Ghost of Our Grandfather

A lifetime of questions led us to discover that the grandfather we never knew had led a surprisingly interesting and varied life, having occupied himself as a farmer and a Populist, a town builder and a merchant, a Freethinker and a pioneer of the Great Dakota Boom. He and his contemporaries lived through the panics of 1873, 1893, 1907 and 1921, the root cause for which they correctly determined to be traceable to the manipulations of the monetary system then in play. Somewhat counterintuitively, in 1922, our grandfather, together with his son and brother-in-law, became majority shareholders in Security State Bank of Dante, South Dakota. Less than a year later our grandfather and his son were dead and the estates they had worked so hard to build disappeared bit by bit under the weight of debt and a deteriorating rural economy. Our grandfather’s story, like so many it mirrors, is the forgotten story of the Northern Plains and how that story figured into the severe economic and political crisis of postbellum America. It is a story that is now repeating itself across America, for much the same reasons.

Geraldine Perry is the co-author of The Two Faces of Money, and author of Climate Change, Land Use and Monetary Policy; The New Trifecta. She also writes for online outlets and is the content creator and manager of three websites; TheHealthAdvantage.com, TheTwoFacesofMoney.com and Geraldine Perry.com.Donna was the force behind this project. She is a member of Ancesty.com and other genealogical societies. It was her interest in exploring our shared family history that led to a more in-depth study of the remarkable life and times of our maternal grandfather, who died more than two decades before any of us were born.Kenneth was the co-author of The Two Faces of Money and served as a local historian in his hometown of Excelsior Springs, Missouri for almost two decades. Like our shared grandfather, Ken had a bit of the politician in his blood, having involved himself in local and national politics for most of his life.