My mother researched and wrote this. I think it's historically valuable. The picture is from in front of the Deb-Greg-Lily home at 4023 Tracy St., Los Angeles, circa 1996. I posted this 1-11-2020 and backdated it so it would be next to my Lily diary, The Small Book of Red Earth.
--Greg Burk
* * *
Summer, 1996
When we are young, most of us are so involved with the present that we give little thought to our family's history and the events, world and personal, that shaped our lives. As we grow older, we become more and more impressed by the courage and perseverance that enabled our ancestors to leave their native countries and come to a strange, often hostile, new land.
Now that our grandparents' and most of our parents' generation are gone, I regret having had so little curiosity about their early lives, what motivated them to embark on such an adventure, and how they managed to carve out a niche for themselves and raise their families under such challenging circumstances.
In case future generations ever develop an interest in such things, I decided to record what little I do know about our families. Most is hearsay, but accurate to the degree that I can verify. Some names appear in family records with many different spellings, and dates for the same event often disagree from one source to another. At best this is a starting point for anyone who might wish to pursue the official records or trace the families back to their European origins. Who knows what famous or infamous forebears are waiting to be discovered?
As far as I know none of our families came to this country with any substantial wealth, and it took many years to become financially secure, but most did succeed eventually in providing good homes and admirable role models for their children.
MEMORIES OF MY OWN CHILDHOOD ON AN IOWA FARM
Farm life was still very rugged during the 1920's and 1930's. Horses were used to operate all the farm equipment; our first family tractor was purchased during my early childhood. Corn and oats were the principal crops in the early days; soybeans were introduced in the late 1930's and soon became an important part of the farmer's income. A few acres were usually planted with clover or alfalfa to provide hay for the animals.
Harvest time required extra help. Before the corn picker became available, men would be hired to help pick the corn by hand and haul it to the corn cribs with horses. Often the fall weather was extremely cold, and it was slow hard work. The harvest of oats came in midsummer. A binder cut the oats and tied it into bundles which were then stacked into "shocks" of many bundles. Neighbors worked together in groups to gather the oats and haul it to a threshing machine which moved from farm to farm separating the grain from the straw, which was piled into strawstacks and used throughout the year as bedding for the farm animals and poultry.
In addition to all the work of planting, cultivating, and harvesting crops, most farmers kept livestock. My father raised black angus beef cattle, hogs, a few milk cows, and sometimes sheep. In the spring I eagerly awaited the arrival of the baby animals, especially lambs which I could feed from a bottle if their mothers couldn't supply enough milk. The black lambs were traditionally given to me since their wool wasn't worth much.
My older sister Donna was born at home in 1922 with the assistance of Grandmother Fickbohm. By the time I came along in 1928, hospitals were more available, so I was born in Lake City at McVay's Hospital. The depression started soon after my birth, and farmers were hit very hard by the shattered economy. There were times when whole litters of baby pigs had to be killed because pork prices were too low to cover the cost of feeding them.
Our farm had no trees, so the house had no protection from winter blizzards or the hot summer sun. We had no electricity and no plumbing. Eventually a furnace was installed to heat the downstairs, but with no heat in the upstairs bedrooms the temperature was often below freezing. There were no closets; clothing was hung on hooks on the bedroom wall. The large kitchen contained no cupboards, just two small cabinets to hold the dishes and pans and a pantry with shelves for canned goods. There was a big black kitchen range which was used for all cooking and to keep the kitchen warm in winter. Usually corn cobs were the fuel; nothing was wasted. There was no refrigerator, but sometimes we had ice delivered in the summer to keep milk, eggs, and produce fresh in an icebox in the basement. It was a real treat when we got a kerosene refrigerator when I was in high school. Farm wives worked very long days during most of the year, rising early to prepare a big breakfast, then baking bread, churning butter, and making pies, doughnuts, cakes, and cookies for their hungry families. The main meal of the day was at noon, with a lighter supper around 6:00 PM. On threshing days there would be somewhere between 15 and 30 men to feed, and their appetites were enormous. They usually expected a lunch of sandwiches, cookies and coffee in mid-afternoon, delivered to them in the field by the housewife.
