The following story was compiled by Ben Matzek, son of Fred Matzek.

On February l5th, 1862 Father was born of Michael and Maraske (nee Schultz)
Matzek in what was then Ortelsburg, Germany , and is now Sczytno, Poland. He was given the name of Fridrich and baptized in the Lutheran Church before he was a year old. His father died when he was 13 or 14 years old and his mother moved with him and others of her children to Kiev in the Ukraine where she remarried.

So far as we know, Father had three sisters and a brother. They were Regina (Mrs. Ferdinand Koslofsky), Louise (Mrs. Rudolph Herk), Gottlieb and Mrs. Linsky. (Please see the Appendix for further details of Father’s relatives).

Mother, whose maiden name was Ernestine Witt, was born of German parents in or near Kiev in the Ukraine on January 20, 1868. Her parents were Ferdinand and Juliana (nee Kurtz) Witt. She was baptized in the Evangelical Lutheran Church on July 5 1868. Her grandparents, Helena and Ferdinand Kurtz, were her Godparents. Preceding the name of her father, Ferdinand Witt on Mother’s baptism certificate is a term translated as colonist indicating that Ferdinand Witt was a foreigner residing in Russia.

When Mother was 6 years old her Mother died and her father remarried. Her stepmother was a sister to Rudolph Herk who married Father’s sister, Louise. (Please see the Appendix for an account of Mother’s relatives).

I don’t remember Mother telling much about her childhood; though I gathered from what little she said that the family was poor. Her father, Ferdinand, was a hand maker of coffins, a trade which presumably provided a bare living. Food, though probably not insufficient, consisted mostly of vegetables. Meat was a scarce item in the family diet. The children especially received little or none.

Information is sketchy about Father’s life from his early teens until age 23 when he joined the German Military. During this pre-military period he apparently did farm work, spent some time in lumber camps, often strayed away from his mother’s Ukrainian home during his early youth and during the later years returned to Germany before entering the military.

His early wanderings away from home often led him into unusual, even perilous situations. On one of his sojourns, for example, he apparently entered a home in search of food. There he was attracted by some dry cheese on a shelf above his reach. He fell while attempting to climb for the cheese attracting the attention of the family in the home. Frightened and angered upon discovering his intrusion they locked him in a granary where it was dark and occupied by livestock, one of which was a calf. During his confinement he is said to have killed the calf for some unexplained reason. At any rate, he finally chopped a hole in the roof and escaped into the night.

Father’s early experience in farm work probably was gained in the Ukraine, a largely agricultural region where most farms were large and in the hands of wealthy landlords. His introduction to lumber camps, on the other hand, likely came upon his return to Germany prior to entering the army there. I surmise this because the Ukraine is not noted for its forests which are a common part of the landscape of Germany.

From what I can remember from his infrequent references to his experiences as a youth he found life in the lumber camps to be harsh. The work was hard, the pay minimal and the food monotonous and unattractive to say the least. The daily ration consisted for the most part of a pot of coffee, a loaf of black bread and a pot of soup.

Father served in the German Military a little over two years and five months. He was drafted into the service in Danzig, East Prussia, now Gdansk, Poland on April 28, 1885 just past the age of 23 and received an honorable discharge as a reservist on September 12, 1887. While in the service he earned the award of Sharp Shooter Class 1. (See attachments for copies of pages of Fathers military papers.)

He often talked of his experiences in the Kaiser’s army in which he had been fully indoctrinated, believing it to be invincible. He was also patriotic to the Reich of that period.5 In spite of these beliefs he could speak objectively about brutal aspects of his military life. He is said to have told Pete Hones, a friend of his who managed the Farmer’s Elevator in Fingal. North Dakota., that the German army treated its common soldiers like animals. For example, when on field maneuvers the men were required to march ten miles to the training area, participate in military exercises there; retrace their 10 mile hike returning to camp late in the evening. Back in camp the men were required to prepare their own meals from rations furnished them. Rations were issued for three days at a time. They consisted of three loaves of dark bread, coffee, broth and oatmeal, which latter two items were to be used for soup. Young soldiers would often be too tired to prepare their soup and instead would eat their three-day bread rations at one time, thus having none left for the remainder of the time until the next food issue.

Discipline apparently was strictly and ruthlessly enforced in all aspects of the training including that of diving and swimming. Training in diving required the men to climb to different heights above the water and dive without hesitation from platforms at those heights. Those who were at all hesitant or afraid to do so were aided by a shove that sent them hurtling down to the water . I’m not certain that this kind of treat¬ment was necessary for Father’s attainment of these aquatic skills, though I remember him as being an excellent swimmer and diver. I was profoundly and proudly impressed by his skills in my childhood when one day many of us stood at the shore of a fishing pond called Bullhead Lake as he swam to its center to test its depth which apparently had been in question.

