Sutton - Always a Farming Town, But Things have Changed.

by Jerry Johnson of The Sutton Historical Society

Farming has been the primary raison d’etre for the town of Sutton since its beginning. Luther French did not file for his homestead in 1870 with an eye toward founding a town; he was a farmer just looking for a place to grow wheat, six acres of it that first year in his dugout.

French and those Swedish farmers a few miles west along School Creek were attracted by miles and miles of available land suitable for farming. They were ready to recreate the farming models of their fathers back east and in the Old Country.

The first town’s people who came in 1871 saw School Creek and the prospect of the railroad as an opportunity to build a town to support farmers who were to come. The railroad station would become hub for shipping out grain and livestock and shipping in supplies and material, machinery and wholesale goods, all with good profit potential.

Agriculture has been the economic basis of this area for over 140 years and continues to be so today. But the nature of that agriculture has changed in several ways during that period.

We look back on the farming model for much of that period, from about the 1880’s through the 1950’s with some nostalgia, don’t we? The land around Sutton was filled with small farms with a neat arrangement of outbuildings around two-story, white frame houses full of kids. A quarter of a section was a common size for the typical farm. Many farm couples were skilled enough to raise a family on an eighty.



Historic farmsteads had a variety of functional outbuildings beyond the house: barn, hog houses, chicken houses, garage,
shops, cribs plus pens for livestock - homes to a menagerie.

Our mental picture of those typical farms of 60 or more years ago is much different from what we see around Sutton today. But exactly what has changed and why?

There are lots of easy answers to that question. Mechanization replaced horses with tractors, two-row equipment with four, six and “x-row” equipment enabling one fellow to do more and more leading to fewer and fewer farmers with more and more land. The population declined, farmsteads disappeared and fewer Sutton High grads kept the 68979 zip code, or even the 402 area code.

Nothing new about that observation but let’s look at it a bit more closely.

Crops.

Luther French grew wheat along School Creek in 1870. Wheat was a popular crop among those first waves of settlers. Corn made its claim as an important crop but it probably wasn’t so obvious then that corn would dominate as the long term crop choice.

Crops on a typical farm during those first 70 years of Sutton’s growth might have included oats, barley, alfalfa and prairie hay. Many farmers of 50 or 60 years ago considered milo to be a better cash crop than corn. Milo, or grain sorghum had replaced wheat as the second crop by that time. There was even some forage sorghum around.

Here and there a duck, duck.

There were a few farmers 50 years ago who even took a run at raising castor beans – an unusual choice considering its dual purposes as animal feed and poison. Castor beans (not really beans) seem to have been around quite a while – Willa Cather mentioned them in one of her novels and Agatha Christie chose them as the poison in one of her mysteries. But I digress.

Our early settlers came from forested areas back east or in Europe. The treeless plains did not look like home and planting trees was a priority from the start. Sutton street names testify to nostalgia for trees. Planting an orchard on the farmstead was a practical means to break up the flat horizon.

Soybeans are the newest star on the list of Sutton area crops sharing domination with the long-time star, corn. Do they have staying power; will corn and soybeans still dominate in 2060 as they do today? How much milo, wheat, oats, barley do we see around here today? Not much.

Livestock.

Farmsteads through much of our history resembled menageries. Early farms were powered by horses and mules making a good-sized pasture a necessity plus consuming a good percentage of the farm output of corn and oats for fuel, almost one-third.

Pastures also accommodated herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, and even goats. Back by the barns there were often hog houses and almost always chicken houses, sometimes even ducks and geese around the yard – a menagerie.

Few farms were without a flock of chickens - roosters and
eggs for the table and more eggs to fill 15 or 30 dozen crates
to take to town on Saturday night. Egg and cream income
could support the weekly grocery bill.

Among the cattle on most farms were a few milk cows. A bit of the whole milk went on the table, the rest went through the cream separator. Skim milk mixed well with ground feed for the hogs; the cream went with eggs to town on Saturday night and generated enough revenue for the weekly groceries. It was a great business model for the times.

Diversity.

Yes, it was a great business model. With several different crops in the field, a failure of any one was a problem, not a catastrophe. Even with a general crop failure, there were pigs eating stuff, even weeds which could generate income. Milk cows and laying hens were nearly weather resistant too. It was a business model that would make a decent MBA case study.

Self-sufficiency.

The characteristic of farms of 50 to 100 years ago that we remember and admire is self-sufficiency. Those farm families on small farms were a little world of their own producing and consuming in a tight economic circle. A small amount of surplus was traded in the local town for that short list of things not producible on the farm and it was a short list.

A farmer’s shop was a carpenter’s shop, a blacksmith shop, mechanic’s shop and much more. A corner of the barn resembled a veterinarian’s office and out behind the barn was a near-infinite supply of fertilizer. Those farms had a wide assortment of self-contained resources just needing a clever and skilled fellow to make it all work, and every farm had one of those plus teen and younger apprentices.

Cattle and hogs were the most popular livestock for the family
farm but sheep had their place in the farm economy of 60+
years ago.

So what has happened since?

There remains a rich legacy of those days on today’s farms to one degree or another. But it is not the same. Diversity and self-sufficiency have given way to specialization and efficiency.

A high percentage of farms grow corn and/or soybeans and no other crops. Barns are useful on fewer and fewer farms; how far and which way from Sutton would we need to drive tonight to find someone milking cows? I know where to go to see a “hog house” but it is not the same. How many kids in Clay County went out to the hen house to gather eggs today? Not many. (I almost forgot the verb we used, “gather.”) There is a milo field over near Fairmont and I’ve seen a couple of wheat fields this summer.

