The Bohm Family to 1905

The Bohm family story as it is told here begins with people coming to America, leaving the Old World in search of a place to start over. The first of these were a group of young German emigrants, Herman Böhm and two of his brothers Friedrich and August, who abandoned their home in a small agricultural village in West Prussia for the United States in the early 1870s.  After about seven years moving about in the upper Midwest, one of the brothers, Friedrich, settled in Chicago; Herman and August pressed on into the west. Sometime between the end of 1879 and June 1880, they settled on parcels of land in what would become the State of North Dakota. About three years later, in the late spring of 1882, another young German emigrant, Ida Lindemann, sailed from Europe with her parents bound for the United States and ultimately Dakota Territory. Ida and Herman met on the upper Great Plains shortly thereafter; they fell in love and were married in the summer of 1884.

Herman’s and Ida’s lives were not remarkable; their daily routines, their diets, the clothes they wore, their religious faith, their attitudes about politics, all were much like those of their neighbors. They homesteaded; they farmed several hundred acres of frontier land; they persevered through harsh winters; they survived one economic crisis after another. Ida bore nine children by Herman; three died in childbirth or in infancy. At that time and in that place none of these things would have seemed extraordinary; certainly none of Herman’s and Ida’s neighbors would have thought their lives to have been remarkable. In retrospect, however, in “looking back” on what Herman, Ida, and their North Dakota neighbors achieved against all odds and in the face of great uncertainty, was exceptional. In the space of only a few years these people helped to transform the heretofore untilled upper Great Plains into one of the world’s most productive farming regions.

In June 1905, Herman died of complications after an accident while helping to repair a county road. Nonetheless, Ida, his wife, stayed on the farm for another eighteen years. She made certain that the land they accumulated between 1880 and 1905 remained in the family. Three years before Ida died in 1924, her youngest son, Fred, married Gladys Hill, a young woman of English and Scottish lineage whose family, after several generations of “leapfrog” migration, landed in the Dakotas. In turn, Gladys and Fred raised two sons, Byron and Fred. Each graduated from high school and, following the advice of relatives, trekked west to the State of Washington. This branch of Bohm family in North America had, in a real sense, participated the great American Odyssey. In fewer than eight decades, family members traversed the continent, settled down, pulled up stakes, headed west, and settled down once again; it is precisely this pattern of living that has come to characterize the American experience. In this barest of outlines, the Bohm family story is the story of many other families; only dates, names, and places differ.

 ***

Herman[1], August[2], and Friedrich, the first Böhms about whom anything is known, grew up the small agricultural village of Breitenstein in the West Prussian district of Deutsch Krone. At the time, both the village and the county were administrative units within the province of Posen-West Prussia. Although Breitenstein  had been settled by Germans as early as 1303, it was technically under Polish jurisdiction from 1368 until 1772, when it became part of the Kingdom of Prussia. For the next 143 years it was part of Germany. After World War II and with the “readjustment” of Germany’s borders, Breitenstein, once again became a part of Poland. Today, Breitenstin is called Dobino and is located in the the county of Wałcz in the Polish province of Western Pomerania.[3]  By the time these three young men reached adulthood in the last half of the nineteenth century, Germany was undergoing a vibrant, tumultuous, and ultimately dangerous era of nationalistic fervor, nation-building, and territorial expansion. Wilhelm, King of Prussia and his chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, wished to assimilate all of the smaller German states on Prussia's borders into an empire dominated, naturally, by Wilhelm’s own Brandenburg-Prussia. The capstone for the plan was a contrived war with France. The struggle, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, was a carefully orchestrated effort to stimulate feelings of nationalism in the minds of Germans spread throught the patchwork quilt of principalities, duchies, free cities and other feudal subdivisions; it also became the piéce de resistance for the creation of Germany’s long-sought “Second Reich.”

          According to scraps of information that have survived as family legend, it was in response to these troubled times that Herman and his brothers August and Friedrich left West Prussia to settle in the United States. Another family legend has it that there were four other Boehm brothers—Max, Paul, Karl, and Walter—who had been conscripted into the German army and subsequently were killed either in the Franco-Prussian War, or perhaps in the 1867 Austro-Prussian War that preceded it. In order to avoid conscription and the possibility of meeting similar fates, so the story goes, Herman, August, and Friedrich were encouraged by parents to emigrate to the United States. And while it is clear that all three crossed the Atlantic, they did not make the trip at the same time. Herman likely left Germany in early November 1870, less than three months after his seventeenth birthday. According to passenger lists recorded at the time, he sailed from Bremen bound for New York aboard a ship that bore his name, the Hermann.[4]

The "Hermann" (launched in 1865), thought to be the ship on which Herman Böhm sailed to America in November 1871. The steamship Hermann was ordered by Norddeutscher Lloyd in August 1864 and laid down as the Europa at Caird & Co., yards in Greenock, Scotland (ship no. 124). When launched in June 1865, however, the vessel was given the name Hermann to honor Norddeutscher Lloyd founder, Hermann Heinrich Meier, as well as the first-century- A.D. Germanic hero. The Hermann displaced 2,715 tons, was 318 feet from  stem to stern, 40 feet across the beam, had a clipper bow, a single funnel, and 2 masts. The ship was was of iron construction and had a screw propulsion system. The Hermann’s service speed was 11.5 knots and it had accommodations for 76 first-class passengers, 107 in 2nd class, and 570 in steerage. She made her maiden voyage on 17 December 1865 from Bremen, via Southampton, to New York). The Hermann was scrapped in Genoa in 1896.

