17 October 2016 Family Heritage By
Oklahoma Panhandle Pioneers
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Oklahoma Panhandle Pioneers Zabel - Schaeffer Pickard - Ferguson We say time flies, but some people say that time stays, and we go. We enter the starting blocks of life not knowing the length of the race. Our life may be a sprint or a marathon, we are not told in advance. All that we can decide is how we will run. Joseph Feeton has observed that every life shares a common mark, and he calls it “the dash between the dates”. On every tombstone, whether ornate or simple, they put one dash between between the date of birth and the date of death. We get one dash through life. It reminds us of the stark truth. Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people. In the end, men reduce all living to a cold mark on the stone. For those of us who live a life worthy of the Lord, following in the footsteps of Jesus, the end of the dash on earth is the beginning of heaven’s glory. Some ancestors ran well, finished strong, and received an eternal prize. You and I are still in the race. It’s hard to believe, but an event in 1763 in Russia is still affecting the Oklahoma Panhandle today. That year, Catherine the Great issued a Manifesto promising free land, exemption from taxes and military service, local self-government, and freedom to retain their religion and culture if German farmers would relocate to the prairies of Russia. Catherine had been a 15 year old princess born in Germany when she was pledged in marriage to Czar Peter III. When he died and she became Czarina, she had a lot more respect for the hardworking nature and thrift of Germans than what she thought was the sloth of the Slavic peasants. The following years thousands of people left Germany and Prussia (Poland) to immigrate to the wind-swept prairie of Russia along the Volga River. One hundred ten years later, Czar Alexander III reversed all the earlier reforms, and began persecuting the German and Polish farmers in Russia. Thus began the exodus to the free land of the central United States. The passage of the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 by the United States Congress led to the settlement of the frontier known then as ‘No Man’s Land”, and today as the Oklahoma Panhandle. Promised 320 acres of free land, poor German and Polish born farmers started planting “turkey red”, a wheat seed they had brought with them from Russia which was resistant to harsh winter weather and drought. Over the next 25 years this pioneering effort, coupled with the increased efficiency of mechanized farming, converted the grassland sod of Cimarron, Texas and Beaver counties into highly productive dry-land wheat farms. August Zabel “Grandpa Zabel” (1859 - 1934) was born in Poland, and Minnie Roberts (which she explained to people is pronounced Ro ‘ berts) “Grandma Zabel” (1873 - 1925) was born in Russia. They embarked from Bremen, Germany, and landed at Baltimore, Maryland, on July 12, 1892. On his naturalization papers to become a U.S. citizen, August had to renounce his allegiance to the Czar of Russia, but since he couldn’t write his name, he put his mark “X” on the application. They had 13 children: Emma (she was riding alone in a one-horse buggy when the horse was spooked by something in the road, bolted in fear, and Emma was thrown from the buggy and broke her neck. Her husband Gus then married her sister) Augusta, Fred, Anna, Elsie, Herman (all born in Lehigh, Kansas, near the original Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad line), Ed, Sam, Mary, Ernest, Albert, Elizabeth and Minnie. Their first home in Texas County in 1902 was a two room shack, they burned cow chips as fuel, then built their two story “home place” near Hooker about 1919. August demanded only German (low Dutch) spoken at home. “English is what those Irish speak”. He would be gone for months at a time working as part of a thrashing crew following the harvest up the Great Plains as far as North Dakota, so Minnie basically ran the farm. Each evening after supper, she would read the Bible by candle light to all her children and teach them how she wanted them to live. Minnie was a large woman with jet black hair and had severe varicose veins. The older children attended a one room school made of sod through the 3rd grade (August made all his children go to work full-time on the farm at age 