The routine in the service, generally dull, did have its rare exciting and perhaps even romantic moments. One night while on guard duty Father rescued a young woman from an attacker.

After his release from the army Father returned to Kiev. There he met Mother. They were married in the Evangelical Lutheran Church by the Rev. Wassem on Oct. 23, 1888. It seems they lived for about a year in a community near Kiev where Dena, their first child was born on August 23, 1889.

In the community where they lived agriculture was the principal pursuit. Farm life of the poor in the Ukraine under the Czarist regime was oppressive. It was a life of long days of manual labor and a monotonous barely adequate diet. Thousands of people of all ages, men, women and children toiled in the fields. Grain was harvested by hand and threshed manually. It was cut with a scythe and gathered into bundles which were tied with strands of the cut grain and set up in shocks to be threshed later. Food was furnished the laborers three times a day. Breakfast consisted of oatmeal porridge; at noon potato soup was supplied along with the porridge; and to the evening meal coarse dark bread was sometimes added. Meat, which was a rare item, consisted mostly of sow belly. When living in the United States, Father would never touch a piece of dark bread or a slice of bacon (Speck) having had his fill of the black bread and sow bellies from youth on, in the Ukraine.

Father blamed the inhumane oppression of the Ukrainian poor on the rulers of Czarist Russia. As a consequence, he could be understandably sympathetic to any changes for the better that its overthrow might have brought about for those peasants. I don’t know how they fared during the thirties when starvation wiped out millions of Ukrainians.

Sometime after Dena’s birth, probably still in 1889, the family moved to Gelsenkirchen , northeast of Düsseldorf, Westphalia (Nordrhein—Westfalen). There Father worked in a stove factory for seven years cutting out oven doors. The work was not only tedious but confined to the dark, noisy, airless factory indoors. Probably to break the tedium and get outside briefly at midday he would have lunch at home. Two-thirds of the hour would be spent walking home and back to the factory leaving 20 minutes for eating and being with his family. The work took its toll on his health and evidence suggests that he developed a serious stomach ulcer.

Mother helped the family income by keeping a couple of boarders and together the parents saved money for passage to the United States. While she worried about Father’s deteriorating health she cared little for the urban living that was unfamiliar to her and differed so markedly from her earlier rural life. Her disenchantment with urban living is exemplified by a story she related about an incident in a bakery in Gelsenkirchen. One day upon entering the shop to buy bread she espied two young men in the bakery who were walking to and fro kneading bread dough with their feet in what she termed a kneading trough. Upon seeing this she exploded with the remark “Ihr Schweine (you pigs)”, which shocked the fellows and embarrassed her. I don’t believe she ever felt like returning to the bakery in quest of a loaf of bread again or any other baked goodies for that matter.

Father envisioned owning a parcel of land which would be their livelihood and Mother longed for the country life. While Europe held little promise of fulfillment of those dreams, word from relatives who had recently immigrated to North Dakota held out hopes for them. Those relatives promised, albeit not entirely altruistically, to help them upon their arrival there. When they had saved enough money for the trip they courageously broke with familiar ties, relatives and friends.

By this time the family was about to leave for the United States it had increased to five including three daughters. Besides Dena there was there were Emma, born March 30, 1891, and Helena, born September 4th, 1893. Both apparently were born in Gelsenkirchen.

The family passport to North America lists Friedrich Maczeck (Matzek), his wife and three daughters; Dena age 8, Emma 6 and Helena 3. It is dated June 15, 1897 and was good until June 14, 1899.

After the children had endured three immunization shots the family was finally ready for the trip to the United States. Their trip across the Atlantic was on first class passage and lasted nine days. All of the family, especially Dena and Emma, who were of that impressionable age, enjoyed the ship’s first class accommodations which included deck privi¬leges, a bedroom with bunk beds, and meals served family style on tables at which stools had been placed. Father found pleasure in visiting with the crew and others on the coal-fired ship. Mother was seasick during part of the trip.

The ship the Berlin is shown below.

