see headstone and info on Find A Grave Memorial ID 63258770
COPIED FROM HERINGTON ADVERTISER-TIMES NEWSPAPER 1956
CONTRIBUTED BY MRS. MINNIE WENDT
Pioneers of Kansas really did have hardships to meet, take it from Mrs. Minnie Wendt whose parents came to America shortly before she was born in January, 1880 at West Branch, near Shady Brook. Her parents were Mr. & Mrs. Paul Bruckner.
One of Mrs. Wendt's earliest memories is of the prairie fire that swept away virtually all of the family's belongings when she was only two years old. She can recall part of the story and the remainder, of course is the result of its re-telling many times in later years by older members of the family.
The prairie fire was eight miles wide and 20 miles long. Mrs. Wendt says My mother suggested when we saw the smoke in the distance that my father burn a fire guard around the house but he said, oh, it won't come this far.
However, by the next morning the outside of our house was on fire. My father discovered the blaze and rushed indoors to rescue the family. By the time we were all out, the house was past saving as well as most of its contents.
Fires in those early days, Mrs. Wendt said, wreaked wide-spread destruction because the dry grass as three or four feet high and furnished quickly flammable material. Her father had a team of horses which were kept in a hollow-out straw stack and these were burned to death as the blaze caught the straw. Her father's feet were burned so severely in walking to the straw stack that they became infected and he was ill for six weeks afterwards.
With clothing and some household things donated by neighbors the family had to start over again. They heard of a homestead near what is now the Beech Aircraft site and moved there. There was only a shack of one room which was home to seven members of the family until a larger place could be built. Later the Bruckners moved to another farm four miles north of Delavan, Kansas.
Mrs. Wendt recalls some of the storm-ridden winters of her earliest years when fuel was low, walls were thin and "once we stayed in bed three days to keep warm" during a blizzard of 86 though she is not certain of the exact year.
A thrilling chapter of this early day saga is the experience of herself and a sister in herding cattle. This began when she was seven and her sister five and it continued four years, adding desperately needed funds to the family exchequer.
"We had 30 head of cattle that first year," Mrs. Wendt remembers. They belonged to Phil Dodderidge of White City, Dave Mickey and Billy Athinson of Diamond Springs. We herded the cattle from May to October and earned $300."
With the money, this earned over a period of four years her father built the farmhouse which still stands.
But life was not all hardships. Mrs. Wendt, who has kept her sense of humor and even a girlish giggle to this day, recalls with active delight the first circus parade she ever saw. She was five years old and went with her father by train to Council Grove, Kansas. Purpose of the trip was to pay taxes but the father probably planned it for circus day to give the child a treat.
"I could ride free, that's why I was able to go," she laughs. The wonder of that parade is as vivid as yesterday's snowstorm. There were eight bears about four feet tall, dancing on their hind feet and holding wands in their front paws. There was a band of Indians in feathers and blankets, the first she ever had seen.
In all, Mrs. Wendt attended school about three years, "but I learned more than my children did in eight," she says stoutly. A listener is inclined to believe it.
One year, she was 14 years old, was spent in the home of a Lutheran Minister at Shady Brook where she did all the housework, since his wife was in poor health, and attended school as well. Mrs. Wendt laughs about her first attempts to black a stove, a job she had never before attempted.
"I didn't know how to mix the blacking" she says," and when I finished, after spending several hours, the stove looked like a spotted pony."
She also blacked the family shoes, plus her own, each Saturday and that too was something new and difficult. But she learned how to "do it right," she says, and the learning was good for her.
She was confirmed by the Lutheran Minister at the close of her year's stay in 1895.
"When I left they said I was the first girl they ever had who could do things right," Mrs. Wendt says proudly.