The Year I Burned the Rutabagas

The Year I Burned the Rutabagas
And Other Stories About Rutabagas
********************************

When Ben and Sarah were little kids, we lived in Seward, Nebraska where Warren worked at KSRD, a radio station that was listened to by the entire town of 5,000 inhabitants.

As Thanksgiving approached one year, Warren begged me to reinstate a Krech family tradition, Mashed Rutabagas, for the holiday meal. I did my best, but in the rush of the morning, with two little kids, and not being the world's best cook, I burned the rutabagas. I was able to rescue enough from the top of the pot, and mashed up the ones not too burned, but they still had that burned taste, and I considered them quite the failure.

This was the year Warren and I discovered there were just some things you didn't talk about on the radio. Yup, Warren talked about the burnt rutabagas on his show the next morning, and everywhere I went for the next couple of weeks, "Oh, I heard you burnt the rutabagas." It's funny, now, looking back on it. At the time I got a little prickly about it and Warren was quite careful from then on not to talk about my cooking on his show.

Several years later, we are now living in Missouri, and I try again. This time with quite a successful recipe that combined bacon bits and brown sugar and other good things. Warren loved them. I don't know for sure, but I would bet Warren talked about how good they were on the air, although I never heard about in the community. But Warren is such a gentleman; I wouldn't put it past him to do this.

This summer, Warren and I drove up to South Dakota to see his brother, Bill, who has recently returned to buy property near the family's original land. We had fun driving around with Bill, checking out the land, seeing how the crops were doing this year, getting out and walking the land. It felt like we were in touch with the ancestors, especially when Warren and Bill would remember a story about some family member, long gone, and stand in the middle of a field and reminisce.

At one point, Bill started sharing a family story he'd heard about the year William and Lina and their children came out to South Dakota. They lived in their covered wagon until they built their first claim shanty later that fall. Since the growing season is so short, Bill said they planted rutabagas as their first crop that year. Rutabagas were commonly planted in this area during a new settler's first summer because they didn't require plowing the field. You could just go walking across a field, stick a shovel in, wrench back a bit of the sod, plunk a rutabaga root in, stomp it down and move on. Many settlers survived their first harsh South Dakota winter on what they could hunt in those prairies, and their store of rutabagas.

So, Rutabagas go way back in the Krech family. And after this summer, I have a new vision of Rutabagas. They are worth doing well. I am glad I have already redeemed myself; glad I've already given myself a chance to do up a mash of rutabagas with the respect they deserve. I will make them again this year for Christmas dinner, and pass down the story to Ben and Sarah, because this is one family story that deserves to carry on for another generation.

The Krech Family deserves at least one more Rutabaga Story, I think.

Unto the 3rd and 4th Generations

I am miss-using this biblical quotation, seen in the title. However, it is applicable to my family in the sense that I can follow a certain physical ailment down through several generations of my family on my mother's side.

If you look at these photos of Susie Gleason you can see a dramatic change in her physical appearance. As a young woman she appears quite healthy. Later she is quite thin with sunken cheeks. She died of some unknown ailment--obstruction of the bowel, my mother always said--when she was 43 years old. Yes, the second photo where she looks like an old lady, is really Susie in her early 40s, right before she died.

Our family thinks she had Krohn's Disease. We think this because my brother was diagnosed with this disease as a young man. In fact, he almost died of the disease but by the miracle of modern medicine, he was saved by an operation that removed an obstruction. One of his symptoms was his very low weight with sunken cheeks--just like his grandmother, Susie.

My sister and I fared somewhat better than our brother. We only have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, a much milder form than Krohn's which is often called Irritable Bowel Disease. IBS isn't life-threatening. IBD is. Recently my daughter was also diagnosed with IBS, which is why I called this post, "Unto the 3rd and 4th Generations." This ailment, in whatever form it takes, is finding a way to filter down the generations from Susie through my mother--who we don't think had much of this ailment that we know of--to Marcia, Laura, and Eric, and now to Sarah of the 4th generation. I have yet to discover if others of the 4th generation are plagued with IBS or IBD. I certainly hope not.