On laundry day my mother would carry to the basement many pails of water from the big tank that caught the rainwater from our roof. She poured it into a big boiler under which she had built a fire. When hot, the water had to be carried to the washer which had a gas engine to agitate the clothes and turn the wringer through which the clothes were channeled by hand into a big rinse tub, then through the wringer again into a big basket which was carried outside to the clothesline.
In summer the clothes dried quickly, but in winter they would freeze stiffly on the line and had to finish drying indoors near the furnace. Mechanical washers were dangerous, but they were an improvement over the earliest washer my mother had which required scrubbing the clothes on a washboard and turning the wringer by hand. Ironing was done with "flatirons" heated on the kitchen range until the Coleman gas iron was introduced; it burned white gas under pressure (and often burned the clothes and the operator as well).
In addition to her cooking, laundry, and housekeeping duties, the farm wife was expected to raise a flock of chickens, carrying the grain and water to them, gathering the eggs, and keeping their houses clean. Many also raised ducks, geese, and perhaps turkeys or guineas. They all had big vegetable and flower gardens. They canned their year's supply of vegetables as well as whatever fruit they could get from their own and neighbors' orchards and berry patches. Many women and children also helped with the field work, but my dad preferred to do that himself.
This sounds as though life on the farm was terrible, but there were compensations. Farmers enjoyed being independent with nobody telling them what to do. Neighbors were very friendly and could be counted on to help out in emergencies. People could be trusted; our doors were never locked. Even in the worst years of the depression there was always plenty of home-grown food. Children had all the space they could want to play, and usually there were kittens and puppies to keep us entertained, even a pony for a while.
Television hadn't been invented yet, but we did get a big radio when I was about seven. It received only a few stations and required about six big batteries of three kinds and a long wire antenna outside, but it was our only link to the rest of the world and provided important market reports as well as news, entertainment, and (my father's favorite) baseball games.
We got our first telephone around 1935. We shared a party line with 10-20 other families, and usually calls were monitored by all the neighbors; there were no secrets! At noon each day there would be a "line ring" when the operator would give market and weather reports as well as any other important news flashes.
It was unbelievably quiet in the country; only a few cars passed each day on the dusty gravel road, very rarely a plane overhead--nothing but the singing of birds and crowing of roosters in the morning. We enjoyed playing in the snow, but we
had to be prepared for long periods of isolation when roads were impassable. The snow might start early in November and last well into spring. I was born in early April, and my father had to shovel his way home from the hospital through a blizzard.
Summer days could be extremely hot, often followed by severe thunderstorms at night, sometimes tornadoes nearby. If lightning struck a farm house or barn, there was no hope of getting fire trucks there in time to save it. Neighbors would rush to form a bucket brigade, but usually it would be a total loss. We were very fortunate the only time we had a house fire, not started by lightning but apparently by a sparrow that picked up a worker's discarded cigarette and carried it to a nest in the eaves. A passing motorist saw the smoke and alerted the family during their noon meal. A couple of agile young men who were helping with farm work quickly climbed to the roof and threw buckets of water on the flames before much damage was done.
My sister and I attended a one-room rural school, Lake Creek #7, about a mile and a quarter from our house. We usually were taken to school by our parents or our neighbors, the Fischers, but often we walked home if the weather wasn't too cold. There were usually about a dozen students from first through eighth grade; 18 is the largest group I can remember, but some schools had as many as 30.
Looking back I marvel at the energy and efficiency of our teachers. Usually they were young single women (one was only 19) with very limited education (two years college at most). For some reason married women were seldom allowed to teach even in the high schools until World War II brought severe teacher shortages.
In winter our teacher's day began very early when she arrived to build a fire in the heating stove which took a long time to bring the temperature up to a comfortable level. There was no electricity, water, or telephone. The older students took turns walking in pairs to the nearest neighbor to get one pail of water for the day's drinking and hand-washing.
Our school day started at 9:00 AM with "Opening Exercises"--the pledge of allegiance, then singing songs to the accompaniment of a wind-up Victrola. Sometimes the teacher would read a chapter of a children's classic such as Little Women. Our assignments for the day were posted on the blackboard, and we were expected to work independently or possibly seek help from an older child. The teacher would call one grade at a time to come to the front of the room and sit on the long "recitation bench" to go over their day's assignment in a given subject. When all grades had covered that subject, the process would begin again with the next subject. I started first grade at the age of five, and I was an extremely shy child. Feeling all those eyes upon me, I wouldn't utter a sound when my turn came to read. If my sister hadn't been there to assure the teacher that I read whole books at home, I would never have made it to second grade. Patient Miss Aegerter decided to go outside and sit on the steps in the sunshine with me, where I suddenly was able to read whatever she gave me. It took awhile, but eventually I learned to participate indoors.
