A son of the prairie, Herman Thurn, of rural Zeeland, ND, died on Sunday morning, October 31, 1999.
Herman and I shared a common passion. We believed that St. Andrew's Lutheran Church (Andreas Gemeinde), located in rural McIntosh County, ND, the spiritual community built by our German-Russian emigrant ancestors .......... is a special and holy place. Herman was a child of the congregation, living most of his life on the farm nearest the church. My connection began with a history of worship visits dating from early childhood.
Even as a child, I knew that St. Andrew's stood as the spiritual link to my ancestral German villages in Russia. Herman also knew that and spent much of his life devoted to insuring that St. Andrew's history was recorded properly, that the cemetery was cared for and each grave properly documented on the cemetery map. In short, Herman was a walking history book about the church. When a member of the congregation died, it was often Herman who climbed the steps and rang the church bell the number of years that person lived on this earth.
One wonderful story about Herman tells the tale of his encounter with a skunk in the church basement. It seems that no one at the church council meeting could understand why punctual Herman was uncharacteristically late.......until they smelled him coming. It seems he had arrived early to check something and surprised the unsuspecting furry animal. He had no choice but to go home and wash and wash and wash.
Herman, his wife Ruth, and a small band of devoutly dedicated church members have managed to keep the doors of St. Andrew's open in the face of declining membership, stricken farm economy and the general drifting of members to urban churches. A shortage of available clergy has made it virtually impossible for St. Andrew's to operate on Sunday mornings. Not to be defeated, the church offers monthly Sunday evening hymn singing events for the community as a way to keep the doors open and the spirit of St. Andrew's alive.
A man of few words, Herman spoke by his actions. He was one of the congregational leaders when I proposed a centennial celebration idea in the spring of 1992. The congregation, then numbering fewer than 30 families, took up my proposal and the rest is history. A year long series of mini-events on the theme of "Andreas Gemeinde, A Beacon on the Prairie." climaxed with a two day event on the church grounds attended by an estimated 700 descendants of the congregation from across North America.
When nearby Wishek, ND celebrated it's centennial in 1998, Herman hand created perfect replica's of the old stone church built in 1883 and the lovely white church built in 1906 that remains in use for those monthly hymn sings.
Herman will be missed by all who knew him. He leaves his wife, Ruth, children, Mark and Vicki, several granchildren and his 97 year-old mother, Katharina. He will be buried Wednesday, November 3rd in the cemetery at St. Andrew's where his emigrant ancestors lay. This time when the church bell tolls, it will be someone else notifying the community that their prairie son has come home to rest.
*****************************************************************************
This tribute to Herman was read from the high pulpit of his dear St Andrew's on the day he was buried. St. Andrew's had officially closed and the funeral was held at St. Luke's in Wishek. His family and friends brought him into the sanctuary at his beloved St. Andrew's one last time and this tribute was read by the pastor of St. Luke's before he reached his final rest in the cemetery which he so lovingly cared for all of his years.
This story can also be found on the NDSU/GRHC website.
Monday, April 26, 2010
If Tombstones Could Talk
As a child I roamed the cemeteries near our farm in LaMoure County, ND, always wondering about the stories of those buried there. I placed fresh picked prairie wildflowers at the graves of small children and the adult graves that never seemed to get any attention, mentally calculating their birth and death dates, translating that data into stories. Children can have a wild imagination, but even now, decades later, when I walk into a cemetery, the voices begin chattering in my head.
Over the years, interest in my pioneer German-Russian heritage took me to the rural churches and cemeteries of my ancestors, often with my father, an uncle or aunt in tow. They supplied detail that only family lore can provide. I became a fixture in county courthouses as I pored over Clerk of Court and Register of Deed documents and I relied on oral interviews with great-aunts and uncles (the children of my emigrant ancestors) to help connect the dots. Most of them kindly let me page through their family photo albums and bibles, allowing me full access and permission to copy anything I wanted. I learned that photographs were great memory triggers for my interviewees, bringing to the surface memories of past events that they hadn’t thought about in years; memories that may have been buried with them had I not been in the right place at the right time. That process “blew life” into my family history as I matched the names on the tombstones to the stories and photographs that were shared with me.
