Some of my Life's Story
Written by Henry Stennfeld
March 31, 1956

The first 17 years of my life I spent in Russia in the village of Holstein near the Volga River. I was born in the home of my grandfather, George Henry Stennfeld. My father, George Henry, and my mother, Katherine Elisabeth Wiesner, lived in my grandparent's home. My father had one brother, David, younger than himself and six sisters of whom the oldest was married to Adam Martin and they lived next door to us. As soon as the sisters were old enough to work for others, they were hired out by the year for wages for about 80 to 100 rubles a year. Usually they hired out to well-to-do farmers who lived in other villages from seven to one hundred miles away from home. My sisters came home very seldom, perhaps only for the Christmas holidays and it was a very great occasion to see them again.

Our folks were farmers and lived in a village of about two hundred families, all German people, mostly Lutherans who attended the same church and had one parochial school which all children had to attend from 7 to 14 or 15 years of age when they were confirmed. I was sent to school at age 6 and learned to read soon after that. My father sat down with me and taught me to read the German language with the first chapter of the Gospel of John. As soon as I caught on to reading, I read other chapters of the Bible, which I loved to read. Our school started October 1 and we had to go 6 days of the week. We had only one teacher, an elderly man who taught all the children. On Sundays when the minister had to preach at other villages (He came only on every fifth Sunday to our church), the "Shulmeister", our teacher as we called him, had to conduct the church services and read a sermon to the congregation out of a sermon book. During the winter our church services were held in the schoolhouse since the church had no heating facilities. The subjects we learned in school were reading, writing, Bible history, memorizing one whole hymn for each Saturday, memorizing the whole catechism and many Bible verses. Yes, we had to do some arithmetic. When I was about eight years old, a law was passed that we had to learn the Russian language, and from then on we had two teachers. Our Russian teacher could talk German, but he only spoke German when it was absolutely necessary.

The best scholars were separated from the other children into a special class and were prepared to give an examination in reading, grammar, geography, and arithmetic. At age 13, I belonged to a special class of three boys and one girl who were prepared for examination before a high government official. Of the five in our class, I was the one who passed the examination with honor, and received a large German New Testament and an official document which would have given me the privilege of serving one year less in the army when I would be drafted at the age of 21. I went to America when I was 17 years old.

Confirmation was a very special occasion. I was confirmed at age fourteen and our confirmation was held in Galka where the minister lived. The confirmands of the 5 villages that belonged to our parish had to send the children that were to be confirmed to Galka. There the minister recited for two weeks special instructions of the catechism. Pentecost was the day of confirmation when our class of about two hundred boys and girls were dressed in their best clothes and led by the pastor and elders in a parade of four and four on a way from the school to the church that was decorated with green tree branches. We all sang the song in German, "Jesus Still Lead On." Indeed it was a memorable day, the day we were confirmed and received our first communion. When we drove home that afternoon from Galka to Holstein, we had a severe rain storm and my brand new clothes for confirmation got wet. Confirmed had great meaning in a boy or girl's life, for now they were considered adults and did not have to go to school anymore unless they wanted to pass to higher learning as the teacher's and officer's children usually did. They went away to large cities where they went to college. But after confirmation we had to enter the ranks of full-fledged adults in all work of adults - and at the age of twelve already.

I was asked to march along the fields with Dad and Uncle David, following them with the cradle scythe, and cut the ripe grain. I was expected to keep pace with them. In sowing time in spring, we worked with horses and oxen in our fields, which we called acres that were scattered around the village in all directions about 3 to 5 miles away from home. Our horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks and geese were kept in barns in the same yard where our home was. Each family had all their animals in barns in their yards which were nicely fenced in. All the work of each family usually kept pace with the work of other families in the village.

Winters were cold with much snow and the horses and cattle had to be fed regularly in their barns. In the mornings about the end of March, when the snow was gone, boys at the age of 7 to 10, took the family's sheep of about twenty sheep with their little lambs outside the village to find new green grass and to herd them. We took our lunch along and had a good time playing games we took turns watching the flock so they would not get too far away. Towards evening we drove the sheep home and it was fun to watch the mother sheep that knew the home where she belonged and the little lambs followed, separating from the other sheep that belonged to other people. Some peoples' goats were a problem as they liked to climb on hills and rocks and lead the sheep away.