       At the time of Herman’s arrival, the United States in general and New York City in particular, were exciting places to be. America’s industrial revolution was beginning to shift into high gear and political issues of the time were being debated boisterously and recklessly by pundits, politicians, and even ordinary people. The New York Times and most other American newspapers were filled with stories about the 1870 mid-term congressional elections, exposés of corruption in the presidential administration of Ulysses S. Grant, and with tales of the progress, or lack thereof, in the Reconstruction of the former Confederate States of the American South. In its back pages in the shipping news, the Times also carried accounts of the severe storms sweeping the North Atlantic that November. In the fine print the paper systematically listed the daily counts of foreign immigrants arriving in the city. During the month of November, for instance, new arrivals from Europe tallied in the thousands—3,831 from the German ports of Hamburg and Bremen alone. Among these German immigrants, was a young seventeen-year-old named Herman Böhm.[5] His ship, the Hermann,[6] arrived in New York and tied up at its assigned New York pier on Sunday, November 13. The following day Herman and other 482 passengers debarked and cleared immigration. At that moment, Herman Böhm “disappeared into the North American continent” and no records have been found to document what occurred in his life for nearly a decade.

       Two years later, however, in late September 1872, Herman’s brother, August sailed from Hamburg for America aboard another emigrant ship, the Silesia.[7] After its usual, brief stopover in Havre, the Silesia tied up in New York, August trundled his belongings down the gangway, and passed through customs and immigration, declaring himself to be a 24-year-old farmer. Then he walked out into the streets of New York.[8] Whether or not brother Herman was there to greet and welcome him to the New World is not known. Likewise, it is not known whether August’s other brother, Friedrich, was there. 

The Upper Midwest about 1880. The map shows the locations of Madison, Wisconsin (located in Dane County), St. Charles, Minnesota, as well as the location where Herman and August Bohm established their homesteads in Dakota Territory in late 1879 or early 1880.

 Settling in Dakota Territory

After their arrival in the United States, the Böhm brothers appear to have followed slightly different courses of action, although all three abandoned New York City and headed west. By the end of the 1870s, Friedrich married and settled in Chicago.[9]

       August and Herman pressed westward, although neither traveled directly to what would be their ultimate destination. Herman first went to Dane County, Wisconsin, near Madison, where he probably worked as a farm laborer in an effort to save enough money to buy his own land. At some point, he even spent a couple of winters working northern Michigan’s lumber camps.[10] Herman’s brother, August, may also have spent time in Wisconsin. But, by 1877, he had migrated to St. Charles, Minnesota, where he married an eighteen-year-old German immigrant named Emma. A year later, they had their first child.

       It is clear that both Herman and August were looking for arible land they could afford; but by the mid-1870s it was scarce both in Minnesota and Wisconsin; these states had been heavily homesteaded and settled a generation or more before the two Böhm brothers arrived in the United States. Land was plentiful farther west in Dakota Territory, however. And by the late 1870s it was it was being opened up to homesteaders. All one had to do, so the conventional wisdom went, was to stake a claim, file the appropriate papers, and start farming. 

The land homesteaded and acquired by Herman Bohm, his brother August Boehm and their respective families by the beginning of the twentieth Century. 

 Homesteading on the Dakota Frontier

 When exploring the history of a family on the Dakota frontier, one is struck by the emphasis placed on land, on land acquisition and land possession. In fact, people’s personalities and their identities tend to become submerged in documentation that tracks land and land ownership. Many, if not most, Great Plains settlers were peasant and working-class immigrants from Europe. They came form pre-industrial cultures in which land possession was a primary indicator of one’s wealth and standing in a community. This bias was played upon by the marketeers of homesteading the American frontier, the land agents, steamship company representatives, and railroad promoters who roamed Europe touting the New World’s virtues as the land of plenty with plenty of land, a place where vast acreages were available for the taking. Europe’s land-hungry peasants and small freeholders found irresistible the talk of land being “given” away via the homestead mechanism.

       In Herman’s and Ida’s cases, the quest for land is the well-documented centerpiece of a compelling struggle. Even preserved documents generated during their first years in Dakota Territory focus almost exclusively on land and land transactions. With the exception of a few scribbled notes, some entries in the family Bible, and the brief love note Herman wrote to Ida shortly before they were married, no other written evidence of the couple’s twenty-one years together survives.[30]

       In contrast, the large number of extant, land-related documents from those years reveal the central focus of their existence and suggest something of what life must have been like for the two of them and their growing family. These documents also reveal the extent of the financial difficulty in which Herman and Ida remained throughout their twenty-one years together, the constant borrowing of money, the persistent taking out of small loans from merchants and lending organizations. Credit and indebtedness actually became a way of life for them. From 1885 to the time of Herman’s death in 1905, scores of small loans were secured; almost everything of value was mortgaged at one time or another: cattle, horses, machinery, wagons, crops, and most of all the land itself.