Progress(?).

The changes from 1950’s and earlier farming practices to those of today were all conscious decisions made by smart people. On a macro level, our area agricultural industry is unprecedented in terms of production levels, quality of product, efficiency and many other metrics. But there has been a price. We’ve lost something that is now only a memory for decreasing numbers of us. Sad.

The displays and the livestock barns at the state fair are anachronisms. It is almost as though the 4-H and FFA systems are performing some of the functions of a museum, but a museum aimed at the correct demographic, youth. They are preserving at least some of the images of the widespread diversity of early area farming more than they are reflecting today’s world.

The tradition and heritage of Sutton area agriculture is a good story and one we should be proud of. The Sutton Historical Society has previously touched on some of the aspects of the story such as the invention of the round baler, the shared labor of threshers, corn shellers and hay stackers and other aspects of that first half of our recorded history. It was a relatively short period of time existing almost entirely between the 1870’s and the 1960’s and then it faded.

I use a joke to give my personal memory of how that era faded. Our team, Judy and Rudy were sold when I was five or six years old and are among my very earliest memories. Our hog operation ended when the barn we used for a hog house deteriorated past the point it could have been repaired or restored. We stopped the spring chick buy at the York Hatchery only after my complaining about caring for dumb chickens reached some critical point – though I probably give myself more credit for that than I deserve – I think. But I do know we stopped milking cows exactly as I went off to college.

Whatever the more widespread reasons for the fading of that era might be, it did happen around the 1960’s as the scale of machinery ramped up boosting the scale of farm operations. Specialization and concentrating on fewer, but larger operations took over.

We can’t go back.

Progress.

This article first appeared in the September, 2013 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. Contact Jarod Griess at 402-984-4302 or at neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com for further information about this publication dedicated to the Sutton community.

 

The Homestead Acts

by Jerry Johnson of the Sutton Historical Society and Ken Nelson of Sutton, Clay Center & Manassas, VA

Is there a more iconic image of the American Frontier than that of the Homesteader?

We revere that rugged individualist of the 1870’s or ‘80’s, a farmer - a young man usually - on his small farm, his team with the recently invented modern farm implements, a few cows and calves, some pigs, chickens and maybe geese or ducks. His pretty, hard-working young wife and her growing brood add to that iconic image.

We attribute much of the growth of our portion of the Frontier to the Homestead Act and how it provided free land for anyone willing to live and work on that land for five years. What a story!

But was it that simple? You know the answer, “It never is.”

Nils Nilsson or Nels Nelson, Verona area pioneer and on of
four homesteaders studied in Ken Nelson's research.

The first Homestead Act passed the House but was defeated in the Senate by one vote. The next attempt passed Congress in 1860 but was vetoed by President Buchanan. What was going on?

The idea of the homestead, a small farm owned and supporting a small family was not the universal concept for western development in the 1850’s. The alternative was the model of the large plantation owned by a gentleman in the mode of the Southern Gentry with slave labor.

Early advocates of the homestead were the “free soilers” who even had a short-lived, single-issue political party called the Free Soil Party centered in New York State. They saw the homestead in the west as a mechanism to halt the spread of slavery into the new states in the west. And although the 1860 act made it through congress there was still strong opposition by Southern Congressmen. Buchanan feared that such a divisive act would further drive the south toward secession.

But secede they did and opposition to the Homestead Act “went south.” The Homestead Act of 1862 was passed by the remaining congressmen from the North and President Lincoln signed it on May 20, 1862.

Then just six weeks later, President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 after six years of heated discussion.

These two acts, arguably the two largest “stimulation packages” of the 19^th Century were enacted in the midst of the nation’s largest internal crisis, The Civil War.

These two acts implement a huge policy decision that the country would incentivize and subsidize not just western development, but rapid western development.

And so, just eight years later, Luther French filed for his homestead in Section 2, Township 7, Range 5 from the 6^th Principle Meridian and little more than one year later the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad laid tracks through that homestead sparking growth in a small community that became Sutton.

How long would it have taken for a town to start in northeast Clay County without both of these acts signed into law by President Lincoln in the spring of 1862? It is hard to imagine how it would have happened.

Part of the subsidies of the Railroad Act was the granting by the U. S. government of ten square miles of land for each mile of track laid. In each township along the railroad including that around Sutton the railroad received the odd numbered sections and the even numbered sections were designated for homesteads, except for sections 16 and 36 in each township were designated as School Land. This wasn’t land where schools were to be built but was land to be sold with the proceeds going to support public schools.

Carl Johan Johannesson or Charley
Johnson, homesteader northwest of
Sutton.

Talk about infrastructure planning. The national policy was that the federal government would encourage development of the frontier. Some pretty smart folks on congressional staffs in the midst of the civil war crafted a coordinate set of laws that provided for land management, transportation, communication, population and education over a huge chunk of the country. President Kennedy’s policy decision to go to the moon in a decade pales by comparison.

The State of Nebraska has always been closely linked to the Homestead Act. The Homestead National Monument honoring the very first homestead is in Gage County about four miles west of Beatrice on state highway 4. How did that happen?

There are a few versions to this story. The Homestead Act went into effect on the first of January, 1863. Daniel Freeman was (supposedly) a scout in the Union Army who had to return to St. Louis (supposedly) on January 1^st. He convinced someone to open the land office just after midnight so he could file his claim and hit the road. Everyone else waited for normal business hours and later, when the claims were sorted, Mr. Freeman’s Gage County claim appeared on top.