I mention this because this blog is about trying to understand the generations of family that have been before us, what they did that impacts us, what they suffered that impacts us. I am hoping that modern medicine will continue to make strides in this area and that there won't be a 5th Generation that has to deal with this issue. We can only hope that 4 generations is the extent of this march through our family.

Grateful for the Kindness of Strangers

A couple of years ago, when Warren and I traveled to Arkansas to find the past history of my mother's family, we came upon a kindness from a stranger that is worth acknowledging. As this is Thanksgiving Week, it seems a good time to be grateful.

We easily found the graves of my mother's parents, Charlie and Susie Gleason in the little town of Prairie Grove, Arkansas, in Washington County.

What was difficult was trying to find the graves of Susie's parents, the Overtons. All I had to start was a cryptic letter from my Aunt Harriet that mentions a trip she and Uncle Wilbur took in the 1970’s where Clifford and Edith M. take them to Rock Spring. She talks of them tramping through briars and a field to find the headstones. J.B. Overton's headstone had his name and his Civil War unit. Harriet Overton’s headstone had her date of birth and death.

It took me a solid week to figure out what her letter meant. Turns out Rock Spring is a pioneer cemetery west of Prairie Grove. For a while, I thought Rock Spring Cemetery was over 3 hours south. We were going to drive down there even if it was really far away. Then I discovered another Rock Spring Cemetery in a close county. Then I found one in Washington County.

I contacted a nice fellow who was a highway worker for years and knew all the back roads of Washington County. He recommended I call a man named William D. This proved to be a great move. William is 80 years old and lives down the road from Rock Spring Cemetery!

He told me that a young man showed up in the spring of that year and started messing around in there. William went over to make sure he wasn’t vandalizing the area. No, the young man was putting up a fence around the graves and mowing down the tall grass and trees that had sprung up around the headstones. Looks much better now, William said.

We met up with William during our visit to Arkansas. William was a very nice gentleman who cared about family and ancestors. He offered to walk with us to show us where the cemetery was.

The photos show the nice gate, sign and fence put in by this young stranger. You can also see the headstones of my great-grandparents, the Overtons. My great-grandfather fought in the Civil War for the north, which in this southern state is probably why he and his wife were buried in an obscure cemetery on a back road in the hills west of Prairie Grove.

The gratitude I feel for this stranger who preserved the cemetery is hard to define. There are almost no stones in the cemetery. Many of them are not inscribed at all. The other two that are probably are the ancestors of this young man. That's what William thought, anyway. This stranger did a great job and it had to have been at considerable expense to himself.

BTW, you can see we left plastic flowers at my great-grandparents graves. This was in hopes that this cemetery's Good Samaritan might return before they were blown away and see that someone else had been there and appreciated his work. We hope he saw and understood!

Thank you, sir, for caring about your ancestors and this cemetery! We are the unintended recipients of your generosity.

Maxine's Fruitcake

Ellen Maxine Gleason Knapp
Taken during WWII for her husband, John,
Who was in England, American Air Force

This is a post about a recent family event. Not 100 or 200 years ago, but something that used to happen in my family, a small thing, but significant because we still remember and talk about it.

Pumpkin Pie

It all started with this comment of mine to a post my sister-in-law, Amy Knapp, married to my brother, Eric, made on her blog about baking a pumpkin pie:

Hey, Amy, do you have that recipe for fruitcake? The one you invented while trying to duplicate the one my Mom and Gramma used to make? I would love to get a new copy. Can't find the old one. Thanks!!

Her Response:

Fruitcake

Yes, it's getting to be that time of year. Yule logs and fruitcakes.

Way back when, Eric and I had our first Christmas together. It was a quiet day. He gave me my very first CD – Elton John's "Captain Fantastic," my favorite album of all time. He had a silver necklace of mine repaired and had the jeweler put an amethyst on it. It was supposed to be a garnet, but they did it wrong. I didn't mind, but I hope he got his money's worth. I gave him a children's book – "Love Is A Special Way of Feeling," by Joan Walsh Anglund, and a Hallmark Keepsake Ornament of two little foxes in a log. It says, "Our First Christmas Together, 1990."

