HISTORY OF HOW OUR FAMILIES CAME TO AMERICA
By Theresia Stahlecker Kramer-Written in 1980's
Published in 2003 Family History compiled by Irene KRAMER Hilt and Doris KRAMER Barchenger

Our forefathers immigrated [sic] from Germany to Russia in the late 1700's or the early 1800's. Their immigration to America came in the later 1800's. They came for freedom and also so the sons would not have to register for the draft.

The Stahlecker grandparents came in 1873 when their oldest son was only 2 or 3 years old. They had eleven children. Great-grandma accompanied them. Great-grandpa had passed away already. Great-grandma lived to be 92 years old. She was blind, crippled, and bedfast. When she needed more care than grandma could give her, they came to live with our family because we had more girls to help with her care. Great-grandma passed away at our house. After she died, grandma went back to her own house again.

Our father was born in Columbus, Nebraska, in 1876. He was the second oldest child in their family. They moved to Scotland, South Dakota. Most of the children were born in Tripp, South Dakota. They moved to Colorado in 1893 and bought the farm 3/4 mile north of the Lutheran church from A. W. Adolf's father. There were two houses on the farm they bought. When other new settlers came to Colorado, they would move in the little house until they had their own homes established. This little house was occupied most of the time. Our Grandpa loved to sing and people would meet at their house quite often for song fests. [sec]

The Doblers came to America in 1885. They had 16 children. Eight of their children died in infancy and the other eight survived to come to America. Grandpa was a carpenter by trade, and built mostly wagons. They had also farmed in Russia.

In Russia they lived in villages. Their farm ground was further away and was referred to as "On the stepp". They had to bring their machinery home every evening or it would be stolen by the Russians. They probably only had a plow and a harrow. There were no pastures close by so the villagers hired a herder for each type of livestock. Mother told us they would start out for the pasture and they would call out that the sheep herder or goose herder was leaving. The other villagers would turn out their stock and the herders would take them out to pasture for the day. Again in the evening as the herders would arrive back at the village with their herds, they would call out that they were back. The other villagers would take their own stock and lock it up for the night. If they did not lock everything up, it would all be stolen through the night. The villagers hired Russian women to hoe their fields and gardens. When these women came to work, they had their hoes over their shoulders and would come singing all the way. Grandma would cook a big pot of borscht or vegetable soup for them to eat. She would take the pot out in the yard and set it on the ground, give each woman a spoon and they would sit around the kettle and eat out of the pot.

Mother was eleven years old when they came to America. She was the second youngest of the surviving eight children. They were on the ship 14 days with several other families. Her mother was sick all they way as were most of the children. It must have been a chore to care for them all.
When they came to America, they could not speak any English. They were hungry, very homesick and cried a lot. Their father was out of money. Another German farmer came along and gave them bread, cheese and sausage. He helped them to a hotel and helped them to the train. They moved to Scotland, South Dakota where they moved into a small house. Everyone had to work except the youngest son. Mother worked three or four miles from their house and had to walk. One of Mother's chores was to twist straw in tight bundles to fire the Russian oven built of adobe. This oven was used to cook, bake and heat the house. It was fired up once a day and stayed warm through the day. Mother would get very homesick and would go to the straw stack, twist straw, cry for home and freeze. She got Sunday off after chores until evening chores. She would run home and back so she could be home longer. Then she started working for another family who had three children. She did housework and babysitting. She was confirmed here. Her mother passed away in 1889. She was sickly but it was mostly from being homesick for her family who were scattered all over and also homesick for Russia.

In 1890 they came to Colorado on the train to Saint Francis, Kansas. From there they loaded everything in the wagon and came to the "Settlement". Grandpa Dobler homesteaded the quarter of land where Hope United Church is now. They built a dugout that had a dirt floor, very small windows and little else in it. Mother planted geraniums and said they bloomed nicer here than anywhere else.
They wanted to worship so they gathered in grandpa's house and he would read the sermon for the services there. Once in a while a minister would come and hold services for them. He would do the Baptizing, marriages and any other services he could for them. In 1892 they built the brick church. Each member had a certain amount of loads of rock to haul for the building of the church for a donation. They got their own minister and named it Immanuel Lutheran Church.

My folks were married on September 11, 1898. They had eleven children together. They started their married life in Grandpa's little house. Dad was sick before their wedding day. That morning they had a blizzard. The minister came to the house and performed the marriage there. Dad's illness was Typhoid Fever. They were quarantined for six weeks. What a honeymoon!

Dad worked for different places. He tried to farm. He quit this and started to work for the railroad. They lived in Burlington at this time. Here one sister, age 2 years old, died of diphtheria. Dad also had this illness but he recovered. Mary was born here. Next they moved to the "Norman Meyer" place. This is 1 mile south and one mile west of the Immanuel Lutheran Church. While they lived here, five of us children were born. I barely remember the sod house we lived in. The house, the buggy shed and the barn were all under one roof. It had a sod roof. When it rained, the roof would leak. Pots and pans were all out to catch the water. Mother would sprinkle the floor with water before she would sweep to help settle the dust. Saturday was the day to "mop" the floor. We kids had to go to the pasture and get the yellow lime dirt from the prairie dog holes. We would pick some grass bushes, tie them tightly together and use them to brush the lime mixed with water over the floor. When it dried, it would help seal the floor and lighten the house.