The plan to create a National Homestead Monument at the site of Daniel Freeman’s homestead was not a popular idea in Gage County. Mr. Freeman had stirred up a controversy in 1899 when he took exception to the local rural school teacher’s classes in religious instruction including Bible studies, prayers and hymns. She maintained that she had the permission of the school board so Mr. Freeman sued the school board of Freeman School, likely named for another Mr. Freeman.

The Gage County District Court ruled in the school board’s favor; Daniel Freeman appealed to the Nebraska Supreme Court which overturned the district court in 1902 citing the separation of church and state provisions in the Nebraska State Constitution.

The renovated Freeman School is near the Homestead National Monument, both major Gage County attractions today.

This 1962 postage stamp commemorated the centennial of
the Homestead Act

So what did it take for Mr. Freeman and the other homestead applicants to get possession of that farm? Was it really just a matter of living on the place for five years and it was all yours?

As I said earlier, it was not so simple.

Thanks to Ken Nelson of Manassas, Virginia, one-time of Clay Center and a cousin for a more thorough answer.

Ken has a keen interest, to say the least, in land management policy and practices. He looked into the details of the full story of what it took to apply for a homestead claim, meet all the requirements to “prove up” the claim and to complete the necessary documentation to obtain full ownership. He researched and compiled the documentation used by four of his ancestors (three I share with him) to file and prove their claims near Sutton, Saronville and Verona.

Luckily, I didn’t get him started on Swedish Land Reform or we’d have been here all night.

Nels Nelson filed an Application for Entry of 80 acres in Section 26 of Lewis Township about a mile from where Verona would later appear.

Nels Nelson's final official certificate in the series
of required documents needed to secure his
homestead. The detailed story of the process is
located in the "PAGES" section of this blog.

Charley Johnson (or Charles, Charlie, Carl Johan Johanesson – Swedes were flexible) filed for an eighty at the top of the hill in Section 28 of School Creek Township a mile west and two and a half miles north of Sutton.

Adolph Aspegren’s homestead application was just west of Saronville in Section 2 of Lewis Township.

Andrew Israelson initially purchased a total of 320 acres railroad land but in 1878 he filed for an 80 acre homestead in Section 6 of Lewis Township about five miles west of Saronville.

Those policy makers in Washington seemed to have anticipated potential criticism about fraud and abuse by incorporating a series of limitations and documentation requirements.

An applicant had to 21 years of age, have never taken up arms against the United States (Confederate veterans need not apply), own no more than 320 acres (Andrew Israelson almost disqualified himself), etc. The applicant had to live on the claim for five years making improvements then file for a deed to title with accompanying documentation that he had met those requirements, with witnesses and all.

Ken’s description of the homestead process is a 24 page document. Much as I’d like to share it with you today, Jarod does not do single-subject issues of Sutton Life Magazine. Ken and I will post a version of his research product on the Sutton Historical Society blog at suttonhistoricalsociety.blogspot.com

How successful was the Homestead program? It was successful enough to expand upon. The Timber Culture Act of 1873 was authored by Senator Phineas Hitchcock of Nebraska and allowed a second quarter to be added to a homestead for the planting of 40 acres of trees. The first timber claim was filed on the edge of Edgar by David Jones.

This stone monument commemorating the first
registered claim under the Timber Culture Act
of 1873 is located near Edgar, Nebraska. Photo
is from the Clay County Atlas of 1963 compiled
by Midwest Atlas Co., Fremont, Nebraska

The Kinkaid Act in 1904 allowed for 640 acre homesteads west of the 100^th Meridian and other measures increased the size of all homesteads.

The Homestead Act was repealed in 1976 with an extension for Alaska. The last homestead was an 80 acre claim in southeastern Alaska in 1988.

Were there problems? Of course. The drafters of the legislation stipulated that a dwelling of at least 12 X 14 would be built. They neglected to define the units of measurement opening the doors from some to claim that their 12 inch by 14 inch structure met that requirement. Phony claimants could be hired and people bought abandoned property. Land Offices were underfunded and understaffed, wages were low making enforcement tough and investigators were targets for bribery. Conditions were harsh where most homesteads were filed and only about 40% were eventually proved up.

But still, 1.6 million applications were processed for more than 270 million acres or about one tenth of the country.

The Homestead Act had a great impact on the frontier but nowhere greater than in the area around Sutton.

Check out the suttonhistoricalsociety.blogspot.com (under PAGES) for a more detailed discussion on just what it took to secure a homestead in Clay County.

This article first appeared in the July, 2013 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. Contact Jarod Griess at 402-984-4302 or at neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com for more information about his publication.

 

 

 

Do you want to find a grave?

by Jerry Johnson of the Sutton Historical Society

One of the early needs of any new settlement in the West was a place to bury the dead. That first death in a new community was only a matter of time and someone needed to pick a burial site.

The first farmsteads often had a family burial plot not far from the farm buildings. The towns of Sutton, Harvard and Clay Center and others selected sites near town for their cemeteries. Churches created their own cemeteries near Sutton, Verona and Saronville and in many rural settings.

The gravestone of Luther French first
homesteader in the Sutton area in 1870.

I understand that graves were found when the first swimming pool was dug in the Sutton City Park; the park site had been an early burial site. Those graves were relocated to the city cemetery. That story is on my Research TODO List.

Gravestones or “monuments” honor those who have died and become a link to our past. Families used to live in the same place for many generations so people could easily visit the graves of parents, grandparents and earlier relatives. There was a strong sense of continuity from graves that served as reminders of deceased family members. That continuity was broken when people moved away from their homes. Immigrants to America severed that tie to a specific family location as did settlers moving west from the Atlantic seaboard who lost their ties to family burial sites back East as well.