We had a 15-minute break mid-morning and afternoon and a full hour for lunch and outdoor play at noon. In winter the mothers took turns bringing a hot dish to go with our cold sandwiches.
Playground equipment consisted of one handmade teeter-totter, a couple of balls and a bat. Usually we played simple games, giving the little ones a head start to even the competition. In winter we built snow forts and had snowball fights. One of the fathers built a large table with a recessed top that held a few inches of sand for us to play with indoors on rainy days building sand castles and roads.
After lunch the class rotation would resume until all subjects had been covered. Other than our textbooks, we had only an aged set of children's encyclopedia, a dictionary, and some wall maps, supplemented by a few books which the teacher borrowed each month from the county library for us to read as a treat after we finished our work.
The last hour of the day on Friday was reserved for arts and crafts, often making things to give our parents for Christmas, Mothers Day, etc. Some projects were quite ambitious, involving sawing, sanding, painting, and framing things.
We were dismissed at 4 PM, and the teacher would hurry to sweep the floor, clean the blackboard, correct papers, and prepare the next day's assignments while enough daylight remained to see what she was doing.
The teacher had to be the school nurse as well, bandaging our injuries and deciding if the injury or illness was serious enough to justify leaving the group to take someone home. As certification requirements increased, she was also busy taking correspondence courses to remain eligible to teach.
One problem our teachers DIDN'T have was discipline. Parents were very supportive of the teacher, and few children even considered defying her authority.
A couple of times a year we would present an evening program for our parents and invited guests for which the teacher had to plan, prepare sets and costumes, coach us in our parts, and lead the singing. Box socials and ice cream socials were occasionally planned for the whole neighborhood, and afterward an election would be held to decide which father would be "director" for the coming year. His duties included hiring a teacher and taking care of any necessary maintenance or purchases for the school on a very meager budget.
My sister was five years older than me and there were few girls in the neighborhood, so my only playmate was Marian Lou Summa, a girl two years younger than me. Once in awhile in summer we played at each other's house or stayed overnight, but most of the time I played alone with dolls, cats, and dogs. Marian Lou died of appendicitis when she was about eleven, just after I entered high school.
A school bus picked us up quite early in the morning for the ride to Lohrville High School. World War II started early in my freshman year and lasted until after I graduated, so the high school years were somewhat overshadowed by the war. Teachers were scarce; gas, tires and many foods were rationed, and the boys lived with the certainty of military service as soon as they graduated. Everyone had friends or family members overseas, and our small community had several casualties.
After graduation my sister entered nursing school at St. Anthony's Hospital in Carroll and she worked there for most of her life. She married Laverne Kohnke and had five children.
I took a secretarial course at a business school in Des Moines (AIB) and worked for the Iowa State Education Association until 1949, when I married Gerald Burk, our next-door neighbor on the farm.
BURK - BROWNFIELD
Bert Sylvester Burk 5/6/76-2/3/44
Lurilla Ellen Brownfield 10/1/81-1/17/77
Less is known about the Burk family history than any of the other ancestors.
We know that Bert Burk (Gerald's grandfather) was born in May, 1876, in Champaign County, Illinois, and that his parents were Mary and Martin Van Buren Burk, but we have no idea when the family came to the United States or from what country.
Bert had three brothers (Wilbert, Charles, and Albert), two sisters (Ida and Clarisa), and a half-sister (Elizabeth--we don't know which parent she belonged to; she isn't pictured in family photos).
Bert married Lurilla Brownfield (Lula) April 30, 1899, in Champaign. Lula's parents were Jeremei (Jerry) Thomas Brownfield and Mary Sidell Brownfield. Their national origins are also unknown, but Mary's parents lived in the Champaign area and she was probably born there in 1844. Her mother was Sarah Sidell. One of Lula's brothers once said that their grandmother was a Cherokee Indian named Ogala Veach, but I haven't been able to verify that--she could have been Jerry Brownfield's mother. The Brownfields owned property near Champaign and were said to have donated some of it (virgin prairie) to the University there; I have heard that it is still maintained by the University.
