ELIZABETH ANNA (KINDSVATER) SCHLEINING

Elizabeth Anna (Lizzie) Kindsvater married Henry Andrew Schleining at Huck on 14 Apr 1886.* He was born 29 Aug 1863 at Norka and died 11 Oct 1944 at Billings, Montana, at age 81. He was the son of Joseph and Mary (Ault) Schleining. (Source: AHSGR card, Harry Greene) Places and dates of birth and marriage were recorded in the family register of the Zion German Congregational Church, southwest of Weatherford, Oklahoma, where the Schleining family worshipped from 1906 to 1911. In the family register the surname is spelled "Schleuning." I do not know in what year the family immigrated to the U. S., but their duaghter Katherine (Katie) Pulkrabek told me they lived first at Lincoln, Nebraska; then at Denver, Colorado, where five children were born 1896-1905. In 1906 the family moved to the Russian German community southwest of Weatherford in Oklahoma Territory, which became a state one year later. In 1911 the family moved from Oklahoma to Montana, where they made their permanent home. Elizabeth Anna died at Joliet, MT, on 30 Jan 1929, at age 65 yr., 5 mo., 18 days.

When Elizabeth Anna Kindsvater married Henry Andrew Schleining, she already had a son, George Kindsvater; and with Henry she had nine children, two of whom died in infancy, John and Marie. The Zion Church Book genealogical section gives the death date of John as 4 Oct 1892. The Zion Church record includes two more deaths between Anna and Pauline (without dates or places), but Katie Pulkrabek told me there were only the two, John and Marie. This son John is not to be confused with the son John born 23 Sep 1905.

*There is a discrepancy in the Zion Church Books. A printer's error in Vol I, p. 64, gives the date of marriage as 14 Aug 1886. The original record in German gives the date as 14 April 1886.

Surviving Children of Henry Andrew and Elizabeth Anna (Kindsvater) Schleining

1. George Kindsvater, b. Huck, 5 Jan 1885; d. Billings, MT, ?? Oct 1933. He never married, and not much information about him has come to me. His sister Katie Pulkrabek wrote in a letter of 25 July 1978, "They found him dead in bed in a hotel in Billings. His billfold was missing. They didn't know who he was. They found a picture of my sister Annie and her children. And a letter from Pauline [Dietz] in a pocket of his. Then they called the Dietzes. They had him buried already when they called. He's buried in the county cemetery in Billings." He was about 48 yr., 10 mo. of age.

2. Maria (Mary) Schleining was born at Huck, 11 Jan 1887, and died in Kansas on 26 Feb 1973., at age 96. She married George Hanes, b. Denver, C0; d. Kansas, 17 May 1954. Mary was blind, had no children.

3. Anna Schleining was born at Huck, 8 Jan 1889; d. 13 July 1938, at age 49. She married Everett Lytle in Denver, C0.

4. Pauline Schleining, b. Denver, C0, 8 June 1896; d. Billings, MT, 9 July 1957,

at age 61. She married (1) Christian Woitt on 24 Jan 1916 in Washington

State, perhaps at Odessa, since their first child was born there on 6 Mar

1917. Christian Woitt was born 20 Aug 1884; d. 18 Oct 1918, at age 34,

leaving Pauline pregnant with their second child, Christian Woitt, Jr.,

b. 30 Jan 1919. Pauline married (2) Jacob Dietz on 20 Aug 1920 (at Billings?)

He was born at Huck, 6 June 1887; d. Billings, MT, 4 May 1962, at age 74.

Though Jacob Dietz never formally adopted his two Woitt stepchildren, they

began to give their name as Dietz when they started to school.

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5. Adam G. Schleining changed his name to Schilling. He was born at Denver, C0,

12 Dec 1899; d. California, 19 Mar 1972, at age 72. He married Myrtle Mader,

who died 4 Sep 1963.