Genealogists include burial location among the data to collect on ancestors and a photo of great grandparents graves can be prized find. How many of us have routed a vacation trip to include visits to cemeteries where some ancestor is buried? I’ve included visits to cemeteries in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana Kansas, Maine and Scotland among my own diversions. There is a good chance that visitors you see in our local cemeteries are from out-of-town, even out-of-state.

Several months ago a new database was linked into ancestry.com. New “hints” began to pop up from a web site called www.findagrave.com. The links led to “memorials” identifying the cemetery where someone was buried often with a photo of the gravestone. Suddenly one of the challenging pieces of information was just a keystroke away.

The findagrave.com website was started in 1995 by Jim Tipton who had a hobby of finding graves of famous persons. The internet enabled him to share his list of famous graves and soon a community of people with interests in cemeteries expanded the list into a website that has grown to include well over 100 million memorials of individuals throughout the country and a more from international locations.

The website is the work of thousands of volunteers the majority of them genealogists. The initial work involved identifying cemeteries and then indexing graves from cemetery records, from old and current newspaper obituaries and from walking cemeteries with a clipboard.

Memorials on the findagrave.com site list the dates and locations of the individual’s birth and death. There may be links to the graves of parents and children. There is a place to include a biography of the person where you will often find a copy of the obituary. And memorials may have photos of the gravestones, of the individual or family photos.

I used information on findagrave.com for several months for my own genealogy research. Then a few months ago I “joined” the community and began contributing to the site. Members who would like to have a photo of a specific grave can make a “photo request” which is posted on the page for that cemetery. I began fulfilling photo requests in the area and taking additional photographs of gravestones.

Some cemeteries have had a lot of attention and have been nearly fully photographed. Others have not. Calvary Cemetery is listed as 99% photographed. The Sutton and Harvard Cemeteries had fewer that a fourth of the graves photographed. I’ve been concentrating on the Sutton Cemetery and over 60% have pictures uploaded as I write this.

View of the North Section of the Sutton Cemetery. The grave of Leonard Hanson, World War II casualty is in the foreground, one of many veterans honored in our cemeteries.

This is still a young project. There are some cemeteries yet to be added, mostly small ones. The directory for the Saron Lutheran Cemetery described two early homestead family plots, neither appeared in the database. The Percival Family Plot is familiar to some. It is marked by a gravestone just a few feet off the south shoulder of Highway 6 west of Sutton. Five members of the Percival family are listed on the stone.

The Plumbly Family Plot is a few miles southwest of Verona on the Charles Plumbly farm. Two adults and two children were buried in unmarked graves at the northwest corner of the farmstead. No trace of the farmstead remains but based on the “little dot” on the 1886 plat maps I took a photo of the site of this “cemetery” for the findagrave.com database.

The web site has a small staff which does such things as review new cemeteries to approve them before allowing them to be posted – both of mine passed their review. The website seems to be well run. There have been a few capacity issues in the few months I’ve been working with the site but no interruption has lasted more than several minutes.

The founder, Jim Tipton, began this project with an interest in famous graves. That interest has become a major feature of the site with many cemeteries listing their famous and near-famous burials. There is a section listing the most popular searches in the prior hour. Elvis Aaron Presley makes that list most of the time. As I write this, Timothy McVeigh was high on the list as was Gilda Radnerr, Claude Debussy’s daughter(?), and director Ted Post who had just died.

My “fun” photo request occurred within the first weeks of my activity when several requests were posted for the Aurora Cemetery including three for Hutsell family members, relatives of my wife. I was going to Grand Island so took the list along. Someone had requested a photo of the grave of Clarence Mitchell. I’d never heard of him but I can now tell several stories about him.

Clarence Mitchell was raised near Franklin, Nebraska in 1891. He dropped out of high school to try his hand, his left arm actually, in pitching starting with the Class D Red Cloud team. He managed to play in the major leagues for 19 years before returning to Nebraska where he continued to play minor league ball until he was 49 years old.

The Clarence Mitchell grave in the Aurora Cemetery, a popular grave for
fans of early 20th Century baseball.

Mitchell had two claims to fame. He was a spit-ball pitcher and when that pitch was outlawed, seventeen pitchers were grandfathered – they could continue to throw the banned pitch until retirement. Clarence Mitchell was the only “grandfathered, left-handed spit-ball pitcher.”

His second claim to fame occurred in the 1920 World Series when Mitchell entered the game as a reliever for Brooklyn against Cleveland. His batting won him this claim. Nebraskan Clarence Mitchell hit into the only unassisted triple play in World Series history. Not only that, but he hit into a double play his next at-bat.

After his career was over, Mitchell ran a tavern in Aurora. One of his advertising items was a key chain in the shape of a small baseball bat with an ad for the tavern on one side and an inscription on the other that read, “Beat this Record. Two times at Bat, Result Five Outs in Brooklyn-Cleveland World Series, 1920.”

The fellow who made the Clarence Mitchell Photo Request has a “Virtual Cemetery” of Major League Baseball Players of the spit-ball era. Members of findagrave.com have a variety of grave collections in their virtual cemeteries.

Action photo of Franklin, Nebraska native and early spit-ball pitcher in the major leagues.

Cemeteries can provide a unique insight into our history as we examine the stories represented by these graves. A burial ground is a personal memorial, a family memorial and a community memorial.

The findagrave.com website goes a long way towards re-establishing the continuity with the family and the community past that is lost when we separate ourselves from the location where our ancestors lived and died. And there is a good feeling when you can fulfill a request for a grave photograph and a few minutes receive an email from an appreciative relative who just saw grandma’s grave for the first time.