In 2005, St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, Wishek, McIntosh County, ND, has been celebrating 100 years of continuous worship. In the last five decades, many rural Lutheran churches within a 20 mile radius found they could no longer keep their doors open and opted to merge with St. Luke’s. The congregation saw fit to honor each merging church with their own special Sunday celebration arranged for and orchestrated by descendants of the honored congregation.
I descend from two of the merged rural congregations: St. Andrew (Andreas Gemeinde), the “mother church,” and Peace Lutheran (Friedens Gemeinde) one of four “daughter” churches. Their special Sundays were in early May, 2005. To my delight, I was invited to lead the “Cemetery Walk,” a journey through time as told by the cemetery markers.
This opportunity to review my decades-old research was a trip down my memory lane. Paging through notes from my interviews with first and second generation children of the prairie, interviews I conducted in my early twenties, brought back sights and sounds that I had forgotten: the cadence of their accent-laced voices, the smell of sausage and kraut or simmering borscht, fresh-from-the-oven kuchen, even homemade Schnaps. Their droll sense of humor and the matter-of-fact way they answered my endless questions, without self-pity or exaggeration, just the facts, stays with me today. The stories were there, they were simply waiting for someone to listen.
Poring over church records as I prepared for my presentations, I did a cursory count and came up with more than fifty relatives buried in the two cemeteries. No wonder the chatter in my head is especially loud when I’m there. Sixteen are great-great, great, and grandparents. Twenty-one more are great-uncles, great aunts, aunts and uncles. And at least ten members of my family tree are buried in the children’s sections. While some of them lived to a ripe old age, others died young from common realities of pioneer and rural life; epidemics, farm accidents, child birth. In Friedens cemetery alone, there are 22 children under the age of one year buried there. My Uncle Otto lost his life in Europe in the final months of WWII, less than 100 miles from the village his great-grandparents left when they immigrated to Russia in 1816. His remains are buried in the American Cemetery in Luxembourg, but his family placed a marker in St Andrew’s cemetery to keep his memory close.
The names on the cemetery markers read like the roster of the founding members of the Glueckstal Mother Colonies. (Glueckstal, Neudorf, Bergdorf, and Kassel) in Russia two hundred years ago. McIntosh County, Dakota Territory, opened for homestead in 1884 and was settled by descendants of those early Black Sea colonies.
The earliest markers in St. Andrew’s cemetery, dating back to 1894, belong to a 49-yr-old mother and to three small children from three different emigrant families. They were casualties of the raw, unrelenting prairie with its extreme heat and cold, isolation and illnesses that even the respected Brauchere, gifted healers trained in South Russia, found beyond the realm of their healing ability. A small pox epidemic in the winter of 1898/99 claimed many on the prairie including three children in one family in three short weeks. My great-grandparents didn’t know what hit them, their family suddenly cut in half. The influenza epidemic of 1918 [the Spanish Flu]brought many more new graves to these rural cemeteries, and the diphtheria epidemic of 1923 cut to the core, claiming my grandfather, Karl, and three of his daughters, as well as his sister, Christina, and her three sons.
Iron crosses are a distinct cultural art form of the Germans from Russia. Most examples appear in cemeteries affiliated with the Catholic Church. However, the oldest marker in Friedens Lutheran Cemetery is a large, ornate, hand-forged iron cross labeled Gottlieb Dockter. An emigrant from Neudorf, Dockter spoke several languages and served as the Clerk of Court (Schreiber) for his village until he journeyed to the U.S. with his family in 1899. With many sons to do the farm work, Dockter often roamed the prairie for days on horseback, always delighted when he connected with others from the Glueckstal colonies. One day he stopped at a sod house near Beaver Creek and encountered a childhood friend, Johann Heine. As a young man, Heine migrated south of Neudorf to Klostitz, in Bessarabia. Their reunion in McIntosh County resulted in the marriage of Heine’s daughter, Katharina, and Dockter’s son, Jacob. Mergers of that kind were common in the early years on the prairie. As for the iron cross - the artist left no identification, but the fact that Dockter’s son George was a well-known blacksmith makes the case for a son creating a tribute to his father.