        In addition, Herman and Ida Bohm had to shoulder the burden of local government. While the amounts necessary for this obligation might seem small by today’s standards, taxes consumed a significant amount of the family’s annual budget. But by the year 1894, after having been married nine years, the Herman and Ida were living in a one-and on-half-story house, a barn and a granary that was insured against fire and lightning in the amounts of $400.00, $400.00, and $100.00 respectively with the St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company of Minneapolis. The valuation for tax purposes of the 320 acres of land Herman Bohm owned in 1894 was $1,308.00.[31]

       On 1 November 1884, just two months after their marriage, they borrowed $40 to help get them through the winter from Sheldon merchant, Karl Rudd, On 4 March 1885 they borrowed $50 from William Stretelow of Casselton; three months later, in June, they took out a four-month loan for $50 from William McIntosh at the Bank of Sheldon; to secure this transaction Herman mortgaged 50 acres of wheat. Six weeks later, he and Ida borrowed another $40 from Rudd.; Then on December 26, the day after Christmas 1885, they borrowed $55 from Ed Pierce; 300 bushels of number one hard wheat was offered as collateral. By August 1885 Herman and Ida purchased a new six-foot cut McCormick harvester to bring in their crop for $162.[32]

       The terms under which the Bohm family and others borrowed money were not advantageous. The rates of interest typically ran from ten to twelve percent. But that is not where the fees ended. According Louise Kisselbach Lindemann, Ida’s sister-in-law,

. . .when you borrowed $100 from the Sheldon bank, twenty dollars was taken out as a discount, or service charge, though you paid interest of 12% on the entire sum. Then you went across the street to Grange’s Furniture Store and the banker picked out a chair or other item which you bought him to show your gratitude for the loan.[33]

Harsh life on frontier menaced Dakota farmers in other ways. Because of the large numbers of new homesteads and farms, farm machinery and essential items like twine were in short supply. At the time, twine was essential in the process of harvesting wheat. The grain was first cut; then, using a machine called a “binder” tied into sheaves and set in the field to dry. Finally, it was hauled by horse and wagon to a stationary threshing machine where the grain was separated from the chaff and the stock. Without twine, this complex first step in the processing of the harvest could not be set in motion.

       Because of these and other difficulties farmers began to grumble—becoming prey to Populist militancy which swept the Great Plains in the early 1890s. Whether or not Herman Bohm became involved with the Populist Party as it emerged in North Dakota has not been determined. It can be stated with certainty that he was not active in the movement.

       In 1889 Dakota Territory was divided; the northern part becoming the State of North Dakota, the southern part, South Dakota. In the politics of statehood, as well, Herman Bohm and the rest of the eastern Cass County German community appear to have played little more than secondary roles. Enduring the many hardships—bad weather, cheap grain, and bank closures—they remained apart, taking care of themselves and attempting to retain what they could of their German culture. American democracy and its peculiar forms of corruption were not yet clearly understood.[34]

       The end of the 1880s were a time of increasing difficulty for most working Americans, in particular those who inhabited the upper Great Plains. The unbridled land speculation, combined with declining crop prices were but two factors that were driving America to the precipice of a financial crisis of the first magnitude. When the great economic “bubble” of the 1880s finally burst it toppled financial institutions in New York, stock prices tumbled; the economy nearly collapsed. It quickly became known as the Panic of 1893. But like most financial crises in American history, this one struck the rural, agricultural parts of the economy years before it its shockwaves reverblurated on Wall Street. Throughout the 1880s prices for agricultural comodities were stagnant, money was scarce, and the costs for staying in business were high. Farmers believed they were being “gouged” by railroad companies, banks, by crooked lawyers, and even by the elected officials they put in office to protect them.

       Throughout the last period of his life, Herman, like those around him, continued to accumulate land. As land had been the key to wealth in Europe, so too in America it seemed to men like him that it was essential to success. Herman, like other German homesteaders, hoped to secure enough property to be able to pass on large inheritances to his sons. For the next two decades Herman and Ida Bohm continued to obtain money by borrowing and mortgaging land, crops, and even their livestock. In April 1888, for instance, Herman and Ida borrowed $380, mortgaging one bay horse 12 years old, weight 1,100# & one sorrel horse seven years old, weight 1,200# & one sorrel mare 5 years old, weight 1,150# & one sorrel mare 5 years old, weight 1,200#.[35] Five days later, he borrowd $33.50 from Ed Pierce offering up “one Stoughton wagon complete with seat, double box, neck yoke and whippletrees. Complete bought from R. E. Rudd in 1887.”[36]

       The year 1888 brought the birth of Herman and Ida’s second child and first son. He arrived on the 13th of January and was christened him Max Paul. Max was born in what appeared to be a relatively mild winter. But then, on February 9, when baby Max was only three weeks old, temperatures in the Red River Valley dropped to -50° Feherenheit. Six days later one of the Bohm neighbors, left Fargo headed for Sheldon on the Northern Pacific. But soon a blizzard swept down on the area and the temperature quickly dropped to -35°; the train got stuck and five engines had to be sent out to pull it back to Fargo. One storm after another swept through the area. By the end of March, one Dakota pioneer reported that snow was “mountain high and still coming.” These, the “blizzards of the spring of 1888, were the worst to ever hit the Red River Valley region[37]  