This article appeared in the August, 2013 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. Please contact Jarod Griess for more information about this publication about the Sutton, Nebraska community - 402-984-4302 or at neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com

   

So, where did all those Griesses come from, anyhow?

James R. (Jim) Griess died on Friday, March 21, 2014 in Lincoln. Jim was the source of much of our information and understanding about the story of the Germans from Russia who came to Sutton. He is missed. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You may be new to Sutton or perhaps you've not been told the story, but still you've noticed. There sure are a lot of Griesses in this town.

As someone I used to know might have said, “You can’t swing a long-tailed cat in Sutton without hitting a Griess.” And you can’t even swing a short-tailed cat without hitting someone related to a Griess.

The definitive authority of the Germans from Russia in Sutton,
a thorough study of the migration to Russia and to Sutton with
family history and Sutton history by James R. Griess, Sutton
High Class of '59.

So, where’d they come from? It’s kind of a long story and an important story, for on some level the Griesses and cohorts have long defined Sutton for our neighboring towns.

The earliest settlers to the Sutton area generally came from Back East. There were a handful of Swedish homesteaders to the west as early as 1870 the same time that Luther French homesteaded the north 80 acres of downtown. French was more typical of settlers in those first years, grew up in Ohio, moved to Indiana, then to Wisconsin, and Iowa and finally here, movin’ west.

Young farmers were being crowded out in the east. Older fellows from Iowa to Pennsylvania were looking for better prospects and cheaper land in the West.

The first settlers came as individuals, a family or sometimes an extended family. The Grays were typical. Hosea Gray and his wife came to Sutton with son John and his wife Emma, daughter Ada and her husband George Bemis and the Cunnings. The four Brown brothers homesteaded in the northeast part of School Creek Township before two of them came to town to practice law and publish the Sutton Register. The Clark brothers became developers as well as the first physician and an early merchant.

Settlers from abroad soon came enticed by railroad advertisements and other publicity, Germans and Swedes mostly but Irish, Danes, Czechs, Bohemians and others were represented. Still, the individual or small family group was the norms.

The huge exception to these situations was the Germans from Russia. They came in bunches.

The first Griess invasion came in 1873 when 55 families of about 400 people left their villages of Worms and Rohrbach in the Black Sea region near Odessa, today in Ukraine. They arrived in Lincoln expecting to find farm land but felt the price was too high so they sat for a time. Some of their acquaintances had made this trip a year earlier settling in the Dakotas. Thirty-three of those 55 families drifted off before news of land in Clay County caught the attention of their leaders.

The bunch which first settled here was led by Heinrich Griess, Johannes Grosshans and Heinrich Hoffmann. These were not your poor, struggling immigrants. Griess was a young man who had sold off about nine square miles of Russian farmland for 100,000 rubles. The exchange rate was 52 cents per ruble – the man had $52,000 in 1873 dollars when he arrived. What does that mean? The “Measuring Worth” web site gives a wide range of answers depending…, but the low end comparison is almost $1 million in today’s U.S. currency. The others were similarly equipped.

Heinrich Griess, leader of the first group of
Germans from Russia who migrated from the
villages of Worms and Rorhbach arriving in
Sutton in

The Germans from Russia bypassed the homestead option for land acquisition for the most part purchasing railroad land – 16,200 acres at a cost of $112,480 – from 4 to 7 dollars an acre, much of that purchased by Grosshans, Griess and Company on September 4, 1873 and receiving special mention on page 202 of http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2374&context=greatplainsquarterly

We have good analysis of railroad land purchases for only two counties: Lancaster and Clay in Nebraska – Yippee! Check out http://railroads.unl.edu/views/item/landsales_ne for the cutest interactive map you’ll see this week. Click on the “Years” at the top of the map, 1870 thru 1880 and watch sections after sections being gobbled up. Those were folks from around Cleveland who settled in Lynn Township and into Harvard but purchases in the northeast part of Clay County were led by Grosshans, Griess & Co.

More bunches and not just a few individuals and families followed those first settlers from Russia between 1874 and 1914, the start of World War I.

A second category of immigrants from Russia were Germans from along the Volga River beginning in late 1874 with eight families from the village of Balzar led by Jacob Bender. The nearby village of Norka contributed many more.

So, how did Germans come to be living in Russia, of all places?

I can’t tell the whole story here. Jim Griess (Sutton High Class of ’59) took 335 large-format pages to tell his version of the story. Anyone connected to the Germans from Russia, with an interest in the topic or just looking for a fascinating book must have Jim’s “The Germans from Russia – Those Who Came to Sutton.” See http://www.jimgriess.net/page1 or see us at the Sutton Museum for a copy (as soon as we restock.)

But briefly, in 1762 Catherine the Great was a German princess who found herself czarina of the Russian Empire – another great story – especially the part where she might have murdered her husband to get the role and the Russian people were O.K. with that. Catherine noticed that a huge portion of southern Russia was unoccupied, unproductive and paying absolutely no taxes. She understood that it was good farmland and she knew where good, honest, hard-working farmers could be found. Actually, it wasn’t in Germany.

There was no Germany. Did you know that? No nation called Germany existed until January 18,

This immigrant trunk belonged Heinrich Griess (or Gries as
spelled on the trunk.) The trunk is marked "No. 1" implying
multiple trunks - he had a large family and was "a man of
substantial resources." The trunk is on display at the Sutton
Museum.

