FromoneAmerican.com
To my sons: Shaun Alois, Shane Eduardo and Aaron Matthew:
The 19th of January will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of your grandmother and my mother.
Mom was born a century ago and
was named Flotilla Elizabeth Frisbie. I don't know of any forbear or
ancestor with her first name -- perhaps it was from a person that my Grandma
Frisbie had read about and admired -- but it would seem reasonable that her
middle name, came, at least partly, from my grandmother herself, Anna
Elizabeth Frisbie, who married Algie Harper Frisbie (the middle name was
taken from the town of Harper, Kansas, where he was born).Mom grew up in western Iowa, on a farm in Sac County. The farm is where her maternal grandfather Jeff P. Kruser, an immigrant from Denmark, settled and made a dugout home on a hillside. Jeff married Emma Goodenow, whose mother was named Elizabeth (maybe another person Mom was named after). The closest town in the vicinity of the farm is Lake View which is located on Blackhawk Lake, called the southernmost glacial lake in the country. The farm itself may have been on the margin of a glacier.
Mom attended school at Lake View, was on the staff of the 1922 Scarlet and Black yearbook and wrote a Freshman piece for it. Intelligent, she was valedictorian of her class in 1925 as was her mother some years before her
(The picture of her here may be her high school graduation picture. It's somewhat damaged with spots but it doesn't diminish her looks as a pretty young woman). After being graduated from Lake View High School, she went to commercial college in Mankato, Minnesota, where she met your grandfather, my Dad Joseph Riedell. Dad lived on Main Street hill. One morning she saw him vacuuming out a car and thought, "What a henpecked husband." She felt sorry for him. The next morning, as she was going by on her way to commercial college, Dad said hello to a girl across the street. Mom thought he'd spoken to her, and said hello back. They met by mistake. And the rest is history.
That history is part of your history. Dad was on his way to work and
stepped up to walk with her. As a girl Mom had been taught to walk on the
opposite side of the street that the Catholic Church was on, such was the
extent of intolerance and anti-Catholicism of her upbringing. Dad's home was
on the same street as Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church, which was down
the hill from where he lived. The steeple could be seen from his house.
Dad took an immediate interest in Mom. That same day he inquired about her from the man in whose home she was staying (elevator man at Saulpaugh Hotel) and also on that same day, he gave her a ride in that same vacuumed car to Lake Washington. After that he came to see her every day.
Mom was a Congregationalist and Dad's family were Catholic immigrants from the Moravian part of Austria Hungary which would later become [part of ]Czechoslovakia. The subject of religion naturally came up. Dad told her something he understood about hell and salvation which bothered Mom. Instead of emotionally rejecting his belief and closing her mind to it, she wanted to know the why behind what he believed but couldn't explain. This is what led her to Catholicism.
In what may've been an act of courage for her, considering her background, she went to talk to a priest. She saw a Father Hageman, a gentle old priest, who explained the religion. Father Hageman
1 was Dad's old principal in school, and he told Mom about the time Dad was being sent to the principal's office to be punished and how he put a geography book in the seat of his pants. I suppose it turned out to be a book of discovery for the principal. 
The strength of the faith in Dad's family may've been best reflected
by his mother Amalia, whom we knew as Grossmutter in German. My Aunt
Harriet, who described Grossmutter as "very devout," told me in a letter,
"You remember how steep Main Street hill is - you can imagine how icey that
sidewalk gets in the winter. Your grandmother didn't miss church. She would
take a pan of ashes - actually a small dipper type pan (picture drawn of pan
in her letter) carry that and scatter ashes on the ice in front of her as
she walked. She had an old fashioned cook stove in the kitchen where they
burned wood so she had ashes." Aunt Harriet also wrote, "People used to tell
me about seeing her out early with her little pan of ashes." One of my
memories of Grossmutter is coming out of the house to sprinkle the
sacramental of holy water before we departed. It brings tears to my eyes as
I write it.
