THE MIKE SNELL FAMILY

Writing our family's life story for the "Recipes" book just continues what I have been doing. My three sisters have asked that I keep a record of our family's history, and I have been working on it for some time. Relatives have written several pages of what they remember. There is a description of a train trip by Grandma Eaton's family as they came to Delaware County, Iowa, from New York in 1856. They built a house- "one room and chambers" -that was boarded up in the summer with expectation of having it sided, lathed and plastered before winter, but both parents and several children became ill with "fever and ague" so that wasn't done. The boards were green lumber, which shrunk leaving large cracks. The mother filled them with rags the best she could. The only heat was from a cook stove and there was nothing but green wood to burn. "We all frosted our feet." •

That was from my dad, Paul Christensen’s side of the family. His father's mother and father came originally from Copenhagen, Denmark. Dad's father, Charlie, was the first to be born in the United States. He didn't speak a word of English until he was in school. It is hard to trace that family because the sons didn't have the same names as their fathers. The father, for instance, would be John and the son would be John's son or Johnson. In this case the father would be Chris and his son would be Chris' son, with the added letters to make it Christensen and it came on down the generations in that way.

I have some pages written from the memories of people from my mother's side of the family. The Lewis Carl family was Rhinelander from the land Germany acquired from Holland. There is a tragic story of how the father, mother, three sons and "small children" had bought transportation to America in 1785. There was a two-year delay before they could depart and were then put on two ships. Storms separated the vessels. The boys, ages 16, 14 and 12, landed in Philadelphia in 1787. They were instructed to go "up the river" where friends were waiting to take care of them until the parents arrived, but they chose the wrong river and the two units of the family never saw the other again. This part of the family history was recorded by a granddaughter of Jonathan Carl, the 16-year-old son of Lewis Carl.

Other records show ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. One ancestor was in the infamous Andersonville Prison. He had been wounded and taken prisoner by the Confederates, transferred from prison to prison until finally to Andersonville from December 25 to mid-April. Nothing had been done about his wounds. He was finally released. "The guards were withdrawn and the prisoners told to take care of themselves." He was discharged July 3, 1865, and returned home to recover his health and to marry. That branch of the family was James Clark and they came to live in Clarke County, Iowa.

I knew Dad's mother and father. Dad's mother's maiden name was Durell, and her family came from the Shetland and Guernsey Islands. Grandma's father was the Eaton family, mentioned above. I also knew 11om's mother and father and my great-grandmother and grandfather on my mom's dad's side, Nelson and Maggie Smith. They were of German and Dutch ancestry. They had 16 children, several of whom died as infants. Some might have lived to be two years old. My mom's mother was from German and English people and my grandma always told me they couldn't trace the family back too far because they were all horse thieves and people hanged them.

Mom's dad, Robert Smith, mostly worked on roads, operating a caterpillar. He helped build some of the roads in Decatur County. Mom's brother, Larry, helped build I-35 from Clarke through Decatur Counties. He also worked on Little River for Leon's water supply. It is an 1800 acre lake that covers several miles. It is about 13 years old and it greatly improved Leon's drinking water. Before then we had taken our drinking water from Nine-Eagles State Park Lake.

I was born October 5, 1954, in Decatur County Hospital. Mom remembers there was a half-inch of snow on the ground. I am the oldest of five children. I had a brother, Paul Howard Christensen, Jr., who was one year younger than I. He died June 18, 1969. My sisters were born in Des Moines. Wilma (Edgerton), born in 1957, lives in Osceola; Marie (Dominguez) was born in 1959. She was and her husband still is in the Air Force. They live in Virginia and she works for the government, often at the Pentagon. The youngest, Christine (Krause), was born in August, 1963. She is a school counselor in Abilene, Texas.

Our parents, Paul and Roberta Christensen, are well known to the Osceola United Methodist congregation because they have been attending here for some time. For 13 years Dad worked in Des Moines at the SuperValu warehouse as dock receiver. He had to make sure of their inventory and that the trucks were loaded right. He could look at a load of tomatoes and just about tell how many would be saleable. He was very good at it. However, he had to give it up because he couldn't be on his feet as much as the job required.

