Homesteading and Moving On

By Helen Kurtenbach Furr

An absorbing account of second-generation German immigrants who remained in rather than left Depression-era South Dakota despite bleak prospects for their late-nineteenth-century homesteadHomesteading and Moving On conveys one womans memory of how, in its modest, devoted way, her family surmounted obstacles and, over nine decades, flourished nationwide, bolstered by faith, love, and mutual respect. Helen Kurtenbach Furrs recollections of her rural prairie childhood and subsequent travels throughout America demonstrate how documenting well-lived lives creates linkage and tribute. She wants future family generations to know their heritage, and she hopes theyll recognize why understanding and appreciation are so important.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503561526

Helen Kurtenbach Furr

Helen Kurtenbach Furr was born in 1929 and grew up in the farming community of Dimock, South Dakota, in the southeastern corner of the state. She married Allan “Doc” Furr in 1950, and they had two children. During Doc’s career as a veterinarian in private practice and as a US government employee, the family moved across the United States—from north to south and west to east—a total of sixteen times in thirty-five years. Doc died in 2004. Helen now resides in a retirement village in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Homesteading and Moving On is her first book.

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Copyright © 2015 by Helen Kurtenbach Furr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 06/23/2015

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER I OF EARLY DAYS

CHAPTER II MY FAMILY

CHAPTER III JOE

CHAPTER IV HUB

CHAPTER V ESTHER

CHAPTER VI MARGE

CHAPTER VII FRAN

CHAPTER VIII ELINOR

CHAPTER IX VINCE

CHAPTER X LOUIS

CHAPTER XI HELEN

CHAPTER XII HOMEMADE FUN

CHAPTER XIII BUTCHERING

CHAPTER XIV LAUNDRY

CHAPTER XV BASEBALL

CHAPTER XVI MORE SCHOOL

CHAPTER XVII HARVESTTIME

CHAPTER XVIII HIGH SCHOOL

CHAPTER XIX AFTER HIGH SCHOOL

CHAPTER XX MEETING ALLAN

CHAPTER XXI EMPLOYMENT

CHAPTER XXII MARRIAGE

CHAPTER XXIII LIFE ON THE FARM

CHAPTER XXIV JOYCE

CHAPTER XXV WJ

CHAPTER XXVI KURT

CHAPTER XXVII THE MOVE TO WASHINGTON STATE

CHAPTER XXVIII BACK TO SCHOOL

CHAPTER XXIX DAILY LIVING

CHAPTER XXX ANTICS

CHAPTER XXXI COLLEGE HOUSING

CHAPTER XXXII CAMPUS HAPPENINGS

CHAPTER XXXIII GRADUATION

CHAPTER XXXIV THE NEW HOME

CHAPTER XXXV FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT

CHAPTER XXXVI TRANSFER TO THE NATIONAL ANIMAL DISEASE LAB

CHAPTER XXXVII BACK TO NEW MEXICO

CHAPTER XXXVIII VADP

CHAPTER XXXIX DOC’S ILLNESS

CHAPTER XL RETIREMENT

CHAPTER XLI CARLSBAD, NEW MEXICO

CHAPTER XLII ANNIVERSARY PARTY

CHAPTER XLIII SERVICE, HEALTH; HEALTH, SERVICE

CHAPTER XLIV JOURNEYS

CHAPTER XLV MOVING TO LANDSUN

EPILOGUE

APPENDICES

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Coming to America

First Maternal Family

First-Generation Webers

In Later Years

My Mother’s Family

My Paternal Grandparents

Antique and Modern at the Same Time

About 1932

Geography as Destiny

Courtship and Marriage

Home and Family, 1930s and 1940s

My Family, Spring 1941

John Kurtenbach’s Dynasty

At Our Mother’s Funeral

Images of Joe Kurtenbach

Hub and Marie

Probably About 1920

Images of Esther

Images of Marge

Jim ’n’ Bill

The Winslows of Washington

Portraits of Fran

Celebrating With Brother Fran

Family Snap

August 20, 1946

Together Through the Years

Family as Friends Forever

Fergens and Furrs on Tour

Varieties of Vince

Vince and Kay’s Wedding Party, May 1950

Two Managers and Their Full Team

Images of Louis

Dynamic Dimock

Lou and Bobbie

As a Toddler

One-Day Wonder

Young Helen, Growing Up

Graduating From Catholic School

Major Players

Spring 1947

The Future in Type

Formal Wear, Secular Setting

Continuity

From 1949

Postgrad Trip

September 1949

Allan Furr

As a Young Man

At Home in South Dakota

Allan in the Navy

After the War

Two Households

Wedding Setting

Wedding Party

October 23, 1950

On the Farm

Packing Into the Program

Baptism Day

Baby Joyce, Dearest Daughter

Kurt Furr

In Washington

Moving On

Allan’s Studies

Mid-Sixties Grown-Up Dress-Up

Higher Education

To Me, He Will Be ‘Doc’

Centered in Centralia

Inveterate Organizer

State Within a State

Desert and Oasis in One

On Our Way to Where

Fun in the Florida Sun

Fixing Up Down South

Serendipity and Friendship

Resting in Laurel

Dynamics of Withdrawal

Home at Last

Cross-Cultural News

Measure of Devotion

Constructive Projects

Family-Friendly Festivity

Anniversary Waltz

North to Alaska With Elinor and Alfy, July 1991

Community Involvement

Exemplary Retirement

Benchmarks

Parts Southwest

Doc’s Funeral

At Home in Carlsbad

Celebration of Life

Dear Extended Family

Treasured Family Connections

FOR

Doc, Joyce, and Kurt, who made my life interesting

Special thanks to Caryne Brown for her much

appreciated editorial assistance

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COMING TO AMERICA—J. Wilhelm Kurtenbach’s family, German immigrants to the United States, taken sometime between 1889 and 1900.

