Stoller in a New World

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HENRY STOLLER


Ach-de-lieber! Life has been filled with great rewards and heartaches, building this new land called Dakota Territory, and many times I said to myself, “You dum-khuf! You should have known better!”
My name is Heinrich (Henry) Stoller and I came to this great county, at the age of fourteen in 1872, with my parents, Dominic and Margaretha nee Kost Mundt Stoller, having been born May 8,1858 in Rohrbach South Russia. (Ukraine) Four days later on May 12,1858 I was baptized. On October 8,1872, right before we left Russia, I was confirmed in our Lutheran Church in Worms South Russia

I was the second child of their second marriage. You see, we as farmers worked together as families and groups. My father lost his first wife, Magdalena Bachmann, and had four girls to raise, but couldn't do it by himself. My fathers relatives and his first wife's relatives temporarily shared the burden by splitting up the family and each family taking a child in. When my mothers first husband died my father went to her and offered to marry her and put the two families together. My father lived only one village away from her village and heard that she and her three children were relying on her family for substance. He went to her church to become acquainted with her. This is what a suitor did if he was looking for a marriage. It wasn't necessary to love one another. What was necessary was to have respect for one another and some admiration. Love comes after you're married. And if love didn't come you worked for the common good and learned to get along. It was after death that you received your rewards in heaven!

It must have been a long time for my father to ask for my older half sisters back, because they didn't want to leave the homes they were in. Plus their aunts and uncles didn't want them to leave as well. Father was saddened by their choice, but could understand his girls not wanting to have their lives disrupted once again. Father did raise my two half brothers that my mother had before she married father. My older half sister of my mother's died at the age of twelve, when I was six.

My Great-grandfather Stoller came to South Russia from the province of Alsace through Strasbourg, France as a young man. Groups of families traveled together looking for work, and were landless. Many of us were from the province of Lorraine, where it seemed France and Germany were always fighting. When my ancestors left Lorraine they had a different name. A name that could have been French instead of German. My grandfathers first name should have been spelled Schokab instead of Jakob. The name Stolher could have been a German name that some mothers side had and was changed to Stoller. Since Alsace was mostly German, my ancestors could have felt they needed to fit in. I could say they were a displaced people! In the beginning of the 19th century, Russian agents were looking for people to settle South Russia. (Ukraine) We took the Russian Government up on their offer and left for land. All total the Stoller's were in South Russia about eighty to a hundred years.

In Lorraine, German and French villages lived side by side, with everybody respecting and getting along with each other. But with France and German fighting and disrupting our lives, people left. What I mean by disruptions was, not only drafting our young men into the armies, but also being forced to give and sell food to the armies that we, the people, needed. And not only that but we, at times were commanded to House officers in our homes. This led to other wrongs! As my first wife, Christina Muehlbeier Stoller told me, they had an ancestor that got the the first name of Lorenz, because of a Frenchman that had co-existed with the family.

When Catherine the Great invited Europeans into South Russia with special privileges in 1763, the Stoller's were leery of the Russian Government, but a lot of people left from Europe to South Russia. It was mostly Germanic people that left for South Russia and used the Low German language.

When I turned thirteen in 1871, the Russian Government revoked the privileges the government had given to us, with my father, Dominic Stoller, saying we weren't going to live like Serfs. He started talking and finding out what we could do and how. Old Johannes Sailer from Johannesthal had a brother-in-law who had migrated to Sandusky, Ohio in 1849, along with twenty other families. After writing to Ludwig Bette (Johannes brother-in) Ludwig came back for a visit in July of 1872. He wore fine clothes and bragged how successful he was and how America was the land of opportunity. Four families pledged to migrate to America. They sold their crops, although their crops were still in the field and prepared to leave. Because they were the first ones they encountered difficulties in obtaining passports. Robert Levi, the church secretary, wrote out the applications and other papers, but the four heads of the families had to go to Odessa and Cherson to obtain the necessary papers from the authorities.

Our group was the third group that left Johannesthal that year. We had harvested our crops and sold all our possessions by the middle of October. We sailed on the Silesia from Hamburg, Germany and by the time we got to America it was December 3rd. When we got to Sandusky, Ohio we discovered the second group wasn't there. A few days later they came with a tale of how they almost lost their lives at sea, due to a storm, and how they had to turn back because the ship was so damaged. They had boarded another ship and were thankful to be alive.