There were also relatives named Clemens, and family folklore claimed a connection to Mark Twain, but that may be myth.
Lula had two sisters, Mary ("Mayme") and Jenny, and three brothers, Spencer, Oran, and Jasper ("Jess"). Jenny doesn't appear in family photos--she may have been born later.
Bert and Lula's first four children (Harold, Bernice, Wilma, and Walter) were born in Illinois. Alberta was born in Iowa in 1914; another child died at birth in 1918. After moving to Iowa in 1911, they raised their family on a rented farm between Lohrville and Rockwell City. They retired in 1934 and moved to Rockwell City. Bert died of a heart attack in 1944 at 68; Lula continued to live in Rockwell City in various apartments and Sunnyview Retirement Center until her death in January 1977 at 95.
Bernice married "Doc" Hazlett and they had two sons, Richard and Robert. They lived in several western states, retiring in Oregon near their sons. Wilma lived in Illinois with her husband, Bill White. She had one daughter, Bonnie. Wilma died in 1970 (heart attack).
Walter farmed near Rockwell City with his wife Mabel (Allen) and their five children: Betty (Lane), Lois (Spencer), Karen (Kurth), Shirley (McShane), and James (Treva Brown). Walter died in 1992.
Alberta, the youngest, had no children. She was married four times, to Tommy Stevenson, Earl Hucka, Cecil Bangston, and Paul Scollon. She died of a heart attack in 1964 at age 50.
Harold married Lillian Johnson in 1922. Gerald, their only child, was born in 1926. They first lived in Rockwell City where Harold operated a bulk gasoline plant. They took over operation of the farm south of Rockwell City after Bert retired. In June of 1954 a tornado destroyed the home where they had lived for more than twenty years along with most of the farm buildings. A new house was built and they continued to live there until their retirement in 1966 when they built a new home at 365 Austin Street in Rockwell City. In 1978 they sold their home and moved to Sunnyview Retirement Center. Lillian died in 1991 and Harold in 1993.
While living on the farm, Harold and Lillian purchased 160 acres of land across the road from their rented farm. It continues to be operated by members of the nearby Irwin family.
Gerald joined the Navy after graduation from Lohrville High School in 1944 and the following year entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. After graduation in 1949 he married Cosette ("Kathy") Fickbohm and they had three sons, Greg, Jeff and Lin. Greg married Debbie Drooz and has one daughter, Lily Belle. Jeff married Carol Agnew.
After several years in the Navy, Gerald joined the Boeing Company in Seattle and has lived near there since 1960. He retired in 1990.
JOHNSON - BARKMEIER
Henry Johnson 6/2/57-7/8/37
Talena Barkmeier 6/30/68-11/24/59
Born near Hohenkirchen, Germany, in 1857, Henry T. Johnson was the son of John and Katheryn Johnson. Not much is known about the family except that he had a brother John and sisters Katherine and Anna. There were other siblings, but their names are not known.
As a young man Henry served in the German military; one of his assignments was said to have been as food taster for Kaiser Wilhelm I. In Germany it was the custom for the oldest son to take over the family business. Not being the oldest, Henry decided to emigrate to the United States in 1883.
There he met Talena Barkmeier of Danforth, Illinois, and they were married in 1887. Talena's parents were Herman and Ayedena (Tamaus) Barkmeier, and they apparently had lived in Illinois for many years since Talena was born there.
We don't know when they came to the U.S., but believe they were also German.
Talena had one sister, Kate (Heideman), and three brothers, Martin, Herman, and
Henry and Talena left Illinois for Iowa in 1900 and settled on a farm near Rinard with their three sons (Carl, Ed, and Ernest) and daughter Della (Hicks). Six more daughters were born in Iowa: Lillian (Burk), Mabel (Archer), Elva (Wiseman), Irene (Scheidegger), Verna (Wilson) and Dorothy. Two other children, Alice and John, died in infancy.
In addition to farming, Henry served as a director of Calhoun Mutual Insurance
Association. His son Carl T. later became a director, followed by Carl's son Harold and then Harold's son Carl E. Johnson--four generations in continuous service to the Association which is still operating in Lake City, Iowa, under Johnson management (and possibly another generation by now).