In the middle of all those cemetery markers with German surnames is a marker for a lone Norwegian emigrant by the name of Frank Olson. His homestead along Beaver Creek was surrounded by Germans from Russia. Olson married Carolina Heine, but left her a widow shortly after the marriage. He was buried on the homestead next to his father-in-law, Johann Heine. In 1910, both graves were exhumed, the remains moved to nearby St. Andrews cemetery, when a county road was platted in the path of their resting place.
In German-Russian culture, the cemetery (Friedhof) is a place of peace and dignity, located near the church building. As a migrating people, death was a reality of life. Assured of a life hereafter, Germans from Russia grieved the loss, but placed their hope on the promise that they would meet again in paradise.
St. Andrew’s, the tall white church, served as a “Beacon on the Prairie.” When a church member died, the pastor or an elder of the congregation tolled the church bell the number of years the deceased lived on earth honoring the life of the congregant and as a vehicle to notify the community, a practice that came with the emigrants in South Russia and continues at St. Luke’s today.
In the early years before funeral homes were established, the deceased was laid out in the family parlor, usually in a hand-crafted wooden casket. Relatives and friends kept vigil by the casket until the funeral service.
Funerals were taken seriously and attended by all in the community. Children were not sheltered from the grim reality of death. The procession from the sanctuary to the cemetery was a solemn one, sometimes with flower girls leading the pallbearers to the grave site. A lone voice began a graveside song, joined by all in attendance. “Wo Findet die Seele die Heimat, die Ruh” (Where does the soul find its home, its rest?), or “So Nimm Den Meine Hande” (Lord, take my hand and lead me), were common choices for adults, “Muede bin ich, geh zu Ruh,” (Weary am I, to rest I go) was a lullaby often sung at the grave of a child. Some of these traditions survive on the prairie in McIntosh County today.
As I told my stories at the celebrations in May, I realized that my years of interviews with family elders, the many cemetery visits and the hours of research in dusty courthouses were simply part of my journey. I am the family scribe. After my presentations, I collected another half dozen stories from 3rd and 4th generation descendants of the early members of the prairie churches. They approached me with a modest eagerness and I humbly accepted their stories. Truth is, they were simply waiting for someone to listen.
This story was originally published in the North Star Chapter Newsletter, 2005 and is also posted on the NDSU/GRHC website.
Over the years, interest in my pioneer German-Russian heritage took me to the rural churches and cemeteries of my ancestors, often with my father, an uncle or aunt in tow. They supplied detail that only family lore can provide. I became a fixture in county courthouses as I pored over Clerk of Court and Register of Deed documents and I relied on oral interviews with great-aunts and uncles (the children of my emigrant ancestors) to help connect the dots. Most of them kindly let me page through their family photo albums and bibles, allowing me full access and permission to copy anything I wanted. I learned that photographs were great memory triggers for my interviewees, bringing to the surface memories of past events that they hadn’t thought about in years; memories that may have been buried with them had I not been in the right place at the right time. That process “blew life” into my family history as I matched the names on the tombstones to the stories and photographs that were shared with me.
In 2005, St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, Wishek, McIntosh County, ND, has been celebrating 100 years of continuous worship. In the last five decades, many rural Lutheran churches within a 20 mile radius found they could no longer keep their doors open and opted to merge with St. Luke’s. The congregation saw fit to honor each merging church with their own special Sunday celebration arranged for and orchestrated by descendants of the honored congregation.
I descend from two of the merged rural congregations: St. Andrew (Andreas Gemeinde), the “mother church,” and Peace Lutheran (Friedens Gemeinde) one of four “daughter” churches. Their special Sundays were in early May, 2005. To my delight, I was invited to lead the “Cemetery Walk,” a journey through time as told by the cemetery markers.
This opportunity to review my decades-old research was a trip down my memory lane. Paging through notes from my interviews with first and second generation children of the prairie, interviews I conducted in my early twenties, brought back sights and sounds that I had forgotten: the cadence of their accent-laced voices, the smell of sausage and kraut or simmering borscht, fresh-from-the-oven kuchen, even homemade Schnaps. Their droll sense of humor and the matter-of-fact way they answered my endless questions, without self-pity or exaggeration, just the facts, stays with me today. The stories were there, they were simply waiting for someone to listen.