CHAPTER I

OF EARLY DAYS

A ll families—happy or unhappy—begin with images and identification and live in memory. And so I begin with some of my most precious images and will connect IDs and memories as we go along. So take heart and proceed…

By way of introduction, I offer this information about my ancestors.

My paternal great-grandparents were Johann Wilhelm Kurtenbach, born in Vettelschoss, Germany, on March 3, 1826, and his wife, Elizabeth Klein, born February 8, 1833, in Aegidienberg, Germany. They were married November 6, 1849, in Neustadt Wied, Prussia (Germany). Elizabeth was sixteen years old.

Nine children were born to them, my grandfather, Ferdinand Kurtenbach, being second oldest. My great-grandparents emigrated from Germany, coming to the United States in 1889. Johann was sixty-three years old at that time. By the end of the century, the Kurtenbach family had been long established in Dimock, South Dakota. Almost everyone there was German and Roman Catholic.

The great-grandparents on my mother’s side were Ludwig Weber, born March 30, 1825, in Köln, Germany, and Katherine Motzer, born in 1828, also in Germany. Both are buried in the Dimock, South Dakota, cemetery. My grandfather was Hubert Weber, born December 1, 1861, died July 14, 1943. He married Anna Schlepuetz, born August 3, 1864, in Germany. She emigrated with her family from Germany when she was seven years old.

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FIRST MATERNAL FAMILY—Grandfather Hubert Weber, Grandmother Anna Schlepuetz. Date not given, but prior to their having children.

Grandfather and Grandmother Weber were married on November 25, 1886. (Twenty-eight years later, my parents were married on that same date.) My grandparents were the first couple I ever knew who celebrated a fiftieth wedding anniversary. I was only nine years old but recall a big party.

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FIRST-GENERATION WEBERS—Grandfather Hubert Weber, Grandmother Anna Schlepuetz Weber, with children Isabelle, Katie, and Elizabeth (my mother).

Grandfather Weber had his left hand amputated above the wrist as the result of a hunting accident. He was with a group of men walking the fields on a Sunday afternoon when he was accidentally shot in the upper-left arm. Grandfather was not carrying a gun. The arm healed, but he had diminished circulation in his hand, and that winter his hand froze and had to be amputated. He traveled by train to Rochester, Minnesota, to have the surgery. While he was there, his youngest child was born.

I recall him playing cards—lining them up on the short arm, then holding the arm close to his body to keep the cards from falling.

In later years, he purchased and drove a 1923 Dodge Coupe (stick shift, of course). He managed to do the shifting and everything else that was necessary with only his right hand. He died of natural causes on July 14, 1943, at the age of eighty-two.

Grandmother Weber died of pneumonia. She had attended our local church bazaar that winter and couldn’t find her coat when it was time to leave. She went home without it, became ill, and died November 28, 1938. She is buried in the Dimock cemetery.

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MY MOTHER’S FAMILY—(Above) Back row: Bertha Bowar, Julia Bowar, Elizabeth Kurtenbach, Isabelle Schlimgen. Front row: Fred Weber, Hubert Weber, Katie Puetz. (Another son, Henry, died during the flu epidemic in a Great War army camp.)

IN LATER YEARS—Christmas 1966: Julie and Bertha Bowar (standing), with my mother Elizabeth (seated, l.) and Isabelle Schlimgen.

My Weber grandparents built a five-bedroom house in Dimock about 1918, where they lived out their lives. When the estate was settled, as it happened, my parents, W. J. and Elizabeth Kurtenbach, purchased the house. We moved into it in March 1944.

My Kurtenbach grandparents also came from Germany. Ferdinand, born in Orscheid, Germany, on March 3, 1855, arrived in the United States with two younger brothers, John and Peter, in 1883, at the age of twenty-eight. The rest of the family immigrated to the United States in 1889, except for the oldest child, Margaret, who was already married and who remained in Germany.

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MY PATERNAL GRANDPARENTS—And family who came to America. Ferdinand and Christina Kurtenbach (seated), with their surviving children: WJ (my father), about age 20; Christine and John (twins), 19; and Ella (center), age 12.

