Snyder Community
Hale County, Texas
Mennonite Colony
Memories
By Edna Guengerich Stoltzfus
"This is to tell of my first remembrances."
[Edna (1901-1995) was the firstborn of Joel and Lena Yoder Guengerich. Her father was a carpenter who built some of the houses in the Snyder Community. Sometime after her 85th birthday, Edna recorded her memories in a 12-page document. Her daughter Vonnie Amstutz submitted a copy of this paper to the Snyder Community Project. I have selected and retold some of Edna’s Texas stories here. Bonnie Snyder Smith, February 2007]
The Joel S. Guengerich Family
portrait from the Edna Guengerich Stoltzfus
Collection
(sitting l. to r.: Joel, Harold, Glenn, and Lena; standing l. to r.: Willard, Albert, Edna, and Earl.)
When I was about six years old, we moved from Clarion, Iowa, to La Junta,
Colorado, and Dad helped build the Mennonite tuberculosis sanitarium. A year
later, when the sanitarium was finished, Dad went to Plainview, Texas, where
land agents had sold land to a number of Mennonite families. It was like
pioneering there. Our mother and we three children, Edna, Earl, and Albert,
stayed in Iowa with grandparents for three months until Dad said to come.
We traveled
to Texas by train. All of us were anxious to see Dad when the train pulled into
Plainview. Finally, we saw him on the platform. When the conductor reached to
lift me from the train to the platform, I by-passed him and jumped to where Dad
was and he caught me!
Before we really moved to the new place on our own property near Plainview, we were at Happy, Texas. Dad built a house for A. I. Yoder, the Bishop at the Mennonite colony in Happy. One Sunday afternoon, a prairie fire was observed in the south, coming right toward this new house. So they quickly built a back-fire which was kept under control and would stop the prairie fire. We were staying at Chancy Hershberger’s, where there was a small lake. When the prairie fire got that far, a number of people there used brooms and sacks, wet in the lake water, to fight the fire. They got it out with the help of women and teenagers. We were told to stay in the house until someone would come and tell us to go out to the plowed area. This fire had traveled twenty-five miles from where a cowboy had thrown a cigarette into a clump of dry grass. [Prairie fires were a constant threat in the Snyder Community, too. Family stories tell of loss of buildings.]
There were no buildings on our farm, so our family lived in a tent in town. We
also lived in a big two story house for a while when the family was gone. We
took care of their stock.
One day Dad
had to go get feed and, of course, had to take the wagon and team. He should
have been home by late afternoon but wasn’t. Our Mother gave us supper and
finally put us to bed. She sat at the window and listened until midnight. Then
she woke me up and asked if I would came sit with her and help listen for Dad. I
was wide awake then and for a while I listened. I wanted so much to hear the
wagon rattle. Mother had wrapped me in a blanket and I went to sleep in her lap.
I did not find out when Dad got there, but I did learn what had delayed him. One
of the horses had gotten sick and would lie down, so they had to wait until it
was better and could walk. There was no place to get help and there were lots of
coyotes. It was so lonesome there on the prairie, with no close neighbors or
telephones, and a strange place.
Then Dad built a “shack,” as we called it, until a well was drilled where we
would live. This shack was built in the Snyders’ yard. When this two-room shack
was moved to our place, there were no fences around for a while. Dad was at work
and a large herd of cattle came by and saw this new deal there. They came
snooping, smelling and pushing each other. It frightened our Mother, who feared
they would push the shack over. So she got a quilt and went to the door and
shook it and they stampeded. Then she was scared they might kill each other, but
they never came back.
Dad was doing
building for the colony people at this time. He got our house built and really
started farming. We plowed a fire guard around buildings because of prairie
fires. A neighbor who had a herd of cattle let Dad pick out some cows for us to
milk, if we raised the calves, until we could buy some. When the cows went dry,
Dad could take them back and get others to milk.
Our Mother
had to help with field work until the boys were big enough to handle a team. She
would mix up bread dough for me to watch until it was ready for loaves. Then I
would run out to the field to tell her and she would come in and put the dough
in the pans, to rise and to be baked at noon.
We children did have some fun living in Texas. We roamed over the prairie and found bird nests. Since there were no trees, the nests would be by big clumps of grass or thistles. We would visit them every day and try to see what kind of bird had built them. We learned that if we were close to a nest, the mother bird would pretend she was hurt. When we would try to catch her to see what was wrong, she would up and fly away.
On June 23, 1910, a baby brother came to us. We named him Willard Eldon. It really made me happy. When he was 18 months old, we all had whooping cough. The baby got pneumonia and went into convulsions early one morning. Mother got me up to watch him as she ran to the barn to tell Dad. It was all very frightening. They decided that Earl and I should walk over to the Snyders’ place to call a doctor, as we did not have a phone. So Earl and I started out just as it was getting daylight. I was so scared that we might meet a coyote, but we didn’t. Mr. Snyder then hitched up his horses and had to drive several more miles to where there was a telephone. I can’t remember if the doctor was there when we returned or not. A good friend came and helped care for the baby.