Poring over church records as I prepared for my presentations, I did a cursory count and came up with more than fifty relatives buried in the two cemeteries. No wonder the chatter in my head is especially loud when I’m there. Sixteen are great-great, great, and grandparents. Twenty-one more are great-uncles, great aunts, aunts and uncles. And at least ten members of my family tree are buried in the children’s sections. While some of them lived to a ripe old age, others died young from common realities of pioneer and rural life; epidemics, farm accidents, child birth. In Friedens cemetery alone, there are 22 children under the age of one year buried there. My Uncle Otto lost his life in Europe in the final months of WWII, less than 100 miles from the village his great-grandparents left when they immigrated to Russia in 1816. His remains are buried in the American Cemetery in Luxembourg, but his family placed a marker in St Andrew’s cemetery to keep his memory close.
The names on the cemetery markers read like the roster of the founding members of the Glueckstal Mother Colonies. (Glueckstal, Neudorf, Bergdorf, and Kassel) in Russia two hundred years ago. McIntosh County, Dakota Territory, opened for homestead in 1884 and was settled by descendants of those early Black Sea colonies.
The earliest markers in St. Andrew’s cemetery, dating back to 1894, belong to a 49-yr-old mother and to three small children from three different emigrant families. They were casualties of the raw, unrelenting prairie with its extreme heat and cold, isolation and illnesses that even the respected Brauchere, gifted healers trained in South Russia, found beyond the realm of their healing ability. A small pox epidemic in the winter of 1898/99 claimed many on the prairie including three children in one family in three short weeks. My great-grandparents didn’t know what hit them, their family suddenly cut in half. The influenza epidemic of 1918 [the Spanish Flu]brought many more new graves to these rural cemeteries, and the diphtheria epidemic of 1923 cut to the core, claiming my grandfather, Karl, and three of his daughters, as well as his sister, Christina, and her three sons.
Iron crosses are a distinct cultural art form of the Germans from Russia. Most examples appear in cemeteries affiliated with the Catholic Church. However, the oldest marker in Friedens Lutheran Cemetery is a large, ornate, hand-forged iron cross labeled Gottlieb Dockter. An emigrant from Neudorf, Dockter spoke several languages and served as the Clerk of Court (Schreiber) for his village until he journeyed to the U.S. with his family in 1899. With many sons to do the farm work, Dockter often roamed the prairie for days on horseback, always delighted when he connected with others from the Glueckstal colonies. One day he stopped at a sod house near Beaver Creek and encountered a childhood friend, Johann Heine. As a young man, Heine migrated south of Neudorf to Klostitz, in Bessarabia. Their reunion in McIntosh County resulted in the marriage of Heine’s daughter, Katharina, and Dockter’s son, Jacob. Mergers of that kind were common in the early years on the prairie. As for the iron cross - the artist left no identification, but the fact that Dockter’s son George was a well-known blacksmith makes the case for a son creating a tribute to his father.
In the middle of all those cemetery markers with German surnames is a marker for a lone Norwegian emigrant by the name of Frank Olson. His homestead along Beaver Creek was surrounded by Germans from Russia. Olson married Carolina Heine, but left her a widow shortly after the marriage. He was buried on the homestead next to his father-in-law, Johann Heine. In 1910, both graves were exhumed, the remains moved to nearby St. Andrews cemetery, when a county road was platted in the path of their resting place.
In German-Russian culture, the cemetery (Friedhof) is a place of peace and dignity, located near the church building. As a migrating people, death was a reality of life. Assured of a life hereafter, Germans from Russia grieved the loss, but placed their hope on the promise that they would meet again in paradise.
St. Andrew’s, the tall white church, served as a “Beacon on the Prairie.” When a church member died, the pastor or an elder of the congregation tolled the church bell the number of years the deceased lived on earth honoring the life of the congregant and as a vehicle to notify the community, a practice that came with the emigrants in South Russia and continues at St. Luke’s today.
