History

As a young man Abraham Pratt (1827-1901) came to America as a sailor, arriving in California during the Gold Rush of the late 1840s. After less than two years in America he returned to England, resigned from the British Navy, became a liquor merchant and owner of a bottling works, was married in 1855, and became the father of two sons and two daughters. In 1866 Pratt's wife died and he never remarried. Twelve years later, in 1878, Pratt sold his British businesses, returned to America, and bought 160 acres of land along the South Solomon River in extreme eastern Sheridan County, Kansas.

In late 1879 or early 1880, Abraham Pratt returned to England to visit friends and relatives. During this visit he convinced his eldest son, John Fenton Pratt (1856-1937), known as "Fent," (pictured above left) to come to America and join him at his homestead. In 1880 Fent arrived in Sheridan County. Two years later Abraham's other son, Tom (1861-1940), also known as "Little Tom," came to Sheridan County to live. Throughout the 1880s other Englishmen arrived in the area to homestead or purchase land for ranches and farms.

For their first few years in Kansas, Abraham and his sons lived in a dugout along the south bank of the Solomon River. In 1885 the first section of the house at Cottonwood Ranch was constructed. The original house was a one-room, native-stone building measuring thirty-two and one-half by eighteen and a half feet on the inside, with a sod-covered roof and an earthen floor. During the winter of 1885 a severe blizzard swept through the area, and the temperature was so cold that ice formed on the inside north wall of the house. In late 1888 or early 1889 the sod roof was removed and replaced with wood. Later, two additions were added to the original house; first the west and then the east sections, giving its present appearance.

In its earliest days the ranchstead consisted of the stone house and at least one outbuilding of sod, which was used as a stable. A sod-walled corral was constructed near the stable. A small, wood-framed structure, which was used as a bathhouse and toilet, was located near the house in the 1880s and still exists at the ranch. In the late 1800s a natural spring northwest of the house was modified to carry water into a storage cistern from which a pipeline was constructed to provide running water in the house.