But before the holiday, we visited his parents. His mother, Maxine, had a box ready for Eric's sister Marcia and her family. It was full of cheese and sausage, a very Wisconsin gift for the Missouri family. But she also had a loaf of fruitcake for them. Wrapped in aluminum foil. I thought, "God, why would you do that to them? Nobody wants a fruitcake." I turned my nose up as high as my skinny neck would let me.

Of course, there was fruitcake for all of us that night. Eric assured me it was very good. It wasn't like other fruitcake, he said. It looked pretty solid to me, brickish, black. How we suffer for love.

Eric cut me a slice. A small one. I politely put it in my mouth, preparing the I'm-not-very-hungry speech and hoping I'd be able to keep a nice face on.

But it was good. Very good, actually. I had more. And more. And more. It was delicious.

And I looked forward to it every year. I even asked for the recipe. I got that same old reply: "Oh, I don't have a recipe!" I thought she was being unnecessarily modest.

And just over five years after my first bite of her fruitcake, Maxine died, without ever having revealed her secrets to tasty fruitcake. Christmas came, the first without Maxine, and the first without my dad. I looked to Christmas sadly, missing our parents and missing the traditions that would be different that year, including the fruitcake.

I decided to try to make some, but I didn't quite know where to start. I knew she used dried fruit instead of that nasty candied fruit. Candied fruit is proof that God is vengeful.

John, Eric's dad, said he knew Maxine's fruitcake secret. Oh, happy day!

"You get a cake mix, any kind, it doesn't matter, and add a cup of dried fruit and nuts," he said. Um, sorry. A cup? Usually guys are OVER-estimating sizes.

So I got a yellow cake mix and dubiously stuffed it full of prunes, dates, dried apricots, raisins, golden raisins, walnuts and pecans. I chopped probably half a bushel's worth. I'm not kidding. I poured it into the prepared cake batter and wondered if it was enough. So I added more. And more. Until finally, it was fruit and nuts barely held together by batter. It was rather hard to stir by that point. I jammed it into pans and baked it. It took forever.

When it was finally finished, it didn't look right. Yellow cake was not the cake mix. I was disappointed.

Eric's family was all here for Christmas. His sister Laura looked at it and frowned and said it didn't look the same. She was disappointed.

I joked, though, that I would wrap it up in aluminum foil and in my best Maxine handwriting say on a slip of white paper, "Merry Christmas! All my love, Mom." Marcia said I was mean. She was maybe joking.

So we gathered and remembered and ate fruitcake. It was not the same as Maxine used to make.

But it was so close you would never have guessed she hadn't made it. It tasted just like it. It felt just like it. It stuck in your teeth just like it. It made a rock in your stomach when you ate half a loaf just like it. Not that I would ever do that.

In the following years, I tried other variations. Chocolate cake mix. Spice cake mix. Almonds. Macadamias. Chocolate chips. No raisins. Adding coffee or orange juice to the mix instead of water. Some worked, others didn't. But I always thought of Maxine when I made it and when I ate it.

So, here is Maxine's secret recipe:

Take a cake mix, any flavor, it doesn't matter. Add half a bushel of chopped pecans, walnuts, prunes, dates, dried apricots, raisins and golden raisins. Add anything else you think is good in fruitcake, but no candied fruit – because candied fruit is proof that God is vengeful. Pull out your paint-stirring drill bit and stir. Pack it into loaf pans. Bake forever. Cool. Wrap in aluminum foil. Write "Merry Christmas! All my love, Mom" on a slip of white paper and tape it on the foil. Or something meaningful and sentimental to you. It keeps well, but why would you want to save it? It's so tasty, you'll have it eaten in no time. And if you eat half a loaf at a time, you deserve what you'll get over the next day or so, and it ain't pretty. Not that I would know from experience, of course.


My Response to Finding Amy's Fruitcake Post:

That's it! Thanks, Amy, for a fun romp down memory lane. You captured a little snapshot of Mom and I appreciate it! I didn't realize she left us so early after you'd joined our family. You know, she thought you were the best thing to ever happen to her son, don't you! :)

I actually remember Mom talking about adding strong coffee to the cake batter. I remember her favorite cake mix choice was spice cake. I remember Gram talking about dried versus candied fruit, waving her large hands in the air in disgust, exhorting me to NEVER use candied fruit in my fruitcake.

