Faces From the Past -- A Picnic in Kiowa County

Once when I was very young, my grandmother, Beatrice Schmidt, and her sisters, Vi Dirks and Edna Schmidt, decided we should all go on a picnic out in the field near where they grew up. The group included those three and my Aunt Judi, my mom, my sister, Nancy, my brother, Arlin and I. We walked in a shallow creek bed for a good while and I think the reason the whole event sticks with me so well, is because we all found ourselves covered in leeches and had to peel them off of ourselves. Anyway, I found a few old slide photos of that day. My guess is it was the very early 1960s.

This one is one of my all-time favorite pictures.

BIRTHDAY BIO: Phyllis Egli Schmidt (1933-2010)

Today, April 17, would be my mother’s 80^th birthday.

Phyllis Eileen Egli was born in Manson, Iowa in 1933 in the home of her grandparents, Peter and Annie Peterson. Her grandmother, Annie Peterson, was a midwife. 

 Phyllis was the second child and only girl born to Emery and Edna Egli. She had three brothers: Tom, who was a year older, and Harris and Kenneth who were younger. The Egli’s lived on various farms in the Manson area while Phyllis was growing up. Phyllis attended one room school houses in the county and the family was active in the Manson Mennonite Church. Both the Egli’s and the Peterson’s were large families and there was always plenty of family around. Phyllis grew up knowing many cousins.

Phyllis attended Hesston College in Hesston, Kansas, where she met her future husband, Kenneth Schmidt. But Phyllis had dreams of becoming a nurse. She had several aunts who were nurses and in fact one, Maude Egli Swartzendruber, taught at LaJunta Mennonite School of Nursing. So after Hesston, Phyllis moved to LaJunta, Colorado for nurses training. Ken, her husband-to-be, was working at hospitals in Pueblo, Colorado, to fulfill his service as a conscientious objector.

Phyllis and her brother, Tom

During that time Ken and Phyllis wrote letters. Nursing students were not allowed to be married so they knew they had a wait ahead of them. A wait they complained about in the hundreds of letters written during those years. They wrote to each other nearly every day and I still have those letters.

Finally in May of 1955 Phyllis graduated. And in August 1955 Ken and Phyllis were married in Manson, Iowa. They settled in Greensburg, Kansas, farming for Ken’s parents.  Phyllis also did some nursing but soon she had a family to care for: a son in 1956, a daughter in 1957, another daughter in 1959. And when Ken decided to return to school, the family moved to North Newton, Kansas, and Phyllis worked the night shift to help support the family.

After Ken graduated, the family moved with Ken’s job to Texas for a short while. They lived in Colorado for over ten years and they added a fourth child, another daughter in 1966. Then in 1978, they moved to Indiana. Phyllis continued to work as a nurse. Sometimes she did hospital nursing, but for many years she worked in doctors’ offices.

Ken Schmidt family

 Phyllis was a working mother, but she was always there for her kids, always involved in their lives and their activities. She was a very giving and loving person and gave her time to volunteer work and also to help her friends and neighbors and anyone she saw in need.

Denim comforter she made
for her grandson

 Phyllis loved to sew and spent much of her free time quilting and sewing for her children and later her grandchildren.  She was also very involved in her grandchildren’s lives, attending many activities and doing many things with and for them.

Phyllis with two of her granddaughters

Everywhere Phyllis went she made friends. And she continued to stay in touch with family far and near and with old friends scattered all around the country. Her nursing classmates are still in close contact, writing letters and spending time together. They share that Phyllis was often the life of the party.

After they retired, Ken and Phyllis moved back to Greensburg, Kansas and lived on a farm southwest of town. The devastating tornado of 5 May 2007 came less than three miles east of them before destroying the town of Greensburg.

Phyllis suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. Over the years she chose aggressive treatments and met the crippling effects of the disease head on.  In 2008 Ken and Phyllis moved into a retirement community in Hutchinson, Kansas, where they reconnected with old friends and made new.

In December 2009 Mom was having trouble keeping her balance. On January 4, 2010, she fell and was injured. She was taken to the ICU in Wichita and on January 13, 2010, Mom passed away. We all miss her everyday.

Wedding Wednesday -- Fred B. Schmidt and Matilda Wedel

Fred B. Schmidt and Matilda Wedel are my great grandparents. Obituaries and other family records list their marriage as 1895 but, according to the Barton County, Kansas, courthouse records, they were married 30 December 1896 by the Justice of the Peace in Great Bend, Kansas. 

This picture is their wedding portrait.

Both Fred and Matilda's families were of Russian Mennonite background. Their families left the Ukraine area of Russia during the great Mennonite migration of the late 1870's. Fred was born in 1874 in Karlswalde, Russia to Benjamin Schmidt and Catharina Siebert. His family immigrated to North America in 1875. Matilda was born in Kansas in 1878 to David Wedel and Justina Decker who immigrated in 1874. They both grew up in the Pawnee Rock area of Barton County.

Fred and Matilda lived and farmed in Barton County for the first years of their marriage and then in the spring of 1910, they moved to Kiowa County. They moved their family of seven children in a lumber wagon to their new home. The moved could not be made in a day so they stopped for the night in Lewis, Kansas and stayed in a hotel. This was a new experience for them all  --  to sleep in a hotel and eat in a restaurant.

The cattle and furniture were moved by rail to Greensburg. They all lived in the granary while a house was being built and moved into the new house just before harvest. After they moved to Kiowa County, they had two more daughters.

They were a typical farm family for the era. They raised wheat, corn, barley, oats, potatoes, hogs, chickens, ducks, geese and cattle. They planted big gardens and had their own milk, cream, butter and eggs. They also butchered their own hogs. Butchering days were always exciting. Neighbors would help each other butcher and it was a big day for everyone.