In April, when there was green feed on the pastures outside the village, the village hired families for the whole season to take care of the sheep, cows, and oxen and to herd them outside the village to pastures. The cow herdsmen came early in the morning when the children were still sleeping and drove the cows through the street of the village. Each family had to be early and had to have the cows milked by the time the herd passed by the gate. Our village had two cowherds, two sheep herds, one oxen herd and one horse herd. The cows came home every evening for milking and stayed at home overnight. The sheepherdsmen kept the sheep in a fold during the night and the sheep were taken home only for shearing their wool, which happened twice every summer. Each family got a sheep from the fold for butchering when they needed fresh meat during the summer and fall work. Some neighbors took half of the butchered sheep and returned the same in weight the next time they butchered a sheep. Since we had no refrigeration, fresh meat was kept either in an ice cellar or kept in a gunny sack tied to a rope and put down into the well in our yard so it was close above the water which kept it cool and fresh until it was used up.

Our well was about 30 feet deep and water was pulled up on a rope that was attached to a long pole, which was rigged up and attached in the middle to a big tree. The long pole had an extra weight at the end, which made it easier to draw the water from the well. The water in our well had much saltpeter in it and was not good for cooking and drinking and was only used for our cattle and stock. The water for our home use, we carried home in 2 pails hung on a cross bar over the shoulders from the village spring outside the village.

The people raised wheat, oats, barley, rye, watermelon, sunflowers, melons and squashes. In our gardens we raised potatoes, cabbage, carrots and other vegetables. Working in our fields, either for sowing or harvest meant each family had to get up early in the morning to feed the horses and oxen that were used to drive to the field and for plowing and other field work and home in the evening after sundown. Breakfast and supper were eaten at home, but lunch was prepared and taken along and eaten under a tent that was raised by the wagon against the hot sun or rain. During harvest time in July when it was hot, the whole family took a nap in a shady place under the wagon, in the tent or under a shady tree. For us children it was a great time when the melons and watermelons got ripe. Uncle David took me and our aunt's son and two girls younger than myself along on a wagon driven with some of our spirited horses to bring some ripe melons and watermelons home for family to eat. Uncle had fun feeding us children with melons and watermelons until we were so full that we could not eat anymore. The melons and watermelons were used by the family as an after-dinner treat as we use desserts here or as a lunch between meals. When harvest was over, every family brought home the grain, which was tied in bundles and put in shocks in horse, and ox wagons and stacked around the threshing- floor.

Threshing time meant a great deal to the boys and girls in their teens for they had to ride the horses that were hitched to rolling granite stones with six or eight corners and driven on a load of grain that was spread out on the threshing floor. The rolling stone knocked the straw to pieces and knocked the grain out. The straw was turned over 3 or 4 times to get all the grain knocked out which took about one hour to finish a load of grain. In a day we threshed about 10 to 12 loads of grain. After sundown when the wind blew less than during the day, the grain and chaff were pushed to the middle of the threshing floor every time a load was finished. In the evening the large pile of chaff and grain was cleaned with a machine that was turned by hand which blew the chaff out in the back on a pile and the grain came out below in the front. The grain had to be put through the machine about 3 or 4 times through different sieves until the grain was really clean, ready to be sacked and put into the granary or sold to the ships called barges that shipped the grain to larger cities or mills where it was made into flour. Our family usually brought a whole load of grain to a mill driven by water and made into flour for the family and the shortening for the horses and cattle. The straw was put in tall long stacks, as you see hay stacks in this country, to be used in wintertime. Then it was hauled home from the threshing floor which each. family had near the village. Each one was surrounded by a fence of red willows weaved into poles so no animals could break into anyone's property where hay and straw was put up to be used for feed in the wintertime. The chaff was exceptionally good feed used to fatten the cattle. It was mixed with shortening and linseed and sunflower seed residue that was left over when oil was made from sunflowers. The sunflower oil tasted very good and was used in preparing all kinds of delicate baked goods and meals. Sunflower seed, as watermelon seed and squash seed, was also sold and brought a good price.