Associated Passenger Date of Arrival Port of Departure
Macek, Fritz July 14, 1897 Antwerp

Upon arriving at Ellis Island the family endured more shots before being permitted to disembark. The Ellis Island Emigration database identifies the family as traveling under the name of “Fritz Macek”. They had arrived on the “Berlin”. The “Berlin” departed from Antwerp and arrived in New York on July 14, 1897. The ship’s manifest lists Fritz and Ernestine and three children; Reinholdine (Dena) age 7 years 9 months, Emma age 6 years, 3 months, and Helene age 2 ears 10 months. The manifest lists their ethnicity as German and their place of departure as Schalke. In addition, it states that they had $355 dollars and were being sponsored by a cousin Adolph Kurtz, in Fingal ND. See the appendix for copies of the manifest and ship information. The Berlin carried 1,770 passengers, of which 170 were first class.

After satisfying the various immigration regulations the family boarded the train for the long ride to North Dakota, arriving in Lucca in July 1897.

On that evening in July 1897 when they arrived in Lucca, Adolph Kurtz met them in his wagon. They climbed into the wagon and rode with him along a prairie road, the common way of the time in North Dakota, to his farm home two miles to the west. After spending the night in the Kurtz home they were again packed into the wagon and hauled to the Christ Wolsky farm about 2 miles farther northwest. A review of the Barnes County census records does not indicate the presence of any Christ Wolsky. A conversation between Kent Matzek and Wesley Wolsky, on Feb 2003, Wesley thought the “Christ” would be “Chris”, Daniel Wolsky’s mother. There they stayed all winter. Wesley thought that this farm would be located in section 6 of Raritan Township.

Life was hard for the family on the Wolsky farm. Even Dena and Emma were called on to work, caring for the Wolsky children. They were thus unable to go to school until later. For their work they received no pay except for 25 cents for picking potatoes for three days.

Mother helped in the house and on the farm, whereas Father worked in the fields. The field work was hard, primitive and poorly remunerative. He used oxen to plow and to drag. He walked behind the drag, which is a spike tooth harrow; the one he used was pulled by a team of four oxen. When he plowed he removed the yokes from the oxen at noon to let them graze, re-hitching them later to resume plowing.

Later in the summer he shocked grain for which he received 75 cents a day. He shocked all of Mr. Wolsky’s wheat that year in a nigh superhuman effort. The wheat was heavy, having been planted on newly broken ground. Yet, he set up in shocks all the 20 acres of grain that Mr. Wolsky could cut in a day.

This was almost incredible, as shocking of 16 or 17 acres in a day of moderately heavy grain by one man was considered to be a feat. Mr. Wolsky was so impressed that even in later years he talked about it to his family. 5 After the harvest when the work was slack at the Wolsky’s he helped Jenz Janz, Herman Janz’s, uncle. Where he stayed until frost because to walk or travel by horse and wagon daily between home and the Janz farm took too much time and energy. The work days literally stretched from sun up to sun down.

In the fall, the family moved into an old house on the Martin Wilberg farm two miles northwest of Nome, North Dakota. It was in this home where Ida was born in March 1898. Martin Wilberg treated the family well. Father had a high regard and deep respect for Mr. Wilberg. Apparently this feeling was shared by countless neighbors and friends who flocked to his funeral several years later.

At the time of the funeral, Ben was perhaps 9 or 10 years of age when the experience of solemn events such as this, attended by so many people, leave a lasting impression. A service was held in the home which of course could not accommodate all of the people. It was common practice in those days to have services in the home, the church and the cemetery. From the home the hearse led the procession to the church about two miles away. The procession extended nearly all of the way, moving slowly as the church bell tolled all the while. People filled the church to capacity. Never before had I seen so many people in a church nor so many flowers in one place.

Our parents were much saddened and shocked by Mr. Wilberg’s untimely death. He apparently was struck by lightening while watering his team of horses near the barn.

Fred Utke had married Christ Wolsky’s daughter and lived on a farm south¬east of Lucca. In the fall of 1897 he urged Father to buy for $1000.00 an 80 acre tract of land southeast of the one-half section farm that Her¬man and Ida bought years later, and where they lived for several years. Their farm was two miles west of Lucca. Father had $355.00 that he had brought with him from Germany . Fred loaned him the rest.

It was on this newly acquired tract that the family built their first home in the United States. Even though they now had their own home they found life still to be difficult and not without tragedy. Everyone in the family except the smallest of the children worked in order to add to the family coffer. It was during this time when the infant daughter, Martha, died of pneumonia.

The home was primitive even by rural North Dakota standards of those times. Before moving the family into it, Father built furniture for it and bought a cow and calf to go along with it.

Sometime in the early summer or late spring of 1898 Father borrowed a team of horses which he hitched to his wagon, loaded the family into it and moved them to their new home which was still far from complete.