I was four or five years old when they built a "modem" house. It was made of adobe, had four square rooms and a pantry, no clothes closets, a shingle roof and a wooden floor. The kitchen was papered with an oil cloth so it could be washed off. The bedrooms were whitewashed with lime. Lime was bought in chunks. Mother would put a few chunks in a tub and pour water over it. It would boil up like lye. When it was dissolved, she put it in an airtight container. It would keep for a long time this way. If it got hard, it could not be used again.

They would get bluing, that would not be neutralized by the lime, and use it to tint the lime. This was used to paint the walls and ceiling. The bluing was then mixed with water and applied with a corn cob in whatever width you wanted for the borders. The cob was rolled in the bluing and then lightly on the wall below the ceiling. It made a nice design border. Mary loved to do this so much that at times she had borders around the doors, windows and above the mopboards too. The lime was also used to kill mites in the chicken house and was used in the milk house.

We girls had to help with farming because we only had one older brother and us five girls until the next brother was born. We walked to school in the Spring and Fall when Dad needed the horses for farming. In the winter we had one horse hitched to a buggy and could ride to school. There was a barn at school and all the horses were unhitched and stayed in the barn until it was time to go home from school. We had to go 2'/2 miles to school then. Later we moved four miles north of Bethune and had to go 3 1/2 miles to school by walking or the horse and buggy in the winter. When I was in seventh grade, we moved to Mosca, Colorado, near Alamosa, Colorado. A bus took us to school in town. It was a four room school with more children in one room than we had in the whole school here. It was an eight grade school. It was a big adjustment for me to make. The first school here had five or six big boys in it besides all the other children, but the teachers were strict and made them behave even if it meant punishment. Our parents would back up the teachers on the discipline. If we got a spanking at school, we'd for sure get another one at home, too.

Our Big Family
Dad would buy material in bolts to make our clothing. All of our dresses were made from the same pattern but had different trim so we could tell them apart. If one of us grew out of the pattern, Mother would take a newspaper and cut out a larger pattern. The dress always had another girl to grow into it. We had two dresses for school to change once a week and one dress for Sunday. We had to change into our good dress right before we were ready to go to church and out of it as soon as we got home so it wouldn't get dirty so fast. Our underwear was all home sewn too. A bolt or two of flannel for winter underwear was bought and flour sacks provided the material for summer underwear.

Washing
Water had to be carried in and out again. We heated it on the range in a wash boiler. We had a tub, washboard and homemade soap to work with. The clothes were rubbed on the board to clean them. The white clothes were boiled to get them clean. The dark clothes were rubbed twice, then rinsed and hung out on the line to dry. If we ran out of clothesline, we would use the Barbwire fence. If we smaller kids would bring them in, we would sometimes have small holes in them from the barbs. In the Winter the clothes would freeze and it was hard to get all the washing over with in one day. Then came the washing machine! It had a handle to push back and forth and up and down to agitate the clothes. The lid had an attachment with four knobs that moved back and forth also. It had a wringer to turn by a handle-no more hand wringing. After the hand crank machine came the gas motor and then the electric motor on the washer. Now we even have an electric clothes dryer.

Ironing
Mother had a mangel [sic] iron. It had a roller like a rolling pin, only longer and no handles. Then a 2X4 board with one handle and curves on the underside. She would roll this back and forth over the roller until it was straight. We had a set of irons, usually three and one handle. These were heated on the range. When one side was cold, it went back on the range and we got another hot one again. Next came the gas iron, then the electric iron and now no-iron material.

Beds
In Russia they had feather beds. Here they had straw sacks. This was a sack made as large as the bed with a slit in the middle and a couple of ties. It was filled after harvest with new straw every year. It was laid on boards in the bed to keep it up. The ties were untied to fluff up the straw and then tied back up again. We used a small quilt to cover the slit and then a sheet or blanket next and the rest of the bedcovers. After more corn was being raised, the soft cornhusks were used in place of the straw. We small kids had to go along to pick up the soft husks when the corn was harvested. We would put them in a gunnysack and gather enough for three or four beds. Sometimes they would snap corn, pile it up at home and shuck it there. Then came bedsprings with the mattress, interspring [sic] mattresses and now waterbeds.

Stoves
Russian ovens. Grandpa Adolf was the only one here to have one of these. Next came the black cast-iron stove. You could buy polish to make it shine. Then came the granite range. It was an improvement because it could be washed off after use. When the coal oil stoves came to cook and heat with, we had no more fuel to carry in and ashes to carry out. Then came the gas ranges, propane ranges, electric ranges and now microwaves.