In the early years before funeral homes were established, the deceased was laid out in the family parlor, usually in a hand-crafted wooden casket. Relatives and friends kept vigil by the casket until the funeral service.
Funerals were taken seriously and attended by all in the community. Children were not sheltered from the grim reality of death. The procession from the sanctuary to the cemetery was a solemn one, sometimes with flower girls leading the pallbearers to the grave site. A lone voice began a graveside song, joined by all in attendance. “Wo Findet die Seele die Heimat, die Ruh” (Where does the soul find its home, its rest?), or “So Nimm Den Meine Hande” (Lord, take my hand and lead me), were common choices for adults, “Muede bin ich, geh zu Ruh,” (Weary am I, to rest I go) was a lullaby often sung at the grave of a child. Some of these traditions survive on the prairie in McIntosh County today.
As I told my stories at the celebrations in May, I realized that my years of interviews with family elders, the many cemetery visits and the hours of research in dusty courthouses were simply part of my journey. I am the family scribe. After my presentations, I collected another half dozen stories from 3rd and 4th generation descendants of the early members of the prairie churches. They approached me with a modest eagerness and I humbly accepted their stories. Truth is, they were simply waiting for someone to listen.
This story was originally published in the North Star Chapter Newsletter, 2005 and is also posted on the NDSU/GRHC website.
Grateful Homage
October 22, 2009
125 years ago today my ancestors (Just - Thurn - Meidinger -Grussie - Wanner) left Kassel, in South Russia for the Port of New York. The journey took about 2 weeks. In the party of five traveling together, Adam Meidinger, the oldest, was just 30 - yrs -old.
They traveled by wagon to Odessa where they took a train to Bremen, Germany. Living in barracks, separated by sexes, they waited until they could board the SS Werra to the Port of New York (pre-Ellis Island). From there they went by train to Yankton, Dakota Territory. They spent the winter of 1884 -85 with relatives in a settlement called Tripp (not far from Yankton) until they filed a Declaration of Intent to become citizens and filed for homestead claims in the Beaver Creek area in McIntosh County - in what is now North Dakota - in May of 1885..
North Dakota and South Dakota became individual states in 1889.
Christof (age 24) and Elizabeth (Wanner )Just (age 22) lost their first child, Karl, on the journey. He was buried at sea. Elizabeth gave birth to another child, whom they also named Karl, on January 1, 1885, while staying with friends who emigrated earlier from Kassel, So Russia to Tripp, Dakota Territory.
Friederich (age 25) and Katharina (Thurn) Meidinger (age 22) had a young son, Andreas with them on the journey. They stayed with her sister (Mrs. Melhaff) who emigrated from Kassel to Tripp in 1873.
Adam (age 30) and Magdalina (Grussie) Meidinger (age 27) came with their small children, Y Adam (Young Adam) and Magdalina. They, too, stayed with Kasselers who emigrated to the area earlier.
Brothers Freiderich and Johann Thurn were also in the party of emigrants. They soon married upon settling in McIntosh County.
It is very sobering when I look at their photographs and realize that I am now older than most of them lived to be.
I was at St. Andrews Lutheran Church and cemetery(formerly Andreas Gemneinde)along Beaver Creek in rural McIntosh County recently. They were charter members and are all buried there. Humbled and grateful am I that they had the courage to move halfway around the world so I would have a better life.
We descendants are scattered to all parts of the country/world, but we are only a few generations removed from the raw and painful emigrant process. We know what our fate would have been had they not had the courage to leave for new opportunity in America.
125 years ago today my ancestors (Just - Thurn - Meidinger -Grussie - Wanner) left Kassel, in South Russia for the Port of New York. The journey took about 2 weeks. In the party of five traveling together, Adam Meidinger, the oldest, was just 30 - yrs -old.
They traveled by wagon to Odessa where they took a train to Bremen, Germany. Living in barracks, separated by sexes, they waited until they could board the SS Werra to the Port of New York (pre-Ellis Island). From there they went by train to Yankton, Dakota Territory. They spent the winter of 1884 -85 with relatives in a settlement called Tripp (not far from Yankton) until they filed a Declaration of Intent to become citizens and filed for homestead claims in the Beaver Creek area in McIntosh County - in what is now North Dakota - in May of 1885..