In the beginning the home was a one-room shack with the studs exposed to the inside and rough unpainted boards for the floor, During the summer, after Father had lined the walls with laths, he and Mother made a plaster of clay and straw, Mother kneading it barefooted into a usable consistency. With this plaster they covered the walls, stuffing clay and straw into the cracks and crevices. The ceiling they covered with cloth. The final touch was to brush white calcimine onto the walls. Calcimine being anything but a permanent covering began in time to flake off, carrying along with it chunks of the clay plaster that had covered the walls.

As time went on, three shanties were added to the original building which became the main room of the house.

It was the only part covered with drop siding. It had one window, a door, to the outside and another one leading to one of the attached shanties. The room held a small table, chairs, and a stove in the winter and a bed where the parents slept. It was in here that guests were received and the family gathered, sitting on the bed when there were not enough chairs for everyone.

The shanty off the main room provided additional living space for the family. The kitchen was in one corner and beds for the children occupied the remainder of the room. The beds consisted of straw mattresses laid upon wooden slats.

The second shanty was the granary but I don’t know the use of the third one.

To provide a stable for livestock acquired piecemeal. as time went on, the family dug a cellar with a slanted or ramp-like entry. This dugout was covered with a slanting board roof. The darkness and dampness inside often attracted lizards and in general offered an uninviting place for the children. Fearful of the lizards and other creatures, real or imagined, Dena and her sisters disliked descending into it even though they needed to do so in helping with the chores.

The dugout provided room for the cow and calf the family brought with them, additional cows acquired later, the team of horses Father acquired and a roost for chickens.

There was a school l 1/2 miles from home, but the children’s education was sacrificed. Dena who was the eldest had her school days interrupted early when it was felt that she was old enough to do housework for families for hire. She first went to work when she was ten. Her first job was to help the Christ Wolsky family during the busy season. For this she was paid 75 cents a week, which Father collected. When the work became slack the Wolsky family sent her home hoping to rehire her in the busy season beginning in the following spring. In the meanwhile she found work with the Luther family and for the stupendous stipend of $2.00 a week. Incidentally, my third grade teacher in Lucca was a Miss Luther, whose home was Embden. I vaguely remember our folks being curious about this at the time, and I wonder if she might have been related to the Luther family for whom Dena worked. Otto’s formal education was ended in the eighth grade, when he had to help with farming chores.

The small tract of 80 acres could not yield enough to provide for the family. During this period there were four daughters, Dena, Emma, Helena and Ida. Martha, a fifth child, was born during this period but died of pneumonia shortly before her first birthday. No doubt the inadequate return from the land was an important fac¬tor in Dena being sent out to work when she was still so young. It also prompted father, after 2 years of farming, to rent the land to a neighbor and hire out as a farm laborer. Meanwhile, Mother also worked part of the time as a day laborer leaving Dena or Emma at home during the day in charge of the smaller children.

During the first two years of this period Father worked for Pete Smith, except for the slack season. While employed there he stayed at the Smith farm home which was 1+ miles away. For about half of this time Mother worked part time for the Smith family. During the harvest she shocked grain for twenty-five days earning a dollar a day and during threshing she helped in the house, she was loaned a horse and cart to enable her to spend the nights at home with her children. During the day, Dena who cared for the children at home brought Martha, the baby, to her mother for breast feed¬ing. With the money Mother earned shocking, she bought a cow.

The Smiths were of English descent. I remember Father saying in later years that Pete was a good man and that his wife was very stingy. So stingy in fact that even Pete often left the table hungry. Otto tells that the Smiths had the misfortune of finding their son involved in a crime for which he was sent to the penitentiary. I don’t know if this was an only child. In fact, I didn’t know the Smiths except through what the folks said of them.

For the next two years Father rented a quarter section between home and Lucca . The first rye crop they raised on it was a tremendous success. It was so heavy it presented an overwhelming problem in harvesting. Father had acquired an old 6 foot binder that had the platform on the right, oppos¬ite from most binders of that time and of all binders in subsequent times. It was decided that Mother would run it while Father shocked but she was un¬able to urge the horses along sufficiently to provide the necessary momen¬tum to keep the binder moving through the heavy rye crop. When they changed places they found the bundles of grain to be about as tall as Mother, But, despite difficulties like this these two years of farming on their own were more satisfying, less arduous and more productive than their years of working for others.