6. Katherine M. (Katie) Schleining, b. Denver, C0, 25 Mar 1901; d. Mandan, ND, 11 June 1980, at age 79. She married William Pulkrabek, b. Hutchinson, MN, 30 May 1897; d. Mandan, ND, 29 May 1960, at age 63.

7. Elizabeth Schleining, b. Denver, C0, 22 July 1903; d. in Montana, 10 Oct 1934, at age 31. She married Remy Beckmoes.

8. John G. Schleining, b. Denver, C0, 24 Sep 1905; d. 1 May 1969, at age 63. He married Lena Hammon.

The Schleining family has been the most difficult for which to collect complete and accurate family information. Perhaps another reader of "Die Huckere Newsletter" may be able to write more fully about this family.

MARIE ELIZABETH (KINDSVATER) SCHAFER

In 1890 Marie Elizabeth (called Marie Eliz or Marilis for short) borrowed $200 and emigrated to America with her parents and young nephew George Kindsvater. She was 23 years old when she arrived in Baltimore on 12 March 1890, one month and two days before her twenty-fourth birthday. The ship's manifest notes their destination as Ohio, but they may have gone directly to Lincoln, Nebraska, where Marie Elizabeth went right to work for a wealthy family.

Soon after her arrival in Lincoln Marie Eliz was told by a friend, "There's a young man you just have to meet," as reported to me by my Aunt Raye Hughes in a telephone conversation on 7 Feb 1988. The friend introduced Marie Eliz to Adam Johannes Schafer, who was from 16th January to 14th April older than she. It was apparently love upon introduction, and courtship began immediately. The new relationship was solemnized in marriage in the First German Congregational Church on Saturday, 7 Dec 1890. They were the fifth couple listed in the marriage register of the church, which had been founded in 1888.

My mother told in her life's story about what a great tease her Grandpa Kindsvater was. (See my article "A Russian German Family in Oklahoma Territory" The Village Frank Newsletter, summer 1996.) She had told me earlier how her grandpa was said to have teased Grandma unmercifully when Grandpa came to call. Grandpa was only about 5'5" tall, but always walked as erectly as a soldier, as if to make the most of every inch of his height. And in her life's story my mother also told how her grandfather used to tease Grandma and Grandpa when he lived with the Schafer family at Bessie, OK, reminding them over and over how Grandpa said during their courtship, "She's my girl, and I'm going to get her" and how Grandma would say, "He's the man for me."

Soon after their marriage my grandparents moved to Denver, Colorado, where Grandpa worked in the silver smeltry in the suburb of Globeville. In 1884 they moved back to Lincoln but remained only about one year before they returned to Denver and took Grandpa and Grandma Kindsvater with them. They made good money and were thrifty, so that when they moved to Oklahoma Territory in the spring of 1902 they had enough money, after selling their house in Globeville, to pay cash for a quarter section farm near Foss. About 1905 they bought a second farm three and one-half miles from Bessie, and for a few years Grandpa farmed both places.

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In her story my mother told that the farm at Bessie had a better house on it than the sod house at Foss. However, my Aunt Raye wrote in a letter of 6 May 1975,"When the folks first came to the farm west of Bessie, they could not get immediate possession of the house and had to live in the 'dug house', which was like a cellar with a roof and one small window. I can remember, too, after we moved into the house that when there were 'funnel clouds' and strong wind storms, we used to go into this cellar thing, which I believe would have collapsed had anything been blown on it. I recall one night we were trying to sleep on the bed, lying side by side from head to foot, when just over me I saw a long centipede moving around on the ceiling (we kept a lantern burning for light). Grandpa got up and somehow he managed to kill it---and after that I was too scared to go to sleep."

In her story my mother gave an extensive picture of what their life was like in the early days in Oklahoma. Aunt Raye has added a few more insights. About field work, she wrote on 6 May 1975, "My mother would take three of us kids with her into the field, and Dad would take three also. In chopping weeds the rows were a half mile long; and Aunt Marie and I being the youngest and couldn't as yet help with the work. So we would play or whatever until the workers chopped a row down and a row back. I found after I was old enough to help in the field I'd rather work with Mama than with Dad. I didn't like the switches he used if he had to call us down for playing more than once."

