Celebrate! at the 2010 AHSGR Convention: Tours highlight pre-convention activities

Sutton, Nebraska was the destination and Jim Griess was our host for a full day excursion on Wednesday.

The bus was filled to capacity as we left Embassy Suites and started to watch the DVD Jim had created detailing the history of Sutton. It traced back to Sutton’s beginnings with its founder Luther French who named the city after his former hometown in Massachusetts. The Union Pacific and Burlington Railroads impact on the development of the town and f how Whiskey Row almost made the railroad choose an alternative route is explained. This movie is ideal for sharing at chapter meetings as it also covers how and why the Black Sea and then the Volga Germans headed to Nebraska.

First stop was at the Mennonite Heritage Park in Henderson. The park shares the hardships and trials of the 1874 journey of thirty-five Mennonite families from Holland to Molotschna colony in Russia and then to Henderson.

The Immigrant House is a replica of the house of the long narrow building where immigrants stayed temporarily until they could build their own homes.

Scenes from the Immigrant Museum

District 73 East one room school house was built in 1880 and moved to this site and restored one year ago. Amy Friesen taught in District 73 West which was built later and she was our on-site guide to the school.

Amy Friesen demonstrated the ink well and pen as used originally in the one room school house.

The Epp barn at Heritage Park was moved here from downtown Henderson because it was the only original barn in the area which had not been remodeled. It contained old Nebraska license plates on the wall which has aptly become a part of its history. The original plate was made of leather with metal digits. During the World War II, when metal was scarce, the plates were miniaturized down to an inch for those years.

The Frank and Tena Dick house was moved to the park in 2000. The house was occupied by the Klaus Friesen family in the 1940s and 1950s.

The entire tour group in front of the General Store used as the office and Visitors center at Heritage Park

Next, we drove to the Emmanuel Church Country Cemetery to view headstones of German Russian Pioneers.

The religious life of the area was not without division. The Free Reform Salem Church split from Emmanuel and then in 1908 the Hope Reform Church broke away. The Free Reform Salem Church continues to conduct worship services in German and uses Paster Hoffer’s sermons written many years ago. Don Griess shared his church with us and explained that the elders run the church, there is no minister, no musical instruments just prayer and worship.

The American Legion Club provided a German lunch for us including bratwurst and cheese buttons. We also sampled Quass, a carbohydrate drink used to keep farmers hydrated when working in the fields. It’s non-alcoholic yet has a taste which we struggled to describe. Still, we remained very curious about how it was made.

Leota Griess was happy to share her mother and sister’s recipes with me and, as promised, the recipes are included verbatim in this newsletter.

“Quass” My Recipe

Dissolve 1 pkg. yeast into 1 cup warm water
Add ½ cup sugar and 2 tablespoons salt
Let it sit while you take
1 ½ cup Rye Flour
Stir up with a little hot water
Add ½ cup corn meal. Let cool.
Add yeast mixture. Let sit for 2 ½-3 hrs.
Add ½ loaf Rye bread (toasted)
½ cup malt
½ cup brown syrup
Fill canner with wote (?), Let site overnight.

“Esthers Recipe”

1 ½ cup rye flour
½ cup corn meal
1 ¾ cup boiling water – Cool.
1 pkg. yeast
1 cup warm water
½ cup sugar
2 ¾ tablespoons salt or 3 tablespoons
Let sit 2 ½ hrs.
1 cup malt
½ cup brown syrup
½ loaf rye bread
14 hours in canner, 8 hrs. in jar before setting in refrigerator.

After lunch we started our walking tour of downtown Sutton which included a visit to the Filling Station, views of historic buildings and the Civil War Memorial Park.