       Max Paul and his sister, Ceclia, were eventually be joined by three sisters—Margaret (born 14 February 1894), Alma (born 6 November 1896), and Hartha (born 28 March 1898)—and a brother—Friedrich Karl Wilhelm (born 18 May 1895).[38]

       In the 1880s and 1890s Herman, Ida, and their family found themselves facing economic conditions that almost certainly cast shadows of doubt over railroad company promises about opportunities to be found in homesteading on the northern Great Plains and make land speculators’ words ring hollow. In 1887-1888 Dakota Territory was subjected to three natural disasters in a row. First, came the incredibly hard “Winter of Eighty-Seven.” On the heels of this six-month cold spell came the great spring flood of 1888. There were reports that the Red River, which flowed through Fargo, was forty miles wide in places. Then, after the fields had been planted—late because of bad weather—came an unseasonably early frost. On August 31, farmers stood helplessly by as below-freezing temperatures killed most of their crops.

       Unpredictable weather was not the only difficulty encountered by the Bohm family and the other pioneers of Dakota Territory. Throughout the 1890s the price of Dakota hard red wheat continued to be depressed on the eastern grain markets. What farmers failed to realize was theirs was a problem of supply and demand. They were, in essence, producing themselves out of business.

On June 8, 1905, Herman Bohm died, not having fully completed the task of seeing his sons established on tracts of land near his own farm. According to Gladys Bohm, Herman was:

. . . doing road grading, like they used to do, on one of those [horse-drawn] road graders. The ground was terribly hard and this machine had levers on it that one had to pull down by hand. Herman pulled on them as hard as he could and they hit the hard road when he pulled, and the machine threw him hard to the road. It affected his lungs, so he got infection and died of pneumonia.[39]

Within a week of his unfortunate accident, Herman lay dead in the family parlor. Family legend has it that the pendulum clock in the living room was stopped at the hour of his death and that, for many years, the hands continued to point at that time. The Ransom County Independent of June 15, 1905, carried his obituary under the headline “An Old Settler Passes Away”:

 The funeral service for the late Hermann Bohm was held in the German Lutheran Church five miles northeast of Enderlin and was attended by a large concourse of friends and neighbors. Born in the year 1852 [sic] he moved to North Dakota in 1881 [sic] and took up a claim northeast of here where he remained until his death.[40]

 Nothing about relatives, wife, children, brothers, or sisters was mentioned in the paper. This tendency was typical of the Independent and many other small-town papers of that era.[41]

Despite what the headline said, Herman was not a particularly old man when he died. At fifty-three, he was relatively young—even by the standards of his time. His death did leave a wife, Ida, to care for six children in an area that was barely more than a frontier. His sons Max and Fred, were not really old enough to care for the land that he had accumulated. But until her death, Ida and her oldest son Max, and with the help of relatives and neighbors, managed to keep the homestead intact.

Notes

[1] Herman Bohm was born on 3 August 1853 in Germany and died 8 June 1905 in Cass County, North Dakota.

[2] August Boehm was born on 25 January 1849 in Germany and died 17 September 1908 in Cass County, North Dakota.

[3]  “Todten Register,” page 340, entry number 2. Church Register. Trinity Lutheran Church, Enderlin North Dakota. This Todten Register (death register), entry contains the following information about Herman Bohm: he died on June 8, 1905 and was buried three days later, on June 11.  The entry also states that Herman was born on August 3, 1852  in “Breitenstein, Kron. Brandenburg, Kgr. Preussen.” By way of explanation, all other sources indicate that Herman was born in 1853; the word “Kron” is a variant spelling for the German word Krone (or crown in English); Krone was one of several earlier names for Deutsch Krone, the small administrative town that gave its name to the administrative district in which Breitenstein fell after the Napoleonic wars. “Kgr” is the abbreviation for Königreich. To complicate matters, there were several Breitensteins in what was to become the German Empire in 1871, including two such locations in Prussia.

     Although an old Bohm family story suggests that Herman, Friedrich, and August had grown up in Alsace Lorraine on Germany’s western border, the entry in the Trinity Lutheran Church Registry clearly demonstrates they were actually from the tiny West Prussian agricultural village of Breitenstein in the eastern part of what soon would soon become the German Empire.

[4] On his “Declaration of Intent to Become a Citizen of the United States,” Herman listed his arrival date in the America as November 1870 and his port of entry as New York. The Passenger and Immigration Lists: Germans to America, 1850-1874, Broderbund Family Archive CD #355, 1st edition, Ref. #1.355.1.3426.30, has an entry for “Herm. Boehme,” age 29, of Prussia, as having arrived from the port of Bremen aboard the vessel Hermann on 14 November 1870. The listed age (29 instead of 17 years) could likely be a transcription error; or it also is possible that Herman deliberately misstated his age. It is also possible that this “Hermann Boehme” is not the same Herman Boehm who homesteaded in Pontiac Township, Dakota Territory in 1879. He was, however, the only person by that name who was recorded as having arrived in New York from Germany during November or December of 1870.

