Plevna, Kansas holds my roots.

Gagnebien, Haas, Beck, Miller, Hatfield, and the list goes on.  When Haas members began to arrive through Ellis Island, they went straight to the "Beck Home" in Nickerson, Kansas and then branched out into the surrounding area, mainly Abbyville, Huntsville and Plevna.  Homesteading was active at the time and Nickerson was pretty well taken, causing them to branch further out in Reno, County. I have a family album that shows the Haas family cutting cottonwoods on the Arkansas River.  My branch of the family did not come here until 1884.  As I recall my grandfather was 6 or 9 years old when he went through Ellis Island.

I can still recall with fondness my Uncle Goll, Uncle Coon, Aunt Lizzie and my dear sweet Aunt Lena.  For some reason I thought my grandfather came to America in 1900, but it was actually 1884.  He was 12 years old at that time.  He married my grandma I 1900.  His father would be my great grandfather, Johann Jakob Haas.  Great granfather actually fathered 16 children by two women.   I come from a long line of weavers. tailors, vine dressers, bakers, and of course, farmers.  But all this is irrelevant to this post.

It must have been about 1970 or so that Dorothy and Ernie moved into a farmhouse outside of Plevna.  I know Little Ernie was just talking good.  I went to visit fairly regularly, but usually when Ernie was at work.  Little Ernie was always a special little boy to me although I had a nest full of my own.  He called me Aunt Do Do, since he could not pronounce Lou Lou.  "  I love you, Aunt Do Do."  Once he came running out of the bedroom to announce "Aunt Do Do, there is a hop grasser in my bedroom!"

Ernie had fenced off a portion of the yard and made that a pig pen.  I do not remember where he worked at the time, seems like he worked for Morton Salt.  Could be wrong.  The important part was that he was gone all day and Dorothy was pregnant.  One weekend he decided to build a new sty for the pigs so he got his lumber and drill.  Please know, that lumber and drill should never be used in a sentence with the name, "Ernie".  In typical fashion he held the 2 x4 up with one hand and drilled through it into his other hand.

They had a station wagon at the time so Ernie laid down in the back, kids were some where and Dorothy began the flying 20 mile trip to the hospital in Hutch.  Ernie would call out every few minutes, " I am still alive.  Drive carefully so you don't wreck.  Hurry!"  Dorothy told me that was her most harrowing trip in her life.  They sold the pigs soon thereafter and moved into town.  Think they moved out on Duffy Road at that time.

For many years we had a Haas family reunion at the school gymnasium.  Everyone brought a dish and we just kind of caught up on each other.  They tore down the school where I had attended my freshman year, but left the gym intact.  Hinshaws Dry Goods store burned.  I went through there once many years ago and the Smith house was a trailer park of sorts, meaning there were several mobile homes on the lot.   The Congregationalist Church was still there as was Grandma Haas's house.  The bank was still there.  I have got to take a day and go there next time I head East.  Course I remember when I stopped at Grandma's old house and got covered in ticks!  Do not want anymore of those.

Towns were built 7 miles apart back then because the trains needed a water stop.  Kansas is full of those little towns, or the remains of them.  Some of them survived, but many did not.  I love to look at my family book and try to envision what life was like back then.  Grandpa Haas married Josie Miller in 1900.  Uncle Gol married Aunt Helen who was Josie's sister, so I have double cousins out there in Southeast Kansas.  

My family is so diverse and far flung that one time I met a boy at a dance and came home to tell mother how great he was.  Her response was  "Forget it!  He is your cousin."  End of that romance and I do not even remember his name, so that is that.

I think I will plan a trip back home and go touch base with the old places in Plevna.  Aunt Lena is gone.  As far as I know the house where grandma lived is still standing.  Maybe I could find one of the Hinshaw twins!  Dean and forgot the other one.  Dean was dark complected  with dark hair and thin.  The other one was fair skinned with freckles and reddish blonde hair and a little on the heavier side.  I have forgotten my friends names!  Janet something.  Charlene Smith.  Damn!  A complete blank!  Maybe I will forget that trip.

Sure wish my momma was here.  She would remember.  