Henry retired from farming in 1930 and died in 1937 at 80. Talena lived to be 91, spending her later years at her daughters' homes.
All of their children remained nearby in Iowa and maintained a close relationship through the years. At the time of Talena's death in 1959, she had 24 grandchildren, 49 great-grandchildren, and 4 great-great-grandchildren. When I last tallied them in 1972, those numbers had grown to 63 great-grandchildren and 31 great-great-grandchildren, and I know their numbers have continued to grow since. Henry and Talena would have good reason to be proud of the generations of fine people who are their successors.
FICKBOHM - McDONALD
William Fickbohm 10/18/51-4/16/30
Annie McDonald 4/16/54- / /41
On my father's side of the family, the Fickbohms came to the United States from
Hanover, Germany, about 1857: my great-grand-parents, Claus and Nesa (Koehler)
Fickbohm, their four sons and one daughter. After about eight years in the New York area (I can find no information about that period), they settled on a farm near Galena, Illinois in 1865 in a region known as Skunk Hollow.
The oldest son, Herman Frederick (my father's uncle), joined the U.S. Navy as an apprentice in 1865, and in 1866 at the age of 17 received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. While 17 seems young for a midshipman, other members of his class were as young as 14. At graduation he ranked seventh in his class of sixty-eight. He served twenty-nine years as a Naval officer, traveling throughout the world and retiring as a Commander in 1899.
In retirement he and his wife, Sallie, lived at 113 Cass Street in Chicago. They had no children. Herman died in 1915 and was buried at Dubuque, Iowa. When Sallie died some thirty-seven years later, Herman's nieces and nephews were surprised to receive a small inheritance under terms of Herman's will which left everything to Sallie as long as she lived, the remainder to be divided among his nieces and nephews.
The second son, Edward, continued to farm near Galena, Illinois, and the third son, Henry, moved to South Dakota. I know very little about the daughter, Doris, except that her married name was Hecker and she lived in Brooklyn, New York.
The youngest son, William (my grandfather) married Annie McDonald in 1880 in
Galena. Annie was born in Illinois in 1854. Her parents, Patrick and Catherine McDonald, had emigrated from County Fermenaugh, Ireland, not long before her birth. According to the 1860 census, Patrick worked as a miner. Annie had at least three brothers (James, Patrick, and Philip) and one sister (Mary).
A distant cousin, Tressa McKeigh, told me that some of Annie's older siblings died of cholera aboard ship on the voyage from Ireland and were buried at sea. I have not been able to confirm this. Mary McDonald married James McKeigh and may have died in her early thirties leaving five children. Patrick McDonald Jr. (Paddy) set out for the western U.S. and was never heard from again, possibly killed by Indians. I know nothing about James and Philip. "Granny" McDonald (Catherine) was said to be a colorful woman who smoked a corncob pipe. Annie (my grandmother) spoke proudly of having delivered eggs to General Grant's home when she was a child in Galena.
In 1885 William and Annie moved to Logan Township, Calhoun County, Iowa, with their oldest three children (Mae, Laura, and Agnes). The land where they settled was virgin prairie, never having been cultivated and probably acquired through the Homestead Act. My father recalled his childhood on the farm, rising at daylight and working until time to go to school and again after school to clear the land of rocks and tree stumps. They would drive a team of horses pulling a "stoneboat" (a low platform on wheels) on which they would load all the rocks they could lift to be hauled away to the rock pile that was a part of every early farm. The larger rocks would be broken up by dynamite.
It seems unbelievable now, but in those days much of Iowa was wet swampland. Drainage ditches were dug into which the water was channeled by tiles and drained into the nearest creek or lake. Then the sod would have to be plowed under with a horse-drawn plow before seed could be planted.
William and Annie had eight more children in Iowa for a total of eleven, five brown-eyed daughters followed by six blue-eyed sons. Emily and Ella arrived soon after the move to Iowa, then John, William (my father), Jim, Lou, Art, and Leo (in 1900 when Annie was 46 years old).
