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As A Small Farm Girl

    In the early 1920's when I was a small girl, the following incident happened at our farm home* west of Lowden, now owned by Frank Weiland. It was a very stormy evening, and after the storm, my father, Henry Kreinbring and our guests went out on the front porch. My father saw something on the porch and gave it a kick, and it moved. Investigation further revealed that this was a girl about 14 or 15 years old who had covered up with a throw rug that was on the porch. They questioned her but she wouldn't talk. She was taken into the house to get washed up and given something to eat. The next morning the authorities were notified, and later in the day they came and got her. They told us that she was adopted girl, who had run away from her adopted home at Maquoketa, Iowa. She was returned to them. We never heard anymore about her, but I remember it was real exciting.

               Leona (Kreinbring) Brendes

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     *The Henry Kreinbring home, now occupied by Francis Weiland is located in the SE part of the E ½ of the SE ¼ of Section 34 in Springfield Township. This is the section that was originally in Massillon Township, until the boundary line between Massillon and Springfield was changed so that the Town of Lowden would all be in Springfield Township. Now some of Section 34 is in Springfield Township, although the greater part of it is in Massillon Township.

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Crawfish Tells A Story

    About fifteen years ago, in 1961, we had a tiling machine hired. As we were planning on laying a tile line under through the road bed we naturally had to dig rather deep. At the depth of 6', we uncovered a bluish colored clay soil. In the bottom of the trench we noticed round black spots about 1 ½ to 2 inches in diameter. We determined these spots to be holes burrowed by crawfish years ago and these holes were silted full of top soil.

     I recalled the stories told by my grandmother. When they moved to this farm* in 1878, all the lowland or sloughs were grass and used for grazing their cattle. The cows would wear cowbells around their necks. All the cattle in the neighborhood would graze together. Many times they would be miles from home at the end of the day. As roads were built and sloughs were drained by tile, this land was put under cultivation and the crawfish holes were filled with soil. Today we can form a mental picture of how it was a hundred years ago.

              Norman Kroemer

    *The Kroemer farm is located in the West ½ of the SW ¼ of Sec. 20 in Massillon Township.

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     I REMEMBER WHEN -
    . . . . my grandmother, who lived in the 1800's, told stories of the survival of the fittest. She told of the time she walked to the neighbors, the Wilkenings. On her return trip she suddenly noticed a wolf, mother of cubs following her. Of course it meant running and took the fortunate help of men with clubs to drive it away.

              Mrs Ernest (Selma Henrichs) Von Roden