[5] Statistics cited in this note were compiled from daily issues of the New York Times, published between 1 November and 1 December 1870. Seven ships sailed from German ports and arrived in New York City during the month. The total number of passengers to arrive in New York the German ports during the month of November was 3,831. It is likely, however, that other vessels may have carried German passengers. That number was probably small, considering the fact that, at the time, Germany was engaged in a war with France.

[6] Norddeutscher Lloyd’s steamship Hermann was launched in June 1865. Displacing 2,715 tons, the Hermann was 318 feet from stem to stern and 40 feet across the beam, was of iron construction, and equipped with a single screw that gave the vessel a service speed of 11.5 knots. The ship had accommodations for 76 first-class passengers, 107 in 2nd class, and 570 in steerage. She made her maiden voyage on 17 December 1865. See, Edwin Drechsel, Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen, 1857-1970; History, Fleet, Ship Mails (Vancouver: Cordillera Pub. Co., c1994-1995), vol. 1, p. 18, no. 13; Nigel Reginald Pixell Bonsor, North Atlantic Seaway; An Illustrated History of the Passenger Services Linking the Old World with the New (2nd. ed.; Jersey, Channel Islands: Brookside Publications), vol. 2 (1978), p. 545. For a fuller description of the Hermann see Appendix I.

[7] The Silesia, the first of two vessels with that name owned by the Hamburg America Line, was launched in 1869. The Silesia displaced 3,142 gross tons, was 339.9 feet from stem to stern and 40 feet across the beam. The ship was of iron construction; it was equipped with a single screw and an operating speed of 12 knots. There were accommodations aboard for 90 first-class passengers, 130 second class, and 520 3rd class. See, N.R.P.Bonsor, North Atlantic Seaway vol. 1, p.390; D. Haws, Merchant Fleets in Profile, volume 4, Hamburg America Line. For a fuller description of the Silesia, see Appendix I.

[8] “Declaration of Intent to Become a Citizen of the United States,” “Dakota Territory Naturalization Records,” volume D4, page 142. August indicated in this document that he arrived in New York in October 1872. The Passenger and Immigration Lists: Germans to America, 1850-1874, Broderbund Family Archive CD #355, 1st edition, Ref. #1.355.1.3532.36, has an entry for “August Boehm,” farmer, 24 years old, who arrived in New York City on 15 October 1872 aboard the Silesia, outbound from Hamburg by way of Havre.

[9] Friedrich (1852-1902) and Lena (1856-1936) Boehm settled in Chicago. They had at least three children: Wilhelm, Amanda, and Clara (born 28 August 1883).

[10]  Letter from Fredric C. Bohm, Jr., to Fredric C. Bohm, III, 25 January 2000. In the letter, Fred, Jr., stated, “Max told me that he [Herman] spent a couple of winters in northern Michigan cutting timber to make enough to get started farming in North Dakota.”

[11] The United States Census for 1880 (reel 111, page D-24, Cass County Township 137 Range 54) lists “August Bome” age 28, his wife Emma age 20 and a son one year old. The census also lists, as part of another household, “Herman Bome” and another adult male “Burgard [Burckhardt] Velch [Welch].” The census taker listed the occupations of August, Herman, and Burkhardt as “farmers.” Herman’s age is listed as 26. All three men claimed to have been born in Prussia. According to the 1880 census, seventy-eight people living in twenty-three households were established in the township. On the census report for the neighboring township (township 137, range 55) the enumerator simply wrote: “no one in this town[ship] that I could find.” Nothing in available family records survives to indicate what ever happened to Burckhardt Welch.

[12] Letter from Fredric C. Bohm, Jr., to Fredric C. Bohm, III, 25 January 2000.

[13] Hiram Drache, The Challenge of the Prairie: Life and Times of Red River Pioneers (Fargo: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1970), pp. 57-58. A survey of the land had to occur before legal settlement could take place. The initial survey, completed in 1858, laid out parallels every 24 miles; these included corrections to adjust for the earth’s curvature. A second survey of the Red River Valley, the one laying out the townships, was completed about 1870. The third survey laying out the sections and quarter sections was completed about 1880 just before the massive influx of settlers.

[14] Hiram Drache, The Challenge of the Prairie: Life and Times of Red River Pioneers (Fargo: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1970), p. 150-153.

     There is a commonly held misconception that, up until 1887, Dakota Territory had for many years experienced a series of relatively mild winters, thus giving those who settled in the region a false sense of security. But meteorological accounts of the winters during the 1870s and 1880s suggest otherwise. The country experienced especially harsh winters in:

• 1873–1874 (Herds of cattle buried, snow covered buildings)

• 1874–1875 (Congress appropriated $150,000 in relief aid for Dakota; 1/3 of the homesteaders in Polk County, Minnesota, abandoned their claims the following spring)

• 1876–1877 (Two months of consecutive below zero days.)