And I remember the taped message on top of the aluminum foil wrapper! I wish I'd saved one. I have her little taped messages on other things all over the house: Jessie's single surviving painted glass ornament, which I unwrap every Christmas and place carefully on the tree. I'm glad I saved that little note! I have the last birthday card she sent me. Take it out every January...but back to the subject...

Warren used to talk about Mom's fruitcake on the air. He swore my mother made mother-in-law jokes passe. He would go on and on about how we were waiting for the "Fruitcake Shipment." I made him promise not to offer any fruitcake to a lucky listener. We were glad the kids didn't have a taste for it yet, more for us!

The Gleason Side of the Family

My mother is a Gleason. We never knew much about her early life when we were kids. I know she became an orphan at five years old. I know she lived with both her older brother and sister after their parents died. I know she was born and lived in Arkansas when they were all still a family. Dad used to kid my mother that one of her legs was longer than the other from all the climbing around the hills of Arkansas. I didn't like this joke as a child and realized when we visited the area recently that it doesn't apply much anyway--there are some hills but not much more than in Wisconsin or Missouri.

This photo shows little Maxine, my mother, with her much older brother, Eldon and sister, Harriet.

What I know about that part of her life is mostly sad. They were very poor people. I think Susie and Charlie married late, compared to others of that time. They were a sharecropper family, which meant they owned very little. I'm not sure if they even owned much furniture. They moved around from place to place in the northwest Arkansas county of Washington. Mom was born in a little hamlet called Rheas Mill. Warren and I went to visit this area a couple of summers ago. I came away with a renewed respect for how far my mother went in her lifetime, how much she achieved, what a legacy she gave us all.

The biggest town in the area, Prairie Grove, seems little changed from the 1920's. We found her parents' graves in the city cemetery. Cleaned them up, left fresh irises, which were my mother's favorite.

I could write about my mother for days......And some day I will...

Bobby Krech Carries on a Family Tradition

Warren and I flew to Denver last weekend for our nephew's wedding. Bobby and Michelle were married on a perfect day in October with the golden aspens and a warm breeze adding to the day's beauty. We were surrounded by family, many of whom we rarely see--one of the sorrows of our far-flung 21st century family. We tried to catch up with all the nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, etc. We left knowing we'd done the best we could but also knowing many more moments were unrealized and questions unspoken.

Other than the wedding and celebration that followed--which were wonderful--probably the highlight for me was when Bobby and his buddies took out their instruments and jammed for hours. This appears to be a common occurrence in his household but was rare and special for Warren and I. Bobby is a professional fiddle player with a Colorado Bluegrass Group called "Hunker Down." Come to find out they played at the Blue Note in Columbia, about 30 miles north of us last winter. We didn't know about it or we would have been there, believe you me!



Most special moment was taking a picture of Bobby with his great-great grandfather's fiddle. It used to belong to his father, Tom, who is an amazing musician as well, who handed it down to his son, Bobby--the newest fiddle player in the Krech Family.

You may remember how I mentioned in a recent post here on "Be Mindful" that "the fact that Bobby Krech plays a mean fiddle and so did William Krech AND his father Chris--who is Bobby's great-great-great grandfather, doesn't surprise me either."



I was surrounded by Bobby's fiddle playing that night, listening to these wonderful musicians playing any old thing they felt like, someone singing or not, folks dancing along, others listening, and wondered how similar this was to a family get-together a hundred years ago in Iowa or South Dakota, William or Chris playing music with other musicians while kids played and teens and grown-ups danced in the grass or on the barn floor. This time we were out on the patio, under the shelter of the canvas gazebo built by Bobby and his friends, kids still playing, teens and grown-ups still dancing or sitting around listening, all of us marveling at the beauty of it all.

The only videos I managed to snag were badly lit and poorly recorded, but I will upload one if I can because you can see people dancing and enjoying the fiddle music of Bobby, who carries on the family fiddling tradition that goes way back to his great-great-great grandfather, Heinrich Christoph Krech, who played in the 1870s. None of this surprised me and it all surprised me. The more things change, the more they stay the same, even when 100 years separates the men who play the fiddle.