10), and the whole family attended the Mennonite Brethren Church in Adams (where Minnie is buried, and her tombstone has the epitaph “Asleep in Jesus”). Her children all reminisced that August was very strict, but Minnie was affectionate, and provided correction with gentleness, reasoning, and encouragement. After she passed away, Grandpa Zabel started attending the Nazarene Church in Hooker, where he is buried. In 1838, Gottlieb and Katharina Maier Schaeffer left the village of Handwailer, which is on the Neckar River near Waiblingen in the vicinity of Stuttgart, Germany, and traveled southeast over 1,500 miles and settled in Rosenfeld, in the Caucases of Russia, near Stavropol, to take advantage of free land. Both their son and grandson, John Schaeffer (1877 - 1958) were born here, as was John’s future wife Magdalena Hildebrand (1880 - 1918). After almost sixty years, the land couldn’t support three generations of families, so in 1898 the entire Schaeffer and Hildebrand family embarked on a 1,900 mile journey further east, relocating to Hannovka, on the edge of the Western Siberian Plain where more free land was available. (The movie Fiddler on the Roof depicts what life in “the little village of Hannovka” must have been like). Although there is just a three month growing season for crops, the soil is black and very fertile, and there are dense forests everywhere so firewood was plentiful. John, like most of the Schaeffers who moved with him, were farmers who raised wheat on just thirty acres, and it was in this quiet village that their children Phillip, Emma, Mary, John, Paul, Otto, and Lizzie were born. In the winter the temperature could drop to 50 degrees below zero, and they had to shovel away all the snow drifts from the house just to get sunlight in the two windows in their mud huts. To avoid the sons and husbands being drafted into the Russian Army, in late June, 1913, they began what can only be described as a monumental undertaking. John and Magdalena, the seven children, Magdalena’s recently widowed mother, and another family loaded all their belongings into a horse-drawn wagon and drove two days from Hannovka to Semipalatinsk, where they navigated a flat boat up the Irtysh River to Omsk, which took three days. There they boarded a train on the Trans-Siberian Railway beginning the 2,500 mile trek west across the Ural Mountains to Moscow which took six more days. (Another movie, Doctor Zhivago, depicts a family fleeing Moscow to find refuge in Siberia, and that train ride was certainly what the Schaeffers experienced). In Moscow they changed trains to go on to St. Petersburg, boarded a small ship from Libau (Latvia) sailing across the Baltic Sea and North Sea, stopping one night in Liverpool, England, for additional food and water, then began the seven-day voyage across the Atlantic Ocean bound for Halifax, Canada. Landing on August 2, 1913, they processed through immigration at Pier 2, and then continued on the Grand Trunk Railroad from Halifax to Chicago, eventually stopping in Milwaukee for a few months to rest up before the final leg of their journey. The family settled in Shattuck in 1914 because some Hildebrand relatives were living there. After Magdalena died, John married Mollie Laubhan in 1924 and moved to Follett, Texas where he worked as a shoe cobbler, but the family chose for him to be buried back in Shattuck next to Magdalena. It might be interesting to compare the typical immigration steamer of 1912-1913 with the greatest luxury liner of that era, which will be mentioned in parenthesis. The Schaeffers boarded the steamer Russia (Titanic) which was built in 1908 (1911) in Glasgow, Scotland (Belfast, Ireland), for the Russian-American Line (White Star Line), was 475 feet long (882), had 2 funnels (4), had a maximum speed of 15 knots (24), could accommodate 40 First Class Passengers (739), 56 Second Class passengers (674), and 1,626 steerage passengers (1,026). The Russia made the Latvia/Halifax/New York City run until World War I broke out in August, 1914, when it was mothballed because all immigration across the Atlantic stopped. The Russia was sold to a Japanese company in 1924 and renamed the Huso Maru, and became a Japanese troop ship in World War II. It was torpedoed and sunk off the Philippines on March 17, 1944, by the U.S. Navy submarine Steelhead. Fred Zabel (1897 - 1985) and Emma Schaeffer (1902 - 1987) were