Creating Fiction from History: 11/16/2022

In 1883, especially in North-Eastern Allamakee County Iowa, life was not easy for young Alberta Haney. Born to John and Fanny Haney on September 14th of the year 1867, Alberta, or Bertie as she was commonly known, being the oldest child, had been used to long labors in the fields around Lansing.

Lansing had been incorporated three years prior and organized as a second-class city by State law in the year of her birth. Bertie barely missed the failed wheat harvests there in Lansing, but by the time she was old enough at age 5 to help work the fields, farmers in the region had begun to realize th...