My father, Norton W. Boden, was born on October 25, 1873, in Oquawka, Illinois.
  His father had been a Union soldier in the Civil War, where he had heard stories of 
  land for the taking in the West and mid West. He was eager to see the frontier; and
  in 1881, when my father was eight years old, they loaded all their possesions in a
  covered wagon and were westward bound. Journey's end was Barber County, Kansas. In
  1882 they homesteaded a claim east of Medicine Lodge, a few miles north of Pixley.
  Their first home was a sod house with dirt floors. Their fuel was some wood, but
  mostly buffalo chips. My father attended a small county schoolhouse, much the same
  as their home. In his teens and early twenties he worked as a cowboy on ranches in
  the area. Some of these were the first established in Kansas. He helped drive cattle
  up the Chisholm Trail and was attacked by Indians wanting beef for their starving
  families. In his later life he could keep my young friends and me enthralled by his
  true life stories, which we never tired of hearing. I'm sorry those tails were never
  put in writing for posterity; it was a great loss. In 1899, when he was 26 years old,
  he married my mother, Audrey Manley. They bought a farm adjoining his parent's
  homestead, which he farmed for thirteen years. This is where my two older brothers,
  George and Glenn, and I were born. Sometime during this period he was appointed
  Deputy Sheriff, a job he held for many years. He became dissatisfied with farming,
  and in 1912 he purchased a cafe in Sharon, which he operated until 1917. In 1913
  my mother passed away when I was four years old. In 1916 he married my mother's
  sister, Anna Manley. Through this marriage I gained four more brothers, Willis,
  Don, Dale, Jack, and a sister Louise.
     After leaving the cafe in 1917, he worked for the Santa Fe railroad, also
  serving as City Marshal from 1917 through 1923. He became custodian at Sharon High
  School in 1927, where he stayed until 1949 when he retired. Cousins of my father's
  mother, Frank and Luke Chapin, were also early settlers and were friends as well
  as relatives and helped bolster morale inthose hard and trying times. Pioneer days
  were indeed hard and tried the souls of men and women, but developed in them
  qualities of stability, love, and kindness.
     My dad was a kind and loving father and a friend to everone who knew him. He
  was always "Nort" to everyone. He passed away in 1957 at the age of 83 years.
     In his lifetime my father was many things - farmer, a cafe owner (Chief cook
  and bottle washer he said), and school janitor, but he never forgot, nor did he
  want to, his early life as a cowboy, for he was always recognized by his big Stetson
  hat. Nort had 8 children, 16 grand children, and 16 great grandchildren.
               
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas,  pg. 109 
     Submitted by: by daughter, Alice Boden Marshall