“The vast public domain westward of the Mississippi River where the stalwart homesteader may obtain legal title to his land-claim by five years of living on it and improving it with his building and husbandry labors, has been summed in an idea as simple as it is powerful: the land has been made into arithmetic. This is to say, surveyors have established governing limitations across the earth, the ones extending north and south known as principal meridians and those east-to-west as base lines. having thus cast the main lines of the net of numeration across half a continent, so to speak, they further divided the area into an ever smaller mesh, first of Ranges measured westward from the meridians and then of townships measured from the base lines. Each township is six miles square, thus totaling thirty-six square miles, and — attend closely for just a few moments more — it is these townships, wherein the individual homesteader takes up his landholding, that the American penchant for systemization fully flowers. Each square mile, called a section, is numbered, in identical fashion throughout all the townships, thusly:
As can be seen, the continuousness of the numeration is reminiscent of the boustrophedon pattern a farmer makes as he plows back and forth the furrows of his field–or, indeed, of the alternate directions in which earliest Greek is written! Thus does the originality of the American experiment, the ready granting of land to those industrious enough to seek it, emulate old efficacious patterns!”
p.90, Dancing at the Rascal Fair / Ivan Doig. Scribner, 1987.
see also: Johann Goering and Freni Krehbiel Goering
“The first years they lived on the E1/2 of Section 23, Turkey Creek Township. Then a few years on the NW1/4 of the same section. In 1892 they purchased the NW1/4 of Section 24, Turkey Creek Township. Here they lived on the East 1/2 of theis quarter until all the children had established homes of their own and in 1912 they built a house and some other small buildings a quarter of a mile west of the home place.”
See also, The Schrag Roots, Part II
“Johann and Anna Schrag purchased on August 22, 1882, 160 acres of land from the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad for $906.65. The location description is as follows: N.E. 1/4 of Sec. No. 17, Twp. N. 22, R. No. 2W, Harvey County, Kansas.”
A story recently came to light in the “Switzer Salt” a little paper by the Swiss Volhynian ancestry association on Moundridge. It reminded me of a little story. Dad Goering (Johnnie B) was researching dates for his genealogy book in 1979. He wanted badly to find the death date of a small child, Katharina, who was born August 7, 1871 (just about 3 months before the death of her father, Johann (pastor in Kotosufka). We searched all of Hopefield cemetery and did not find that child’s death date. His genealogy and other genealogies were published without a death date. Now new research has brought a new history to light. When the Kotosufka group landed in Peabody in 1874, the group stayed in an “imigrant house” and the men and older boys took a train to Halstead and then walked/rode horses to the current sight of Moundridge to scout out the land and to purchase the land. When they returned with their good news of finding good land, they found that a disease had run through the immigrant house and as many as 17 children died. Many of the dead children were carried to a farm known as the Henry Hornberger farm where there were already a few graves and were buried there. This place is now known as the Catlin Mennonite Cemetery and is some three miles north, then west of Peabody. Seventeen names have been researched, among them “Katharina Gering, August 7, 1871 to 1874” which is our direct relative. (To keep things in prespective, this little girl would have been an aunt to Johnny B). Of the 17 children all have a death date of 1874. Some have death dates ranging from September 9 to 25. All are under three years of age, except one who was five.
The Swiss association now proposes to place a memorial at the cemetery in Catlin, Kansas. The cost is someplace over $2000. It will have the names of all of the little ones buried here and probably also at Peabody (which had no cemetery at the time). The Memorial Stone will read “In memory of the Swiss Volhynian Mennonite children who died at Peabody on the journey from Russia to Kansas in 1874 and were buried here in September 1874. Those who are buried here are among the following:”
I think Dad Goering would be pleased to know the mystery of the little girl’s death and burial place is solved.