Every season brought different work for the family in which all usually took part and together shared responsibilities and joys. Springtime brought seeding, planting of fields and gardens, cleaning of homes and yards and barns and granaries. Everything was used for good purposes, even the manure from the barns of the cattle, stock, and chickens, if not used for fertilizer for field and gardens, was used for fuel to heat the homes in winter. After the seeding and planting was over in springtime, every family concentrated on the big manure pile that gathered in back of the barns. Those manure piles were thoroughly cured by heat since it was piled together when wet and grew daily bigger by adding the fresh manure that was cleaned out of the stables several times daily. It was spread out in the back yard behind the barn about 8 inches thick and more old straw was spread on top of it, and then about six or eight horses were driven on it while water was put on it so it could be made into a mass that could be pressed down evenly and cut into eight inch squares and put up in the sun to dry. When dry, it was piled under the roof of a shed for fuel in wintertime. Since we had many oak forests growing on the hills that belonged to our village, trees were marked and numbered in the fall and each family drew numbers chopped down those trees for fuel. You could hear the noise of chopping the trees and the crash of the fall when they came down. Of the fallen trees, the branches were chopped off and the stem of the tree was cut in proper length so they could be loaded on the wagon to be brought home. The branches with the leaves were loaded into big loads and also brought home.

After the harvesting of grain, fruit and vegetables was finished and each family found more leisure time, the trees were cut into shorter pieces and split into cordwood and set up into orderly rows. The branches were chopped short to fit into the fireplace for kindling. The larger pieces of wood were used to heat the oven for the weekly baking of bread. Our bread was made from rye flour and known as schuarz brot, black bread. Mother baked some big round klatches of white bread and coffee kuchen (cakes) but that was extra and eaten on Sundays and holidays. The last work before winter was the butchering of the hogs and a steer or cow, a real picnic for the whole family. Preparation began several days ahead of time to sharpen knives, prepare seasoning, invite relatives to help in killing the pigs very early in the morning, scald them in real hot boiling water, and clean and cut them up. Everything from the pigs except the squeal was used for the family or household. The bristles could be sold, the droppings of fat was used for soap, the head was made into head cheese, much was used to make sausage which was smoked and hung up and dried to be used in seeding time and harvest. Bacon and hams were salted and dried and smoked to keep for a long time. Pork and sauerkraut was a dish we all liked very much.

Our family was not rich, but always had enough to eat and never had any debts. We lived simply. There was not meat on the table every day, but we liked the meals and soups mother made. We ate the soups out of good-sized wooden spoons. When we had meat for our meals, grandfather or grandmother at the top of the table cut it up and gave each one his share. In our family there were table prayers before and after meals and morning and evening devotion when Stark's Prayer Book and the Bible were used.

Our family was also regular in church attendance, and I remember far back into childhood that dad and mother took me along to church every Sunday. I have not forgotten how I liked the church services, the singing and the sermons, and I still do not like to miss regular church attendance. As my father' s sisters got older, they were hired out to work for other people, usually away from home in other villages. They found their boy friends where they worked and got married far away from home. Aunt Katharine Elisabeth married the son of a rich farmer about 100 miles from us on the East Side of the Volga. During the revolution in 1917, her husband was taken away from the family and put in a boxcar with other rich farmers, Kulaks as they were called, and shipped to Siberia. That was the last we heard from them. Aunt Eva Elisabeth worked as a housemaid in a Tsarizin, a large city about 80 miles south from Holstein. She met a shoemaker and got married to him and stayed in Tsarizin, which during the Second World War was named Stalingrad. Aunt Julia worked as housemaid for a rich family in a village 6 miles south from us who had a milling and grain business. She married a farmer, David Klein, who moved to America and lived in Tampa, Kansas, where they made their home on a farm they bought. Aunt Julia died in 1930 of cancer shortly after my wife and I had visited her in a chiropractic hospital in Kansas. Aunt Anna Elisabeth stayed home the longest of my father's sisters, and married a cousin of hers, David Stennfeld, the Uncle of Dave and Henry Stennfeld now living in Portland, Oregon. Aunt Susana married John Fred Relke of Holstein after he came home from serving in the Russian army. They went to America after they were married and lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. They were instrumental in sending a ticket to my cousin Dave Martin, my father's sister's oldest son, who went to Canada in 1907.

My father and mother lived at home with our grandfather Stennfeld and had three children. I was the oldest, born March 31, 1890. A little sister Mary was about two years younger than I. Brother Fred, born September 1, 1898 was eight years younger. Sister Mary died of scarlet fever when she was four years old. When I was thirteen years old, our grandfather divided our family property, gave my father and mother their share of horses, oxen, cows, sheep, pigs, chickens and land and helped him buy a place where we built a new home of mud and rock and lumber. We also built barns for the various cattle. We moved into our new place where for the first time since I can remember we were a small family by ourselves and did our own housekeeping.