married on February 14, 1920, in Shattuck, Oklahoma. The first six months of their marriage they lived at the “home place” with Fred’s parents before moving into their own house nearby. Emma’s sister, Lizzie, lived with them off and on from 1924 – 1934. Fred and Emma had four children. Wilbert, who enlisted in the Navy in October 1941, and served 17 years until he received a medical discharge due to a disability from World War II. Norma, whose first husband and two infant sons are buried in the Lutheran graveyard in Oslo, (Hansford County) Texas, had breast cancer surgery in 1959. Her son, Larry, was an All-State Oklahoma football player in 1960, but broke his ankle which ended his hopes for a college scholarship. Norma moved to Amarillo in 1965, following her divorce, and completed a 40 year career working for J.C. Penny’s. Clarence was their third child; and Velma Jewel, the fourth child, who with her husband Leonard, pioneered a Foursquare church in Fort Collins, Colorado, 1956-1962, pastored a church in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, 1962-1970, back to Fort Collins 1970-1978, Los Angeles 1978-1983, and have lived in Cameron, Texas, since 1983. Clarence was born about four miles southwest of Hooker, Oklahoma, just off Hwy 54 (the Frinfrock place). He was called “Bud” for the first year of his life because his parents couldn’t agree on a name! Clarence first attended the Buffalo School, a two room country schoolhouse about a mile from his family’s homestead. On his 10th birthday the family relocated to a farmhouse about eight miles southwest of Guymon, Oklahoma (the King place). Clarence then attended the Frisco School, a one room schoolhouse from the 5th - 8th grades. He experienced first hand the Dust Bowl days of the Oklahoma Panhandle from 1934 - 1937. The worst dust storm was on Palm Sunday, April 14, 1935. A huge cloud appeared about 3 pm, and by all accounts the sky went absolutely black for about two hours. Many people thought it was the end of the world and dropped to their knees in prayer. Clarence said that whenever a dust storm blew at night, he and his brother would go to bed under a moistened bed sheet, and the next morning it would be covered with dirt. Clarence contracted Rheumatic Fever when he was 16, and had to lay out his entire junior year of high school. In 1940 they moved again (the Ritter place). His father wanted him to start working on the farm, so Clarence never had a chance to finish school. He got a “farmers deferment” in World War II, which exempted the last son of a farm family from going to war. Clarence became a Christian in 1946 and was baptized after church one Sunday in the Frisco Creek. Jean and Clarence were married at the First Foursquare Church in Guymon at 4pm on Sunday, September 8, 1946. Jean’s Maid of Honor was Lural Dryden and Clarence’s Best Man was his cousin, Billy Schaeffer (who died just two years later of a brain aneurism caused by his epilepsy). Patty was the flower girl. After the reception at the Pickard home, Jean and Clarence drove his dad’s 1941 GMC pickup all night long to Canyon City, Colorado, where Clarence’s parents had moved to open a tourist court called “Fred’s Cottage Camp” on Highway 50. (Clarence’s parents were still in Guymon having attended the wedding, so the cottages were temporarily closed up). Jean and Clarence finally arrived at 4am on September 9th, and were attempting to crawl through a window when a local resident spotted them and thought they were burglars! In January 1947 they went to Los Angeles to attend the Foursquare denomination’s LIFE Bible College. They decided that they weren’t called to the full-time ministry, so they returned to Guymon. He worked at odd jobs over the next ten years as a carpenter and painter saving enough money to start his own business. In the winter of 1956-1957 Clarence, with the help from his close friend Everett Rush, built the home at 828 West 4th Street in Guymon for $10,000. The family started “batching it” each summer (the Timmons place) since Clarence worked so late each day. In 1965 the family moved to the little farming community of Hitchland, Texas, to be closer to the farm and ranch land. Clarence got his big break in 1957 when Mr. Ralph Bort, the President of Gruver State Bank gave him his first loan to buy 250 head of cattle. It was a “character loan” since Clarence didn’t have enough collateral or