Maternal Censuses #2 - Elizabeth (Suderman) Fast 1930

Stepping ten years back in history, let's look at the 1930 census for Elizabeth Fast. She was 37 years old and living with her husband David D. and three children in Nabisco Township, Texas County, Oklahoma. When we met them in the 1940 census they were living in a ramshackle stone house near Hardesty. About a year after the 1930 census, they lost their farm in Nabisco township due to being unable to pay the mortgage and were forced to find a house, any house, to live in. So at the time of this 1930 census, debt collectors were already breathing down their necks. 

U.S. Census of 1930, Texas County, Oklahoma, Nabisco Township, e.d. 70-17, sheet 1A, family #6, household of David D. Fast, lines 19-23, accessed online at ancestry.com, 20 October 2012.

Nabsico Township? We don't think about townships much today, but America was a rural country before World War II and most people located themselves by the township in which they lived. Nabisco was (and still is) a township located southeast of Hooker and north of Adams. But for decades townships have meant little or nothing.

Let's take a look at the other families on this census page. Just below them is another Fast family, Abraham G. and Sarah Fast. Abraham was her husband David's cousin. In fact, David's father and uncle (and Abraham G.'s father) Gerhard and several of their children had owned farms next to David's. By 1930, they had all moved away except for David Fast and his cousin Abraham G. Fast.

Three children named Viola (age 4), Rosa (3) and Ernest (0/12). Rosa should be "Rose" and Ernest is "David Ernest." His age is 0/12 because he was less than a month old when the census was taken. And Rose was born in Liberal, Kans., not in Oklahoma. As he did here, a census enumerator makes mistakes - sometimes big and sometimes small.

David and Elizabeth owned their own home, shown by the "O" after David's name. Unfortunately, the column for value of their home is blank for everyone on the page. Please, please, for the sake of future genealogists fill out every blank on every form!

Another interesting bit of personal data are the ages at marriage, 40 for David and 31 for Elizabeth. They both married at a late age. They were married on 10 June 1924 in Reedley, Calif., when David went to California to wed his bride and bring her back to his farm in the Oklahoma Panhandle. If we didn't know about their marriage, the census would give us a clue about when to search. Here is their wedding picture:

And here is a picture of their farm home. Elizabeth came from a middle-upper class family in California and joined her husband on a pioneering farmstead in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The Panhandle had only been thickly settled starting in about 1905, so she left behind a comfortable life and became a pioneer woman. It was a huge change in her life, and she often talked about her memories of beautiful California. And I think the difficulties of pioneer life and the losses of the Great Depression led to depression in her life.

The 1930 census was the last one to record the birthplace of each person's parents. Elizabeth's parents, Jacob and Eva (Pauls) Suderman, were born in Russia, which means that she was the first generation born in the United States. She grew up in an immigrant household, speaking Low German as her first language, and living in a Mennonite culture that had been transplanted from Russia. This was a very different experience than most of us who know nothing but life in the United States.

Grandpa Fast Loved Newspapers and Magazines (2 of 15) -

Part 2 of the series about Grandpa David D. Fast's love of periodicals. See Part 1 here.

Farm Journal – Begun in 1877 by Quaker Wilmer Atkinson for farmers near Philadelphia and published monthly. He worked hard to develop it into a national publication with a million subscribers by 1915. It carried practical information about farming and rural life. The sample magazine cover from 1925 is in color, which shows the marketing savvy of the magazine staff. Farm Journal continues today with a wide range of print, radio, television, internet, and data products.

 

Grandpa Fast Loved Newspapers and Magazines (1 of 15)

Grandpa David D. Fast (1884-1974) #112786 was proud of being a self-taught man and was an

avid reader. Even though he only completed eighth grade, he believed that education and knowledge mattered greatly. According to my dad Harold, about 1950 he counted the periodicals to which he subscribed for a total of seventeen. My dad and his siblings could still remember fourteen of them, which are described below. (The cover pictures below are just examples that I found on the internet.)