Going to town was an adventure, and about that Aunt Raye wrote, "We drove to Cordell for some grocery supplies. This was always a whole day's trip in our wagon. This was when we had 'bakery bread' and cheese for lunch." Now she would prefer the home-baked bread, but when she was small, eating bread baked in a bakery added to the adventure of going to town.

Both my mother and Aunt Raye have testified to Grandma's deep religious feelings and power in prayer. Grandma often admonished her children with an old Russian German dictum, "Work as if you would live forever; pray as if you may die tomorrow." Though Grandma was deeply religious and ready to help anyone in need, she could be rather insensitive to the feelings of her children. In the story of her life, my mother told how Grandma forbade her to date her childhood sweetheart because only one of his parents was German. Aunt Raye also bore the brunt of that insensitivity on occasion. One day in Cordell, when Aunt Raye and Aunt Marie were with her, Grandma drew the attention of the manager in one of the stores to her two girls. "But," she said, pointing to Aunt Raye, "this one, she no so purty - she looks like her Fadder." About this incident Aunt Raye continued, "This left me with an inferiority complex and somehow stayed with me until I became a mother." She decided she could not be ugly if she could have such pretty children. (6 May'75)

Like my mother before her, Aunt Raye also had problems with Grandma over dating. In the same letter she wrote, "We never had real chances to get acquainted with our young folk in the German Lutheran Church, as we didn't have evening services; so about the only dating Marie and I did was when she worked as a maid in private homes and I was working for my board and room. We often double dated. When I was almost 19 I went to Clinton. I decided after all to get through high school. I met a nice young kid who neither drank nor smoked. He was still in high school (a real Christian). I could only go out twice a week. We went to Wed. night and Sun. night church services. So when my mom and dad came to town, I had her meet Barksdale, and how she cried, right in his presence. Finally, I broke our engagement, and somehow as time went on I became a little bitter."

My mother wrote in her life's story about Grandma's resourcefulness and self reliance. She could read German and taught Grandpa to read. She could

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speak Russian and taught my mother to count in Russian. And with respect to that counting, let me tell a little story that illustrates that my mother inherited a bit of her grandpa's teasing nature. In 1964 (when she was 66 years old) my mother visited me in Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa. My mother loved the ocean, and we frequently spent afternoons on a beach near my apartment. One day I pointed out some men on the beach and told her they were sailors from a Russian ship in Lagos Harbor. Later, when I had wandered off, the men strolled by again, and my mother, still remembering some of what Grandma had taught her, called out in Russian, "one, two, three, four." Overjoyed to meet someone on the beach who spoke Russian, the sailors surrounded my mother, eager to talk. But their joy was short lived, because all the Russian my mother knew was "one, two, three, four."

My grandmother died of a heart ailment in my home on 3 December 1934 at age 68. I was fourteen, and I recall hearing my mother and an aunt talking about how Grandma had wanted to know when she would die, the way her grandfather had known when he would die. I remember hearing them discuss how Grandma had prayed and sung hymns all night before she died about eight o'clock in the morning. In 1976 Aunt Raye wrote about Grandma's death, "The morning Mom died, she removed all the covers, and when Millie went in early to see if she was OK, Millie covered her, and she said, 'Take the covers away, the angels are coming this morning and I want nothing in the way.' Then later Millie brought her breakfast, but she wouldn't eat, said she'd just wait, wait for the angels, that she wasn't hungry."

Recently my sister Opal and I were talking about the day Grandma died, and she added a poignant detail. Opal was twelve years old, and when she was ready for school, she stood for a few minutes in the doorway of the room where Grandma lay. Grandma was lying on her back; and as Opal looked in at her, Grandma raised both arms straight up, as if in welcome. In a moment she put her arms down; and after another minute or two an uncle who was in the room went to the bed to look at her; he closed Grandma's eyes and said, "She's gone." My grandmother's death was just that easy and appears to have been the kind of home going she longed for.