When he was an infant, Dad had osteomylitis infection in his leg. They scraped the bone, which affected the growth of that leg, and, ever after that, it is shorter than the other. He had to have one shoe built up and that got him started in shoe repair and he has had his own business in Leon for close to 25 years. He also works at Boyt's Manufacturing. Mom works as cook at the Decatur County Hospital.

I loved my grandparents. We lived just down the road from them so we were with them a lot. Mom said that, when I was little, whenever I heard my grandma come on the porch, I would start crying so she would pick me up. My grandfather, being Danish, said that we were Great Danes. I wasn't very old when he taught me to drink coffee, straight- no sugar, no cream. When we would go to town with them, my grandma and Mom would go shopping and I would go with my grandpa and my dad. We would go to the ice cream parlor and have malts and drink coffee.

When Chris was real young, some of her characteristics showed up. The stores used to give play money when people bought something and once in awhile they had auctions where people could use it. Mom and Dad gave the play money to Chris. She didn't know the difference so she used it to buy a dog. When the dog had pups, she thought she had made a real bargain. Then she got it into her mind to use $5 to buy a horse. The folks didn't think much about it. Where could she get a horse for $5? But, one day, here came a fellow leading her horse, a Shetland pony that was so small it could walk under the kitchen table. No question about it, she was a wheeler-dealer.

There was a time when I wanted Banty chickens, so we got some. Then my dad's cousin wanted chickens so we traded some for ducks. That took us into raising ducks. Years later Dad's cousin's flock of chickens outgrew what he wanted to take care of He wished he could remember how he had gotten started because he would take them back. I knew, of course, but I never told him.

When Dad was trying to get his shoe repair shop started, we stayed in a farm house that belonged to my uncle. It wasn't modern in any respect. We had to bring in oil for heating. There was a hand pump at the kitchen sink that pumped water from a cistern alongside the house. There was no electricity and I can remember doing my studying by lantern. We wondered where my dad had taken us. We lived there a couple of years, and then moved to a farm house down the road. It had running water but still no inside bathroom.

My brother Paul's death was one of the saddest events in our family's life, particularly for me. He and I were very close in age and we did a lot of things together. When we lived in Des Moines we each had a bicycle so we wouldn't go riding alone. He loved roses and a neighbor told him how to take care of them. He and I built a cement fish pool in front of the house. We had fish in it and planted roses around it. He loved horses and, whenever we went to Grandpa Christensen's, he would ride horses. He just loved old people and was always taking care of them. We lived close to a Catholic church. He talked to the nuns and took them tadpoles for their science projects. Everybody thought a lot of him. He was a good kid.

While we were in Des Moines, we moved from the south to the north side, to a bigger house. It was very nice, with wooden floors and open beams. Mom never has been in good health and she wasn't able to take care of it. We had to move back to the smaller house. Dad and I and my brother built on another room for him but Paul died before it was finished. It happened this way:

When he was 13 years old, Mom's sister, Dee, and her son, Robert, came to Iowa from Colorado to visit. At that time my mom's brother's wife, Judy, and their year-old daughter were living with my grandma while he was in the Philippines in the service. One afternoon the family was going to get together. Aunt Dee, Judy, Robert and Paul drove off. As they came to a hill, a drunk driver, coming from the opposite direction, was coming up the other side of the hill so fast that his car was airborne and came down on top of them. Judy was killed instantly. The boys were immediately sent to Des Moines. Robert and Aunt Dee lived. The night it happened, Aunt Dee wanted to tell Mom about it but Mom thought she was dying and wouldn't let her talk. They sedated her and from then on she couldn't remember anything about it. My brother had severe brain damage, lived several days, and died.

In 1967, when I was in 6th grade, I attended confirmation class at the Fort Des Moines Methodist Church. Rev. Cecil Latta was my minister. He baptized me and confirmed me in the church on Easter morning. The next year my brother took confirmation. I really liked Rev. Latta and got a lot out of the classes. It was a nice surprise when he and Marjorie came to be members of the church here.