That winter I worked for two months for a farmer outside of town. He and his family went to the same church that we and Ludwig Bette went to. For two months I stayed with the farmer during the week and though they could speak German, they would only speak English so I would learn the language.

By the end of February the men had decided to send a few men west to find land. My father, Dominick, was one of them. Our minister, Pastor Schaf, drew up a route for the twelve men that went, along with letters to pastors and people along the way. They went to Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois. They found land, but not a lot of land in one area. They went to Nebraska, only to find land that belonged to the railroad and had a price on it. Some people could not buy land because they were young and had no money to buy land with. In Nebraska they were advised to go to Yankton and the Dakota Territory, where they found large tracts of Homestead land. We took up land north west of Yankton. It was called the Odessa Township of Yankton County since Odessa was a providence of South Russia, (Ukraine) were we migrated from.

It was at this time that my father, Dominick did a thing that was possibly, unlawful. He registered land in his Dad's name and brothers name, thinking that he wanted his family around him when they came to America. Father had the money to pay for the registering of land in his Father's and brother's names. Years later we told everyone that my father had bought the land outright, which was a lie. His Dad's name he wrote down that he was two years older then Dominick, and the wives were all given the same name as my Mother's name. Two and a half years later, we had a feeling that Dominick paid for his deceit with his life.

By June of that year we had been given a post office and mail was delivered by stagecoach to the Jacob Mutschelknaus farm. Four years later, Henry Rudd, who lived six miles away, opened a stagecoach stop with meals, and named the stagecoach stop after his grandson Lester. Later on when the train came through in '81', he moved two miles to the west, to what was known as Moscow, Dakota Territory. Moscow at that time was a place the train stopped. The name Moscow was dropped and changed to the town of Lesterville.

When we settled in Odessa Township, Yankton was twenty two miles from us and was the closest town around. We came too late in the spring of '73' to plant any crops but we built houses and claim shacks, put in gardens, put up hay, and broke sod. My father put up a horse barn and bought oats, to keep the horses strong. He was a firm believer in putting the animals needs first before our own needs and wants. My father had owned land in South Russia, selling it to a man that wanted it and received a good price for it. Because of his good fortune he was able to buy lumber and hire help to turn the homestead into a working farm, before a lot of our neighbors could. One of the things he was hoping to do was plant grapes like his ancestors had in Alsace, France.

In the late summer of '73' my Mother's relatives came from the Berezan Colony of Worms, South Russia. The Kost's and the Muehlbeier's were brothers and cousins to my mother. Also on the ship Thuringia were the familys of Surr's who were second and third cousins to us. With all the relatives around that fall, it was fun and not work, finishing the house and barns, while plowing and getting ready for winter. Jocob J Muehlbeier was a year older then me and his sister, Christina, was a year younger then me, with a lot of other fun children around besides.

The Muehlbeier children had a sister that didn't make the trip from South Russia. She was less then nine months old when she died coming from Sioux City to Yankton. Her mother held her until they got to my fathers place. Her mother said she never was of a strong constitution and had caught something along the way. With the death came the subject of a cemetery and where it had to be. Jacob Mutschelknaus offered to sell a plot of land for a church and grave site for our Lutheran faith. We all agreed to share in the expense, even though a free and clear title was not to be had until Jacob proved up on his quarter. We felt it was an act of faith and brotherly love when we built our church the following summer.

On January 5,1874 Andreas and Sophia Bertsch had a baby boy. Before they moved to their claim at Wolf Creek, Pastor Jacob Orth baptized the little boy and he was named Ludwig. Sophia had wanted to name him Andreas after his father, which would have made him Andreas A. The A would have stood for who his father was. Andreas said he would have called him Zig regardless.

Pastor Orth also married my older sister, Magdelina to Henry Schortzman on March 8 of that year. That fall Pastor Orth went to seminary and became a Reformed Minister and planted a church in Scotland as well as the Odessa Township. Ten years later in very cold weather, while going from church to church, he became ill, because of the cold, and died, leaving behind a wife and thirteen children.

In '74' we got our summer crops into bundles before the grasshoppers got real bad. Yankton still had the closest elevator to us, and there were people that would freight our grain to Yankton for a fee. There were stories around and about of grain and freighters disappearing, so father always made sure he knew the person that was hauling and where he lived. He also planned by '75' to have storage for grain and a big grain wagon for his horses.