Although our folks were farmers, they were also shoemakers and made new boots and shoes and patched up the old ones not only for the family but for other people as well. In winter when harvest and butchering was over, they went to the neighboring villages and lived with a family for whom they made shoes and boots to measure for the whole family. Saturdays they came home and often, as I still remember, I had to take the horses and sled and meet them about half way to the place where the people for whom they made shoes brought them. It was a great pleasure to meet dad and tell him all the news that had happened through the week. News to us meant so much since we had no telephones and newspapers. Dad also knew how to build basements and foundations from limestones for new houses. He went to the shore of the Volga River where he broke the stones loose from the large rocks and cut them into squares or oblong measurements for masonry.

I remember the story dad told us how the Russian workers hitchhiked on the Volga River in springtime when the ice broke loose. About a half dozen men selected a big cake of ice on which they carried some straw, old clothes, and firewood. When the ice swam down the river toward the large cities in the southern part of Russia, they had a free ride on the ice where they cooked their tea, ate their dry bread, and slept while some in turn kept watch. At the large cities they walked from one piece of ice to another until they came to the shore and found work for wages for the summer time. In fall they walked from village to village along the Volga resting by fresh water springs to cook their tea and eat their dry bread soaked in water until they came home to their families.

My father was very handy in making things with tools on a working bench. He made rakes and forks and harnesses for the horses and yokes for the oxen out of leather or wood. We had an old spinning wheel in the home and the ladies of the home and girls that were at home helped prepare the wool to be spun into yarn and sent to the weaver. The weaver made the wool into cloth for coats for men and coats and skirts for women. The skins from the sheep were tanned and fashioned into warm winter coats for boys and girls and for men and women. During the winter the children from 7 to 15 years had to attend school. After school they helped feed the cattle, sheep, chickens, and pigs. They also had lots of fun riding their sleds down the hills.

The people in our village were mostly Lutherans who attended church regularly. In the home grandfather or dad had devotions mornings and evenings. They read a chapter out of the Bible and a prayer book and we children had to say our prayers and the family closed with the Lord's Prayer. The love of God and his word was planted in us from childhood on, and I remember what influence it had even on my younger brother Gottfried whom we call now Uncle Fred who lives now in Chicago. He was only eight years old when our dad died in 1906 at 43 years of age. Yet, when Gottfried came to America at the age of 13 and got married at about 21 in Chicago, he wrote to me. Brother Henry, he said, I will never forget the devotions our dad had when he was still with us. When I get married, that is one thing we too will keep up in my home.

George Henry Stennfeld, our father did not live very long after we moved away from Grandfather Stennfeld. He died of kidney stones. He was 23 years old he had an operation for kidney stones, but when he got very sick at 43 he did not realize what his ailment was. Uncle Dave and grandfather took him to a hospital in Saratov. They were told it was too late for an operation and they brought him to die at home. I was 16 years old, and now the leadership of the home for farm work and whatever a man's work was, was now expected of me. It did not seem possible to lose such a good strong loving father who was the best friend among people I had. But we learned to face the future as best we could and always had contact with father's and mother's relatives who did not live too far away from us.

One year after dad died, mother married Fred Kelln who had 3 boys and 2 girls. Since my brother Fred was only nine years old, mother took him along to her new family. But I was seventeen years old and old enough not to depend on a stepfather so I was to find a way to make my own living. Our place was to be sold and the property and animals disposed of and the money to be divided among mother and brother and myself.

A way opened which we would not ever have dreamed. My cousin Dave Martin received a prepaid ticket from Russia to Winnipeg, Canada, to our Aunt Susana and her husband Fred Relke. On Friday I was planning to go to Riga and work in a candy factory, the plans were still very vague. On Monday I packed my clothes and got my papers and the share of money I inherited from dad's property, 150 rubles, which was about $75 in American money, just enough to pay my fare and expenses from Russia to Winnipeg, Canada. Another welcome surprise came when my Uncle David Wiesner told me, Henry, if I can borrow some money somewhere, I am packing my things and will come along. A friend loaned him 100 rubles and he came with us.