Thanks for the memories, Bobby and Michelle!

"Dad Looks Like William" or Gifts from the Past

I was struck by Sarah's comment from my last post: "It's amazing how much Dad looks like William Krech."

It always amazes me when I see a newborn and can see their ancestors in their fresh face. As if that person who isn't here anymore has come back to say hello. I know that's a bit schmaltzy. Okay--a lot schmaltzy. But hear me out.

The point is that who we are IS somewhat a gift from the past. We are somewhat--not altogether--I'm not saying that--but we ARE somewhat a collection of what has gone before us, genetically and otherwise.

So the fact that Warren looks like William does not come as a surprise to me. I think my son is beginning to look like William, too, for that matter. The fact that Bobby Krech plays a mean fiddle and so did William Krech AND his father Chris--who is Bobby's great-great-great grandfather, doesn't surprise me either.

The fact that Ben and Warren both are truly funny guys and their humor is so original as to just amaze me--I can sometimes hear Eldon's inflections and timing and even his laugh in the jokes of my husband or son--is truly a treasure, another gift from the past. And that we found out this past year that Chris, the original Krech who came over from Germany in 1849, was considered a funny man and a truly good storyteller, is not really a surprise to me anymore.

Which is why I care about dead people--ancestors of my family and my husband's family. Long gone, but truly not forgotten, as they show themselves in the faces and the skills and talents of my present family.

So when I tell you that Kelsey looked like my father when she was born and has begun to look more and more like my most treasured and favorite aunt in the world, Nina, who was my grandmother's sister, is just about the coolest thing I can say about the present. And when I glance at my daughter, and see my mother's face, almost hear her laugh, certainly see her smile, it is truly a gift to treasure.


So take a look at William's photo. And look at Warren and his son, Ben.




And you be the judge.

Who Was Chris Krech?

When I married into the Krech Family over thirty years ago, I didn’t know a thing about Chris Krech, even that he existed. I just knew about Claude, Warren’s grandfather, and Eldon, Warren’s father. Within the first year of our marriage, Claude died. I think I met him once or twice in the nursing home, but I’m not sure. But I never “knew” him, except through family stories.

I also heard about William and Lina, the great-grandparents. They were among the first Krech family members who came to South Dakota from Iowa. I loved to listen to the stories at Krech family reunions about the “Homestead,” as I also loved to hear the Knapp family stories about “The Farm.”

But mention of Chris, William's father, was rare and fleeting, mostly, I think, because he never came west with his son, but remained behind in Iowa. I have never seen a photo of Chris. And almost nothing was known about the first Krech in America.

But all that has changed in the last year. I have been doing genealogy research for several years but had never attempted to find out much about Chris and the origins of the Krechs in Iowa. Last winter I started looking for details.

I was amazed at what I discovered! It’s hard to cover it all in a short “blog” but here goes:

Here are Ten Amazing Facts about Chris Krech:

(1) Chris really wasn’t “Chris.” His original name, near as I can figure, was Heinrich Christoph Krech. His name was different in every Federal Census in which he is included.

(2) He came from Germany. More specifically, from the Prussian Province of Saxony. A couple of censuses say he came to America in 1849 at the age of 23.

(3) According to his Naturalization Card, he lived in the Morisiana area of New York City and attained his citizenship on July 25, 1855. At this time he was married to his first wife, Regina, and had one daughter, Doretta.

Doretta and William

(4) William, his first son, was also born in New York City. Then the family seems to have migrated west to Iowa before the birth of their third child, Ida was born. The next four children were all born in Iowa: Ida, Christopher, Charles, and Emma. These details show up in later Federal Censuses.

Ida, Chris, Charles and Emma

(5) The greatest discovery I made last winter was a mention of H. C. Krech in a Bremer County Biography book, published in 1883. These were usually submitted by the person mentioned or close family members and are not thought to be totally truthful, having the chance to reinvent themselves as they wished. But details can mostly be double-checked by other sources and are a great place to check. Download this image and enlarge to read. Great fun! Amazing details about his life.