Little by little their 160 acres became productive land which my grandfather farmed until 1926 when he retired to nearby Lohrville, leaving son Art to manage the farm. I have no memory of my grandfather since I was only two when he died of cancer in 1930 at the age of 78. My grandmother continued to live in Lohrville until her death in 1941 at 87. She had been blind for about ten years, probably from cataracts. I remember that we visited her nearly every Sunday after church and she would follow our growth by touch.
All but one of the five daughters married. Mae married Mike Coan, had one son, and spent most of her adult life in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. She died of cancer in 1951.
Laura married Charley Martens and raised three sons and a daughter on a farm near Rockwell City. She died in 1971.
Agnes married Jack Coan (brother of Mike) and had five children; she died of cancer in 1920 at the age of 36. Her four oldest children made their home with their grandparents most of the time until they were old enough to live independently. Aggie's youngest child, Mary, was adopted by her mother's sister Emily who was married to Pat Connelly and lived on a farm near Churdan. She had no other children. Emily was the most educated of the family, having attended Iowa Teachers College and Chicago University. She was a teacher in Iowa's rural schools for eleven years and worked as a secretary in Washington, D.C., during World War I. She died in 1976.
Ella never married. She devoted her entire life to the family, caring for her parents in their later years, her brother Leo, and the children of her sister Agnes. She died in 1974.
Most of the Fickbohm sons were farmers. John married Celia Powers and farmed in northern Iowa near Emmetsburg. They had two sons and one daughter. John died in 1970 of leukemia.
My father, William Walter (called Will), became very ill with a ruptured appendix when he was quite young. Since there were no medical facilities in the small communities, his brothers transported him several miles to the railroad station in a horse-drawn wagon. The train took him about thirty miles to Fort Dodge, where he was rushed to a hospital for emergency surgery.
He was unconscious for several days and in the hospital for a long time, but he did regain his health and seldom needed the services of a doctor until he was very old. He was hospitalized one other time when a horse kicked him and broke some ribs. He also recalled having wrecked a car when he was about 28. On crutches he was helped up the courthouse steps by his brothers to report for the World War I draft. In spite of his injuries he was to be inducted in the next group, but the war ended before that happened.
He first started farming on his own with his brother John. They purchased land in northern Iowa near Emmetsburg. When John married, he and Celia took over that land, and Will rented a farm near Rockwell City. He married Mary Crowley in 1920, and they continued for many years to rent 240 acres owned by John Lanphier of Omaha. After Mr. Lanphier's death, they purchased 80 acres of that farm from the heirs and the Harold Burks purchased the remaining 160 acres. Will and Mary had two daughters, Donna and Cosette (as I was called until I adopted "Kathy" after high school). The Fickbohms moved to Rockwell City in 1948 where they bought 100 acres on the west end of town. Rockwell City High School now stands on 40 acres of that land and Tracy Kohnke owns the rest. Mary died of cancer in 1965. Blind and very arthritic, Will died in a nursing home in Carroll in 1976.
Jim married Isabel Powers and they raised a son and a daughter on a farm near Rockwell City. Jim died in 1947 in a fall down the basement stairs.
Lou never lived in Iowa after his military service in World War I. (Art and Jim also served during the war.) Lou spent many years in southern Oregon, then moved to California. He was married quite late in life to Beatrice Bussman (no children). He died around 1980.
Art took over the family farm after his father retired. He and his wife, Leona Crabtree, adopted a baby girl. Art died in 1970.
Leo was a Down Syndrome baby, and while he lived to be 64 he never developed mentally beyond the age of 5 or 6 and had a speech impediment. He lived with Ella until moving to a group home not long before his death in 1965.
CROWLEY - CRONIN
John Edward Crowley 6/28/55-3/9/47
Mary Agnes Cronin 3/17/60-8/18/49
About 1876 the Crowley family joined the throngs of Irish people who came to the United States in search of a better life. The population of Ireland is said to have declined by half during the nineteenth century because of emigration and starvation caused by poverty and the failure of the potato crop which was the principal food in the Irish diet.
Timothy and Hannah Crowley brought with them from Bantry, County Cork, all but one of their ten children; the oldest, Jerry, stayed in Ireland (though some of his children later came to this country). Tim and Hannah settled near
Preston in Jackson County, Iowa, with their four sons and five daughters--
Con, Mike, Tim, Ellen, Julia, Kate, Mary, Hannah, and John (my grandfather).
