Photo: Dellmont and Mathilda with Marland, Kenneth, Arthur, Sophie, and Ethel
I visited my Great- Grandparents earlier this week. They were both born in the mid 1800’s and passed away in the early 1900’s. So I guess to be technically accurate, I would have to say that I visited their final resting place earlier this week. But strangely, though they were not there for me to speak with, I somehow felt a connection to them by seeing their headstones and touching the lettering which made them seem more real to me than they ever had before.
I was spending girls weekend with my sisters up north and, as often happens when we get together, we came up with kind of a crazy idea to reach out to a relative whom we had never met before and ask if we could meet. This gentleman is actually my second cousin – we share the same great grandparents. He is 76 years old and lives in Remer, Minnesota, where many of my relations were born and lived their lives. Following through on crazy ideas must be a genetic trait that we share as he was just as curious to meet us and eagerly accepted our invitation. So without much planning, we agreed to meet at the cemetery the following morning. We were nervous as we drove up – what if he is some kind of crack pot? But that was not the case at all. We left our meeting having found a lost relative and a new friend. He was an extremely interesting man and we had a wonderful conversation as he walked us through the cemetery introducing us to the stones of relatives whose names we had heard, and whose pictures we have seen, but for the most part, were not people that we knew directly. There were certain names that I expected to see but I was surprised to see the stones for my great grandparents.
I've followed my family history for a number of years and passionately collect photos of ancestors and document names and dates. It can be easy to get lost in the "business" of names and dates, categorizing, labeling and diagramming family history. But I was reminded earlier this week that those names and dates represent people. Family that I would have been honored to know. They loved, they laughed, they worked hard to build their lives. They suffered loss. They struggled through disappointments. They cried. They worried. They celebrated. They lived.
I wonder someday if one of my own great grandchildren might be walking through a cemetery in search of my headstone. I hope that they will know that I was more than just a name and the dates that are inscribed there. I was a woman who loved, laughed, worked, suffered, struggled, cried, worried, celebrated, and lived. I hope that they will touch my headstone and connect with the memory of an ancestor who once lived.
To help them along, I will leave stories so that they know who I was and what life was like in our time. It is my gift to children that I may never know but already love.
As our conversation at the cemetery drew to a close, a nearby funeral was also ending. A twenty-one gun salute stole our attention and then we were held as a lone bugler played "Taps". None of us spoke as the soulful notes played. My sister described it later perfectly as "hauntingly beautiful" and the "only song that stops time". Time did stop as I stood there among the headstones of my ancestors listening to that beautiful song. I felt connected to that place and to the people that were there. For me, it was a "God Moment".
Wishing you moments of joy and peace this week and many moments where time stands still.
Dellmont Hart
Dellmont Hart Gravestone
Mathilda Hart
Mathilda Hart Gravestone
Post script: For my Hart relatives, the following is a combination of my research along with stories borrowed from Uncle Paul about our ancestors...
John Riley was married to Sarah Almenia Shoults (or Schultz) in December, 1865. Although not much is known about Sarah or her family, it is known that her mother was from the Gibraltar region of Spain. Sarah married when she was 17 and died when she was only 39. The years in between were filled with children (ten) and hard work. In May, 1886, Sarah gave birth to her last child, a daughter named Elda. Sarah died only ten months later and Elda followed her within five months time. They were buried in Sherburne, Minnesota. The rest of the family, including my great-grandfather Dellmont, then moved to St. Paul, Nebraska.
During these same years, another story was taking place that also would become very important in my family's history. In 1869, in Germany, John Schutt married Sophie Katherine Kramer. They would have nine children, including Mathilda Augusta, who would become my great-grandmother. Mathilda (or Tilly as she was known), was born on April 1, 1873 in Schleswig, Holstein, Germany. When she was very young, she and her brother Henry had a great idea to bury Mathilda's gold earrings in the orchard in order to grow another pair for Henry! When she became a bit older, she helped with the housework for a nearby family with six children and was paid about $1.25 a week for her services. Her father, John Schutt was a blacksmith and he and a partner owned their own blacksmith shop. John became ill and was taken away from the shop for a period of time during which his partner ran their business into the ground. When he regained his health and discovered what his partner had done, he and his wife Sophie decided to sell their home and buy passage to the United States.
The year was 1883 and Mathilda had just turned 11 years old. The family went by boat to Hamburg which took them only about two hours, but the next portion of their trip from Hamburg to the United States would take them three weeks. When they arrived in America, they made their way to Grand Island, Nebraska. John Schutt arrived in Nebraska with 15 cents in his pocket so he bought a straw hat and started looking for work.
The Schutt family lived near a railroad and the children would pick coal for heat and for cooking. Occasionally, a fireman would throw a shovel of coal to them as his train passed them by. There was a slaughterhouse nearby which provided them hearts, heads, livers and feet for eating. When Mathilda was 18 years old she met and married Dellmont Hart. The season for my great-grandparents had begun...