I had started to school in Des Moines, where we had moved when I was a year or two old. In the last nine weeks of my 9th grade we moved back to Leon and I graduated from Central Decatur in 1974.

I had begun working in nursing home when I was a sophomore in high school. I worked at West View Acres in Leon during my sophomore and junior years and then in Lamoni, when my grandma Christensen was there. After that I went to nursing school for a semester at Ankeny Area College but ran out of money so I didn't go on.

Dad drove a school bus for Decatur County schools for 17 years and I would drive it off and on in the evenings, when I was through at the nursing home. When I was through school, I drove for four years morning and night. I also worked for the school, in the laundry room. We washed all the uniforms. I did janitor work, too, cleaning the girls' bathrooms and locker rooms.

In 1978 I quit working in the school system and came to Clarke County Hospital on the graveyard shift, 11:00 p.m. until 7:00a.m. Mike was the maintenance guy on that shift. We began dating and Mike sent me a dozen roses for my 25th birthday.

Mike was the oldest of three children born to William Robert and Marilyn Jean Waugh Snell. Mike Herman Snell was born May 16, 1954, at the Clarke County Hospital. He, his sister, Melinda Ann Stephenson, and brother Merrill Robert Snell were all born in Clarke County.

The Snell family has never talked very much about their background, but Bob’s oldest sister, Edna Cline, told that when she was about seven, her family came to Iowa. They had gone to Kansas, expecting that it would be easy to homestead there; but it didn't work out and they came back to Iowa. Edna could remember riding in the covered wagon while her mother and father walked. Every little town they went through on the way, people would call out a warning, "GYPSIES!" They would all scatter and little children would run into their houses. Edna was a cook in restaurants around town.

William Robert (Bob) Snell, the youngest of 13 children, was born September 21, 1930, to George Eliot Snell and Gertie Rosetta Wright Snell. Her mother had been born in a sod house in Kansas. George Snell was a day laborer for the city, on farms, or doing lawn work. One for whom he mowed was Rich Robinson. Both he and Gertie were hard workers who put their family first. They took time to play with their children, taking sleigh rides or ice skating or other activities. The family particularly regarded Christmas and July 4th as times of special celebration.

Marilyn's family name was Waugh. She believes there is some Indian blood in the family somewhere. Marilyn's father is Herman Waugh. Both he and her mother, Irene Mae Carson Waugh, had grown up in the Ottawa community. Her family is rich in American history, being able to trace their ancestry back to George Washington, the father of our country. An early relative, John Carson, was a stage coach driver through the southern section of Iowa.

Marilyn was born February 9, 1933, and grew up, also, in Clarke County. She and Bob met at their high school prom. They both graduated in 1951 and Bob served in the Korean War. When he returned, they were married by Rev. Azel Smith in 1953.

The whole family was always very close, with that set of grandparents and great­ grandparents, also, truly enjoying the children. In fact, Great-grandpa Herman and Matthew are always up to something and the family never allows Marie and Grandpa Herman to sit together because they are always picking things off each others' plate.

Martha tells their story: When Mike bought the roses for my birthday; he got them at Don and Frances Carson's flower shop in Leon. When they realized who he was, and that they were related, they took lots of interest in our wedding, June 22, 1980. At that time we moved to Osceola, to the house on Grant Street, where we have lived ever since.

Matthew was born on May 29, 1981, in Decatur County Hospital. It was a hard birth. I was in labor from 3:00 to 1:00. The doctors thought he was dying so he was born by Caesarian section. We almost lost him. Mike's blood and mine don't mix right so he was jaundiced. This was also true of Marie. In her case it was getting so serious that they considered taking her to Blank Hospital in Des Moines, but we fed her water all day long and it began to go down. After we had these two, Mike said, "We have two wonderful kids and the problem might be getting worse," so we didn't have any more.

Marie was born on December 2, 1983. We knew that she would also be born by Caesarian section so we could choose the date. We realized that no one in the family had a December birthday, so we chose that. When I was waking up they told me I had a beautiful little girl with black hair. She had a lot of hair, about an inch long. No one would know it now because it kept getting lighter and lighter until she was blond. Both Matthew and Marie were baptized by Rev. Haider in 1984. Matthew had announced, "We are going to get advertised in church."