Most of them stayed in the Jackson County area, but around 1890 John acquired some farm land in Calhoun County near Lohrville. It was there that he became a citizen in 1893.
On February 10, 1891, he married Mary ("Molly") Cronin at St. Joseph's Church in Lohrville. She had come to the U.S. (also from County Cork) about 1880. 1 don't know if they were acquainted in Ireland. She worked as a household servant in New York City for awhile and was always grateful to her employer who taught her so much. I believe her parents, Patrick and Margaret (McCarty) Cronin, stayed in Ireland, as did her sisters Julia and Katherine who married brothers named Murphy. One sister, Margaret, came to the U.S. and married a Sullivan, but she died very young in 1895. Her brothers Dennis, Patrick, and Murthy also lived in Iowa and possibly another brother, Martin, who died in 1894 according to the family Bible.
Though relatively old at the time of their marriage, the Crowleys had six children--Hannah, Margaret ("Peg"), John, Mary (my mother), Mike, and Catherine. Their original home was on a farm in an area called Wightman about three miles southwest of Lohrville. Only a grain elevator remains of Wightman today. When the railroad came through their property and required removal of their house, they purchased additional property two miles west and made their home there for the rest of their lives. Hannah, Peg, and Mike never married and continued to live with their parents throughout most of their lives. After the death of their parents and Hannah, Mike and Peg moved to Lohrville in 1972 to be close to St. Joseph's Church in their later years. The old farm house stood vacant for more than twenty years but was torn down after all the original family had died.
Although the Crowleys prospered through the years, they preferred the simple life they had always lived. They never did have indoor plumbing on the farm, and they rejected electricity long after it became available, finally installing it late in the 1940's for the refrigeration of farm products. Hannah saw television for the first time in 1965 (and found American Bandstand shocking!). Mike and Peg bought a TV about 1973 and seemed to enjoy it.
No doubt the Crowleys were considered to be very eccentric, but they seemed happy just to stay close to home and not get involved in community affairs. Grandma, Grandpa, and Hannah rarely left the farm except to go to Church, but they were always hospitable to neighbors or relatives who visited them.
It wasn't until after their deaths that I learned that neither of my grandparents could read or write even though two of their daughters were teachers. Apparently there were no public schools in Ireland in their youth. I find it amazing that they functioned so well without reading. Grandma cooked, baked, and canned foods without recipes, raised a huge vegetable and flower garden, and cared for all kinds of poultry. She made her own soap, bread, butter, jelly, and clothing (even knitted mittens) with no patterns or written instructions. Grandpa Crowley had a particular gift for mental arithmetic. He raised black Angus cattle, and when it was time to market them he would walk among the herd, patting each one and silently calculating their weight, the current price of beef, and cost of transporting them to Omaha. His estimates of their net value were so close it never failed to mystify his more educated family.
Each member of the Crowley family was a distinct individual, no two sharing the same personality. Grandma was very quiet and hard-working. Even in her mid-eighties she worked in her garden for hours on hot summer days wearing her ankle-length dresses and aprons and her sunbonnet (homemade from fabric scraps with window screen for stiffening). She died at home at 89 with virtually no medical care throughout her life.
Grandpa Crowley was more gregarious. He enjoyed his mid-day naps and hearty meals with plenty of fat pork and all those other high-cholesterol foods that we are warned against. He was nearly 92 when he died and had rarely seen a doctor and had never been hospitalized.
Hannah, the eldest child, was very serious and thrifty. She had brown eyes, and her fine, dark hair was pulled back in a neat bun--it was never cut. She was an excellent seamstress, grew beautiful flowers, and did most of the household chores (laundry, cleaning, cooking). She was always rather frail and sickly. At the age of 77, she retired for her afternoon nap and died in her sleep.
Margaret (Peg) had almost no domestic talents except for baking very good pies, cakes, and cookies. She was the most outgoing of the family, very strong and independent. Hannah's education ended with grade school, but Peg was determined to be a teacher, so she walked the 2-3 miles along the railroad tracks to go to high school in Lohrville. After a brief course at Iowa State Teachers College, she got her teaching certificate and spent the next 47 years teaching in the rural schools of Iowa. She was very highly regarded as a teacher, a strict disciplinarian who demanded every student's best performance, but she also enthusiastically joined in all their roughhouse play at recess and provided generous treats for all the holidays at her own expense. Sometimes she boarded with families near the school, but usually taught close enough to live with her family. She did all the family shopping and errands.