My own memories of Grandma's illness and death focus more on me, perhaps, than on Grandma. As I have said, I was fourteen and Opal was twelve. Grandma stayed in our home during her last illness so my mother could take care of her. The heart disease caused Grandma to have a lot of edema; and Opal and I both recall how our family doctor would come to the house to drain water from Grandma's abdomen. I remember, also, that my mother would ask me to sit by Grandma's bedside to keep her company and to massage her feet because poor circulation always made them cold.

The morning Grandma died my mother sent me and my siblings on to school. She intended no disrespect to Grandma; it was the sensible thing to do. Our house was small, and she anticipated a great deal of coming and going all day; four kids ranging in age from fourteen to six would have just created problems. In short, school was the best place for us to be that day. On my way to school I went by Aunt Raye's house to tell her about Grandma and also by Uncle Adam John, who lived next door. I remember that I was crying and Aunt Raye soothed me and told me not to cry, that Grandma was in a better place. After school that day my mother took me to the town's men's store and bought me my first nice wool suit to wear to Grandma's funeral.

Four days before Grandma died, Aunt Mollie Adler died. And I remember that after the notice of Grandma's death appeared in the local newspaper, one

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of my classmates greeted me with the question, "Hey, Glenn, are all your family dying?" And for a time after the funeral my mother would send me periodically to sleep with Grandpa to keep him company.

Through the years I remembered the story but forgot the "who" had predicted the day and hour of death. Aunt Raye retold me the story in one of her letters. She said it was Grandma's grandpa. I do not know which grandpa, but because Grandma seems to have been closer to her Kindsvater relations than to the Weigands, I suspect it may have been her Grandpa Kindsvater. This is what Aunt Raye wrote, "Mom's grandpa was so close to the Lord that one day the Lord let him know he would be in Heaven with Him the next day at 3:00 p.m.; and the next day he set out his shaving equipment and mirror; his family asked him where he was going; he told them he was going to Heaven at 3 o'clock and he wanted to have a clean face." It seems then that he died at three o'clock that same afternoon.

Grandpa Schafer lived till 4 April 1949, when he died at age 83. I have not written much about him here because I hope to write a separate article focusing on him and what I can learn about the Schafers.

The Six Children of Adam Johannes and Marie Elizabeth (Kindsvater) Schafer

1. Katherine Schafer (called Katie or Kay), b. Globeville, Denver, C0, 2 Sep

1891; d. Cassville, M0, 8 Oct 1973, age 82 yr., 1 mo., 6 days; buried Clinton

Cemetery, Clinton, OK. After finishing her elementary education at Sun Flower

School near Bessie, she attended the Christian College in Cordell for her

secondary education, and after that attended and graduated from the Normal

School at Weatherford. She taught three years in country schools, one year

near Foss and two years north of Bessie. On 25 April 1914 she married

Robert Albert Wagner, Jr., b. in Rumania, 20 June 1887; d. Cordell, OK,

24 Nov 1941; buried in the Clinton Cemetery. He was the son of Robert

Albert and Minnie (Jelenek) Wagner. My cousin Frances (Wagner) Kelley told

me that her Grandma Wagner's family were Bohemian.