1871 after Otto von Bismarck had put all the pieces together. There were people who spoke the German language and were consider Germanic but they came from places like Hesse, Baveria, Prussia, Swabia, etc. etc. Germans who came directly to Sutton from Germany often identified their place of birth in the census as one of these city-states. My favorite census enumerator’s “best guess” is that several people in Sutton are listed as being from Dam State. That should be Darnstadt, a city and region in today’s western Germany. There was no Germany until 1871. The nation of Germany has been around as long as the town of Sutton. But I digress.

Catherine invited Germans to come to Russia to live. She established a set of generous conditions allowing the settlers to their own villages, language, churches, etc. living in little pieces of home pretty much to themselves.

Conditions in Central Europe were horrendous. These ancestors of Suttonites were in the midst of on-going wars between the French and the various Germanic states, then Napoleon stirred things up – ugly. Accepting Catherine’s invitation made sense. Many packed up and moved.

The first migrants settled in the Volga River Valley – hundreds of villages. Later another wave settled near Odessa in hundreds more villages.

Advance the clock about one hundred years and a couple of Czars to Alexander II who began to back off of those generous conditions (long story, see Jim’s book.) In 1871 the Germans learned they were to become Russianized – no more German language, churches, villages – now Russian. But, they had ten years to adapt or leave.

Meanwhile, back in American, railroads were laying track across empty plains where a population would certainly be useful. Railroad agents swarmed to Europe with aggressive Madison Avenue-like ad campaigns. Germans, Swedes, Irish, Bohemians and others began a new migration. For the Germans in Russia this was timely, fortuitous and, if they were religious, and they were, it was an answer to prayers.

So to Sutton they came, and to Lincoln, Scottsbluff, Kansas, the Dakotas, Colorado, really all over. Sutton is unusual in that immigrants from both major regions, the Black Sea and Volga area came here. The Sutton arrivals also all came from villages of the Reformed Church. There were also villages of Lutherans, Catholics and Mennonites, some of the latter settled around Henderson, assisted by earlier arrivals in Sutton.

How were the new immigrants accepted? About as you might expect. As a species we do poorly in accepting the New, the Different or the Other.

The railroads launched an aggressive advertising campaign with posters like this one
to attract settlers who would ride the trains and ship goods on those new railroads
being constructed across the open prairie.

The first groups from Russia were frankly wealthy. That helped. The later arrivals were not rich, many were poor and had been sponsored by friends already here. One story involves two brothers who came sponsored by a relative who would not buy them new clothes until they had earned them. These young men were on the streets of Sutton for several weeks wearing distinctive Russian peasant garb, embarrassing and not cool. However, several individuals quickly moved into the mainstream of Sutton life – office holders, professionals, merchants, etc.

We can find newspaper references pointing out the industriousness of the “Russians” as they were often called. But there are contrary references.

On one occasion a local paper noted that a group of Russians had arrived by train and spent the night on the depot platform before catching an early morning train west, likely to western Nebraska or Colorado. The comment concluded something to the affect that Sutton already had its share and he was glad to see their backsides heading west in the morning sun.”

Did all the Germans in Russia immigrate to America? They did not. Many stayed and were caught up in world history often with tragic consequences especially during World War II when they were alternatively courted and vilified by the Germans for being Russians and by the Russians for being German. Again, see Jim’s book; it’s complicated but worth sorting out.

The descendants from those Germans from Russia are a significant percentage of Sutton’s population. Add people who are closely related to that group and there aren’t many of us left out. Theirs may be a unique story in the strict sense of the word – one of a kind. Many of the surnames of the Germans from Russia have disappeared, either the folks left or the names “daughtered out” as the genealogists say. Regarding the leaders of that first group in 1873, Grosshans does not appear in the Sutton phone book. There is a representation for Hofmann. But as for Griess, yes there are some in the phone book.

The Selective Service Draft

by Jerry Johnson, Sutton Historical Society

Graduation is a time to celebrate finishing school and looking forward with hope and anticipation to the array of opportunities ahead. Such was not always the case.

Not very long ago graduating men and boys found a huge obstacle between them and those opportunities: the Selective Service Act, the Draft. The Draft had a way of not only influencing decisions but it made those decisions.

The WWI Draft Card of Carl H. (Jack) Nolde

The draft was used to select men for military service in major wars until 1973. I’ve found two misconceptions by those too young to have memories of the draft. One age group remembers the lottery system that existed after 1970. Others, younger, relate the draft to a time when rich guys paid others to serve – a phenomenon of the Civil War which they probably recently studied.

Draftees were a small percentage of soldiers in the Union army. Saving the Union was a popular cause that fed the fighting force for over two years. Lincoln then asked for authority to conscript soldiers and that threat sustained a flow of men that nearly met the needs.

There was no draft in the brief four-month long Spanish-American War. Europe was almost three years into World War I before the US formally entered and began to raise a force of 4 million.

The draft registration process for WWI was a three-day operation. Men aged 21 to 31 all registered on June 5, 1917. One year later on June 5, 1918 new 21-year olds registered and finally on September 12, 1918, just two months before wars end, all men age 21 to 45 were required to register.

Genealogists love WWI registration cards where men listed their birthdates, birthplaces, color of hair and eyes, build and a tall/medium/short selection. It may be the only place to learn a man’s middle name.

World War II threatened in 1940 when a survey of the US public showed 71% support for “the immediate adoption of compulsory military training for all young men.”  The Selective Service used a lottery system exclusively to round up more than 10,000,000 men aged 18-38 for service as voluntary enlistments were suspended in 1942.

