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Some Stories from our Past |
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| J.H. Loucks | Lydia Diener | Fannie Landis | Cora Weaver | Herman Sommerfeld | Mary Brundage |
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J.H. Loucks
I came to Kansas by railroad in 1879 with my new bride, Susanna (Smith). We settled first in Peabody and then Daniel Brundage persuaded us to move to the Spring Valley community. This was the year the town of Canton was founded. Bishop Brundage thought I could lead the congregation because I was a good “fix-it” man. I enjoyed mechanics and had the threshing machine that we used in the neighborhood. Well, I was chosen by lot to be a minister, but I just didn’t feel comfortable in this leadership role, so I asked to be relieved of this responsibility. I much preferred to help care for the church house and cemetery. Friends of the family always dug and covered the graves. Mowing the bluestem was all without power mowers. Sandburs were a discomfort to the bare feet of my grandson Charlie, who often helped me mow. As I mowed, I thought about the stories each grave could tell. I will tell you a few of them. The first person buried in the cemetery is right over there. He was the father of the McNicol family who moved here from El Dorado in 1872. He died soon after he came. Their family brought some native rough lumber with them and built the first frame house in the township. They were not of the Mennonite faith but contributed to the building of the community. After their family moved, I bought the land where they homesteaded, and my son lived there after me too. There were many deaths in those early days - many small children and babies. Probably many died from an inadequate diet or from infections that today could have been prevented by vaccines or cured by antibiotics or the care of a doctor who was so rare at that time. A story is told of some young harvest hands following harvest near here. It was rainy and they quit work early one day. With nothing to do, they got drunk and then went to sleep on the wheat. One of the guys threw up and suffocated in his vomit and died. That night his buddies brought him up here and buried him in the cemetery - right over there. Another interesting story is of Ira and Harvey Yoder from Spring Valley who attended meetings in Abilene related to the holiness movement. It is told these two brothers thought they could jump from the top of the barn and God would take them to heaven. Both jumped and landed in the manure pile below. The movement held an extreme position on divine healing - that it was wrong to use medical help. Harvey and Ira who were 21 and 19 at the time both contracted typhoid fever and neither would take medicine, but believed the Lord would heal them. After Ira died, some friends prayed for Harvey. They told him to get up for he was healed. He did get up but died shortly afterward. Others who were sick also, sought help from a doctor and recovered. They are buried under the Cedar tree. So it is, some die young - foolishly, but many live long, productive years in God's kingdom. What legacy will you leave? In 1940, it was decided each able member of the church would take a turn mowing the cemetery. Members were exempt after 60 years of age. The northwest corner of the cemetery continues to be left in native prairie grass. In spring, the wildflowers bloom as a reminder of how it was here 150 years ago. Lydia Diener I grew up in Elkhart Co, Indiana and was 21 years old when I came to Kansas with my father, Jacob Landis and his new wife in 1880. In 1884, four years later, D.A. Diener, came to Kansas from Lancaster County, PA, leaving his Amish home. We were married two years later and came to faith in Christ at the first evangelistic meetings in the KS/NE conference in 1889. The next year, D.A. was chosen by lot to serve as minister of Spring Valley which he did for 43 yrs. I will share with you of some of my life experiences. I will never forget the tragic story of a family traveling west on the Marion Road in a covered wagon. The mother accidently discharged a revolver hanging from the side of the wagon and was killed. I helped my father prepare the body for burial right over there. A stone marks her anonymous grave. I raised 5 children - 4 boys and one girl. When I was 58 years old, my life changed. As we entered World War I in 1917, our Church doctrine of love, peace, and nonresistance was severely tested at Spring Valley. There was terrific pressure from local bond drives to support the war effort with threatening notices given to us because we felt it unscriptural to support the war. D.A. gave his biblical reasoning and shared how he gave financial support through the church and the Friends. Nevertheless, in April. 