(6) Probably the biggest thrill was finding Chris’ actual tombstone photo included in the Iowa Tombstone Project. He is buried between two of his wives, Regina, his first wife and the mother of his children, and Susannah, his last wife. Two other wives are mentioned in the Bremer County Bio, but I have yet to find a single verification of either of them. The date of Chris’ birth was always hard to find, but the date of 1821 on his tombstone seems as reliable as any. His death was in 1905.


(7) Chris is buried in the St. Paul’s Evangelical Cemetery in Denver, Iowa, a small town in section 24, adjacent to Chris’ property.


(8) The 1870 Federal Census lists his occupation as Farmer and Sawyer. Since I just today have discovered that many Krechs who came over from Germany worked in the lumber industry in Germany and also rafted lumber down rivers, this is an interesting fact about Chris. I want to pursue later.

(9) The 1880 Federal Census lists his occupation as Saw Miller and Farmer. I just today (9-13-07) have FINALLY discovered an image of a Bremer County/Jefferson Township plat map of section 23 that shows the H.C. Krech name and a small square with the label “Steam Saw Mill.” Very exciting discovery! Since Warren and I are planning a trip to Iowa, possibly this fall, we now have an actual PLACE to go, along with the cemetery, to visit and explore. An exit ramp off of Highway 63 appears to cross right over where the saw mill stood.


(10) In the 1880’s, Chris founded a German-language newspaper called the Waverly Phoenix. I have just discovered that Heinrich C. Krech’s Obit was published in the Waverly Phoenix. His last wife, Susanna Geyer Moeller Krech’s obit was also published. His death is listed as 1/4/1905. I have sent for an image of the obit and will add it as soon as I get it. What fun!

Fishing from Grattan to Smyrna

A great fish story as told by E. John Knapp - my father - just had to share as it says much about the freedom of life as a youth in the 30's in Michigan

Fishing from Grattan to Smyrna
By E. John Knapp

When I was a teen, I loved to fish. My buddy, Russ Moore, and I fished in every lake and every river and stream within 50 miles of Belding, Michigan. My Dad gave me a bamboo fly rod. I took it apart and rebuilt the rod to a thing of beauty. I varnished the rod with some of my dad’s best spar varnish.

John as a Young Teen

One day we decided to fish Seely Creek. It runs from west of Grattan east for several miles to Smyrna. This stream runs south of M44 for miles until it reaches Flat River. This cold-water stream had rainbow trout living in it. Of course rainbow trout were a big attraction. Not many of the men in my life were aware of this fishing place, so we never gave away this secret.

The Fishing Trip from Grattan to Smyrna and then northeast to Belding

We had my Dad drive us out to Lincoln Lake Road and drop us off at Seely Creek, south of M44. There is a camping spot there. We told Dad we would be home before dark. We had no food, just fishing equipment and teen energy.

We started fishing about 1:00 pm. The first half mile--no luck--only small bites. By this time the stream was wider and the trout hid in small holes on the river bottom and under fallen trees. We began to catch a few fish each mile. Trout are a smart fish--they hear you and hide. You can see why we loved this place.

This stream wandered back and forth, around farms and fields. Most of the way was in thick woods of maple and oak trees with a few pines and lots of willows along the main stream bed. Often the scene would break into pastures with cows and horses feeding on grass. When we reached Flat River, the Creek was quite wide.

The Flat River at Smyrna

At this site is the old flour mill next to the Flat River. We decided to go into the mill and see if it was still running. As our luck had it, a farmer had just unloaded a large wagon of wheat to be ground into flour. We were favored with watching the entire process.

Walking home takes an hour or so and we left then for Belding. We got home around sunset, tired and quite hungry. Mom was glad to see her big son home and she cooked up those fish for Russ and I. We let Dad eat one fish. Did those trout ever taste good!

Six Young People Begin Their Married Lives as Dakota Territory Pioneers

Thomas and Catherine Fountain had three beautiful young daughters growing into young women with little prospect for a good future. I think this was a real concern for these parents. Iowa was totally settled with little land available except at a high price and with no guarantee they would be close to family.