I would think that Mom easily sensed Grossmutter's faith. It's simple reasoning that you cannot give what you do not have. What you live is what you reflect. Grossmutter's example probably influenced her.
After attending commercial college, she went back to Iowa, still in
1925. Dad's niece and my cousin Dolly wrote a piece for her Emeritus writing
class about her Uncle Joe, which told in part about a trip with Dad from
Mankato to Lake View to see Mom, then his fiancee. She wrote that they left
for Iowa on a beautiful September morning in Dad's Model T roadster after
Grossmutter sprinkled them and the car with holy water to assure them a safe
trip. She wrote that Mom lived in a white house in Lake View with her mother
and younger sister, Ramona, who we would know as Aunt Bo.
She said on Sunday morning Dad and her aunt-to-be took her to Mass and gave her a shiny dime to put in the collection basket. She related that Mom "was taking instructions to become a Catholic before their marriage in February."
She spoke of how kind Mom and Ramona were to her. They took her to a "bright and cheery attic where all their doll furniture and toys were stored." They let her play there and pick out "a small crystal candlestick holder to put with my doll dishes when I got home." Home was Pipestone, Minnesota, where Dad took her after a noon dinner. I can almost see Mom standing in front of that white house, waving goodbye, as Dad with Dolly beside him, drove away heading back toward Minnesota. Before he left Dolly at Pipestone, he gave her an early present for her sixth birthday, her first pair of roller skates.
The following year, on the 3rd of February 1926, Grandma Frisbie
gave her notarized consent for her daughter to marry Dad and to the issuance
of a marriage license. Mom was just 17. About two weeks later, on the 16th
of February, they were married at the parish house at Wall Lake, Iowa, in
the presence of Grandma Frisbie, a Peter Lawler, and the Pastor Rev. James
Slattery who solemnized the marriage. I'm not sure of where they lived
between their marriage and going to California but in the Sac County
records, on the "Return of Marriage" part, Dad's residence is listed as
Mankato, Minn., and meter reader, his occupation. Mom's place of residence
is listed as Lake View. It's dated Febr. 16, 1926.
People ridiculed her for turning Catholic. I was told she became
Catholic because she felt it was the right church. She liked the idea of
authority behind what you believe, rather than believe or interpret whatever
you want. But the ridicule hurt her as did the later ridicule of the large
family she'd have.
After my oldest sister Marie was born, Mom and Dad went out to
California because Dad's sister Ida and brother Art were out there. It seems
to Marie, from what she was told, that they stopped to earn money as fruit
pickers on their way there. She thinks it could've been in Colorado. She
remembers Mom saying that she was small enough to fit into a grape basket,
and it strikes me as possible that they could've put her in such a basket,
and carried her along with them as they moved about an orchard or vineyard.
In San Francisco Dad got a job as a street car conductor for the Market
Street Railway. Mom earned some money hemming handkerchiefs. She sewed tiny
rolled hems by hand. They lived near Golden Gate Park.
Marie couldn't tolerate cow's milk and they had to give her goat's milk. During their time there, my older brothers, your uncles Francie and Bob, were born. When Dolly was about ten, they returned to Minnesota for a visit. Dolly remembered wheeling Bob in her doll buggy and taking Francie and Marie by the hand to show her friends. They lived in Frisco long enough for Marie to start school or preschool at St. Anne's. Francie remembers going through a steel gate and down some steps to a church, so I think what he's probably recollecting is Mom taking him and Bob along to pick Marie up from school or take her there.
I'd have to say I lived in California as well, since during Mom's
last months there, she was with child, her fourth. Mom returned to Iowa in
1932 (maybe in February) while Dad stayed for a time in California to earn
money. I was born on May 20th, the first of us children born on the farm and
weighed in at nine lbs. Dr. Speaker was the physician.
