All My Ancestors

Today I was reading through the index to the oral histories at the library in the Research Division of the Oklahoma Historical Society. There are lots of categories of oral histories, but I wanted to see what the holdings were for the Germans from Russia. My maternal grandfather’s family immigrated from Russia in 1874, from an area called Volhynia. They came with with the wave of Mennonites that came to escape having to serve in the Russian army. They first went to Kansas, but when the land opened up in Oklahoma Territory, they moved south to what is now Goltry in Alfalfa County.

I didn’t find any of my family members interviewed–didn’t really expect to. Most of the interviewees appeared to be from families from the Volga region. But I remember I used to ask my grandad why he didn’t speak German because both of his parents were the first generation born in the US. His older sister, my great-aunt Edna once showed me her school books from when she started school–they were in German. She said she only went to that school one year. I asked her why and she said the German schools were closed after that.

When I went back to check the dates, I found that was about the time of World War I. That’s what I saw today in the interviews–the effect of WW I on the Germans who settled in Oklahoma. Several of the families lived out by Shattuck, in Ellis County, Oklahoma. Shattuck isn’t too far from where I grew up in Ochiltree County, Texas, and, in fact, lots of folks went to Shattuck for medical care at Newman Clinic. My family from Beaver County, Oklahoma, talked about it a lot. But what caught my eye today were the number of people who said that at the time of the first World War, they were not welcome in Shattuck. They were viewed as “clannish” and were not allowed to speak German–the merchants didn’t want them there.

As a result, they went just over the state line to Higgins, Texas. Higgins is in Lipscomb County, and is a little town with an interesting history. Will Rogers worked there as a young man, for example. Seems like I remember some connection between Higgins and Dan Blocker, aka Hoss Cartwright, but I can’t remember or find the connection just now.

Anyway, what I read in the interviews made me think about the current brouhaha about immigrants–of course people stick with the people they know–no matter if they’re from Germany or Mexico or Oklahoma. And the anti-German sentiment probably accounts for the discontinuation of the German schools my aunt started in.

My husband and I lived in Shattuck for a little over a year about 1976–I remember there were lots of German names in the community. And the grocery store sold some wonderful homemade German meat pies called bierocks. yum. Wonder if they’ll be selling tamales in that grocery store in another 60 years or so?