1918, a flag was nailed to the church and at 2:00 a.m. around fifty masked men drove into our yard and pulled D.A. out into the yard. They put tar and feathers on him, demanding payment or they would come back and repeat the abuse. Two months later they came again threatening to pound him to pieces and he gave them a check because I was so distraught with this terror, but he cancelled the payment the next day. A week later, they returned and ransacked the house from cellar to garret. They daubed our new house with yellow paint inside and out and did the same to the automobile. They took all the money they could find and D.A.'s watch. They stripped him naked and struck him over a dozen times with a large strap, causing bruises and large cuts. He was dragged to the barn and abused after which they applied carboline roofing paint to his body followed by feathers. The carbolic acid made him very sore, and his body, face and hands were badly swollen. They threatened to hang him the next time. Kindly, the Spring Valley women rallied and in a service of love came and helped clean up the mess. Removing the tar was painful; tar caused the skin to burn and blister and when the tar was removed, often skin peeled off. My son Charles also was abused in the same manner each of these three times the masked men came. I was overcome with such terror and shock that I was never the same and my dear husband had to care for me the rest of my life. I used a wheelchair and was an invalid all those 14 years. We did give $175 to the Red Cross for Quaker reconstruction efforts. D.A. did finally buy $100 war bond. He never held malice towards those who abused him, and his church members respected him for suffering for the cause of Christ. Fannie Landis I came with my family to Kansas in 1880 from Holmes, County, Ohio. I was eight years old, and it was the most exciting adventure to ride a train across so many states. With all our belongings in a wagon, we came from the Newton train station. Mother asked why we stopped at a stake in the prairie grass. Father answered, "We are to live here." Then mother began to weep. It had been hard for her to leave family and her special garden in Ohio. Mother soon grew to enjoy her life here-especially the fellowship with the other pioneers at Spring Valley Church. We soon had a cozy house and later a prosperous farm. I loved attending Sunday School as a girl. We had it in the Bunker Hill School across from the church. But in 1890, when I was eighteen years old, the conference agreed that we could have Sunday School in our church. Now I was old enough to teach and since we had no printed books or picture cards to use, I often walked over two miles to and from the church on Saturday afternoon to make a drawing on a blackboard to help me illustrate my lesson the next day. I served the Lord at the Chicago Mission in 1905 and when I returned to Kansas, I helped start Sunday evening Bible readings. Later the church made available Young People's Meeting topics which we used for many years. I taught a mission study class on Sunday afternoons and the girls from this group came to my home and we would sew little dresses for Relief. The women of the church began supporting the Mennonite Children's Home near Hillsboro in 1905 with food and clothing they sewed. They organized a sewing circle in 1916 and eventually broadened their projects to orphanages, hospitals, immigrants, missions, C.P.S camps and to MCC for overseas relief. Along with sewing and mending clothing for MCC, they canned fruit and rolled bandages. Sewing circle was a joyful experience and it filled a need for women who spent most of their time at home doing housework. They felt it was their part in the Mission outreach of the church. Cora Weaver My parents came to Kansas in the mid 1880's. In 1907, my father, Aaron Landes was the third deacon ordained at Spring Valley. Church was the center of our family life, and we attended whenever the doors were open. I taught 10-12 year old Sunday School over the years and kept records as the Church historian. From an early age, I loved singing. I enjoyed being a chorister and singing with various groups in church. Originally the frontier Mennonites sang in only one-part and in German. Songbooks were brought to church from the homes and since there were not enough for everyone, the minister would read each line before the chorister led the congregation in singing the line. A story was told about how a minister forgot his glasses one Sunday and when he was going to "line" the song, he tried to squint his eyes and bring the book close, but he could not see the words. So, he said, "My eyes are dim, I cannot see, I did not bring my specs with me." To his embarrassment, just like that, the congregation sang these words. Trying to explain himself, he followed with "I did not mean that you should sing, I only meant my eyes are dim." And they sang that also. At the Kansas Nebraska Conference of 1890, they discussed and approved singing in four parts. Teaching this new method of four-part singing brought singing schools to Spring Valley, so that the people could learn to read music. One winter, R.M. Weaver had two sessions a week at Spring Valley, riding a bicycle or a horse the eighteen miles one way from his home in Harvey County. Quartets and other singing groups formed through the years to sing for special occasions or the weekly worship service. In later years, my husband Oliver and I moved to Schowalter Villa and we kept in touch with