We said farewell to friends and mother. Mother took us to Dobrinka where we boarded the steamship that took us to Kamishin. It was the first city I saw and the first train ride I had taken. It was hard to leave home where I spent the first 17 years of my life. Now I close the story of my childhood and will write something about my youth from the time I traveled far away from home into a new world to now people, new language, new work, new experiences, and many new opportunities until I was 28 years old when I entered the ministry. Uncle David Weisner, Cousin Dave Martin, and I traveled from Kamishin to Libau on the North Sea. It took four days to travel through Russia and we saw beautiful stretches of pine forests, dales, and valleys, all so strange to us. I had never seen pine forests. In large cities we had to sleep on the floor when we stopped overnight to wait for another train. We had to be very careful and stay together and watch each other so we did not get lost or lose our money to pickpockets.

At Libau we received the last of our papers and tickets for our steamship to London, England. We noticed the German trains were much nicer and much faster than the trains we saw in Russia. All we saw of Germany was what we saw from our boat as we came through the Channel. Our boat to England was a dirty affair. We had to sleep in the decks below on bunk beds all in a row packed in like sardines. The food we received was salted herring, bread, and tea or soup, which was something we were not used to. Perhaps the poor food was why most of us could not keep any food down and got seasick. In London, I still remember the smoky city, the big bridges, and the large buildings of stores and business houses. We took the train to South Hampton where we boarded the White Star Liner, Adriatic, a beautiful ship about 900 feet long. We had good cabins for the various families or traveling companions. It was a clean ship, with good food.

It was June 1907 then we landed at New York at the Kettle Gardens, Ellis Island. Our first real joy we had was when we could see land in the distance after eight days on the ocean. The real surprise came when we saw the Statue of Liberty on the way to Ellis Island. Uncle Dave did not have enough money to get to Winnipeg so I gave him some of the money I had and we were both short on funds. We had only fifteen dollars American money between us, not enough for anyone of us to get very far with so little. Uncle David Wiesner sent a telegram to his brother-in-law in Winnipeg asking for $45.00. An answer came to his telegram, but they called his name "Waikner" instead of Wiesner and we could not get the money so it was returned to Winnipeg.

We prayed and our prayers were answered when a Lutheran minister came and spoke our language and took us to New York to find work. This minister took us to an employment office. My Uncle Wiesner and Henry Gorr, an immigrant, became friends. We were barely at the employment office a half hour when a man dressed as a German sailor came and asked in German if we wanted a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant at Coney Island for $25.00 a month and room and board. Henry Gorr and I accepted the job of washing dishes and went to the restaurant at Coney Island. Uncle Wiesner hoped to land a job as a carpenter and waited several days to find something better. After I was working eleven days at the restaurant, he came one day and said "Henry, look at my hands." They were full of blood blisters from pushing wheelbarrows for a gardener at a low wage. Now he wanted to get enough money together to take a train to Winnipeg. I gave him all the money I received by that time and he took the train to Winnipeg. The job at Coney Island was to wash pots and pans for the cooks who were mostly German sailors who spoke their Berliner German, which I could understand. I spoke my Schwabish German dialect, which they could understand so we got along fine. We had only one man who spoke English so I had a little chance to learn the English language.

After I was at Coney Island one month and four days, Uncle Wiesner sent me $25.00 from Winnipeg. I bought my ticket and went to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, in August 1907. Uncle Weisner and Uncle Fred Relke, the husband of my father's sister Susan lived there with their three children, two girls and a boy and they had me stay with them for room and board and $11.00 a month. Uncle Relke was a foreman for a construction company and had us work with him on his construction gang for 20 cents an hour for ten hours a day. It was hard work, but I soon got used to it and worked with him till harvest time of September when about six German boys my age went across the line to North Dakota. There we worked with a threshing machine for $3.00 a day plus room and board. After threshing I went to work again with Uncle Relke digging ditches with a pick and shovel. Every fall we went to North Dakota during threshing time. One fall after the grain was all threshed; I stayed with a Mennonite family during the winter for $5.00 a month and room and board. My job was to feed the horses and cattle. In spring they paid me $25.00 a month plus room and board.

