As the summer of 1918 drew to close, seventeen-year-old Helena Nelson of Yankton County, South Dakota prepared to compete at the South Dakota State Fair as a participant in a local 4-H club.

YANKTON TO SEND CONTESTANTS TO FAIR

Yankton, S.D., Sept. 2.—After a series of contests here, Wilma Gilreath, Elsie Frick, Helena Nelson and Albena Sailer, will represent this county in the state contest at the state fair at Huron in September in the Liberty Food Club. In addition Wilma Gilreath, winner in the food contest, will also be in the canning contest, and will be associated with Lois and Dorothy Gross to make up the team in the canning contest.

Tabor Independent, 05 September 1918

In 1918, Helena was a student at the Southern State Normal School in Springfield, South Dakota. This was not terribly far from her family’s farm in Tabor, west of Yankton, where she had likely spent the summer before the fall semester began. In addition to pitching in on the farm that summer, Helena was also involved with the activities of the Liberty Food Club.

Helena’s older sister, Andrea, wrote in her diary that on the morning of Sunday, 08 September, “About five Jim took Helena on to town, as she was to start by car with Kecks at six for the fair at Huron. The rest of us had a late breakfast.” Helena and her siblings had attended a barn dance hosted in honor of a local soldier on furlough the night before, but that didn’t stop her from hitching a ride from her brother-in-law that morning after only a few hours of sleep! It was time to make her way to the state fair, one hundred and twenty miles to the north.

The South Dakota State Fair, which dates to 1885, first introduced activities for youth in 1915 when a Boys State Fair Camp was held. Delegates were judged on their agricultural skills in regards to crops and livestock. The first Girls State Fair Camp took place in 1918, and included both food canning demonstrations and Liberty Food Clubs.

Liberty Food Clubs were a wartime invention and encouraged participants to assist with the war effort. An official bulletin of the United States government stated, “In order to become a member of this club each boy and girl enrolled in club work must sign a card pledging himself or herself, through food production and food conservation, to help win the war and world peace.”

While it is not known exactly what their exhibit or presentation may have entailed, the Yankton County girls did walk away as the winners of their event at the South Dakota State Fair. The Daily Argus-Leader of Sioux Falls reported, “Nearly a hundred valuable prizes were won by members of South Dakota boys’ and girls’ clubs in the final contests of the year at the state fair.” The different competition classes, aside from Liberty Food, included Pig Club, Baby Beef, Sheep, Stock Judging, Canning, and Sewing. Of Liberty Food, it was noted, “First, Yankton, State banner. Team Wilma Gilreath, Elsie Frick and Helena Nelson, all of Yankton. Second, Hughes county team, Alma Swanson Harrold, Ina Putnam Oahe, and Janice Lantz, Pierre.” One source suggests that twenty-four Liberty Food teams had competed in all.

Members of the Liberty Food Club who had successfully completed the work of the club for the entire year were to be given a diploma of achievement, but it is unknown whether Helena received such an honor. Not long after the South Dakota State Fair, Spanish Influenza struck her community and within a few short months she ultimately lost both her father and her sister Andrea. This was a tumultuous time for the Nelson family, especially as Helena’s older brother Ole was still away at war, and it seems very likely that any extracurricular endeavors would have fallen by the wayside.

The following year, the Boys State Fair Camp and Girls State Fair Camp became more formally known as 4-H clubs under the oversight of the State College Extension Service. World War I had come to a close, and Helena herself had completed her studies and become a country school teacher.

Copyright © 2023 Melanie Frick. All Rights Reserved.

SOURCES

Andrea Nelson, “Diary” (MS, Yankton County, South Dakota, 1918), unpaginated; privately held by Melanie Frick, 2018.

“Boys’ and Girls’ Liberty Food Club” in “Recent Activities of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Helping the American Farmer to Supply Nation’s Food,” Official Bulletin, Washington, D.C., 19 June 1918, from Official U.S. Bulletin, Issues 272-348; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 15 August 2023).

“Boys and Girls Win Many Prizes,” The Daily Argus-Leader [Sioux Falls, South Dakota], 24 September 1918; Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 15 August 2023).

“Death of Andrea Nelson,” Tabor [South Dakota] Independent, 05 December 1918; Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 15 August 2023).

“Fred Nelson,” Tabor [South Dakota] Independent, 31 October 1918; Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 15 August 2023).

“History,” South Dakota State Fair (https://www.sdstatefair.com/general-information/about-us/history/ : accessed 15 August 2023).

“Yankton to Send Contestants to Fair,” Tabor [South Dakota] Independent, 05 September 1918; Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 15 August 2023).