The family’s oral history speaks of this concern of Thomas and Catherine’s. How they saw no future in Iowa for their daughters, or their younger son, Pat. How they looked around at opportunities and found that the U.S. government was offering “free” land by homesteading in Dakota Territory. By this time two of their daughters were married. Mary Cellecta (Lecky) had married Manny Winklepleck and Frances Margaret (Frankie) had married Charley Dyce. It looked like Evalina Anderson (Lina) would marry Will Krech. None of these young couples had much chance of getting ahead in Iowa. So they all agreed to leave all they knew behind and carve a new life for themselves in Dakota Territory.

Thomas thought this was a good opportunity for his children and the young people of the neighborhood so he sold his home and made up a wagon train of covered wagons drawn by oxen. They loaded up their worldly possessions in the wagons and started out for Dakota. In the wagon train were Thomas and Catherine Fountain, their son Pat, aged 13 at the time, their three daughters and husbands and fiancé, along with Charley and Will Wellman, Uncle Delan Smith and his sons, Ed, Charley, and Harry, and some other neighbors who wanted to come “west.” They started out to a new country and a new life in the spring of 1878.

They stopped near Luverne, Minnesota along the way where Catherine’s brother, George Barclay, lived. According to the family’s oral history, the young people made arrangements to come back here and work on the farm later that summer.

This map shows both Luverne, MN, and the Flandreau, SD area (near Egan).

The wagon train went on to what is now Egan, South Dakota, where the government land office was located. A man from the office took Grandpa Fountain with him in his horse-drawn buggy and led the way with the wagon train following. As they drove through the prairie country he would point out which quarter sections were taken and which were not. When they came to what later became the Wellman Church corner, the agent stopped and said, “From here on nothing is taken,” and Grandpa Fountain, tired from the long journey, said without hesitation, “I will take this one and that one,” pointing to the first two. And when the wagon train came up each man picked his farm all in the same neighborhood. They drove their oxen and covered wagons onto their farms and lived in their wagons until they could build their claim shacks.

Will and Lina in front of their claim shack, by this time sporting a few additions.
Young son, Claude, is 2nd from left. Unknown who the other adults are
but most likely one of Lina's sisters and her husband and small child.

Later that summer, after the first crops were planted, the Fountain young people, Manny and Lecky, Charley and Frankie, and Lina Fountain and Will Krech went to Luverne to work in the harvest of their Uncle George’s crops. It is thought they brought back the lumber that was used to build the first claim shacks on the homesteads, hauled by an oxen team, when they received their earnings for helping harvest their Uncle’s crops.

Will Krech and Lina Fountain were married October 12, 1878, in Luverne before they returned to their claims that fall. As far as we can tell, the parents were not present at the marriage of their daughter, Lina. But it is inspiring to think of these six young people leaving the new homesteads, traveling 65 miles to Minnesota, working in the fields all that late summer and fall, attending the marriage of Will and Lina, and then hauling enough lumber back, purchased with their field work wages, for the family to build claim shacks, 12 feet by 16 feet in size, before the cold winter blizzards hit Dakota Territory.


These pioneer families and their descendents owned and lived on these homesteads for three generations and in fact some of the land is still owned by descendants of Will and Lina Krech. I am blown away by the bravery of this family. They wanted a future for their children and they sacrificed their comfortable Iowa farm life for that future. They left their homes and friends and church and land, and headed west with what they could cram into a few covered wagons, and did exactly what they said they would do. They made a good future for the whole family by risking all and working hard and never giving up, even though many hardships (blizzards, grasshoppers, droughts) were faced before they “proved” their homesteads.

Margaret Krech, wife of Eldon, Will’s great grandson, still proudly displays the patent that Will and Lina received when granted full ownership of the land. This “homestead” land is still family-owned and will be passed down to future generations of Krechs.

The Farm Property

A photo of the Farm taken in the 1950s.

The Michigan property has been in the family for over 150 years. The original owners were Reuben Clark and Lucinda Russell Clark. Lucinda was a daughter of Josiah and Betsey Hastings Russell. Russells owned other property in other sections nearby. The property is in Section 11, Grattan Township, Kent County, Michigan, on Lincoln Lake Road. R. Clark is on the Grattan Plat Map of 1855 for the property.