• 1880–1881 (Temperatures averaged -19 for six weeks; buildings buried by snow.)

• 1881–1882 (Trains were blocked by deep snow from early January through April 9.)

• 1882–1883 (Trains unable to bring supplies to settlers for weeks because roads were blocked by snow.)

• 1887–1888 (The winter of the “Blizzard of ‘87”; This series of storms swept the entire great plains decimating crops and herds of cattle.)

[15] First Filing, “Declaration of Intention to become a Citizen of the United States,” August Bohm, April 13, 1881, volume D4, page 142, District Court, Fargo, Cass County, Dakota Territory. Six years later, on June 7, 1887, August’s “Record of Naturalization” was recorded in the District Court, Fargo, Cass County, Dakota Territory, volume F21, page 319.

     Before 1906, the United States had no uniform procedure for maintaining naturalization records; decisions regarding citizenship applications were left largely in the hands of federal courts, state district courts, and local judges. In North Dakota, state district court judges normally conferred citizenship. Throughout the country the basic process of naturalization was recorded in two sets of documents. First came the “Declaration of Intention.” Declaration of intention documents often are called the “First Papers.” In them, a person announced his or her intention to become an American citizen. These affidavits usually contain little more than the registrant’s name, the location of the court, and date of the declaration.

     The second step involved the filing of “Naturalization Records,” often called "Second Papers". These records actually granted American citizenship. Before 1906, only the head-of-household was required to go through the process of naturalization. The remainder of any family in question automatically was naturalized when the applicant received his or her final papers. In other words, spouses and children were not normally listed separately on naturalization papers, nor were separate records required until the late 1920s.

[16] “Declaration of Intention and Clerk’s Certificate,” Herman Bohm, March 15, 1882, 11th Judicial District for the State of Minnesota. Bohm Family Archives.

[17]  See the Introduction for a discussion of the names Böhm, Boehm, Bohm.

[18] First filing, “Declaration of Intention to become a Citizen of the United States,” August Bohm, April 13, 1881, volume D4, page 142, District Court, Fargo, Cass County, Dakota Territory. “Record of Naturalization,” August Boehm, June 7, 1887, District Court, Fargo, Cass County, Dakota Territory, volume F21, page 319.

[19] “Ferdinand and Julia Petrich Lindemann,” Enderlin, North Dakota, 1891-1966 Diamond Jubilee, [Enderlin: Anniversary Committee, 1966], p. 153. For a genealogy of the extended Lindemann family, see “Family Tree of Ferdinand Lindemann and Julia Petrick,” 1970 [compiled by Ardell Lindemann Bruchenwald].

[20]   “Carl and Louise Lindemann Family” and “Ferdinand and Julia Petrich Lindemann,” Mike Martin, ed., Enderlin Centennial Book, 1891-1991 (New Rockford, North Dakota, 1991), 153 & 154.

[21] Freidrich and Anna (Krueger) Petrich emigrated from Germany with the Lindemann family in 1882. Anna was William Krueger’s sister. Accompanying the older Petrichs were a daughter and two sons. “The Petrich Family,” Enderlin, North Dakota, 1891-1966 Diamond Jubilee, [Enderlin: Anniversary Committee, 1966], p. 104

[22] Filing for citizenship prior to her getting married gave Ida an identity separate and distinct from that of her husband. At the time, wives and minor children of adult males who successfully filed citizenship papers were also granted citizenship by virtue of their being part of a household headed by a naturalized citizen. Ida’s separate identity as a citizen, however, entitled her to file for a homestead. As a mere wife who had become a citizen by affiliation, she could not. First filing, “Declaration of Intention to become a Citizen of the United States,” Ida Lindemann, August 1, 1884, volume D7, page 195, District Court, Fargo, Cass County, Dakota Territory. In this document, Ida declared that she “. . .emigrated to the United States and located at the Port of New York on or about the month of May in the year Eighteen Hundred and eighty three. . . .” [The italicized, underlined words are the ones Ida entered in the appropriate blanks on the “Declaration” form.]

[23] This passage, written sometime before Herman and Ida were married, appears on the browning pages of Ida’s velveteen-covered autograph book. There are about nine or ten other short passages written on other pages—all by girlfriends. These, in contrast to Herman’s entry, are all in English—albeit the English of young German girls who still have English as their second language. The original German, from which Herman’s passage was translated, reads as follows:

Für Freulein Ida Lindemann
Heut vor zweien Jahren da du noch in Deutschland war hat dich nicht getreumt das Glück was dich Soll trefen doch Trag es mit geduld die zeit de du musst Warten. es kommt die zeit eh man Weiss Ich bleib dein Freund so lang Ich Leb,
Herman Bohm

After Ida’s death her son, Fred C. Bohm, Sr., retained the autograph book for many years. The book is now in the possession of Ida’s great-grandson, Dwight Keith Bohm.

[24] First Filing, “Declaration of Intention to become a Citizen of the United States,” Ida Lindemann, August 1, 1884, volume D7, page 195, District Court, Fargo, Cass County, Dakota Territory.