Men leaving Clay County for service in World War II earned recognition in local newspapers. This group appeared in the Sutton News on October 29, 1942; the to-be soldiers were identified left to right (apparently not distinguished by row) as: Glen McCune, Glenvil; Marvin Pope, Sutton; Ernest Hanson, Sutton; Roy Ochsner, Saronville; Marlow Munson, Sutton; Erwin Wenske, Glenvil; Glen Swanson, Sutton; Kent Wilson, Fairfield; Alfred Davis, Glenvil; John Dunleavy, Harvard; Louis Drudik, Deweese; Gayle Gunn, Edgar and Edor Johnson, Edgar.

Selective Service drafted 1.5 million over the age of 18 and a half for the Korean War, just over half of those who served. A survey of draft age men found 64% satisfied that this draft was fair.

Onto Vietnam.

Army PFC Jack Schroder of Clay Center killed in Vietnam in 1967 at the age of 20.

Men of about those 50-year reunion classes lived this draft.

The Vietnam War officially lasted from November 1, 1955 through April 30, 1975. The US had “military advisors” “in country” from the 1950’s but things began ramping up as troop levels tripled in 1961 and again in 1962 then numbers got real serious in the mid-1960’s.

President Kennedy early on balked at the idea of drafting family bread-winners and by executive order exempted husbands. Curiously, marriages happened. As force requirements increased that policy was changed to exempting only fathers. Again, curiously, business in maternity wards picked up. These men were sometimes called “Kennedy husbands” and “Kennedy fathers.”

Certain professions such as teaching and other skilled workers were exempt allowing them to continue in those jobs. The Peace Corps was authorized in late 1961 and offered another escape from the draft. Personal note: had I managed the timing better I would have been in West Cameroon from 1966-1968 and not at all from a pressing desire to live in West Africa.

Society appreciated that education is a good thing; hence, the student deferment came into being. Curiously colleges and universities saw enrollment climb. Personal note: University of Nebraska, 1961-1966.

Marine PFC Thomas Leichleiter of Harvard, killed in Vietnam in 1969 at the age of 18.

Did the draft influence these decisions by young people to get married, have kids or go to college? No. The draft made those decisions. Believe me.

A classification system identified each individual’s relationship to the draft. Status 1-A was “available for military service.” It was from this pool that the county selective service office did their “pickin’ and choosin’”. There were several other “1’s” including for conscientious objectors, members of the Public Health Service and other services and 1-Y, qualified but only under greater need (asthma was one such criteria.)

Number 2’s were deferments – you were on “hold.” Classification 2-C was for the agriculture occupation; 2-S, “activity in study” – college student (five years for yours truly) and 2-A, other civilian occupation deferments.

Classification 3-A was for fathers.

The major Number 4 classification was 4-F, not qualified for any military service.

This serious imposition into our lives sometimes created memorable situations. A very good friend learned of his 4-F classification the morning of his wedding, a wedding that would have happened eventually but was timed to qualify for the “husband” deferment then in effect. Is that a true story? Take it from the Best Man.

Other “4” classifications were for completed service, sole surviving son, minister, alien and “officially deferred by law.”

Raise your hands all that have been waiting for one other group: Canadian immigrants.

Perhaps as many as 100,000 men who had exhausted this array of “outs” and still seriously did not want to serve then chose to leave the country. Canada was the most popular destination where officials did not extradite fugitives from the draft. That fugitive status remained until President Ford issued a conditional amnesty in 1974 and when President Carter later pardoned them.

The net result of the Vietnam War era draft is that over 2.2 million men were directly drafted between 1964 and 1975 and the draft is credited with “encouraging” 8.7 million additional “volunteers” including yours truly. Again, the draft not only influenced decisions but made decisions for us.

One more statistic: 58,195 men and women gave their lives in the Vietnam War and are listed on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Though I’m telling the story of the draft emphasizing those who were pressed, or “forced” into military service, a large number of those who served, probably most, did so truly voluntarily with full understanding of the consequences.  Society levied an obligation on them, an obligation that they met, willingly or not.

The names of no Sutton men or women appear on that wall in Washington. Three Clay County men are listed:

"The Village" is a book about the Marine unit of Marine Lance Corporal
Paul Fielder of Harvard. The web site at
http://www.vvmf.org/thewall/Wall_Id=16043
does not have a photo of Paul Fielder. Can anyone help with that?

Marine Lance Corporal Paul Wesley Fielder from Harvard on Panel 10E, line 97, died September 15, 1966 in Quang Tin Province at the age of 20.

Marine Private First Class Thomas Allen Leichleiter from Harvard on Panel 18W, line 122, died September 21, 1969 in Quang Tri Province at the age of 18.

Army Private First Class Jack Wayne Schroder from Clay Center on Panel 28E, line 30, died October 17, 1967 in Binh Long Province at the age of 20.

Please read that last part again. Thanks.

Personal wrap-up: After I’d nursed my 2-S deferment for five years and tested other options our local Selective Service Board noticed that I’d graduated. They reclassified me 1-A and I learned I was to be on the next month’s draft call. I visited the recruiting offices in the Lincoln Post Office and “volunteered” for the Air Force. Was I “avoiding” the draft or a “draft dodger?” Of course, I just wasn’t very good at it.

The Air Force surprised me with an assignment to a missile wing in Wichita, Kansas as part of the Cold War. Wichita was not a bad place to spend “The War.” Then one thing led to another leading to Montana, Omaha and finally Northern California where, after 21 years I finally found a reason to leave. Few of those decisions were mine but I was extremely fortunate.

Finally, let me return to LCpl Paul Fielder who is listed above. Those who remember Paul speak highly of him, from a tough background, a kid who saw the Marines as his opportunity. His is a compelling story. A book, “The Village” tells the story of his 15-man Marine unit and of the night he was killed. A synopsis of that story is at http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=66076528

This photo of the Marine unit of Lance Corporal Paul Fielder was taken within two weeks of the attack that killed about
one half of the unit including LCpl Fielder. He is seen here kneeling at the right.

