Just a man and his horses

Clip-clopping down Blueberry Hill south of Marseilles, Tom Bolden of Edgerton, Wis., and his team of horses and wagon retrace his ancestral grandfather’s move from Windfall, Ind., to Ontario, Wis., 146 years ago. (Herald Photo by Jo Ann Hustis)

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MARSEILLES – He’s following in his great-great-great-grandfather’s footprints – or hoofprints, more likely.

“I don’t have a clue as to what route he took, but as old as he was, I’m thinking he would have taken the cheapest, which would have been horse and wagon,” noted Tom Bolden of Edgerton, Wis., who is retracing his ancestral grandfather’s move from Windfall, Ind., to Ontario, Wis., in a wagon and two horses of his own.

“I’m just hoping that, 146 years from now, my great-great-great-grandson can do something for me in the same fashion as my ancestral grandfather did 146 years ago.”

Bolden is retracing the route with two draft horses pulling a wagon with a square, wooden, boxlike, arrangement on top as shelter from the weather. He loaded the horses in his truck Aug. 18, hitched up the wagon behind, threw a bicycle on top, and hauled the assemblage from Wisconsin to his ancestral grandfather’s home in Windfall.

He travels 12 to 16 miles a day with the team. Late each afternoon, he unloads his bike from the wagon and backtracks to his truck, throws the bike into the trailer, and races back to where he left the horses.

“Then I water them and take care of them, and dive into the old futon with a mattress about 3 inches thick, and I’m out,” he said. “I worry about the horses, I do, I do. They’re standing there, sometimes two hours before I get back. I worry whether they got loose.”

Some motorists have offered him rides back to his truck.

“People say they’ll take me. I say ‘No, I’m riding this bicycle.’ They say, ‘We’ll give you a ride today. You ride your bicycle tomorrow.’ It’s fantasic – it really is.”

Bolden knows nothing about his ancestral grandfather, Samuel T. Bolden, other than he was a whiskey maker while the family lived in Indiana, and began farming in Wisconsin after leaving Windfall in 1873, at the age of 67.

“I’m doing this ride on behalf of him,” said Bolden, 63. “In Wisconsin, he made his home with his other two sons. He lived there until he passed away at age 84. The son who was with him passed away a month after he did, and left my grandpa without a grandpa, and I ended up without a grandpa, too. The generations never had a grandpa for many years.”

Although he’ll never know for sure, Bolden wants to experience somewhat the trip his ancestral grandfather made. He’s certain his ancestor had help and encouragement from others en route.

“There have to be good people,” he said. “To not know where you’re going to spend the next night is a really scary feeling.

“You’ve got two horses to take care of, you’ve got to move your truck, and you’ve got to get this all done in one day. You want to make 14 or 18 miles a day. It’s really scary when you wake up in the morning and think about that.”

Dealing with coyotes in the dark can be upsetting, too, Bolden says on looking back at an incident. He was concerned their barking would make the horses break loose from where they were tied for the night and thrash through the nearby cornfield.

The evening began with rain, followed by a drop in temperature. A scattering of huge horseflies then flew in and began to agitate Bolden’s team.

“My horses got the horseflies on them. They started kicking each other, trying to get the flies off. One horse kicked the other in the side, and the other horse kicked the first one in the butt, and I’m trying to hit the horseflies. I finally got the horseflies taken care of, and I laid down. Pretty soon, the coyotes started barking,” he said.

“The horses’ ears were up, and they were looking, too. Then some dogs started barking along with the coyotes. It sounded like a lot of action. I laid there and waited for everything to quiet down. Pretty soon, I went to sleep and woke up early the next morning. I was glad to get out of there.”

Bolden ate a bagged breakfast in Iroquois County.

“This guy invited me and said, ‘We’re going to have egg-in-a-bag.’ I said, ‘Whatever.’ I put two (cracked raw) eggs in a plastic bag, wrote my name on it, dropped in pieces of cheese, bacon, ham, peppers and mushrooms, squeezed all the air out and sealed the bag, then dropped it in a big pan of boiling water.

“Twenty-one minutes later, you pull the bag out of the water, open it, and find it’s the best omelet you’ve ever had. It is de-li-ci-ous.”

He has no camera, compass, nor cell phone with him. No support people follow him. He laughingly admits to bringing a few dollars along, though.

“I wanted to go it a little bit rough. I wanted it to be rugged and have some hard times and trials and tribulations, experiencing something he experienced,” Bolden said of his ancestral grandfather.

“A guy offered me money. I said I don’t need anything. He talked to me in the rain for a half-hour. He invited me to stay at his place overnight. He said, ‘My girlfriend has 150 head of horses. She’d be just overwhelmed if you’d come.’”

Bolden turned him down.

“Then he looked at my wagon and said, ‘I’d love to do this.’ I said, ‘What’s holding you back?’ he said, ‘I don’t know.’”

Someone else assumed Bolden was Amish because of the team and wagon.

“She said, ‘Where’s your beard?’’ he noted. “I told her I never had a beard. She talked to me for a whole half-hour. Told me her life history. She said she’d been divorced. I’m thinking, ‘Oh-h-h-h, I don’t wanna hear this ... “

Bolden went four miles out of his way one day when he got lost. He had to turn the team around and backtrack.

“The horses didn’t like that at all,” he said. “I felt bad, like ‘Oh boy, I put you guys through this.’”

Bolden was in service in the mid-1960s, and volunteered for duty with the Army Signal Corps in Vietnam 42 years ago.

“We were like a family,” he said of his Army buddies, many of whom were Illinoisans. “I’m just hoping (by way of his trip) that someone will come out of the bushes and say, ‘I remember that guy - I was in the military with him.’ That would be neat.”

Bolden stayed overnight in Marseilles with the Rockie Mann family. He expects to arrive home in Edgerton about Sept. 18.

“It’s a great experience, but I only want to do it once,” he said. “My luck could run out. Something coming down the highway could run into me and I wouldn’t have a prayer. So, it’s kind of risky.”