The Fred B. Schmidt Farm in Kiowa County.

Fred and Matilda lived the remainder of their lives in the Greensburg, Kiowa County area of Kansas. In the 1930's, Fred encouraged his family to start a Benjamin and Catharina Schmidt reunion. It is still an annual event in Greensburg.

Matilda died in 1944 and Fred in 1955. They are both buried in Dundee Valley Cemetery, Dundee, Kansas.

-Rita


SOURCES:

Ancestry.com. Philadelphia Passenger Lists, 1800-1945 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2006. Original data: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1800-1882. Micropublication M425. RG036. Rolls # 1-108. National Archives, Washington, D.C. 

Dundee Valley Cemetery (Barton County, Kansas; section 16, township 20S, range 14W). Grave markers.

Hiebert, Clarence, compiler. Brothers in Deed to Brothers in Need. Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1974.

Kansas. Barton County. "Marriage Records." Records Dept., Barton County Courthouse, Great Bend, Kansas.

Schmidt, Pearl and Grace Unruh. "Family of Fred B. Schmidt." Personal memories. Copy in possession of author.

BIRTHDAY BIO -- Kenneth H. Schmidt (1932-2011)

Today would have been my dad’s 81^st birthday.

Kenneth Howard Schmidt was born in 1932 in Greensburg, Kansas, in the home of a midwife. He could point the house out to me before the tornado of 2007 destroyed it.

He was the oldest child of Harvey and Beatrice Schmidt. They would add another son, Lee, and a daughter, Judi, to their family in later years. He grew up on a farm southwest of town.

While the Schmidt families came from a Mennonite background, Harvey and Beatrice were not regular church attenders as Ken grew up.  But Ken would return to his Mennonite roots and join the church as a young man at Hesston College, Hesston, Kansas. And Ken would go on to work for the Mennonite Church – and in particular, the medical ministries – the rest of his life.

 Ken’s path into this field began with his salvation experience. As a Mennonite, he chose to be a conscientious objector and registered as such with the selective service. This change of status made him a target of selective service investigation for many years.

Ken served out his alternative service as an orderly in hospitals in Pueblo, Colorado. While this wasn't his first choice, he was glad to have a location in Colorado as his girlfriend and future wife, Phyllis Egli, was in nurses training in LaJunta, Colorado – about 75 miles away.

After he completed his service and Phyllis completed her training, they were married and settled in Kansas working as farmers for Ken’s dad, Harvey. But Ken kept his hand in the medical field. He was on the board at the local hospital.  And eventually he decided to go back to college and got a degree from Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas in Medical Technology.

In the following years, the Mennonite Church hired him to work in hospitals and nursing homes in south Texas, Colorado, and Indiana. Although he was trained in medical technology, he worked in administrative positions. And even after he retired and returned to Greensburg, Kansas, he worked as administrator of the local nursing home.




Ken was also active in churches wherever he lived and active in the lives of his children and grandchildren. He was also a part-time farmer in Colorado and in Kansas.

Ken was a very devoted husband and in their later years, Ken and Phyllis - his wife of over 50 years – were often seen holding hands as they walked down the halls of their retirement apartment community.

As Phyllis struggled with illness and disabilities, he was more and more her constant help and companion. And as her health failed, so did his. He was showing early signs of dementia.

Mom passed away in January 2010 and in the months that followed, Dad seemed to lose his will to live. He lost weight and slowly slipped away from us. He passed away on the 25^th of January 2011. We love you and miss you, Dad.

Postscript: I have added more bio info and photos on this post Birthday Bio early years

Those Places Thursday - Calvary Mennonite Church

In the 1930's Calvary Mennonite Church in Greensburg, Kansas, was meeting in a small basement structure that they did not have the resources to complete. But the growing congregation needed more room. So in 1937 when the opportunity came up to purchase the old North Grade School building, they decided it was the right move and acquired the building.

 
North Grade School

They decided to remove the second story. They used jacks to hold up the roof while they tore out the story, but when the jacks were lowered there was still a ways to go to get the large roof lowered in one piece.  I was told that a man named Folsom Wheeler, who was known as an inventive genius, came up with a way to get the old roof down onto the first floor when he had a dream about it. They placed large ice blocks between the roof and first floor, removed the jacks and waited as the ice melted and slowly lowered the roof onto the first floor.

remodeling in process

I wish someone had taken a picture of that!

This church is the church I remember as a small child. I remember my Aunt Judi's wedding here, sitting on those big front steps, church dinners in the basement, watching the ladies quilt.  I remember my parents let my siblings and I play quietly beside them during Wednesday night prayer meetings. I also remember that if we weren't good in church we were carried out of the building and disciplined. We learned how to sit still at an early age.

The church in 1953

In 1974 the Calvary Mennonite Church changed it's name to the Greensburg Mennonite Church and in 1978 a new church was built next to this one. In 1981 the old school/church building was torn down.

Greensburg Mennonite Church in 1995

On May 4, 2007 an F5 tornado came through Greensburg destroying everything, including every church in town.

Greensburg Mennonite Church site, summer 2007

But in the years since, every church has rebuilt including Greensburg Mennonite. You can see the new church by looking them up on their Facebook page.



Sources:
"The Greensburg Mennonite Church History" compiled from "Church History" a term paper by Wallace Jantz and past records of the church.

Personal notes and photos of Kenneth Schmidt.

2007 photo copyright RMartin

*If link does not work, find Folsom Wheeler at: Find A Grave Memorial # 19676248