[25] Today, the congregation, known as Trinity Lutheran Church, is located in Enderlin, North Dakota. Holder had been sent out by the Lutheran Church, Iowa Synod (subsequently merged with the Buffalo [New York] and Ohio synods to form the American Lutheran Church). He was not, however, the first Lutheran pastor to investigate the possibilities of a mission church in the area. A year earlier, in 1883, German residents in the Sheldon vicinity invited in a Wisconsin clergyman, D. Lebahn, hoping that he would found congregation. Lebahn was known to some homesteaders who had lived previously in Wisconsin. But for whatever reason, he decided Dakota Territory was not for him and he promptly left. “Trinity American Lutheran Church, 1884-1984, 100thAnniversary” [Enderlin: Trinity Lutheran Church, 1984], p. 6

[26] The list of Trinity Lutheran’s founding members, or more appropriately the “heads of households” of its founding families, included:

Herman Bohm, August Buss, Albert Fraedrich, Wilhelm Fraedrich, Sr., Wilhelm Fraedrich, Jr., Herman Froemke, Wilhelm Froemke, Carl Kaatz, Carl Kruger, Ferdinand Lindemann, August Neuman, Ferdinand Oehlke, Theodore Petrich, Jacob Schmidke, Michael Schmidke, August Schraeder, Adolph Walter, and August Westphal.

The congregation was organized into northern and southern sections; each had its own officers. The early years were difficult ones. In a commemorative booklet titled “75th Anniversary, Trinity Lutheran Church,” published by the congregation in 1959, an early member described these difficult years when “Pastor Holter, with a shawl wrapped about him to protect him from the cold, walking or riding from farm to farm, holding services in various places to interest people in the new church.” In addition to serving the Sheldon community, Holter was pastor for the Lutheran mission at Watson. In 1885, Holter married Emma Trapp; that same year a parsonage was constructed in Sheldon for $400. Each member of the congregation was asked to contribute $2.00, as well as two sacks of oats and a half-ton of hay to support the Pastor’s horse and to pay his $400 annual salary. There were, according to the seventy-fifth anniversary booklet, many months when Holter went unpaid.

     In 1890, Holter’s health failed and he resigned. Pastor Andreas Biemuller from Davenport assumed some pastoral duties temporarily until 1891. In April of that year Paster E. Melchert was called; he served until heart trouble forced him to resign in 1894. During his tenure the northern and southern congregations of Trinity became independent of one another, members of the northern group chose the name Prinitz Church for their congregation.

     In 1895, Pastor H. Dieter was called to serve both congregational groups. That same year, the congregation also purchased land from Carl Lindemann to create a cemetery. In 1895 Pontiac Trinity Church was dedicated and the collective parsonage in Sheldon was sold and the money divided between the two congregations. In 1900 a new parsonage was built beside Pontiac Church and Dieter resigned the following year. In 1901 Pastor Elster began his long career at Trinity, a position he held until 1938.

[27] “Bohm Family Bible,” Die Bibel ober die ganze Keilige Schrift des alten und neuen Testaments, New York: Herausgegeben von der Amerikanischen Bibel-Gesellschaft, 1890, pp. 856-857.

[28] This 1887 photograph contains the only extant image that is known for certain to have been of Herman Bohm. There have been a number of physical descriptions of him handed down by family members. Gladys Hill Bohm, although she never met him, said that she was told by many people that Herman was a “big man,” some one over six feet. He was described as stern. Byron Bohm, a grandson, said that Herman was a big, mean man who probably suffered from alcoholism. In March 2005, Fred Bohm, Jr., relayed to Fred Bohm III that in November of 1944, shortly after he and his family returned to North Dakota from Bremerton, “an old man in the bar in back of the Venlo Store” asked Fred, Jr., “Did you ever hear of Herman Bohm? You know, I knew that old homesteader.” The old man told Fred, Jr., that Herman had a red beard and was “pretty good sized.”

[29] “Certified Copy of Record of Naturalization,” Ida Bohm, nee Lindemann, August 30, 1889, District Court, Cass County, Dakota Territory. Bohm Family Archives. No extant record survives of a naturalization certificate for Herman Bohm and no record is contained in the Immigration documents for Dakota Territory or the State of North Dakota. It is likely that Herman crossed into Clay County Minnesota to conclude his naturalization proceedings there.

[30]  Not even a marriage certificate for Herman and Ida Lindemann Bohm has survived, yet the title abstracts for every piece of land that was owned at Herman’s death in 1905 has been preserved in almost pristine form.

[31] St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co. Stock policy 36966. Bohm Family Papers. The total value of this policy was $2,140.00; the annual premiums were $48.00 per year and the term of the policy was three years. Personal possessions were insured for $200.00 and an organ was insured in the amount of $40.00. See, Treasurer’s Office, Cass County, North Dakota, 5568, Bohm Family Papers.

[32] It took the Bohm family three years to pay for this vital piece of equipment. The first installment of $12 was due four months later, on 1 November. Additional payments of $75 were due on 1 November 1886 and 1 November 1887; the final two payments were not made, however, until November 1888. This same harvester was used as collateral for a $130-loan taken out on July 26, 1894 with the W. A. Wod Harvester Company.