Because we live in an era of dying print newspapers and magazines, it is hard to imagine how important they were to a ranching family in the Oklahoma Panhandle. In 1950, the average household subscribed to 2.3 daily and weekly newspapers, and this doesn’t include magazines. In comparison, the Fasts subscribed to 8 newspapers! But in 2020 only 39% of households subscribe to a newspaper. Even medium-sized cities had morning and evening newspapers, and many people subscribed to both. Every small town had its own paper, sometimes several. Newspapers and magazines brought the latest information and entertainment to the remotest ranch or farm on the prairie.

Periodicals were a social and family event as well. Families listened with rapt attention while Father read the latest news aloud, shared a humorous joke, or groused about the cattle prices in Kansas City. Or as Mother informed them of the latest “doings” of the neighbors that were detailed in the local columns sent in by township correspondents. Newspaper and magazine salesmen traveled the prairies and aggressively sold their products to every household. If a family could not pay cash for a subscription, they were willing to trade for old batteries, radiators, chickens, anything that could be sold for cash. Print media were the lifeblood of the nation. 

The next series of posts will describe each periodical.

Maternal Censuses - Elizabeth (Suderman) Fast 1940

I have focused much of my family research on my paternal lines. But I thought I would track my maternal lines back through census records to see what I would find. So I'll start with my paternal grandmother Elizabeth (Suderman) Fast in the most recent census in which she appears.

Source: U.S. Census of 1940, Texas County, Oklahoma, Nabisco Township, e.d. 70-14, sheets 2B-3A, family #38, household of David D. Fast, lines 74-80 and 1, accessed online at ancestry.com, 20 October 2012.

The first census to look at is the 1940 US census for Hardesty Township, Texas County, Oklahoma. She and her husband David D. Fast lived in a leased house for which they paid $5 a month in rent, what the family called the Rock House, since it had been built of soft chalk rock in 1881 by David Donaldson. Although there were two other families that rented for $5 a month, the Fasts were clearly living in one of the poorest houses in the neighborhood. (I believe this was the rent for the house, not the rent for the ranch land.) 

Location of Fast ranch in 1940.

Elisabeth was 47 years old, having been born in 1892 but not yet having had her September birthday in 1940.

David and Elizabeth had six children: Viola E. (14 years old), Rose E. (13), David E. (10), Harold E. (8), Mildred B. (7), and Jacob S. (6). The census records that Elizabeth had had six children and that all six were living at the census date. The census record can prompt interesting questions if we look carefully at the information. For example, why do the first four children have the initial "E"? I happen to know from my dad that each one was given a middle name starting with "E" in honor of his mother: Viola Elizabeth, Rose Ethel, David Ernest, and Harold Eugene in that order. But I don't know why that pattern changed for Mildred and Jake.

Elizabeth and her family.

The census also records the birthplace of each family member. Elizabeth had been born in Kansas and was now living in Oklahoma, but she made a lot of moves in between that this census does not record. Also, notice that the children were born in different states. And there is a story with each one. Viola was born at home, on the farm southeast of Hooker, Okla. But Elizabeth decided she wanted to have hospital births after that, so Rose was born across the state line in Liberal, Kans. The plan was for David to be born in Liberal as well, but he came too quickly, so he was born at the farm near Hooker, Okla. Then Harold, my dad, and Mildred were born in Liberal, Kans., both according to plan. By 1936, the Depression was hitting very hard, and babies were dying of dust pneumonia; so the Fasts made a move to California that turned out to be temporary, which is why Jake was born there. But they were back near Hardesty by the time of the 1940 census.

Next we see a question about where the family was living in 1935 - it turns out to be the same house. If we look at the neighbors, we see that most of them were also living in the same house. It's possible people were moving away because of the Dust Bowl, but they certainly weren't moving to the area. In fact, based on family stories, I think most of these people had lived here for years, so it was a stable neighborhood with close-knit relationships. These were tough people who by 1940 had stayed through a decade of the worst that the Dust Bowl and Depression could deal out.