Mom did more than cooking, housework and taking care of us. She worked
outside the house, in the barn and in the field. As a baby she took me along
in a basket. In the barn she put me up on a shelf while she milked cows. In
the fall of 1932 she took me along to the field while she picked corn. I
stayed at the end of the corn row in a car with my older brothers
Dad was concerned about the safety of his family and sent a single shot Savage rifle from California to Mom for protection, but Francie says Mom was afraid to shoot it. But he says he wasn't.
She was busy. Among the things that she had to see to, was my Baptism. In the faith she chose, one shouldn't wait long to baptize, since through the Sacrament we receive sanctifying grace, which enables us to go to heaven. Mom gave me natural life but not the new life that God confers through the Sacrament.
Mom didn't know anyone at home to have for Baptismal sponsors for me, so she undertook to make a trip to Minnesota in a Model T, where an uncle and aunt were in Mankato. Once again I was taken in the aforementioned basket. It could've been a warm trip up to Minnesota and back, as the Christening took place in August. I was baptized by Father Winters at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church, with my sponsors being Dad's brother Fritz and his sister Ida. I had been named John Alois -- Alois being a name in the family for generations going back to Europe -- but I was baptized John Aloysius. Alois is the German and Czech form of Aloysius.
2One time I was in the baby crib, wanted out and wouldn't wait. I slipped through the bars sideways and ended up hanging by my neck without my feet touching the floor. I screamed and one of the kids ran to Mom saying, "Johnnie's choked." She ran upstairs to the west room and got me out. I was kind of bluish and mad. I was"hanging in there" even when I was young.
In 1934 Dad came to Iowa to work the farm. Dolly wrote about seeing
my family again after they moved to Nebraska and my folks were back in Iowa.
She was about 14. She saw the cousins she met before plus several new ones.
She spoke of gathering at the table and Mom carrying in platters of "golden
fried chicken, mounds of mashed potatoes, bowls of gravy, fresh vegetables
from the garden" and cherry pies, from cherries picked on the farm. She
talked about cracking walnuts that Dad's brother Art sent from California,
of Dad cranking the ice cream maker, and of following him to the barn to
milk where he would squirt milk in their mouths. They also followed Mom to
the hen house to gather eggs and rode our plow horses bareback.
She went back to visit in years to come, and mentioned that my sister
and your Aunt Marie, at age eight or nine, seemed like a mother herself,
helping with the babies. She came to realize that Mom wasn't much older than
she was. When she was15, Mom was 26 . They had a common interest
in literature and Shakespeare.
During Mom's first years on the farm, water had to be carried up from the basement to be heated in a copper boiler on the stove. The basement had a tank fed by spring water and the kitchen had a stove, fueled by cobs, coal and wood. It also had a reservoir to warm water. At first she washed clothes using a scrub board but later on had a washing machine.
Mom used to bake six loaves of bread a day and canned everything she could. She made jam, jelly and apple butter, and peeled potatoes by the kettleful. When we were young she made most of our clothes, and even shirts when we were older. She had a lot of mending that was never completely done. She had a large garden until her family was older.
In 1954 my parents took the younger children out of school at Lake View, and undertook the expense of sending them to St. Bernard's School in Breda, which meant money for tuition and providing transportation there. This was at least partly because they were being ridiculed at Lake View.
Breda is a small town about 15 miles away from the farm and was located in Carroll County, to the south. At first Mom drove them there and picked them up. Afterwards my brother Joe James (Joey) drove. Joey thought they squeezed eight of them in an old '41 Chevy which didn't have a heater that worked well in the winter, so they bundled up. After that he said he drove a '47 Chevy, called the "Blue Bomber." Joey has a happy memory of going to Breda where he had friends and there were other big families. After Joey was graduated in 1956, my sister Katie drove. Katie had started St. Bernard's as a Freshman and was graduated in 1958. Following her, other members of the family drove.