co-signers to warrant the loan. Hitchland was established in 1929 when the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railroad laid track across northern Hansford County. Reaching a peak population of 100 in 1948, Hitchland had a hotel, a grocery store, a U.S. Post Office from 1930 – 1955, and the Hitchland School (where Lit Hall taught) was merged into the Gruver ISD in 1954. Yorkshire is the largest of the 39 historic counties, or shires, in England. The countryside is widely considered among the greenest and most fertile in England, and was the home of Vikings before they were conquered by the Normans in the year 1066. In the 19th century, the coal, textile and steel industries were booming, which led to overcrowding in the cities. The resulting poor living conditions contributed to cholera outbreaks in 1832 and 1848. Tens of thousands of English immigrated to the United States and Canada in the following years to try to start a new life. The White Rose of York was the symbol of the House of York in Medieval England, and has been adopted as a symbol of Yorkshire as a whole. The rose is white in color because in Christian literature white typifies innocence, purity and joy. John William Pickard (1822 - 1897) and Frances Hutchison (1824-1868) were born in Yorkshire, England. They immigrated to Ottawa, Canada, where one of their children, James S. Pickard “Grandpa Pickard” (1852 - 1932) was born. In 1864 they moved to Elkhart, Indiana, where Frances died in childbirth. Lulu Elizabeth Stephens “Grandma Pickard” (1874 - 1959) was the daughter of Charles and Mildred Stephens. Lulu remarked that she and her father participated in the April 22, 1889, Oklahoma Land Rush, and that her grandmother was full-blooded Sac and Fox Indian. James and Lulu married in 1891 in Mulhall, Oklahoma. James and Lulu had ten children; John (Jay), Jim, Charley, Nora (who died in childbirth), Forrest “Oakie” (1901 - 1977), Viola (who married Andrew Costner, whose younger brother Walter is the grandfather of actor Kevin Costner), Bill, Ed, Howard and Oral (Grandpa Pickard was 66 years old when Oral was born :), and moved many times across country by horse and covered wagon from Eastern Oklahoma to Rossville (where Forrest was born) to Geary, then to Weatherford (where Grandpa Pickard managed a wagon yard) and finally settling in Guymon Township in 1912. Grandpa Pickard apparently passed on his horsemanship skills to two of his sons. Bill started training quarter horses and thoroughbreds to race in New Mexico, Colorado and New Mexico. Oral took that profession a step further, and he trained horses that competed at Hialeah Race Track in Florida, Belmont in New York, and Santa Anita in Southern California. The movie “Seabiscuit” depicts what training horses was like in the 1930s and 1940s. Their eldest son, Jay, was drafted into the Army in the summer of 1917. The night before he had to leave home for basic training, his fiancé, Ada Clark, had dinner with the Pickard family. When it got to be so late, she stayed overnight and slept with Nora and Viola. The next morning, after saying farewell to his parents at the homestead, Jay hitched up the team and rig so he and Ada could travel alone to the train station in Guymon for what must have been an emotional parting. Jay would write letters to his parents while he was in France. Forrest said that after his mother read each letter out loud to the family, they would all just sit and cry together because they missed Jay so much. Jay was stricken by Spanish Influenza, and died while serving in the U.S. Army in France in World War I. An Act of Congress in March, 1929, authorized the Secretary of War to pay all expenses for any “Gold Star Mother” of military and naval forces who died in service in the war to travel to France to visit the gravesite. By the time the program ended, some 6,693 women had made the two week pilgrimage. The Act of 1929 did not contain any provision for any member to make the trip except the mother, so the trip was a life-changing experience for many who had never traveled outside their hometown or state. “If you think about it, you are between 50-65 years old, and asked to travel 6000 miles away with a complete group of strangers. You’re on a trip with nobody you know, and although everything is going to be taken care of, it had to be a terrifying experience.” Lulu sailed from New York City on June 15, 