Finally, we should look at the neighbors, and there are many whose names I have heard: Jim and Anna Beasley, Fred Mayer, Jake Neff and his son Boss, George Oiler, Jula Wood, and Willard and Alta Mae Jones. But notice that there are no Mennonite names on the two pages where the Fasts appear - when the Fast family lost its farm near Hooker and had to move to a leased ranch near Hardesty, they moved far from their church community and into an "English" one. While David and Elizabeth remained staunch Mennonite Brethren church members all their lives, it took an effort to do so. And their children were the only Mennonites in the Hardesty school. They no longer did business in Hooker, Tyrone, and Liberal where their fellow Mennonites did business - instead they did business in Hardesty and Guymon where their "English" neighbors went. Their daily social ties were with "English" neighbors.

It is amazing the amount of information that can be pulled out of a census record, especially when there are family stories with which it can be correlated.

Lichtfelde Village History #2: The Departure

Let's begin our detailed study of the Lichtfelde village history. Here is the first paragraph:

15. Lichtfelde. Acting on their own initiative, in 1818 a significant number of Mennonite families decided to emigrate to join their co-religionists in South Russia, as they had no more prospect to receive land for their descendants in Prussia.

"Acting on their own initiative." The first emigration from Prussia to Russia, which resulted in the establishment of Khortitsa (Chortitza), was a three-year process that began in 1786 with an official invitation from the Russian minister in Danzig to the Mennonites. The churches sent delegates to survey the land, who spent a year traveling to Russia and negotiating. After they returned and reported, two groups departed in 1788 and spent the winter en route, arriving in 1789.

When the second colony Molotschna was established in 1803, Elder Cornelius Warkentin had learned that land was available, so the prospect of emigration was discussed at a minister's conference in August 1803. Large groups of Mennonites left and arrived in Khortitsa by fall, where they wintered with fellow Mennonites. In 1804, another large group joined them and they established new villages in Molotschna. The whole process was simpler and faster.

When the third wave arrived in Molotschna, beginning in 1818, they came in smaller groups, not in the organized mass migrations that established Khortitsa and Molotschna. And they were more responsible for organizing their own journey. In reality, there had been three decades of contacts among the Russian government, Mennonites in south Russia, and Mennonites in Prussia. It was much easier to emigrate to Russia in 1818 than it had been in 1788.

"in 1818" The Napoleonic Wars had ended in 1815, so the threat to the Prussian state had disappeared, and they no longer needed Mennonite support domestically. So they ended sales of state land to Mennonites, making it more difficult to acquire land for children and expansion. At first the Prussian government refused to give exit visas, but eventually they relented, but on the condition that Mennonites would pay an exit tax of 10% of the value of their property.

"a significant number of Mennonite families" Either 254 or 255 families emigrated over a roughly two-year period. If we assume 5 people per family, this would be roughly 1300 people. It would be interesting to know if they traveled in one huge group (unlikely since they came from different parts of Prussia) or several large groups. Or was it many groups of a few families? Presumably the wealthier families rode wagons or carts, in which they also hauled their possessions. Poorer families or individuals would have walked, perhaps pulling a handcart or carrying everything they owned in a backpack. 

"to join co-religionists in South Russia" It was much easier for this third wave of Mennonites to emigrate to south Russia because they had friends and relatives in Molotschna Colony to welcome them and to help them get settled in their new homeland.

"no more prospect to receive land for their descendants in Prussia" A farming family needed to buy more land for its children to farm, or their future economic prospects would decline. Children would be forced into a craft or trade, which was much less profitable than farming. The Prussian government was hoping that this economic pressure would force Mennonites to give up their non-resistance, but the prospect of cheap farmland in Russia gave them a way to keep their faith and to prosper economically. Thus, our ancestors saw this as God's provision for them.

The German original:

15. Lichtfelde. Aus eigenem Antrieb entschlossen sich im Jahre 1818 wieder eine bedeutende Anzahl mennonitischer Familien, zu ihren Glaubensgenossen nach Südrußland auszuwandern, weil sie in Preußen keine Aussicht mehr hatten, Land für ihre Nachkommen zu erhalten.