In all Mom had 20 of us children, 18 of whom were born between 1927 and 1952. Two were lost before birth, one a twin.
3 The following are the born: your uncles and aunts Marie, Francie, Bob, Margaret, Pete, Joe James, Katie, Dolores, Paul, Jerry, Tom, Mike, Yvonne, Philip, and Richard. George and Dennis died in infancy: George in 1939 and Dennis in1946. George died three days after my seventh birthday and was buried in the cemetery near Wall Lake. As I looked back in memory across the years, there was some recollection about it, and Marie confirmed part of what came to mind. Distraught and sorrowful, Mom walked south on the country road to go to the cemetery, miles away from the farm. From what Marie remembers she may've blamed herself because she had chased cattle while carrying George. The cows may've gotten out through a fence and onto the road. I don't know if she reached the cemetery, but it seems to me more likely that she turned around or Dad went after her.But Mom weathered the storms of life, helped I would think by her faith and her philosophy. She prayed, and said with God, nothing's impossible. She thought that if you can't change a situation, you learn to accept it. She saw two sides to every situation, even the right side. She thought we should praise God more, and not be so demanding. The fact you're alive was something wonderful to her. She loved to walk in the rain. She believed there was something soothing about it. She said, "It seems like God is blessing you."
But not all weather is gentle. The farm has been hit by flooding, and by storms that have brought down trees, and it seems to me, one bent a steel post like a piece of licorice. One storm in particular hit in mid-June, when crops were looking good after three years of drought. Corn was flourishing, already more than knee high, and oats was headed out. Out of the west came a thunderstorm hurling hail and rain. Hailstones up to the size of baseballs or larger, bombarded buildings and fields. The wind blew fiercely. At the Sac City airport, the wind gauge pegged and they estimated the windspeed at 100 mph. The rain flew in torrents. It was over in about 20 minutes.
Mom slept in the west room downstairs. Behind her bed, on the west side of the house, was a big bay window which didn't open and had a sill inside. Mom arose from her bed to close another window. Moments later, glass from the bay window was blasted out as the storm crashed into the room. It shredded the shades and her bed was strewn with glass, hail and leaves. Outside the cottonwood tree lost most of its foliage, cars were dented and roofs were damaged. Much of the oats was cut down to stubble and the corn was pummeled to the ground, most of it gone.
Yet even in the fury of the storm, there was a blessing. She
survived and I don't remember her even being hurt. The storm also
illustrates the uncertainty of farming and the farmer's dependence upon the
kindness of the weather.
As years went by, Mom had her health problems. She had rheumatic fever,
and one knee was so bad, she couldn't get up or down. When she had this
disease, my sister Margaret interrupted her schooling to stay home to help
Mom, finishing a year after her class was graduated. Mom would beg her to go
back to school which she did. Mom had diabetes and high blood pressure.
There was a night when the doctor thought her heart could've exploded from
the pressure but it didn't come to pass. One terrible affliction came after
Christmas in 1958. She was taking a canning kettle of liquid lard that had
boiled on the kitchen stove, to pour it into a container. She slipped and
fell on the floor. The hot liquid fat poured over her, splashing into her
face, drenching her right forearm and hand, and burning her left. She was
badly hurt. It was an agonizing ordeal for her. In the autumn of 1979, she
suffered a series of heart attacks and even heart failure. She recovered,
though weakened.
Neither she nor the doctor thought she'd last as long as she did. She asked God to let her live till her children could take care of themselves.
A mother is one who gives life and she certainly lived that. And she continued to give to us in care, care to the lives she'd given, her family. But finally, on the evening of February 5th, 1980, her life gave out. On that evening, a fire broke out in the repair shed on the farm, and flames leaped into the sky. She'd come out the front door, and there on the steps, she collapsed, never to revive. Just days before, the last of her flock had moved out of the house. God had granted her request.
