an additional grant so we had a section then," she said.

What changes she has seen have been that ranchers used to depend on grazing their cattle, but now buy a lot of hay from Torrington and the surrounding areas. However, she and her family cut hay.

"When we expanded our cattle, we didn't have as much to cut and we grazed more," she said. The family raised herefords.

"At first we had a few Durham cows and we milked some, then we had Hereford," she said.

After her parents were killed in a car crash, she took over the operation of the family farm/ranch. Person does not think she was unusual for having kept the operation going by herself.

"I grew up with it and just knew what to do and did it," she said. "there wasn't much about managing land and cattle I didn't know. I grew up with it you see. It wasn't like someone that had been dumped into that business," Person said.

"You grow up with things and you learn how to do it and you just do it and don't think about it," she said.

Person moved to the Niobrara Memorial Nursing Home in May 1988. She enjoys reading and participating in the Glee Club at the nursing home. "You see I'm past the working age," she said.

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