 My wife and I visited the Washington, D. C. and the Vietnam Memorial in April, 2013. It was her first visit to the wall where we stopped and paused for a time before Panel W1 where, on line 97 near the bottom of the last panel and near the end of the war is the name "Warren R Spencer" a tech school classmate, car pool buddy and friend from 1967.

Rita Johnson before Panel W1, the last panel on the Vietnam Memorial Wall where
the name of our friend Warren R. Spencer can be found. Warren was a B-52 radar
navigator whose plane was downed on December 20, 1972 during the Christmas, 1972
 offensive against Hanoi and Haiphong Harbor. One account of the incident is at
http://www.pownetwork.org/bios/s/s213.htm
The panel is reflecting back to the east to the Washington Monument past the visitors
up the gentle slope of the early one half of the memorial. Smiles are rare here.

 This article first appeared in the Sutton Life Magazine in May, 2013. Contact Jarod Griess at 402-984-4203 or at neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com for more information about this publication.

Israelson 1913 Letter from California

This letter appeared in the Harvard Courier newspaper December 13, 1913. It was from John W. Israelson of the Saronville Israelson family (more about them below).

Settlers in Clay County had often stopped "back East" for a spell before pressing on further west. Clay County also served as a stopping place for many who, after a few years or decades again picked up stakes and pressed on even further west.

California was a popular next destination with the Los Angeles basin drawing large numbers from Clay County as well as other Nebraska locations and other places that had been on the frontier.

The Sutton area had two specialized migrations as the Sutton Germans often joined family and friends who had earlier settled around the zinfandel grape vineyards of Lodi, California in San Joaquin County between Sacramento and Stockton. Saronville Swedes had their own California destination among the orchards around Turlock in Stanislaus County near Modesto.

John Israelson joined another significant contingent that choose Pasadena, Long Beach and points in between joining the migration that led to today's large population center of LA and Orange Counties.



1913 Letter from John W. Israelson shortly after he
moved his family to Pasadena, California

 

John W. Israelson was the second child and first son in the Israelson family.

The Israelson Family patriarch was Andrew Peter Israelson who was born in Asby, Östergötland, Sweden about 40 miles east of Jönköping, and 140 miles southwest of Stockholm, on January 8, 1824 to Israel Karlsson and Catterina Petersdotter. Andrew, or Anders married Charlotte Sophia Larsdotter in March of 1851. The next year Andrew and pregnant Charlotte left Gothenburg on the Swedish ship Carlos arriving in New York in August 26, 1852 and headed for western Illinois where daughter Emma was born in December, the first of twelve offspring in the family (three died young).

Mr. Israelson purchased railroad land in Sutton Township near Saronville in 1877 and moved his family to Clay County.

The Israelson family name has largely expired around here, or daughtered-out as the genealogists say. But the genetic heritage of Östergötland persists in Clay County and elsewhere with surnames such as: Aspegren, Pontine, Nelson, Hultman and many others - even Johnson (hand proudly waving from my keyboard), Serr and who'd have thought, Rolfes.

John W. Israelson was married to Amanda Charlotte Thry in Illinois in 1880. They adopted Ruth Francis before 1900; she was a member of the illustrious Sutton High class of 1912 and moved to California with her parents. My family records lists Ruth's death on March 24, 1918 in Los Angeles at the age of 22.

My "official" connection to John W. Israelson? He was my Great Grand Uncle - my great, grandmother Emma's brother - Jerry Johnson.

Trival Question in our Clay County News column for the December 4th issue

This item appeared in our column in the Clay County News December 4th issue:

• Bonus memory item for the end of football season: The legendary Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley and Elmer Layden may still be the most famous backfield in all of football 89 years after Grantland Rice memorialized them in their senior season of 1924. They only lost only two games in their three years. They lost to Nebraska’s 1922 team 14-6.
• Trivia question: what was the other team that beat the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame? See suttonhistoricalsociety.blogspot.com for the answer.

----

----

----

----

----

----

----

And the answer is:

The 1922 Nebraska team was the first of two teams to defeat the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame. The second team to defeat that legendary Notre Dame backfield was

THE 1923 NEBRASKA TEAM.

Yes, Nebraska handed the Four Horsemen both of their defeats in their renowned college football careers. The 1923 score was 14-7. Full disclosure: on November 15, 1924 the Four Horsemen did earn their retribution as seniors defeating the Cornhuskers 34-6 in South Bend.

See http://dm12700.wordpress.com/football-in-the-1920s/  for more about that Notre Dame backfield where you'll find this line:

• The renowned four horsemen played 30 games together as a backfield unit, losing only twice, both to the same team: the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

New Sutton Area Chapter of the AHSGR

A group of Sutton residents are forming a Sutton Area Chapter of the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia. Members of the Sutton Historical Society wish this new organization well and look forward to working with the new chapter to further recognized the contributions of the Germans from Russia to the Sutton community.

Neil M. Cronin Obituary

Neil M. Cronin was born in Sutton in 1880; his obituary appeared in the Clay County News on October 24, 1963. This item appeared in the November 28th issue of the Clay County news indicating President Kennedy's signing of the certificate honoring Sutton native Neil M Cronin occurred in the last few days of the president's life.

Mr. Cronin died on October 15th; President Kennedy
was assassinated on November 22nd; the certificate
signed by the president arrived at his widow's home
the week of the assassination.

Note: I might have worded the headline of that item a little differently.

Neil M. Cronin, born in Sutton on June 14, 1880