[33] Enderlin, North Dakota, 1891-1966 Diamond Jubilee, [Enderlin: Anniversary Committee, 1966], p. 14. The Mrs. Carl Lindemann mentioned in the quotation was Ida Bohm’s sister-in-law, the former Louise Kisselbach (born March 10, 1861); she was the wife of Carl Lindemann (born October 30, 1853). Carl was Ida’s brother.

[34] Research regarding Dakota Territory in the 1880s and the State of North Dakota in the 1890s was done at the University of North Dakota Archives. The following newspapers were consulted as source material: The Fargo Forum, The Daily Argus, and the Sheldon Enterprize. No Enderlin newspaper prior to 1911 is housed at the University of North Dakota.

[35] Herman borrowed this money from Carl and Fred Lindemann, his brothers in law. The note was due on 1 April 1888.

[36] Herman paid off this loan on October 20, 1888.

[37] Hiram Drache, The Challenge of the Prairie: Life and Times of Red River Pioneers (Fargo: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1970), p. 154.

[38] “Bohm Family Bible,” Die Bibel ober die ganze Keilige Schrift des alten und neuen Testaments, New York: Herausgegeben von der Amerikanischen Bibel-Gesellschaft, 1890, pp. 856-857.

[39] Gladys Bohm to Fred C. Bohm III, November 6, 1991. This same story was related on at least two occasions to Fred C. Bohm III by his grandfather, Fred C. Bohm, Sr., during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Later, however, a slightly different version of the story was related to him, in about 1975, by his uncle, B.K. Bohm. According to B.K., his grandfather Herman was a heavy drinker, someone who today might be labeled an alcoholic. The accident while working on the road repair crew occurred largely because Herman was drunk at the time. This version was subsequently corroborated by B.K.’s brother Fred, C. Bohm, Jr. Fred added that Herman frequently came home drunk from town and that he was prone to violence. Almost certainly, these stories were picked up by both B.K. and Fred, Jr., as they were growing up.

[40] History of the Red River Valley Past and Present (Grand Forks: The Herald Printing Company, 1909), p. 776. Enderlin’s first newspaper, the Journal, was founded in 1893 by C. L. Allen (who subsequently left town to manage the Lisbon Free Press). A year later, on June 1, 1894, C. A. Potter established a rival publication, the Ransom County Independent; the following year, Potter’s the Ransom County Independent absorbed the Journal. A decade later, in 1905, Potter sold his interest in the paper to T. L. Langley. The Independent remained Enderlin’s only newspaper until C. A. Krells of Lisbon and A. R. Knight, formerly employed by the Buffalo Express, established another publication the spring of 1909, the Ransom County Independent. The year 1910 witnessed yet another newspaper merger when the fledgling Headlight was acquired by the Ransom County Independent. A name change followed and its new masthead sported the banner Enderlin Independent in simple block letters. Microfilms of the Independent are kept at the North Dakota State Archives. However, no research on the Bohm family has been done using this source.

     The date listed in the obituary for Herman Bohm’s arrival in Dakota Territory is incorrect. As shown in the 1880 census (see note 4) he had arrived in the area by 1880. The date 1881 is when Herman filed for his homestead.

[41] The brief notice given to Herman Bohm’s death in the Independent is apparently the only public record for Herman’s passing; the physician attending his death filed no certificate with the State of North Dakota. In response to a query in June 1999 by Fredric C. Bohm III, Beverly Wittman, Director, Division of Vital Records, North Dakota Department of Health, stated: “We searched the statewide alphabetical index of deaths under variations of the surname [Bohm and Boehm] from 1900 through 1910 as well as the Cass County death records on and around June 8 for 1904, 1905 and 1906. We did not find a death certificate registered for Herman Bohm, Boehm or any similar spellings.”

     A flier accompanying Ms. Wittman’s June 8 correspondence indicated that the first law requiring the registration of births and deaths in North Dakota became effective on July 1, 1893. It was, however, repealed in 1895 and was not re-enacted until 1899. The document also points out that, even though registration of deaths within the state was required after 1899, “. . . it was very poorly done and there were very few births or deaths recorded prior to 1900 or in the early 1900s. More events were recorded beginning about 1908, but it was not until about the 1920s that registration became about 90 percent complete.”

     Seven years later in June 2006 Fredric C. Bohm III submitted another query to the North Dakota Department of Health, this one in response to information contained on the department’s new online database of vital statistics. The response, sent on 5 July 2006, was a computer-generated “Certification of Death” for Herman Bohm. The certificate, in fact an abstract information gleaned from an original document, states that Herman Bohm died on 19 June 1905, eighteen days after the death date as indicated elsewhere, including a number of Cass county court documents. The story in the Ransom County Independent describing his funeral appeared on 15 June, four days before the death date listed by the North Dakota Department of Public Health. Further, the attending physician did not file the death certification until 22 Spetember 1905. Finally, the certificate incorrectly gives Herman’s place of birth as Wisconsin. The cause of death indicated on the certificate corresponds with Gladys Hill Bohm’s account of his having died of pneumonia. The certificate indicates the cause of death as being "typhoid pneumonia."