Fuel
At first when little com was raised we had few corncobs to use for fuel. We would feed the hogs ear corn. When they had it eaten off, we would pick up the cobs out of the pigpen. Some of them were very messy and we would throw them outside to dry out and bum them later. These would burn longer than the clean cobs but smelled much worse. We all burned cowchips then too. We would put a double box on the wagon taking along a lunch to eat and head out to pick up cowchips wherever we would find them. If no one was ahead of you, it didn't take long to fill the wagon, but sometimes we would have to go as far as to the river. We had few sheds then and the cowchips needed to be kept dry to burn so we would build a shed with them. We used the bigger ones for the outside walls, filling the middle with the smaller ones and heaping them up to make a rounded top. We would then take fresh cow manure and plaster it over this. It would stay dry all winter. When we needed to use some of these cowchips, we would dig a hole in the side, take what we needed and cover the hole with a blanket to keep out the snow. We would also go along the railroad tracks and pick up coal that was scattered when they fired the steam engines. If a train would come along and a good hearted fireman was on, he would throw a few shovels full out so we had more to pick up. Coal could be bought if we could afford it. As more corn was raised, less cowchips were burned.

Gardening
Everyone raised a garden. We had big 50 gallon vinegar barrels to store some food in. There were usually two barrels, one filled with dill pickles and one with sauerkraut.- Dad used a stomper to stomp the kraut down in the barrel, but Bill remembers that he had to wash his feet clean and go in and stomp it down by foot. Beans and potatoes were raised. We also milked a bunch of cows. We drank the separated milk and sold the cream and some eggs to buy flour, sugar and other supplies. We ate a lot of meals made with flour and drank milk or ate corn mush. All the bread was baked at home. We butchered beef in the winter when it would keep longer. Pork was also butchered and the hams and bacon were cured. Mother would also fry up the pork and put in in a crock, cover it with lard and use it later. We also ate a lot of jackrabbits, young pigeons and sometimes we had frying chickens in the summer. We had to butcher these in the morning to serve at the noon meal so the meat would not spoil. Later we canned meats and vegetables. Then came the deep freeze for longer storage and now food is available as you need it over the counter.

We were married in 1928 and had three children. "The boys came to Mosca from the "Settlement" to get us girls back to Bethune". We had our good years and bad years. In the "Dirty Thirties" and again in the Fifties, we were back to eating jackrabbits and beans, grinding our own wheat and corn, picking up cow chips to burn and carrying out ashes.

This shows some of the changes and also the blessings since our families first came to America. But the greatest blessing is that we still have our worship services that started in our grandparents houses. The Church kept going in the good years and the bad years. It spread to Hope Congregational, now Hope United. Then it spread in the community, state and out into the world. I'm sure everyone here can trace their ancestors back to the start of their Church, how it grew and how it continues today. We can all gather together to worship where we feel the happiest because God has been the leader of our grandparents, our parents, us, our children and our children's children, and he will be, as long as we keep our Faith in Him.

Updated Information by Irene Hilt-October 2000
After getting married, Bill and Theresia moved into the two-room (kitchen and bedroom) house. The two attic rooms were used by Norman and Irene for bedrooms when they got older. Water was piped down the hill from the windmill. There was carbide lighting. The cook stove heated the kitchen and a potbellied stove kept the bedroom warm. The porch was enclosed later and used as a summer kitchen with a kerosene stove. Bathroom facilities were the outhouse behind the chicken house and a washtub for the Saturday night bath.

By the end of 1947 the new house was finished and we moved in. The new house had all the modem conveniences. The electricity was supplied by a propane generator until REA reached the area.
In April of 1985 Judy and her two sons were helping Bill and Theresia install a new hot water heater. Unfortunately it was faulty and exploded. Everyone got out of the house safely before it burned, but everything in the house was lost.

Thanks to Fred Gramm and the help of the community and surrounding area, a new house was completed by the fall of 1985. Bill and Theresia enjoyed their new home until 1994 when their health forced them to have a farm sale. At that time they moved to Bethune, Colorado.

Cousin Alice Stahlecker came to stay with Bill and Theresia in 1995 to help Theresia take care of Bill as his health began to fail. What a blessing Alice was to all of us. Bill passed away July 3, 1997 at Grace Manor in Burlington. Theresia lived in her home in Bethune until November of 2000 when her health forced her to move into Burlington Care Center. After her health deteriorated further, she moved to Grace Manor where she passed away on January 17, 2001.

Both Bill and Theresia were very active at Immanuel Lutheran Church all of their lives. Bill served on the church council and Theresia taught Sunday School for many years. She was also an active member of the women's group.

Bill and Theresia were also active participants in other community activities being members of the K.C. Electric, Farm Bureau and Co-Op. They were both 4-H leaders during the years their children were growing up. Later they became involved in senior activities both in Stratton and Burlington. Theresia was known for the skits and readings she presented at many gatherings. Their lives and the lives of the Settlement Community were much richer because of their involvement in clubs and church activities.