Life during the years the family lived in their first home had its comic and tragic moments. In his first year of hauling bundles during the threshing, Father discovered that the threshers had omitted a shock in a certain field that was being threshed. Upon inquiring why it was left he was told there was a skunk residing underneath it. Being unfamiliar with the defense mechanism of skunks and insufficiently warned about them, he went out on his last field trip of the day to retrieve the shock. Upon loading it onto his wagon he discovered its resident, a slow moving animal and jumped on it with both feet, upon which the skunk came to its defense by emitting a spray that perfumed him from head to foot. Upon arriving at the farmhouse for supper he was not permitted to enter, all windows were closed against him and he was required to completely change outside of the house from his skin outward to an entirely different set of clothing. Even so, he carried the perfume with him for days afterwards. By the same token, his first hand knowledge of skunks remained with him always. I remember one day Julius and I while picking mustard, encountered a skunk, killing it at a distance with stones and soil clods, keeping us to its windward side all the while.

One unusually warm day, Mother, Dena, Emma and Helena, wheeling Martha in a baby carriage, walked to the Stohl farm two miles from home. There they picked up a small pig or shoat which was placed into a gunny sack. Since it was too cumbersome for them to carry they placed it into the baby carriage and had Martha walk along side with the rest of them. The shoat being unaccustomed to such treatment struggled and bounced about in the car¬riage requiring frequent stops to set him aright. All this was done amidst much laughter and giggling. Toward the end of the trip the shoat ceased his protestations so its escorts believed it had finally become accustomed to the ride. When they arrived home they discovered the shoat to be com¬pletely unresponsive to any urging or prodding. Mother being worried about its fate put it into a tub of cold water hoping to revive it but was unable to do so. She then felt so badly she sat down and cried, joined in by her children: a sad ending to a fun excursion.

The 1900 census records show that Fred and Ernestine were recorded in the census records immediately following the Adolf Kurtz family. The records show Frederick and Ernestine Mazak. Note the difference in spelling from the emigration manifest. The records show the four daughters and that Fred was a farmer,

After living six years in the first home they owned in the United States the family moved. This would have been in 1904. Father sold the 80 acres to Adolph Kurtz and together with Rudolph Herk, his brother-in-law, bought a one-half section of land 3 1/2 miles north of Lucca. Here the family made their home for years to come. I take it from Helen’s notes, according to Dena, that the land belonged to Mr. Nessett. As I was growing up the Nessetts lived on a farm one mile north and one mile east of our home. Mr. Nessett’s son, Oliver, lived there also and farmed the land for the Stanglers, neighbors of ours, who owned the land while we were growing up. It is now owned by Alois Huber. Mr. Nesset played the violin. Once, when Otto was first learning the violin he visited Mr. Nessett to get a few pointers. I don’t know how much he learned but remember him saying that Mr. Nessett had no regard for the saxophone. He probably was a purist.

In 1903 Henry the first son was born. Otto, having been born two years later, grew up in Henry’s footsteps. Henry was Otto’s best friend and playmate. Henry most likely baby sat Otto. Unfortunately Henry died at the age of four of Diphtheria. Otto was lost and inconsolable with the lost of this playmate. Otto would wander the house in search of Henry. Father was very displeased with Otto’s actions at this early age. Ida came to Otto’s support during this time.

Father and Rudolph Herk discovered that the barn, granary and windmill were on the line between the two on quarter sections they had bought. They therefore agreed that Father take the windmill and Mr. Herk the granary but would reach no agreement on the barn. Father offered to sell his portion to Mr. Herk but was refused. He then sawed the barn in half using the lumber of his half to add to the house which up until then had comprised only two rooms. We added a bedroom and used the discarded half of the roof to add to the kitchen.

The children attended a one room country school one half mile south and a mile east of home. I believe they walked, though they were privileged to ride in a wagon to the school picnic. They were denied but a few years of normal education, though this was not that apparent to those of us who came later. I gather from Ellen’s notes that Ida attended through the 4th grade; schooling for Dena lasted less than that. When she was not needed at home, she found work in the homes of neighboring farm families. The schoolhouse was gone by the time I came along. The school had been consolidated along with others into the Lucca Consolidated School. Only the foundation stones remained for us to see as we rode horseback past the school yard on our way to our favorite swimming hole a half mile southeast down the creek from there. The farm grew to a total of three quarter sections. The farmstead was situated in the northeast corner of the southeast quarter of one section (Section number 22). The plat map of Binghampton Township, 1910 shows the location of this farmstead, and just across the road is the farmstead of the Adolph Kurtz family. A second quarter was in a section directly across the road to the east (Section number 23). I don’t know when this was acquired. A third quarter lay directly south of the farmstead in still another section (Section number 26) . Father often referred to this quarter as the “Bracket quarter”, He once related to me how he came to purchase it. I will repeat his account as best I can, granting that some of the facts may suffer the vagaries of my memory.

The Matzek's celebrated fifty (50) years of marriage with a party, in 1938.