Flotilla doesn't appear to be a common personal name. You do find the name applied to a small fleet or a fleet of small craft. In a way, it fits her life. From her, a small fleet of us have set forth on the sea of life, all destined for a farther shore, a New World beyond the horizon. Sometimes the sea is peaceful and sometimes rough. Sometimes a tempest tosses one or another of us about. Yet we stay afloat and journey on. Mom followed the light of faith. It's our course as well.
Remember your Grandma on her anniversary,
Your old navy Dad
1
I wonder if his name was spelled Hegemann, as I found that a Fr. Hegemann, S.J. was the Pastor of Sts. Peter
and Paul from 1905 to 1909, and the priest Mom saw in 1925 was mentioned as
being old.
2 Grossvater, my Grandfather in Mankato, was
named Josef Alois Riedel. His son and my father was Joseph Alois as
well, and both of Dad's grandparents
were named Alois, Alois Riedel and Alois Schwab. Grossmutter was Amalia
Schwab, the youngest daughter of Alois and Josefa Schwab.
3
The gender of those lost isn't known, but the twin's
been named either Patrick or Philomena (a twin to Philip), and the other child,
either Susanna or
Samuel.
Note: Since the
above story was written, a little album came to light that apparently
belonged to my Grandma Frisbie, and in it, was a note from a person named
Flo; some of it is light to read and guessed at, but the word Flo is clear.
I wrote that perhaps the name Flotilla was a person my grandmother had read
about or admired. It may very well be that it is the person we are reading about
now in this little album. My guess would be that this is
the source of mom's name Flotilla. The note this Flo wrote was
addressed to "Cousin Annie" and signed Flo Strohn or Strohm. The name
John Strom (as it sounded) lingers in my memory. I notice on a
marriage document of Grandma Frisbie, what could be the signature of an S. S. Strohm.
Some Additional Information
A portion of a map showing the proximity of our
farm in Section 20 to the town of Lake View and the lake. This is from
the Sac County Plat map for 1935. Note in the lower left hand corner
of Section 20, that the land is in the names of Anna E. Frisbie and J.
P. Kruser, my grandmother and great grandpa.
Note as well that the Indian Creek runs out of Sect. 20
and into the section 19, then back into 20 again. I don't remember
seeing this road north of the farm other than straight, the road by which
we walked to school which was located in the northeast corner of Section 19. It
seems to me there was an inclined cut along the north side of the hill near
the Stoffregen farm buildings, which likely was the old roadway.
We carried water for school from the Lange farm.
To fetch our pail of water, we went up the road to the east, past the creek, cut through a wooded area to reach
their pump.
To the right of our farm is where the three Quinlan
brothers lived, and to the east of the lake was the Olaf Jensen farm.
Olaf was my Confirmation sponsor.
Regarding Jeff P. Kruser, Grandma Frisbie's
father and Mom's grandfather, he was
born in 1851 and came to this country around 1872. He came from
a part of Europe that changed hands during his lifetime, but family history
says his family was Danish and we knew him as such.
He landed in Baltimore and some months later came
west to Sabula, Iowa, on the Mississippi. In 1876, according to one
recollection, he brought cattle from the area of Clinton County to the
vicinity of Sac County for the Goodenow who was a banker in Wall Lake.
However, this recollection may be partly in error. Another remembrance said
it was for Charles Goodenow, and in a biographical sketch of a him, it
mentions that Charles came to Sac County “when his family removed here and
drove a large bunch of cattle ahead of him. He unloaded the cattle
from the train at Grand Junction, Iowa, and drove them to his father's ranch
by way of Lake City and Sac City.” So I believe this was likely
the cattle drive he participated in. Charles was the son of Royal
Goodenow who came to Sac Co. in 1875.
1876 was before Lake View even existed as a
town or Fletcher before it. From that year Jeff Kruser became
associated with the farm northwest of Lake View where my brother Richard
still farms, and where Dad, my brothers Bob and Jerry farmed as well.
