Written by: Hulda Erdmann Repstein, January 1952
Anna Katherina Rosenmeier was born in southwestern Germany near France November 11, 1827 and died November 20, 1923 at the age of 96 at her daughter Mina's home at Prairie du chien, Wisconsin. Her father lived to be 60 years old, but she never knew her mother who died when Katherina was very young. She had one brother Henry, two sisters, Henrietta and Louisa, two step-sisters and one step-brother. She had two step-mothers, and from the time she was eight or nine years old she was living with strangers working for her living. She found life so hard that sometimes when picking up potatoes she would hide some to roast later in the fields. To make her clothes, she beat up flax straw to weave into material. When she was 28 her great opportunity came; two of her chums were coming to America with their folks; they had tickets bought when one of the girls suddenly became ill and died. They asked Katherina if she wanted to go to America in the girl's place, using the ticket and working it out. She worked for this family at Sheboygan, Wisconsin until she married Henry Stuempges.
Henry Stuempges was also born in southwestern Germany near the French border on April 27, 1826 and died on May 12, 1907 at his home one and one-half miles east of Irene, South Dakota, after a lingering illness which they called "creeping paralysis." He and his wife are buried in the Union Cemetery a few miles west of Wakonda, South Dakota. Some years before, they had given their farm and home to their youngest son, August; in return he was to care for his parents in his home the rest of their lives, but after his marriage to Dora Brockmiller, this arrangement soon was not too agreeable. In his last years Henry became very crippled and was too much for Katherina to handle; then their daughter Mina came to help care for him. After his passing Katherina continued living there for a while longer, but she was old and also needing some care, so her daughter Etta, who was living at Beresford, came and got her. She was there about a year, but never happy, always homesick for her home where she was not wanted. She then lived with her daughter Mina in Prairie du chien and for a few years with her son Henry and family at Bemidji, Minnesota. It seems Henry and Etta had received financial aid at some time and wanted to repay by keeping her for a while. When Henry's family was going to move, Mina came and took her mother home with her once more, giving her loving care through her long infirmity. When she was about 90 she was very ill, but the doctor said her heart was so strong it just could not stop, so she lived on through years when at times she did not recognize her own children when they came to see her. The greater part of her last years was spent in bed, Mina caring for her like a baby.
In 1849 Henry Stuempges came to Sheboygan County, Wisconsin with his parents and brothers, John, William and Julius, and sister Johanna. They bought timber land which the government was selling cheap, but they could buy only 80 acres. The government man took them to the land and said, "Here's your land. Here's where you can build your house," so they took their tools and before nightfall had built the walls of their log cabin for protection in the woods. Later, after they had become lumbermen, they built their mother a better home. The other children had married and Henry was living alone in the log house; he needed a wife, and though he had never met Katherina, he had seen her and admired her in church. Also, he had heard what people were saying, that she had worked long enough to more than pay for her passage to America; and furthermore, she was a good worker, so soon thereafter he went to see her, dressed up and wearing the silk hat he had brought along from Germany where he had been a weaver of silk and also had sold silk clothes and hats. Katherina looked up from her barnyard chores, thrilled to see such a fine-looking young man standing there, indeed, a storybook prince charming, but she was embarrassed in her worst old clothes, and insisted on going to the house to dress up a bit before talking with him. He came right to the point - would she be his wife? They were married in 1856. In 1906 they celebrated their golden anniversary at their home near Irene. A picture taken at that time accompanies this history. Although always a devoted and happy couple, they were very different, having lived through opposite environments. He was truly a gentle, kindhearted man and deeply religious. He had beautiful blue eyes and in later years, snowy white hair. Though of good stature, he was never strong physically, never having done manual labor until he came to Wisconsin. Katherina was darker skinned, with brown eyes, and hardly ever weighing more than one hundred pounds, but she was strong and energetic and always a great help and strength to her husband. In 1863 Henry moved his wife and four daughters to Clayton County, Iowa, two and one-half miles south of Monona. There they lived with Eiferts until they bought a little farm. Etta was six months old, and Mina, the eldest, had to watch the younger ones while Henry and Katherina worked in the fields. Wheat sold for $4.00 per bushel and Katherina went into the neighboring fields gathering loose grain that the men did not get into bundles; she would stack it near their's and later they would