Back in Winnipeg my Uncle Wiesner asked me to do carpenter work with him building houses. We took the train to Rhein, Saskatchewan, and Stornoway where he had a homestead and built homes for farmers and barns and granaries. He gave me 15 cents an hour and we received our free room and board from the farmers for whom we worked. In the fall of 1910, I went to Yorkton, Saskatchewan, where government land was sold by auction. I put in my bids and came away with 160 acres, a quarter section of land, for $13.25 per acre. It took one of my friends, Mr. David Schmidt, $400.00 to fence the 160 acres of mine and break up 40 acres for the first crop. The land paid itself in ten years and gave me some extra income towards my education. I was able to help my brother Fred who studied at first several years in Mellville, Saskatchewan, Canada before he came to St. Paul Lutheran Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I studied. Brother Godfried, as we called him, was only eight years old when our father died. He came to America when he was only thirteen years old. He was quite strong, tall, and heavy and he earned his wages like any other adult laborer.

I studied for the ministry in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I entered in the fall of 1911. 1 came from Rhein, Saskatchewan, Canada with George Schaeffer. George came from the congregation of Rev. Henry Flagman, in Rhein, who was our pastor. When we traveled together to St. Paul, George Schaeffer told me that he wanted to become a missionary in India. And at the time I am writing these lines he is a missionary there for almost forty years now. He has three sons, one of whom is a doctor of Medicine in India, one a missionary, and the third son is preparing himself as a missionary in education also in India. In 1954, my wife and I saw George Schaeffer again for the first time since he bid us farewell at the train in St. Paul during the last week in March of 1918 when we boarded the train after our wedding day in Good Thunder, Minnesota, where I was married to Mary Schneider on the 19th of March 1918. She was the oldest daughter of Rev. J.G. Schneider.

Our (my wife and I) destination was Hilda, Alberta, Canada, where I had served Bethlehem Church during the summer vacation of 1917 in June, July, and August. School was hard for me since my only education in Russia was about the eighth grade and I never had any schooling in the American language but I always made good grades and was rated most of the time with the best in the class. When the church from Hilda, Alberta, sent a request to have me come to be their pastor, Dr. Henry Ernst told me at the end of the first semester examination that he was so pleased with my grades that he would not expect me to take another examination before I was ordained.

The seven years in the seminary passed all too soon and were my most happy years I spent during my youth with many happy memories of my classmates and professors and the student body of the St. Paul Lutheran Seminary. In 1917 Dr. Henry Ernst, the president of the seminary, sent 1 to Brush, Colorado, to serve two congregations for three months until they could get a new pastor from the class of graduates. To take care of two congregations was a new experience for me. I had to preach and also teach a confirmation class for about 25 boys and girls. But it was a pleasant experience to be a minister even before I had graduated from the seminary. At the end of June, the seminary sent me to Canada to a church in Hilda, Alberta, 55 miles from Medicine Hat out in the Alberta prairie. I served in Hilda to the end of August. After we finished our exams in February, Dr. Ernst had a call for me to the church in Hilda. Dr. Ernst was satisfied with my last exams and told me I had to be in Hilda to preach my first sermon there on the first Sunday of April and to be the pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church there. This was in 1918.

Before I moved to Alberta, Canada, I married Miss Mary Schneider, the daughter of Rev. George Schneider of Good Thunder, Minnesota. Our wedding was on 19th of March 1918. We packed our clothes and took the train to Winnipeg, Canada, where I was ordained into the Lutheran ministry by Pastor John Groeger. From Winnipeg, we took the train to Medicine Hat, Alberta, from there the elders of the church of Hilda had to come and bring us to our home. Our son Paul was born on the 27th of January 1919 in the hospital of Medicine Hat. This town was also the birthplace of our daughter Dorothy Katharine on the 17th of July in 1920 We moved to Central Butte, Saskatchewan, and stayed there for four years. We had church twelve miles out in the country. Once a month I took the train to Moose Jaw, seventy miles away, and serve the small missions there. Our services were held in the homes of the members of the church who gave me meals and lodging while I was in Moose Jaw. Two of our children were born in Central Butte. Our third child Esther Helen was born February 12, 1922 and our fourth child was born March 26, 1924. We named her Lois Ruth.

In 1924 Brush, Colorado, was without a pastor so we packed our things said goodbye to the people in Central Butte and traveled 1200 miles to Brush in our new ford car.

NOTE: This is as far as Henry Stennfeld got in writing the story of his life.

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