Grasshoppers had been a big problem with the grasshoppers coming in like a cloud overnight, trying to eat everything in sight, then laying their eggs, before dying or leaving. They seemed to be with us for a month. We gathered our wheat and oats bundles together and tried to keep the grasshoppers off of our piles until the grasshoppers ran their course so we could thresh our grain and put it away or sell it. That fall everyone was busy breaking sod, burning grass, and praying the grasshoppers didn't come back the next year.

In '74' all we had for thrashing our grain was an axle, with rolling stones, shaped like a five foot long by two foot high stones, made from Limestone. The stones had a hole through the center of the stones and pulled by horses around in a circle of hard packed ground. After the straw had been crushed we threw the straw into the air with pitch forks to separate the straw from the grain. The next year we used a horse powered stationary threshing machine. By the '1900's I was one of the first farmers to have a steam engine driven stationary threshing machine. Together with my brothers help, we threshed my crops, as well as my brothers and neighbors crops. It was hard work, but also another source of income and profit.

That fall and winter was cold with a lot of snow. It was April in '75' before we could start planting our crops. We couldn't believe how lush the crops were that summer. One day after the wheat was ripe, with us working to put it down and bundle it up, a humming black cloud came over and blotted out the late afternoon sun. The next morning everything was normal with us talking about the strange occurrence, thinking it had to have been a swarm of grasshoppers. Later in the month we were told that Iowa was infected with grasshoppers that year. We knew God was with us!

In '75' we grew some corn and we were busy that fall picking the ears off of the stalks till the middle of November. We later found out that if you had a picking mitt and a bang board on the wagon that you filled, the harvest went much faster. Father didn't haul wheat to Yankton until after the corn was in. We would load the one hundred bushels into the wagon, with our steel grain shovel one day, with father making the trip to Yankton the next day. Father felt that by the end of February all the wheat would be sold.

Father also inquired at the locker plant and meat market in Yankton, to see if they would be needing more farmers to raise pigs for them and what they would pay and how many pigs they would promise to buy every week from him. We as farmers raised our own meat, but father was thinking that the people in Yankton would create a market we could sell to. We could raise more corn if we could feed it to animals for a profit. That winter a couple of ears of corn a day to the cows helped winter them through the cold. We also found that winter, that we could use the cobs to burn in our stoves.

By Christmas we had a lot of snow with February coming in like a lion. Father was worried he wouldn't get all the wheat to Yankton before the ground got soft in the spring. He would then have problems getting the wagon stuck on the roads. We had the wagon loaded for two weeks with grain till March the eighth came. The weather was calm and cold when father left for Yankton to deliver the wheat.

The horses on the way home must have still been 'feeling their oats' because they jerked the reins out of fathers hands and took off. They threw him out of the wagon and came home. When the horses got home we went looking for father and found him still alive but unconscious. Three days later he went into a epileptic seizure and died. The Doctor said the brain was damaged and swollen. We were all grief-stricken while mother was beside herself. I told her not to worry, we would manage. She said two husbands was enough. She was never going to get married again! That summer Andreas and Sophia came and stayed with us with Sophia being a big help to mother.

When father died, I discovered some things only Mom knew about. My Father had been telling some untruths to the neighbors and us children. My Father had Homesteaded two more one hundred sixty acre plots of land and had put them in his Dad's name, Johann Jacob and a brother, Gottlieb. To make matters worse, all three allotments had a wife's name of Margaretha, which was my Mother's name. After the shock of what my Father had done, and our Mother telling what Father had tried to do, which was trying to get his Dad and Brother land that would be close to use, I told my Mother what I thought she should do! Which was, pay a penalty and prove up early. My Mother obtained ownership of the land.

I myself, didn't think we needed help. I turned seventeen that spring with my brother John turning fourteen, my brother Jacob was already eleven, my brother Fredrich turned nine the day father died and my brother George was seven. With my sister, Elisabeth, turning sixteen that April, I felt we had all the help we needed to farm. But Andreas was a big help, with Andreas and I learning from each other.