2. Amalia Schafer (Mollie), b. Lincoln, NE, 18 Apr 1894; d. Weatherford, OK,

28 Nov 1934, age 40 yr., 7 mo., 10 days. On 31 Dec 1912 she married (Johann)

Peter (Pete) Adler, Jr., in the Schafer home near Bessie. He was born at

Kolb, Russia, 21 Sep 1885; d. Weatherford, OK, 25 Apr 1947. He was the son

of (Johann) Peter and Anna Elizabeth (Kantzler) Adler, and the grandson of

Valentin and Katrina (Schreiner) Adler. When he was nine years old, he rode

in a spring wagon from Hastings, NE, to Weatherford, OK Terr. The trip lasted

thirty days. (The trip was made with his grandfather, Valentin Adler)

3. Adam John Shafer (Jack), b. Globeville, Denver, C0, 19 Sep 1896; d. San Pedro, CA, 19 Mar 1952, age 55 yr., 6 mo. Johannes became John at school, and Schafer was changed to Shafer during World War I, and he served in the U. S. Navy under that name. At Cordell on 31 July 1920 he married Pauline Lemke, b. Newton, KS, 24 Feb 1902; d. San Pedro, CA, 25 Oct 1993. Her parents were John and Pauline (Schwartz) Lemke, who were born in Russian Poland, he on 21 Oct 1876; she on 7 Apr 1868. Both died in Oklahoma about 1930.

The Lemkes lived about one mile east of the Schafers at Bessie. Aunt Pauline wrote in a letter of 28 Apr 1975, "that is where I learned to know 'Jack, 'Spud'." Adam was so fond of potatoes as a child that his sisters nicknamed him "Spuds." In fact, till I was about ten or eleven we children addressed him as "Uncle Spuds." Then a new business partner (Bill Slattery) thought

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"Spuds" an undignified nickname and gave him the new nickname "Jack", and gradually family stopped using "Spuds" and called him "Jack". In the same letter Aunt Pauline continued, "My brother Otto and I used to go see Raye, Marie, Spuds, and play with them, and the three would come over to our place. We would play ring-around-the-roses and drop-the-handkerchief. Can you imagine us big kids playing games like that?" She must have been thinking of the time after my mother married in 1917, when Aunt Pauline would have been fifteen.

4. Millie Schafer, b. Globeville, Denver, C0, 18 Nov 1898; d. Annapolis, MD, 21 Feb 1980, age 81 yr., 3 mo., 3 days; buried Clinton Cemetery, Clinton, OK. The register of births of the First German Congregational Church at Denver reads: Emilie Schafer, daughter of Adam and Elizabeth, b. 18 Nov 1898, bapt. 11 Dec 1898. Sponsors: Georg Stroh, Ernst Holl, Marie Doroth. Stroh.

Millie was my mother. When she started to school, her classmates called her Millie, and she ceased to use the name Emilie. She gave herself a middle name, and on official documents the rest of her life she signed herself Millie May. On Sunday 26 August 1917, in the Schafer home near Bessie, she married Carl Sitzman of Weatherford, b. Lincoln, NE, 4 July 1896; d. Oklahoma City, OK, 15 Aug 1978, age 82 yr., 1 mo., 9 days. He was the son of Jacob (1862-1948) and Katherine Margaret (Pfeiff, 1868-1940) Sitzman from the Colony Frank, Russia.

5. Marie Schafer, b. Globeville, Denver, C0, 29 Jan 1901; d. E1 Reno, OK, 21 Apr 1976, age 75 yr., 3 mo., 23 days. Aunt Raye told me Aunt Marie gave herself the middle name Adeline but used it only during childhood. She lived with a congenital heart condition that normally does not permit the patient to live anywhere near age 75, so that in her later years she was of special interest to cardiologists. On 24 Apr 1921 she married Ernest Jacob Weber, b. Stuttgart, AR, 25 Apr 1894; d. Oklahoma City, OK, 26 Apr 1973, age 79. He was the son of Jacob and Tillie (Thain) Weber, who were immigrants from Germany. Marie and Ernest celebrated their golden wedding anniversary at E1 Reno, OK, 24 Apr 1971.

6. Raye Grace Schafer, b. Foss, OK Terr., 29 Apr 1903. Her baptismal certificate gives the date of her baptism as 31 May 1903, at Parker, OK Terr., by Pastor B. 0. Richter. Witnesses were Friedrich Konig, Christine Konig, Friedrich Janz, and Elizabeth Sauer (her cousin).