1933, aboard the steamer SS Manhattan. Although the Army expected the mothers to break down at the gravesites, they instead showed great strength. One observer said “I think the mothers came out of the experience of visiting the cemeteries feeling that the sacrifice was worth it, that this crusade (the war to end all wars) was necessary and significant”. There is a treasured and poignant black and white photograph of Lulu sitting next to Jay’s tombstone at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery located seventy miles northeast of Paris, where his is one of 6,012 crosses. This picture conveys a thousand unspoken words concerning grief, faith, and pride. .James Quience Ferguson “Grandpa Ferguson” (1864 - 1930) was born to Andrew Ferguson and Mary Ellen Benlow. James married Mary Ellen Brumback “Grandma Ferguson” (1864 - 1938), and they raised dryland wheat near Hwy 54 between Nevada, Missouri and Fort Scott, Kansas, where their six children were born; Bessie, Eva, Ethel (who married Uncle Alfred, lived in Mullinville, Kansas (pop 215), and used to say “if a diet doesn’t include fried chicken and corn on the cob, it’s not for me”) Mearl, Don (who was kicked in the head by a horse when he was 10 years old, which affected him mentally the rest of his life), and their last child was Leila (1905 - 1978). Grandma Ferguson died while visiting Ethel in Mullinville. Guymon was established in 1902 when the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad extended the line southwest from Liberal to Texhoma. Originally called Sanford Switch, the population growth is as follows: 1910 1,342 1920 1,507 1930 2,181 1940 2,290 1950 4,718 1960 5,768 1970 6,855 1980 8,492 1990 7,803 2000 10,472 As early as 1911, the town had three banks, two newspapers - the Guymon Herald and the Guymon Democrat, four doctors, three hotels, and a number of retail outlets. The Texas County Courthouse was built in 1926. Guymon schools closed one year during the Great Depression due to lack of funds, the city hosted the first Pioneer Days Celebration in 1933, the Guymon Hospital was constructed in 1949, and in 1991 Seaboard Farms built two hog farms in the area contributing to a current 38% Hispanic population in Guymon. Forrest and Leila were married on October 14, 1923, and she carried a peach handkerchief down the aisle at the ceremony. (A family tradition was started, and that same handkerchief was also carried down the aisle at the wedding ceremonies of her four daughters, her granddaughters, Judy and Nancy, and her great-granddaughter Kambry). Forrest and Leila’s first child, Alice Eileen, lived only one month, unexpectedly dying of pneumonia. She died in Lelia’s arms and that tragedy haunted Leila the rest of her life. Jean, Dorothy and Lois were born in Grandma Ferguson’s house, and Patty was born at a mid-wife’s house in Guymon. Forrest rented about 5 quarters of land, raised dry-land wheat and sorghum, and their homestead was 3½ miles west of town off Hwy 54. In 1941 they moved to a house off Hwy 3. After he retired, they moved into town to 203 S. May Street (phone # 338-3868). Try to imagine Christmas Day 1963, Dorothy and Paul travel and stay overnight, but everyone else lives in Guymon. Seventeen people (the grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins), in that small house, but the closeness of family ties was evident in the laughter, playing Rook (a card game without face cards), kids running around, a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle, and great food, including the family tradition, homemade noodles. Imogene Lucille (Jean) Pickard became a Christian in 1938 and was baptized in a horse tank that was brought into the First Foursquare Church for the occasion. She attended the Salyer Elementary School, then Guymon High School, graduating in 1944. When Jean and Clarence were growing up, they lived on farms in the country. Each of their families had a chicken house with about twenty hens and two roosters, raised hogs for pork, had ten Jersey milk cows (Jerseys gave richer milk, but the local dairies used Guernsey cows, because they produced a lot more milk), one bull for beef cattle to eat, and a wind mill and water tank. Indoor plumbing and indoor electricity wasn’t installed until about 1946, so outhouses and kerosene lamps were used. Around 1940 they first purchased battery operated radios for family entertainment. A