Nine months later, they were blessed with their first child, a daughter who they named Ethel Verge. The family was living in town in Grand Island, Nebraska at the time. Dellmont worked in a store and from time to time, hauled freight to and from Spalding, Nebraska. In February, 1897, my grandfather, Marland Dellmont was born, and a little more than a year later, in April, 1898, Dellmont and Mathilda welcomed another daughter, Sophie Almena. With three children under the age of three, this was a very busy time for Mathilda but she managed it all quite successfully. At times, she would sit in the rocking chair to nurse Sophie, while rocking Marland's cradle with her foot, while also pushing Ethel in the baby buggy with her free hand. Soon all three children would be asleep, and Mathilda was able to continue with her housework.
Another son, Kenneth Alton was born in September, 1901. The family moved to a homestead in Bartlett, Nebraska in April, 1903. Dellmont built a tar paper shack; one room measuring 14'x16' and the family of six all lived there. Later he added a house built of mixed clay and hay. The walls were papered with newspaper and the clay floor was pounded smooth with a spade. This house was double their previous accommodations, measuring 30'x32'. There were no trees in the area to burn for firewood so they would twist hay to burn as well as corn cobs, cow pies, and brush. In September, 1905 their family welcomed a third son, Arthur Bartlett (named for the town of his birth).
While living in Nebraska, Dellmont did some farming and also began what would become for him a lifelong career of raising hunting dogs. He would train hunting dogs and sell them as well as using them for his own purposes of hunting food for the family. Many people would come from quite a distance to try the dogs before purchasing. His reputation was earned by successfully training the dogs; however, sometimes his methods were somewhat unorthodox and held consequences for both Dellmont and the dogs. Once, a dog was not doing what Dellmont was attempting to train it to do. Dellmont intended to fire a shot over his head (to get his attention) but his aim was off and he shot the dog dead.
Dellmont and his sons would hunt from horse-drawn wagons and from horseback. They also trapped prairie chickens at the shocks in the fields -- corn, oats, and hay. The trap was spring loaded with a door in the top. They would cover it with a grain shock and the birds would fall down into the trap where they stayed alive until they were gathered up. They also hunted waterfowl, riding to the ponds and rivers in wagons or on horseback. They carried along live ducks to use as decoys that would quack whenever wild ducks passed over drawing the wild ducks into shooting range.
They lived in the clay house for more than two years but when part of their field sunk more than 10', Dellmont was discouraged and sold their home moving the family to Lebanon, Missouri where they would live for the next three years. While in Lebanon, the girls contracted malaria and for health reasons, Dellmont and Mathilda traded their home in Lebanon for 80 acres of timber in Remer, Minnesota and moved the family north. They rented a box car in order to bring their cattle, horses, and machinery as well as all their household goods and furniture. Before they left, they butchered a pig which Mathilda "fried down". She baked many loaves of bread for the journey and they ate sandwiches during the move. The cows they brought along provided milk for the family. Dellmont and the boys stayed in the freight car to care for the animals along the way. They stayed in hotels a couple of the nights during the journey and in early Spring of 1912 arrived in Remer, Minnesota.
There were no buildings on their land so Dellmont and the boys hung a canvas which would provide them shelter for the summer. The two daughters, Sophie and Ethel, stayed in town with the local printer and his family. But Mathilda remained on the land helping to clear it by hand to make room for the buildings and garden. During the summer of 1912, Mathilda did all their cooking outside by fire and the family would eat much fish which was plentiful in the waters nearby. She had brought with her from Missouri many plants including lilacs, roses, narcissus and others which she planted in an orchard on a small hill to the East of her house. The lilacs planted then still bloom there today. Soon, Bill Wooster provided a sawmill on the Hart land and they cut and sowed enough lumber to build a house, barn and chicken house.
In the winter when they needed cash for staples, they cut and hewed out railroad ties with a broadaxe. Then they would load the ties on a bobsled and with the team hitched, they would start the long, cold journey to town to deliver the ties. With timber wolves following quietly along their trail, my grandfather Marland remembered that the only sound to accompany their occasional howls was the jingle of harnesses and the squeal of the sled runners on the snow.
Getting enough hay to tide the livestock over the winter was always a problem because there wasn't much hay ground so they would make hay in swamps and slews - wherever there was any long grass. Marland, Kenneth and Arthur would go out on the lake islands in the summer to put up hay and when the lakes froze enough to carry the weight of a team and bobsled, they would go out and haul it home. Marland remembered one time specifically when they were on an island on Thunder Lake putting up hay. It was not convenient for them to travel back and forth so they decided to camp out on the island until they hay was cut and stacked using a scythe, and pitchforks. One morning, Marland woke up as the sun was just appearing on the horizon and said to his brothers, "Let's get to work boys. Here comes the haymaker." Kenneth and Arthur thought he was referring to their father who was coming to check on them, and flew from their beds to get up and get dressed; this gave Marland a good laugh.
Living off the land, taking bear, deer, fish, grouse, and waterfowl, supplemented what they raised for food in their gardens and the wild rice they collected in the fall.
It was shortly after arriving in Minnesota that Ethel met George Livgaard and the two were married in November, 1916 at the Hart home. They had three daughters together, Sophie, Scenia (who still resides on their homestead in Remer), and Shirley. Marland married in June, 1926 to my grandmother, Monica Paul; they would have five children including my dad, David.