Although very popular and engaged two or three times, Peg never could bring herself to give up her freedom and get married. Peg also had brown eyes and dark hair which was bobbed in the twenties, then grown to waist length and worn in a coiled braid. Her front hair turned white in her thirties and was kept soft and wavy with a curler heated in the chimney of the kerosene lamp. She was the only family member who wore lots of makeup and jewelry and fashionable clothes. She died of colon cancer at 88.
John, the oldest boy, is said to have been very tall and handsome. He drowned at the age of sixteen while swimming with a group of boys at a nearby swimming hole on a hot summer evening. His death was devastating to the family, particularly his mother, who never really got over it. She had lost her closest friend when her sister died very young, and although she never complained, there was always a sadness about her after John died.
Mary (my mother) followed Peg's example, finishing high school and training to become a teacher. She was the prettiest of the girls, with blue eyes and reddish-brown hair. She was more traditional than Peg and soon gave up teaching to marry and have a family. She never lived more than five miles from the Crowleys, so we were much closer to them than to the Fickbohms. We were also the first grandchildren of the Crowleys, while there were many Fickbohm descendants.
Mike had to grow up very fast when his brother died and he (at 12) was the only surviving son to help his father with their expanding farm duties. He always worked in the fields or around the barnyard until it was too dark to see what he was doing. Although he didn't have much education, he enjoyed reading and was surprisingly knowledgeable about many subjects.
He was about six feet tall, blue eyes, sandy hair, and perfect white teeth. He never married, though he always said he would have if he had ever met anyone even half as good as his mother. All of his sisters idolized Mike and sought his advice about everything.
None of the Crowleys ever felt the need to follow the crowd, and Mike was no exception. When the rest of the country observed daylight savings time, Mike insisted that their clocks remain on what we called Crowley Time. Mike, like Hannah, died unexpectedly in his sleep at 78.
Catherine was the family tomboy. As a child she could always be found riding her horse or tending the animals and poultry. Born when her mother was 45, she was quite small and delicate. According to her siblings, she was therefore pampered and developed a stubborn, independent attitude that would never have been permitted in the others. She had dark brown eyes, dark hair, and rather prominent front teeth caused by her refusal to give up her baby bottle until she was four or five (according to her sisters). At 16 Catherine had a ruptured appendix which kept her hospitalized in Carroll for many weeks (with Hannah by her side), but she eventually regained her strength. She never went back to school, but was able to resume her activities on the farm, raising chickens, ducks, geese, and guineas.
Her personality improved greatly as she grew up, and she was my favorite aunt, young and carefree. She enjoyed dancing and driving and would take my sister and me on outings to Twin Lakes or to movies or the traveling circus. She finally got married in her mid-thirties to John Masterson, and they had two children, Mike and Mary Ann (Booge). After John Masterson's death, Mike Crowley bought a small farm for Catherine next door to his own so she would be close by to help Peg in her old age. Catherine died of colon cancer at 81.
Most of my summers as a child were spent with the Crowleys. With their many trees, I could spend hours finding birds' nests and monitoring the progress of the baby birds. Crowleys always had a dog and many cats to play with, and Peg and Catherine often took Donna and me shopping or picnicking (things my parents didn't have time for). Hannah taught me to sew, making clothes for my doll, and to play the old cylinder records on the Grafophone. Peg kept all her teaching materials at home in the summer, so I learned to read from her primary texts. Their house wasn't very big, so often we would have to sleep three to a bed on the big feather ticks they made from goose down. They always put me in the middle; otherwise I would fall off the edge in the middle of the night.
My memories of childhood center more on the Crowley farm than on my own home--wading in the creek in the pasture; climbing to the top of the windmill (where I was sure I could see to the end of the world); the sound of meadowlarks singing on fence posts and pigeons cooing in the barn; the heavy smell of lilacs on hot summer nights; the taste of grapes, carrots, radishes, and peas taken straight from the garden to the water pump to be rinsed and eaten (vegetables have never tasted that good again). They were of another era and unique even then. The world could use more of them!