large summer garden would produce vegetables to be canned for the winter, and there was a coal burning pot belly stove in the middle of the house. In essence, each farm was nearly a self-sufficient operation to support one family. Dorothy and Paul Ritchie eloped and got married in Clayton, New Mexico. Paul played football on a full scholarship at Panhandle A&M College for 2 years, was drafted, took basic training at Camp Roberts, California, then was stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia, where he was a clerk typist in the morning, and played on the post football and baseball teams in the afternoons. After his discharge from the Army, Paul played one more year of football at college, and he and Dorothy graduated in 1955. In their teaching careers they taught at Darrouzett 1955-1958 (Dorothy’s first salary was $2,850/year); Morse 1958-1959; Highland Park Elementary in Amarillo 1959-1969; Alamogordo, New Mexico 1970-1971; and River Road Elementary in Amarillo 1971-1985. Paul retired in 1978 to focus on his investments (he has used the same stock broker since 1972, primarily utilities, and in particular, Consolidated Edison) and golf game, and Dorothy retired in 1985. They took a 22 day European vacation to ten countries in 1968, and especially loved Sorrento, Italy. They also spent a week on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu each summer from 1970-1978. Their three Pekinese dogs were Tuffy, Rusty, and Sandy. Lois and Phil Demetro (Phil’s grandfather, Demetrius Bobopoulus, was from Greece) were married in Angelus Temple in Los Angeles. While Phil went to college, he worked as a linotype apprentice at the Los Angeles Times, which in those years was a very conservative newspaper. They moved to Texas and established the Irving Foursquare Church from 1954-1958, and Phil worked a 2nd job as a linotype operator at the Arlington Journal. Next, Phil and Lois pastored the Guymon Foursquare Church 1958-1964, the Midland Foursquare Church 1964-1972, and finally the Lubbock First Foursquare Church (where Lois was the Director of the pre-school and kindergarten) from 1972 until their retirement in 1994. Since that date, Phil has worked in the hospice ministry in Lubbock. Ronny Demetro lived with Jean and Clarence each summer during his junior high and high school years since he loved working cattle, farming and being around horses. Nancy said that Ronnie was like the brother she never had. Ronny and Donny’s main interest growing up was rodeo, with Ronny’s event being bareback bronc riding, and Donny’s was bull riding. During their rodeo “careers” from 1973-1980 they would enter 2 different amateur rodeos most weekends, competing in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, and Colorado. Ronnie’s largest winning purse was $1,500, and his favorite rodeo that he entered each year was the “Roaring Springs Stampede”. After Ronny and Jan were married they lived on the Timmons Place working for Clarence for two years, then they moved to Fort Worth where he worked for the Vann-Roach Cattle Company as yard foreman from 1982-2000. Since then he has run his own company, Metroplex Rain Gutters, and Donny has been his lead foreman. Lois and Phil’s third son, Randy, was born with the rare genetic disorder Usher’s Syndrome, that causes deafness and gradual vision loss in one out of every 23,000 people. It has been a real witness to observe how Randy has dealt with this disability with courage, perseverance and a happy personality. Patty worked as a switchboard operator “number please” before she and her husband, Bob Boston, moved from Guymon to Oklahoma City in 1963. Bob worked at General Electric/Honeywell/Control Data 1965-1976, and Organon Teknika 1976-1992 when he retired. Bob was diagnosed with diabetes when he was just 30 years old. From 1965-1967 Patty worked at the General Electric plant on the weather satellite for the Apollo Lunar Module, then she owned and operated the Guthrie Whole Foods Store 1998-2004. Patty and Bob were astute real estate investors, and they successfully bought and sold houses in Oklahoma City, Yukon, Guthrie and Midwest City. Her son, Bobby, graduated with an Education degree from King College, in Bristol, Virginia, and her second son, Jerry Wayne, has worked for Texaco for many years, and loves to hunt elk in Colorado and antelope in Wyoming. 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