thresh it for her. Then they bought 80 acres of land from Charles Lang six miles east of Monona. A few years later they bought twenty acres of black walnut timber land and 80 acres of fire-swept land which had very few large trees, mostly it was bushes growing among stumps from which new shoots had sprung. During the summer Henry usually had men helping him grub out the stumps. Clearing the timberland for cultivation was hard work and only three to six acres could be cleared in a summer, but the soil was very rich and wheat went 30 bushels to the acre. In the winter the men were busy trimming and cutting up wood to sell. One winter he had them cut about 100 cord in the black walnut timber where the trees were very large. This he sold to be used for railroad ties. He needed $300.00 to pay the 10% interest he owed on $3000.00 he had borrowed when he bought the last 80 acres of land. He had borrowed from an unscrupulous man who later foreclosed when hard years came before Henry had a chance to get matters handled. They always had a difficult time financially and the girls had to help others to get a little spending money. One of their worries came when a carpenter wanted to collect $100.00 about a year after he had been paid. Henry couldn't find the receipt and even the clock refused to run. Katherina took it down for Henry to look over; she noticed a paper and showed it to Henry-so there was the lost paper and all that was wrong with the clock was that it had been forgotten. In June 1879 Henry drove a team of three-year old colts to Dakota Territory to homestead in Turner County. When he returned to Iowa he left the colts in August Kuhler's pasture. The Kuhlers were former neighbors in Iowa who had come to Dakota a year earlier and lived eight miles southwest of Henry's claim. The town Wakonda is now about a mile east of the Kuhler farm and one of their grandchildren now lives thereon. Their youngest son still lives in Wakonda. In October that year Henry Stuempges had a sale in Iowa. He kept two horses, two small colts, four cows and some chickens. The stock and all of the belongings came to Dakota in one railroad car for $100.00. He and his son Henry came in the same car so they could care for the stock on the way. Katherina and children, Mary, John and August took the train which went only so far as Canton, South Dakota; from there they took the freight which went only to Parker, twenty miles north of their destination. They got to Parker about 10 a.m. the second day and loaded their things on the wagon to start south on the prairie road. The colts were tied to the wagon and they drove the cows. The village of Swan Lake, now called Hurley, was about half way and here they stopped at a farm house to spend the night. The friendly Danish family invited them in for a good supper of dark flour biscuits and barley coffee. Beds were made by putting hay on the floor and spreading blankets over. By noon the next day they had reached their destination. There they lived with a family by the name of Whitmarsh who lived a mile south of where Henry and his son-in-law, Salon Gaylord, were building a house. Salon had married Hanna and they had come to Dakota a year earlier. She was sick all winter with an illness the doctors called "spinal fever" and died in the spring. She was buried in the Yankton cemetery, her grave being the first one. Later when Etta and Mary were working in Yankton they walked out several times, but now knowing that some of the graves were marked with numbers, never found which one was Hanna's. It didn't take long to build their one-story 3-room house. The inside walls were not plastered, just covered with boards. Later, after August married, he built a new house using this old part for the kitchen. When they first came to Dakota they got their mail once a week from a post office in a house near Wakonda about eight miles away; later a neighbor one and one-half miles away had the post office. Centerville was about eight miles but had only one store, so, even though it took them a day, they usually went to Yankton to do their shopping and to market their butter and eggs. Katherina was a Lutheran, but in Iowa they were members of Henry's church, the German Reformed. After a few years this church was discontinued and they joined a German Methodist church and were Methodists so long as they lived. In Iowa three Methodist churches under one pastorate had union or quarterly meetings every three months. This was a great one-day meeting beginning with services in the forenoon, dinner, and another service at 2:30. All who lived within two miles of the church took someone home with them for a hurried dinner which had been prepared ahead of time, usually consisting of potato salad and boiled ham or chicken, and pie or cake. They also enjoyed camp meetings that lasted a week. Those who had tents cooked meals and invited others to eat with them. After they moved to Dakota they attended camp meetings in Nebraska, crossing the river at Yankton in a small boat as there was no ferry. Reverend Huelcher, their Methodist minister who came to Kuhler's school house, was conducting these meetings in Nebraska. He also held services at Joel Frys, their near neighbor. Later his son, Reverend George Huelcher, conducted services in the home of Ernest Erdmann in Douglas County and there united in marriage Gustav Erdmann and Anna Marie Stuempges.