We are very proud of our children. They both work hard for grades. Marie is always on the "A" honor roll; Mathew is on the "B", which is good for him. Matthew was in the special ed program and was found by the school psychologist to be exceptionally intelligent, but he is dyslexic. Black printing on white paper is hard for him to see. Besides seeing words and numbers in reverse, he also sees only three characters at a time. This has understandably made school very hard for him, and the system wasn't able to help with the problem. He has come to know what the problem is, so he compensates. In addition, for many years he had severe migraine headaches.

However, Matthew received an award from the National Academy of Science. His picture is in their annual book. He's really good at working with his hands, with wood and metals. He wants to go on to take classes in construction and welding at Southwestern Community College. This year, as a 9th grader, he was put into a shop class with seniors. There were two freshmen and the teacher, Mr. McCann, hesitated to have them in the class with the older boys but has said that these two boys outdid some of the seniors.

Matthew and Marie have always done extra work at school. Matthew and Isaiah Fletcher did a program making bells. They had to put it in the computer to cut them out. It took them about a month.

Matthew had just gotten his driver's license when we worked on this story. We had promised him that he could go fishing on the day he got it, and he had told Marie she could go along. She was sitting in the car waiting before he got out there.

Marie played basketball this last year (1996-'97). Because of her size, she was on the 2nd team, but she is very quick and if she had been taller, she would have made the 1st team. She has been in 4-H for five years, the last two of which she has taken projects to the State Fair. Because this year's Fair was a celebration of Iowa's 150 years, it was a Heritage event. Her project was a quilt made of double knit material that came from her grandmothers' and great-grandmothers' dresses. The great-grandmothers were my mom's and Marilyn's mothers. Marie knew which blocks came from which and she had hand quilted it by herself She also entered a crocheted afghan, a soda cracker crumb pie crust and Greek cookies and won first place on all.

My mom is a terrific seamstress. She made all three daughters' wedding dresses and is teaching Marie to sew. My dad has taught Matthew how to repair shoes.

Both Matthew and Marie have their lives planned. Matthew is going to trade school and Marie is planning attend and is saving her money toward college. She has several accounts at the bank and when she takes a deposit, she knows exactly what account to put it in. She won a Coca-Cola scholarship by winning fourth place in a state bowling meet. It will increase every year
until she is ready for it.

Matthew was in the Scouting program until he gave up due to his migraine headaches. He had earned the God and Me and God and Country awards. For that one he had to work through the church. For his project he found old churches that had stained glass windows and took pictures, which he put in a scrapbook and took them to show the congregation. He also did the Arrow of Light award.

Mike has worked for Hy-Vee for 17 years. He was in the freezer department when he first went there, and then worked on the loading docks. When he found out that there would be a school for drivers, he took it and for the last 14 years has driven their semis, delivering groceries from the Chariton warehouse to the various stores.

I have worked for eight years in the school system, the last two with children classified as having “behavior disorder." In fact, I helped start the program with a teacher who came from Lenox. These are children from 1st to 6th grades and the challenge is great because this is not a baby-sitting situation. They have assignments. We borrowed worksheets from the other teachers, and I got some from my sister in Texas. They are taught all subjects that are taught in the regular classrooms. My blood pressure had gotten very high and I had to resign. My last day in the school system was in May of this year.

We are very involved in the church. I served as president of U.M.W. in 1986; for nine years Janice Walker and I taught a pilot Sunday school class for two-year-olds. To my knowledge there hasn't been such a class since we quit. Presently Mike and I am involved are in the Good Samaritan class, taking turns teaching withMike Boldon. Mike and I on an usher team, so we usher about once a month. When Rev. Haider was here, I did the children's sermon several times. He, Mabel Oehlert, Fern Underwood and I were in a pilot program of a Covenant Group. I feel that I grew spiritually during that time, but I had to quit when I went to work at the school. Over the years I have served on the education committee and the church board. All of us attend Sunday school and Marie is often an acolyte, particularly for the early service.

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Last Revised May 20, 2012