She was named Rachel, but at school she was called Raye, and the family took up the nickname, as they had in the case of Millie. She gave herself the middle name Grace and has signed herself Raye Grace ever since. I had known from my mother since my childhood that she gave herself her middle name. I learned about Aunts Marie and Raye on an occasion that I commented to Aunt Raye about Grandpa and Grandma not giving any of the other girls middle names. That was when Aunt Raye told me that the three younger sisters gave themselves middle names at the same time.

On 17 Oct 1927 she married F(rancis) Earl Hughes, b. Kansas City, M0, 12 Sep 1898; d. E1 Paso, TX, 9 Sep 1971, three days short of his 73rd birthday. As of this writing (February 1997) Raye Grace (Schafer) Hughes is the only grandchild of Ostwald and Margaret (Weigand) Kindsvater still living. God willing, she will observe her 94th birthday on 29 April this year.

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To round out this account, we might end with a few physiological observations. Aunt Raye told me that Grandpa Schafer was about 5'5" tall, Grandma about 5'4", and Aunts Raye and Marie were each 5'1". Judging from a family photograph, I think Aunt Mollie was about 5'6", my mother (Millie) about 5'8", and Uncle Jack about 5'11". Aunt Katie was taller than my mother, but I do not know how she compared with Uncle Jack, though I think she was shorter than he.

Grandma had hazel eyes (her father had grey eyes flecked with brown), and Grandpa had sky-blue eyes. All six children had blue eyes. Grandma's hair never got very grey, whereas my mother's hair turned white when she reached her sixties. My mother said that Grandma's hair had some red in it (as did my mother's when she was young and also her Grandpa Kindsvater's), but Grandma would never admit to any red in her hair. Two traits that Grandma found hard to accept were red hair and left-handedness in the family.

There was a strong facial resemblance between Grandma Schafer and her sister Anna Marie Sauer. And there was a strong resemblance between Aunt Annie Sauer and some of her children and grandchildren. No one knows what Aunt Lizzie (Kindsvater) Schleining looked like, but her daughter Katherine (Schleining) Pulkrabek bore a strong resemblance to her Aunt Annie and some of her Sauer cousins. I wish that some day I might know whether they took their looks from the Kindsvaters or the Weigands.

GOD'S BLESSINGS TO ALL OF YOU AND MAY YOU

HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY AND JOYOUS

NEW YEAR

Stalin purges reached all levels

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Nobody knows exactly how many people perished during the purges of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, but historians generally estimate the death toll at 14 million to 20 million. Most of them were Soviet citizens.

The victims were from all parts of Soviet society: army officers, intellectuals, common workers, as well as the government's communist elite. Anyone with ties to foreigners or foreign governments was suspect, and most were accused of trying to overthrow the Soviet regime.

Stalin set the stage for the purges in the early 1930s by destroying his rivals within the Communist Party through widely publicized show trials. Then the terror intensified, and in 1936 the mass arrests began. Execution grounds operated throughout the country in 1937 and 1938, while regional prison camps, often located in arctic mining and lumbering areas, filled up.

Despite the mass disappearances, few in the West heard about it at the time. The U.S. government, gearing up for World War II, was courting the Soviet Union as an ally against Hitler. Tourists and journalists visited the Soviet Union in the 1930s, but saw nothing. The nighttime arrests, the crowded cells of Moscow's Butyrka prison, the millions of prisoners cold and hungry in the great camps of the North were all hidden from them. The only public scenes were the great public trials, which rarely departed from prepared scripts.

The reasons for the purges remain obscure. Some historians believe mass arrests and terror were the only way the totalitarian state could control its bureaucracy, while others link it to Stalin's extreme paranoia. Historians generally agree that the purges so damaged the Soviet administration, industry and army that the purges weakened the dictatorship. The large-scale purges ended in 1939, though smaller ones continued into the late 1940s.

Most of the victims were officially rehabilitated under Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the charges against them repudiated

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