Spring Valley by listening to the church cassette tape brought each week for us. Herman Sommerfeld I am part of Spring Valley almost by accident. My father was John Sommerfeld who had 10 siblings. They were German speaking Mennonites who arrived in Kansas from Russia in the 1870's. This large family could not all ride together in the wagon to Goessel for church, so the four oldest boys, Henry, my father John, Jake, and Lenhart walked or rode horseback to Spring Valley. All four brothers joined church here and three of them married Old Mennonite girls from here. My grandparents were not opposed to this, but it was hard for my grandmother to communicate with her English-speaking daughters-in-law. There were many "firsts" that Spring Valley can claim along with being the first Mennonite Congregation in Kansas. It also held the first session of the Kansas Nebraska Conference in 1876 and 14 more times up to 1947, using large tents to hold all those attending. Thirdly, Spring Valley had the first evangelistic/revival meetings in the Kansas/Nebraska Conference in 1889. The fourth first was that we were the first congregation in the district to take regular Sunday offerings. My wife, Sarah (Reimer) and I were married in 1937 and we were the first couple ever married in the church. I am thankful God led my father to Spring Valley. In 1948, I was ordained a deacon here at Spring Valley and I tried to serve the Lord faithfully in that role. In my later years, I suffered from crippling arthritis, but stayed on the farm and attended Spring Valley as Iong as I was able. Mary Brundage You've probably heard of my husband, Bishop Daniel Brundage. We've got quite a story. We were born and raised in Ontario, Canada. That's where we were married and Daniel was ordained to the ministry. He was an energetic preacher, if I do say so myself! All our 7 children were born there - and our 6th little one died when just a baby. He's buried there and I thought we would live beside his little grave forever. But, in 1858 when our youngest child was 3 years old, Daniel felt the need to move and we packed up what we didn't sell and moved to Elkhart County, Indiana. Daniel tried to farm, but he was a better carpenter so he earned a living at that while also preaching. We never had much money. In 1868, Daniel felt the same prodding to move again. By now our first three children had married so they stayed in Indiana. This time we went to Morgan County, Missouri where Daniel organized the Bethel Church for the Mennonites in that area. While we were there, Daniel was ordained as a bishop in the church. A disagreement over foot-washing resulted in the church peacefully dividing in 1871. Daniel oversaw the group that became the Mt. Zion church. Only four years after moving to Missouri a great tornado came. Some of our friends and neighbors were killed. All our buildings and belongings were scattered and Daniel lost his carpentry tools. Daniel thought this was a good time to move on. The Western Territories really attracted him and he came to Kansas and moved us to this homestead in 1873. Daniel began organizing the scattered Mennonites in the surrounding area. He founded this Spring Valley church first and later donated the land for the building. He was overseer of the Catlin church 15 miles east of here. In 1883 he helped organize the West Liberty Church about 25 miles west of here and a few years later the Pennsylvania Church 15 miles straight south of here between Newton and Hesston. He preached at one church or another every Sunday morning. I didn't go along with him very often. The little cart he drove wasn't comfortable. It didn't have any springs because springs were "too worldly." Traveling around was difficult and could be hazardous because there weren't real roads - just some trails. He and our youngest son, Christian, and another friend went to the town of Marion and plowed a furrow in the prairie land to help people find their way across the plains, but mostly to help them find their way to church. A few Mennonites lived near Marion and in the "Canada" area between there and Hillsboro and this furrow went right through there. They plowed it to one mile north of here because there was a good place for travelers to camp there. Not bad for a 60-year old man and his 17-year-old son! Oh, there are a lot of stories I could tell you about Daniel. Once the men at the Pennsylvania Church thought he was abusing his horse because it was in such a lather when he arrived to preacher one Sunday morning. Daniel explained that was because the horse had wandered off and would have made him late if he hadn’t hurried him along the way. He promised to give him extra oats that evening. Daniel actually lost his ordination for a few years because of a disagreement while building a brother's house at the Catlin Church. Joseph Dohner wanted a gabled roof, but Daniel insisted that was too "prideful" so he cut the rafters the way he thought they should be. Brother Dohner got a different carpenter to build his house the way he wanted it and then he left the church! Ah, well, the many stories of life on the prairie and life in the church with Daniel. |