One day Mrs. Brenneman came to our house. She and Mother were cleaning spots on
clothes with gasoline, which they had in a cup. Suddenly, three-year-old Willard
coughed and sounded choked. Mother went to him and smelled gas. She looked in
the cup and saw that it was about empty. She tried giving Willard milk and also
a raw egg to make him vomit, but nothing worked. Soon he seemed to be okay.
Mother and
Mrs. Brenneman talked about why Willard would have drunk the gasoline. Mrs.
Brenneman liked to smell the gasoline and would go to the cup to smell it.
Willard must have seen her and thought she took sips. Well, that night he got
terribly sick, so Mother ran her finger down his throat and he did vomit then
and got better. He looked sick for several days. I don’t remember if he was
taken to the doctor the next day or not, but he had a sick look in his eyes for
quite a while.
One Sunday we had dinner at Fred Rastetter’s and the boys were riding a blind pony. Albert was quite young and not used to the blind pony. She hit a wire fence and whirled away. Albert was thrown into the fence and cut his leg to the bone. The folks took him to town so the doctor could sew the cut. It took six weeks to heal. He was six years old at the time, and got spoiled.
We had two miles to walk to school, so Earl and I would walk through the Snyders’ barnyard to shorten our walk. The Snyders had geese in the barn yard.
The gander was quite mean and would come for us and pinch our legs. It hurt! So
we began to look for him, to see where he was. Then we would run to the road.
One morning
we forgot to watch for him because it had rained and we were watching for mud
puddles. Suddenly he was beside us hissing! I put my foot up on his head and
pushed it down in the mud. Then I grabbed little Earl and ran. Suddenly I
thought maybe I had killed the gander, so we stopped and looked back. He had his
head up, shaking the mud off. That gander never bothered us again!
[Photo at right shows Susie Snyder feeding the chickens and geese in her father
Peter's barnyard. From the Grace Snyder Swartzendruber Collection.]
Since there were no mail routes, the Snyders would get our mail in town and we would pick it up from them. One time when I carried the mail home, I knew there had been a blue letter, but I didn’t have it when we got home. I told the folks and Dad had me tell just where we had walked through the corn field. He took the lantern and found the letter. Was I ever relieved and happy!
One winter we had a terrible blizzard. School was cancelled. Our neighbors sent their hired man out to see about their cattle. He couldn’t find them and at noon he came to our place and was nearly frozen. We were in the kitchen getting dinner started and I heard something at door. We went to look and found him standing there; he had kicked door. He came in and we got him thawed out, then he ate dinner with us. The wind went down around 4:00, so the hired man left for home.
When I was about twelve years old I went to work for Dave and Ida Hartzler when their second baby was born. [See note beside photo below.] Ida had worked for us when Willard was born. I made my first pie while I was there, with Ida’s directions. After that other people wanted me to help them, too. At first I thought it was great, but soon I didn’t care to go any more.
When I was around fourteen years old and Willard was five, he and Mother went to Chappell, Nebraska to visit Grandpa Yoder’s family. Thrashers came to our farm and were there for several meals. Lucy Landis and another lady came to help with the noon meals. With Dad’s help I got breakfast for seven men. I was really glad when Mamma and Willard returned.
On May 24, 1916, a baby boy came to us. We all wanted to call him J.S., Jr,. but
Dad wouldn’t have it. Then a neighbor girl started calling him Buster. When he
was almost a year old Dr. Wayland said, “Now the baby has to have a name so I
can register him.” So he was named Glenn Wayland, but we still called him
Buster. Later, when we moved back to Iowa, Grandpa Guengerich insisted that we
call him by his name or he would always be known as Buster. We really had to
work on it.
On July 23, 1918, another brother was born and was named Harold Wayne. I was
terribly disappointed that I didn’t get a baby sister. A nurse was there several
days and I had not yet held the new baby. When the nurse was through bathing him
the last morning she was there, she said to me, “Here, hold him. Put out your
arms.” She laid the baby in my arms, then said, “Kiss him! Kiss him!” So I did
and then he was “my baby.” He was so sweet and soft!
[Photo at left of Glenn and Harold Guengerich, from the Pauline Hartzler Shie Collection. Identification on back: "This was taken Oct. 1919. Glenn Wayland Guengerich 3 years 5 month Harold Wayne Guengerich 15 month" Pauline was Dave and Ida Hartzler's "second baby" to whom Edna referred above.]
In 1918, the folks decided that they would try to sell the farm and we would move back to Iowa to be with family. Dad said if the place didn’t sell, I could go to the Mennonite school at Hesston, Kansas. The place did sell, so in December 1918, we had an auction and then left Texas.
copyright ©
2007 Bonnie Snyder Smith