North Dakota and South Dakota became individual states in 1889.
Christof (age 24) and Elizabeth (Wanner )Just (age 22) lost their first child, Karl, on the journey. He was buried at sea. Elizabeth gave birth to another child, whom they also named Karl, on January 1, 1885, while staying with friends who emigrated earlier from Kassel, So Russia to Tripp, Dakota Territory.
Friederich (age 25) and Katharina (Thurn) Meidinger (age 22) had a young son, Andreas with them on the journey. They stayed with her sister (Mrs. Melhaff) who emigrated from Kassel to Tripp in 1873.
Adam (age 30) and Magdalina (Grussie) Meidinger (age 27) came with their small children, Y Adam (Young Adam) and Magdalina. They, too, stayed with Kasselers who emigrated to the area earlier.
Brothers Freiderich and Johann Thurn were also in the party of emigrants. They soon married upon settling in McIntosh County.
It is very sobering when I look at their photographs and realize that I am now older than most of them lived to be.
I was at St. Andrews Lutheran Church and cemetery(formerly Andreas Gemneinde)along Beaver Creek in rural McIntosh County recently. They were charter members and are all buried there. Humbled and grateful am I that they had the courage to move halfway around the world so I would have a better life.
We descendants are scattered to all parts of the country/world, but we are only a few generations removed from the raw and painful emigrant process. We know what our fate would have been had they not had the courage to leave for new opportunity in America.
Treasured Friend
March 2009
For over 40 years I saw Sylvia every week. I was 18-years-old when this long relationship began. Little did we know then that we would be together – for all these years - on a journey of ups, downs, losses, gains, happiness, sadness - balanced with the surprises that life hands us. We were ever practical with a spoonful of humor to get us through it all. The anchor was our weekly Friday appointment.
Sometimes I would be the one holding her up as she was reeling from some event that life handed her. More often she held me up and gave me a dose of her wisdom as I maneuvered through the transitions in my life. Realities were acknowledged, sorrows accepted and the promise of a new day was given.
That I was the one behind the chair coloring, curling and cutting her hair was incidental. We were trusted friends in the ongoing soap opera of life. A weekly update, an inventory of who is doing what, a running political and fashion commentary, a rundown of our various family events - our conversations never really ended, they just reconvened the next week. When Sylvia found she had to stop driving, we shifted her appointment time so I could chauffer her. I simply couldn’t let her go. A relationship of that length and value can’t be severed by simple inconvenience.
Just after she turned 91 years, s stroke and the life changes that followed signaled an end to our time together. The loss is great, the grief is raw, but the memories are beautiful. I feel very blessed for the years we spent together.
Farewell to my friend Sylvia. Your wit and wisdom will always guide me. Your smile remains etched in my memory and I will forever hold you in my heart.
For over 40 years I saw Sylvia every week. I was 18-years-old when this long relationship began. Little did we know then that we would be together – for all these years - on a journey of ups, downs, losses, gains, happiness, sadness - balanced with the surprises that life hands us. We were ever practical with a spoonful of humor to get us through it all. The anchor was our weekly Friday appointment.
Sometimes I would be the one holding her up as she was reeling from some event that life handed her. More often she held me up and gave me a dose of her wisdom as I maneuvered through the transitions in my life. Realities were acknowledged, sorrows accepted and the promise of a new day was given.
That I was the one behind the chair coloring, curling and cutting her hair was incidental. We were trusted friends in the ongoing soap opera of life. A weekly update, an inventory of who is doing what, a running political and fashion commentary, a rundown of our various family events - our conversations never really ended, they just reconvened the next week. When Sylvia found she had to stop driving, we shifted her appointment time so I could chauffer her. I simply couldn’t let her go. A relationship of that length and value can’t be severed by simple inconvenience.
Just after she turned 91 years, s stroke and the life changes that followed signaled an end to our time together. The loss is great, the grief is raw, but the memories are beautiful. I feel very blessed for the years we spent together.
Farewell to my friend Sylvia. Your wit and wisdom will always guide me. Your smile remains etched in my memory and I will forever hold you in my heart.
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