We did get more diversified as time passed over the next years. In the winter we would sell excess grain. March and April we would plant wheat, oats and barley. May we would plant corn, plus keep some ground bare (black) for planting winter wheat in the fall. June and July we would put up hay plus cultivate weeds out of the corn. July and August we would be bundling, shocking, and thrashing small grain. August and September we would be cutting wood to keep the house warm in the winter, plus haul grain to town. October and November we would be picking corn by hand and putting it into a corn crib. All year long we would be milking cows and taking care of pigs and chickens as well as butchering our own meat. On Sundays we would go to church, have extended family over, go courting, read the bible, and take afternoon naps, as well as milk the cows and do the chores.

We all came from close nit families, attended the same church, quit school after the eighth grade, and married someone our own age. Marrying your first cousin was frowned upon, but first cousins once removed was considered all right. I enjoyed being around Christina Muehlbeier, so I was glad she was my second cousin. In 1879 on December 9th I married Christina and homesteaded four miles from home. I was over twenty years old, and besides, my brother John was old enough to do what was needed to help mother. My brother Fredrich, who, having been infected with Hepatitis C, was not doing well, but the rest of the children were a big help. We still exchanged work and farm machinery, so you could say everything was the same, we just farmed more land.

The next year, nine months and nine days, from the date we were married, we had a beautiful little girl that we named Sophia, born August 18th 1880. The next year on November 6th 1881 our little girl Paulina was born, but died shortly after that. For a little while Christina was afraid of living, but you have to go on. Our Katherine was born one year later on November 25th 1882. She was a very healthy and happy baby. In January 27th 1884 our little girl Helena was born and two years latter we had a son, David Jacob Stoller, born January 25th 1886. With our growing family, was my sister that married my cousin once removed, Jacob Kost, and his sister, Elisabeth, married to my brother, John. My Beatha was born on May 8th 1887 and my son, Henry was born almost two years later on March 28th 1889. Two years later our daughter, Eva, was born- January 15th 1891. A year and a half later on June 18th 1892 my son, George, was born.

Through these past twelve years our lives had been going by with so many blessings that I could only view them in amazement. Not only did we have eight wonderful children, our lives in the Dakota Territory had been so rewarding. I had built a good home for my family, my homestead was without debt, and I was buying a quarter next to us from my first cousin once removed and her husband, Karl and Barbara nee Bertsch Jasman.

On May 14th 1894, our daughter, Christine was born, but two years later she died due to an epidemic of diphtheria. The whole countryside was sick including my children and me. My son, Henry, died on April 20th 1896, being only seven years old. My wife, Christina, was completely distraught! So much so that she would sit for hours staring into space. Our oldest daughter, Sophia, was sixteen that year and a big help for me, in holding everything together in our time of grief. That fall on November 28th 1896, our daughter, Henrietta Christina was born. With Henrietta's birth, she also brought my wife back to us, becoming the warm and loving mother she had been before our loss. A year and a half later, on May 30th 1898, our son, Theodore, (Teddy) was born.

I had always felt if we had been able to share our concerns with the Russian Government in 1871, about our rights and the needed rights of the Russian people, my family would not have needed to leave Russia. In 1898 I volunteered and was elected to serve in 1900, as a representative to the State Legislative Body in Pierre (Peer) South Dakota. I came home in time to put the crops in and see my son Emil, born.

So many times when one becomes puffed up and feeling like he's on top of the world, the Lord will take you down. On March 29th 1902 my son, Gustav, was born. A week later he died from influenza, along with my son Emil. On April the 20th Teddy died, and days later my wife died.

My daughter, Sophia, was already married to Gustav Muchelknaus, so my daughter Kathy, who was nineteen, and daughter Hellen, who just turned eighteen, were vary much needed to run the household. David, who was sixteen, and I, got the crops planted, with all of us doing the best we could. Beatha, Eva, George, and Henrietta were all a big help, even though our youngest was only five years old.

That summer the Republican Party, once again, convinced me to run for the South Dakota Legislature. It also came to my attention that a widow that was ten years younger then me had moved to Scotland and started going to our church. She brought some equity into the marriage, but also some responsibility. Her first husband had been a widower with five children, with them having three more children before he died. I agreed with Katherine that I would be responsible in getting the five boys of hers started farming as well as my own. Gottlieb, the first son, was already on the home place, and I felt he should buy some of it. Christian was twenty, and we needed to make him a land purchase. I bought a quarter for Christian with the understanding that Gottlieb and Christian would pay us for two quarters with interest. In case of a crop failure, the payment would be delayed for one year. As each boy reached twenty one they would have a quarter to make payments on instead of share-cropping to get a start.