Aunt Lena

Woke up this morning with Aunt Lena on my mind.  Aunt Lena has been gone for many years, but she still resonates in my mind on a regular basis.  Aunt Lena was my Grandfather Haas's sister.  She was, and I must put this delicately, a "spinster lady who rented rooms to other spinster ladies who were school teachers." 
Back when the Haas family migrated through Ellis Island and settled in and around Abbyville, Kansas things were very different.  The patriarch of the family, Johann Jakob Haas, had already buried his first wife, Elizabeth Beck who bore him 7 children.  This was known as the "first family.  He then married the woman who took care of the first family, Dorathea  Schade and started another family.   This family consisted of 9 children, but one died an infant.  When plans were made to migrate, the two oldest girls, from the first family, boarded a steam ship and then a train to travel to Nickerson, Kansas to stay with their Beck relation who lived on the outskirts of Nickerson.  As a tiny girl, I remember going to the Beck house once.  That is all I remember.  I went to school with a boy named Ronnie Beck, who I am sure was a shirt tail relative.  I never dated in Nickerson because I was a distant cousin to everyone there one way or another and I just never wanted to do the incest thing!
But, I digress.  As a teenager I went to live with my grandmothers in Plevna, Kansas, and became well acquainted with my Aunt Lena.
That was when I learned why she had never married.  Seems back in the dating years. that Great Grandma Hatfield (nee Gagnibien), was at the time married to a man named Franklin Miller.  They had 3 children, Lou Miller and 2 girls, Mable and Josie.  Next farm over was the Haas family with lots of marriageable kids.  Mabel married Goll Haas.  Josie married Christoph Haas.  Uncle Goll was checking out Lena Haas when Great Grandma put her foot down and said her whole family was not going to turn into Haas family and so Uncle Lou and Aunt Lena said their goodbyes and he married a complete stranger.  Aunt Lena embrassed spinsterhood and moved into Plevna and starting renting rooms to school teachers.  Back in those days school teachers were predominately women and more often than not, single.
Aunt Lena always seemed tall.  She stood ramrod straight at all times and talked with her teeth clenched together.  Her teeth were always clenched.  I used to think she might have lock jaw, but I think that is just how she talked.  Expect there was a lot of "Keep that mouth shut!"  with a total of 16 kids running around and her being towards the end of the line they all bossed her! 
Aunt Lena always wore a dress.  Always.  Well, I can't say what she wore during harvest and before I knew her, but I am betting it was a dress.  But trust me, when she wanted to go wade in the creek, or chase a calf across the field, she knew how to modify her dress.  She would slam on the brakes in that old jalopy she drove and jump out of  the car.  "Come on, kids!"  She would spread her legs and reach back between her knees and catch the hem of the skirt in the back, pull it forward and up and tuck it in her waistband.  Instant culottes!  And she taught us the fine art!  She would put one foot on the bottom barbed wire and pull the wire above it up so us kids could crawl through with out ramming a barb in our back, usually.  Then off we would gallop across the field in quest of what ever Aunt Lena had seen.  Sometimes we ended up wading in a creek.  Sometimes we picked Sand Hill Plums.  Sometimes we just walked across the field and kicked clods. 
Aunt Lena kept a horse tank in her front yard.  In the summer it was always full of water and when we went to her house we could jump in and cool off.  The only item of clothing we removed was our shoes.  When we got out we just "dried out."  Kansas gets very hot in the summer and those little dips were always just what us kids needed. 
I remember the last time I seen Aunt Lena.  It must have been about 1992.  She was born in 1893.  She died in 1994. She would have been about 99 years old.  It was at the Auditorium in Plevna where I had gone to high school  The school was gone, but they used the auditorium for reunions and such.  I had a cousin of sorts, Earl Boyd who was at the time 88 and legally blind.  Had been for years.  He and Aunt Lena were talking and it went like this.
"Oh, Lena, I would love to see the old homestead, but I don't have a car."
"Oh, Earl, I have a car, but I can't drive."
"Well, you have a car!  I can drive us there.  It is just a couple miles and it is all dirt roads."
"But, Earl, you can't see!  How can you drive?"
"You can see, Lena!  You can tell me where to go."
"Do you think it would work Earl?"
"Sure!  Let's plan on doing that someday soon."
I don't think they ever made the trip, but it made me happy to know they wanted to.  I thought several times, after I returned to Colorado, that I should make the effort and make that happen for them, but I never did.  It was the procrastination thing that always trips me up. 
And now, I am the older generation.  Now, I am thinking I would like to make a trip back to the old home place and I keep putting it off.  Maybe some day.  For now, I will set here and remember.  I miss my mother.  I miss my husband.  My brother, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents and on and on and on.  I can see them all, just like they were.  Is that a sign of old age?  Senility?  Or just wishful thinking?