In 1863, the name on the Grattan Plat Map was O.H. Russell. This is Otis Harrison Russell, who was Lucinda's brother. I think he must have bought the property from her after Reuben died, either to take over the responsibility of the land or to give her money to live on. The family has a history of taking care of each other so I am not surprised by this. Otis Harrison died in the Civil War in Tennessee.

The next Grattan Plat Map of 1876 shows Julia A. (Ackley) Russell, wife of Otis, as the landowner. She received a pension via her husband's Civil War service so was able to keep the land.

She sold it to her daughter Jessie Florence and husband John Irving Weeks, who remained the owner well into the 20th century. Elmer Grant Weeks, Jessie and John's son, either inherited the property or bought it from his mother sometime in the 1940s or 1950s because he was the owner during my childhood in the 50s.

Grant eventually sold the property to my cousin, Lyle Weeks and his wife Judy. Lyle died in late 2006 so the land was then owned by his widow, Judy, although I think one of their sons now lives in the original farmhouse and Judy lives in a new house built at the back of the property. So that son must now own the property.

This makes the ownership of the Farm in "The Family" from at least the 1850s to 2007.

Robert Lester's Story

At her 90th birthday party, with all her children present, Margaret Krech revealed that she had a brother who died at 6 weeks old. For some reason, she had never talked about this in the past. She was bringing it up now because it had always bothered her that a headstone was never placed on the grave. She had tried to find it long ago but with no success. I think she was hoping her children might help her find the final resting place of her brother and help get a headstone placed there...finally.

This summer, Warren and I drove up to South Dakota to visit Warren's brother, Bill. Our primary mission was to locate Robert Lester's grave. We started by visiting the Brookings Public Library's microfiche area. A nice librarian helped us find the birth and death dates of Robert Lester. Knowing that he died on 2-2-22 was a good start. We looked at microfiche of the two weeks following Robert Lester's death.

First go-around, we found nothing, except that there were no "official" obituary notices in the Brookings paper. We did know that Margaret and her family had lived in Aurora, South Dakota at the time and we noticed there were little neighborhood news sections, including one called Aurora News. So we went back to the week of Feb. 9, 1922, found the Aurora News section, and there it was! One small paragraph that spoke volumes.

"The six-weeks-old babe of Mr. and Mrs. Aberly who had been seriously ill for some time passed away Thursday and was laid away in the Aurora cemetery Saturday afternoon. The funeral services were at the home and were conducted by Rev. B. A. Benson of Brookings."

Margaret talked more about Robert Lester when we visited this last week in Arizona. Her most vivid memory of her little brother is that he was very sick almost from the beginning and cried all the time. Her mother fixed up a little bed in the wooden rocking chair and Margaret and her twin sister, Marjorie, stood on either side and held the arms of the rocking chair and slowly rocked the chair to soothe their brother's cries.

After the funeral services, their father put the coffin on the bob sled and led the horses around to the front window so the girls and their older brother, Lyle, could watch as they went down the snowy, bitterly cold, road toward the cemetery.

We later met with the Aurora Cemetery's sexton and after measuring out the area listed in the sexton's records, actually found a small indentation in the ground, just the right size for a small coffin! We had found Robert Lester's grave!


The two nephews took a moment to silently acknowledge their Uncle Robert Lester.

Bill has contacted the Brookings Monument Company and a headstone is in the works. Margaret is so happy that her brother is finally going to have a headstone!

Welcome to "Be Mindful"

Welcome to Be Mindful of Thy Ancestors! I have been looking for a way to publish family photos and videos that explain where the Krechs and Knapps came from.

What about our ancestors has made us all what we are today?

Can we recognize the birth of our Family's Personality in the Struggles of our Ancestors?

This photo, for example:

The John I. Weeks Family Home. My great grandfather and great grandmother had a photo taken of their home on Lincoln Lake Rd. in Grattan Township, Kent County, Michigan. They sat themselves on their front porch with all their children gathered around them. My grandmother, Eva, sits in the wagon.

This photo talks to me of the PRIDE of the family. They were proud of what they had accomplished. A beautiful house, which still stands to this day, still owned by the family. A beautiful family, working together to wrestle a homestead out of the wilderness.