Ferdinand married Christina Gratzfeld, who was born March 26, 1858. According to Dimock church records, Ferdinand donated substantial amounts of money to the local church during the early 1900s. Ferdinand and Christina prospered on their homestead and were considered fairly wealthy farmers. Christina died at the age of sixty-five on May 14, 1923, reportedly of stomach cancer. After her death, Ferdinand and his daughter Ella continued to live together in Dimock in the family home. Ferdinand lived to the age of seventy-seven, apparently dying of natural causes. Ferdinand and Christina are both buried in the Dimock cemetery, near their deceased children.

My personal family history begins in Dimock, with my parents’ union. They courted in an old-fashioned way, as you can see from their photograph in the old-time buggy. I look at that photo and realize that even then, they must have known their world was changing and that they were part of the change. How else, I wonder, can we explain the absence of a horse in the picture? They were between centuries, my parents, transitioning between one world of old and the next of new to come. Somehow, as I now believe, they knew it, even if they didn’t always approve. They understood that they were in a world that, day by day, was going to be different from the one they’d been born into.

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ANTIQUE AND MODERN AT THE SAME TIME—My parents, W. J. and Elizabeth Weber Kurtenbach, during their courtship, about 1914.

So much for deep family background. And now we can begin…

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ABOUT 1932—In the background is the big grain and corn crib on the farm near Dimock, South Dakota. Starting at left: Henry Puetz, John E. Bowar, Fred Weber, Katie Puetz, Julie Bowar, Katie Weber, Lizzie Kurtenbach, W. J. Kurtenbach, Grandpa Hubert Weber, Christine Bowar (holding Donna Mae), Grandma Anna Weber, John H. Bowar, Bertha Bowar, Arthur Bowar (holding little Bertha), Bella Schlimgen, John Kurtenbach, Theodora Kurtenbach (holding Jack). All of the people in the photograph are my aunts and uncles.

W hat I recall pretty much begins with the 1932 family picnic depicted in the photograph above, even though I’m not in it. It was taken before the time a small house was moved onto the property, in 1941. The big granary was an exercise in modernization—an exceptional building, two stories tall and equipped with a built-in elevator. Meanwhile, picnics had often been held on the property. Why? Shade trees and water.

Exactly where the property was in a more general sense may help give you a picture of our family. Dimock, in Hutchinson County in the southeastern part of South Dakota, has always been a (very) small town—even now inhabited by fewer than two hundred souls. These days you have Lake Mitchell and Interstate 90 (going east and west) to the north, with Parkston and Yankton, South Dakota, down south a way. Rapid City is parts west on I-90, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I-90 intersects with I-29 (a north-south route), is some way to the east. As you go up I-29 from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, toward Fargo, North Dakota, you are also on your way toward Brookings, South Dakota—where there’s more going on than most people might think (additional detail about that later). From there, you’re not too far from the western edge of Minnesota and can, if you like extended day trips, make your way ENE to the Twin Cities.

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GEOGRAPHY AS DESTINY—How place determines experience. The prairie and life’s priorities intersecting and affecting the Kurtenbachs, Fergens, Webers, and Furrs down the generations.

Metroplex America is, nevertheless, by and large somewhere besides Hutchinson County. Though she was talking about pioneer Nebraska in her 1913 poem Prairie Spring, Willa Cather nailed it for 1932 Dimock as well:

The miles of fresh-plowed soil,

Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;

The growing wheat, the growing weeds,

The toiling horses, the tired men;

The long empty roads,

Sullen fires of sunset, fading,

The eternal, unresponsive sky…

Grandfather Ferdinand Kurtenbach homesteaded about three miles east of Dimock at a time when people still called the town Starr. Of the ten children born to him (including three sets of twins), four reached adulthood. Five children died as infants, surviving only briefly. One, described as a cholera victim, died at about age five. The Rh blood factor was found to be a problem for later generations; could it have been a problem back then? I am Rh-negative.

A brief account of the surviving children:

William J. Kurtenbach, known as WJ (my father), born in Dimock on April 17, 1889; died May 3, 1953, buried in Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Cemetery in Dimock. He was sixty-four years old.

John J. Kurtenbach, twin to Christine, born June 2, 1890. He married Elizabeth Mayer, who died December 12, 1930. John later married Elizabeth’s sister Theodora. Four children were born to John and Elizabeth. Nine children were born to John and Theodora. John died October 21, 1971, in Parkston, South Dakota.

Christine Kurtenbach, twin to John, was born June 2, 1890. Christine married John H. Bowar on January 16, 1917. Four children were born to John and Christine. Christine died on December 16, 1981, at the age of ninety-one.

Ella Kurtenbach, born June 30, 1897. Ella, twin to Otto, was unmarried and died in 1979 in Parkston. She is buried in Dimock.

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COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE—My parents in their wedding picture, November 25, 1914.

WJ Kurtenbach married Elizabeth Weber (my mother), who was born in Dimock on October 30, 1891, married on November 25, 1914. Elizabeth died March 8, 1971. She is buried in Dimock in Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Cemetery. WJ died of cancer, Elizabeth of complications of diabetes.

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HOME AND FAMILY, 1930s AND 1940s—(Clockwise from top left) Elizabeth and WJ Kurtenbach, sometime before 1944; WJ and Elizabeth with Fran, who was drafted in 1945; feeder cattle, a staple of the farm; WJ surveying Chester White hogs from