Grandpa Kruser made a dugout
on the farm and lived there while building another home. My sister Marie
remembers it being referred to as a sod house.
Bob told me that when they were making the sileage pit in the area where it was, they unearthed a spot where the soil was a different color
from the surrounding soil. This could’ve been the exact spot and could
indicate that sod was pushed into where the dugout was excavated. The sod
could’ve come from lower down toward the creek.
Jeff Kruser married Emma Goodenow over near the
Kaiser farm in 1877. Emma's father was James B. Goodenow, who
had an uncle Timothy Goodenow, Jr. who married a Betsey White (Emma's great
aunt). Betsey was a direct descendant of Peregrine White who was the
first child born to the Pilgrims in the New World. His mother gave
birth to him while they were at anchor in Provincetown Harbor. The
harbor was the initial anchoring place for the Pilgrims before they went to
Plymouth, and they signed the Mayflower compact while there.
Peregrine's cradle was a pretty wicker willow, and according to tradition,
his parents brought it from Holland anticipating the birth of their child.
R. L. Goodenow was a brother to another Goodenow,
John E. Goodenow, came to Iowa in 1847 and bought land south of Maquoketa.
He's been called the father of Maquoketa. I was told John was a
trustee for the railroad as it crossed Iowa and that he named Oseola and
Osage counties.
Jeff Kruser and Emma had one daughter Anna
who was my maternal grandmother and was born in 1888. She married Algie Frisbie,
and they had two daughters, Flotilla and Ramona (shown below as girls)
Not only were we related to him, but Jeff Kruser
was also an uncle to Eric Scott, Mattie Westrom and Edna Hamm, children of
his sister Anna who was married to Simon Scott.
We children knew him as Grandpa Kruser. He lived with
us, smoked a pipe, read westerns and sat beneath the trees with a twig
branch to brush away the flies. My brother Francis says people brought him
hay rope to mend. He died in June 1949 in his 99th year of life and is
buried in Ferguson Cemetery.
The old house on Grandpa’s farm where mom was
born, burned down in the fall of 1909. It was thought that it was
around corn picking time.
Named after the Sac tribe of Indians, Sac County
was formed in 1851, but I don't know if there were even any rudimentary
roads dividing sections of land in that part of the county when Grandpa came
in 1876. Four years later , in 1880, a town was laid out by a J.C.
Fletcher and named for him, but in 1887 Fletcher was changed to Lake View.
Sac City had only been incorporated two years before Grandpa Kruser came,
and the first railroad came through Sac City in 1879, several years after he arrived.
Looking at the above map, I invite the reader to
consider, whether something like this might have occurred: Grandpa Kruser
heard talk of the glacial lake in the county and set out to see it shortly
after his arrival at the Goodenow ranch. Riding a horse, he followed
the Indian Creek or kept it in sight. Possibly, his route took him
over the map's Kies and Stoffregen land. Coming over the high hill, he
saw below him a picturesque valley with the creek winding through prairie
grass and even some slough. He saw a wooded slope about a half mile
away. He rode down the hill, where he found a spring, and
cupping his hands, he tasted its water. He liked it and the land that
he saw. He continued on to the lake with rocks along the shoreline,
rested there and enjoyed the scenery, thinking thoughts in both Danish and
English. Watering his horse, he returned to the Goodenow ranch,
perhaps taking another look at that picturesque valley as he rode back.
However it happened, whether this way or
another, this was the land he chose to settle on and this where in later
years we would grow up on the farm.
―JR
Mom's family:
From left: Back row, John,
Marie, Margaret and Bob; 2nd row, Pete, Dolores, Katie, Joe James,
and Francie; Paul, Tom and Jerry are to the left of Mom who's holding
Richard; Dad's holding
Phil; to the right of Dad, are Yvonne and
Mike. This family photo was taken around 1953.
Mom, Marie, Bob, Francie and Johnnie, the tipsy one.
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