On December 15th 1902, I married my second wife, Katherine nee Reich Herr Stoller. I would always remember the wife of my youth, but this had to be! If not for us, we had to for the loved ones we were responsible for. In January, Katherine and I traveled to Pierre to attend the 1903 Legislative Session for six weeks while leaving the children at home to take care of each other and learn to get along with one another. Katherine and I got to know each other much better also.

Two and a half years later Katherine and I had a little boy named William, (Bill) born August 19th 1904. In 1906 Katherine was once again with child and I had agreed to run for a four year term for the Yankton County Commissioners. I won the election and three weeks later on November 25th 1906 my son Emil was born. On July 18th 1908 my son Albert (Jack) was born. Two and a half years later on February 13th 1911 my son, Benjamin (Ben) was born. In May of that year I turned fifty three. My youngest four boys would probably always think of me as an old man, especially Ben.

As the boys turned twenty one, I was purchasing land for them to buy, at the same time trying to keep Katherine's money invested. In 1909, I was asked to buy shares in a new bank in Scotland. We called our new venture the Bon-Home County Bank. A telephone company was being formed in Lesterville about the same time and it was looking for investors. I thought the bank was a safer investment, although if I had known that in a few years I could call my cousin in New York and talk to him, I probably would have bought shares. In 1909, I felt the phone was a convenience for the business man in Lesterville, to the extent that their wives could call them at the end of the day to bring home groceries.

In 1913, I became the Bank President. That summer Katherine and I along with seven of our children moved to town. My son George stayed on the home place and bought it from me. During this time I also formed and incorporate the German Mutual Insurance Co. We had a vary big need for the insuring of our farm building and other farm property to be covered at a realistic cost to the farmer.

In 1915, Scotland supported an article in our papers describing what the town had done since it was organized in 1885, thirty years past. We had a population of twelve hundred people, eight churches, an opera house, a hotel, (which cost a person $2.25 a night to stay) an electric plant and water works, a telephone company, three grain elevators, plus a railroad (Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul). We had two Veterinarian Practitioners, two blacksmiths, three hardware and general stores, a plumber, a stable, a tinsmith, three real estate agents, two lumber yards, three pubs, one brewer, two poolrooms, two lawyers, two barbers, and a clothes maker, (milliner) and a man that fixed and sold automobiles.

Land was at a rise that year and selling for seven-five to one hundred thirty-five dollars per-acre.
My bank had grown to fifteen thousand in invested capital with five thousand in surplus.

Six years after I became Bank President we were in the middle of First World War. I sold my shares and resigned! Young people in the area did not like the conservative approach I gave banking. Because of the war, we as Germans went from being called 'Rooshuns' and 'Germans' to 'Huns', even 'Krautes' to our faces, and worse behind them. One business proprietor in Lesterville was even tarred and feathered one night because he did business with 'Germans'.

We moved to Menno and I bought stocks and bonds in the Stock Market. Land prices continued to go up, but with the crops that we could raise on our land, it was worth two hundred dollars per-acre. By the mid 1920's I had five farms, plus George's west quarter, that was in my name, with a lien against them all. George had the home place paid for with the west quarter almost paid for. When the Stock Market crashed in 1929, I found myself owing more then Katherine and I was worth. George went to the bank and paid me the rest that was owed and I gave him the title. In the 1930's, land prices kept plummeting till the land bottomed out at fifteen to twenty dollars per-acres. George always felt that he had paid way more then the land was worth. In 1933, my stepdaughter, Amelia nee Herr Weidenbach wrote to us, asking if we would go to Shafter, CA. and stay with them. In '34' we left Menno, with my son Emil and me driving the car. It took us nine days traveling to reach Shafter, CA.

When we arrived in California my four boys found land to farm and we started over. Nephews and other relatives resettled all along the west coast and now we're farming once again, even growing grapes like we did when we lived along the Rhine.

THE END

P.S. Heinrich (Henry) Stoller died on May 3,1956, three days short of being ninety eight, and his wife, Katherine, died the following year on August 19th 1957.

Footnote: The slang or saying of, “feeling their oats' go's back to farming with horses when oats was given to draft horses during the winter to build up muscles and energy for work in the fields, come spring. 'Feeling their oats' got to be an expression that extended to the children when they were full of energy and running around the yard.