George J HIEB

                   http://pixel.cs.vt.edu/library/churches/link/glueck.txt
GEORGE J. HIEB One of the Eureka community pioneers, who has seen this section grow from a pr airie wilderness to a region of fine farms and enterprising towns, is George J. Hieb. In comi ng here with the great majority of Eureka folk, he is a native of South Russia, having been b orn near Odessa on February 12, 1860. His parents were Jacob and Clara Hieb. The family ances tors came from Wuertemburg, Germany, in 1812, when Adam Hieb and his parents joined the tid e of immigration to the region around the Black Sea in Russia. Adam Hieb was the grandfathe r of the subject of this sketch.
When political and social conditions in Russia made it an unpleasant place to live for the fr eedom-loving Germans, they decided to seek new homes in America. Among them were the Hiebs. O n May 2, 1874, George Hieb, then a lad of 12, accompanied his parents on the long journey t o America. After an ocean journey of two weeks and eleven days of travel by rail, the famil y arrived in Yankton, Dakota Territory, on May 27 of that year.
A few weeks later the Hiebs settled in Hutchinson County where they made their home for sever al years. Meanwhile, young George grew up, and on December 17, 1883, took unto himself a wife . She was Katharina Perman, born on December 4, 1863, the daughter of Christoph Perman, a res ident of that community. To this union was born a family of children that would have delighte d President Theodore Roosevelt, as there were no less than 16 boys and girls.
However, soon after their marriage the Hiebs decided to join the tide of immigration to McPhe rson County where there was still land open to homestead, pre-emption and tree claim entry. A ccordingly, George and his young wife loaded their movable property on a freight car on May 2 , 1884, and left Menno, traveling by rail to Frederick, via Aberdeen. Frederick was then th e nearest or most convenient railroad town to the far-flung stretches of McPherson County. He re they loaded their wagon and started the slow trek toward their future home.
It was an interesting train. They had two mares, two years old, a pair of oxen, two cows, si x chickens, a wagon, and a breaking plow. Most important, they had $40.00 in cash. They drov e westward as far as Spring Creek in Campbell County. But the young couple didn't like the la nd so well there and retraced their tracks back to McPherson County where they selected thei r claims in Section 11, Township 127, Range 71.
The land had been surveyed only into townships, so each family picked their locations by gues s. There were, namely ten families who came with the Hiebs and were a part of the explorator y trip. On May 19, 1884, the Hiebs pitched camp on the site of their new home. Their first co ncern was of course to provide some sort of shelter, but it must not require too much time. A ccordingly, they built a wall of sod and leaned a few scrap boards against it at an angle. Th is was their first home in McPherson County.
But an even more important worry met them the day after they arrived on the claim. Mrs. Hie b discovered they were out of bread and the water jug was empty. They had no stove nor oven . Necessity, the mother of invention, stood by. Young Hieb scooped a hollow in the earth in a n adjacent bank and drove a pole from the top, which, when removed, provided an opening fo r a chimney. Then came the question of fuel. The young couple hitched up trusty oxen and drov e over to a valley, which to this day known as Hieb's hay lake. There they cut the long dry g rass with a bread knife, tied it into wisps of suitable size for the fireplace. The balance w as used for a bed in the improvised house. The oven worked admirably and Hieb recalls the bre ad was extra good. The slough water was, of course, not good for drinking purposes, so they c alled the cow over for a cup of milk whenever they felt in of liquid refreshment.
It was not long, however, until a well was dug and a good supply of drinking water obtained . Day by day they worked and provided one after another the little comforts that make life mo re pleasant. All of it made them very happy.
The coming of the winter made a more substantial house imperative and this was one of the pri ncipal occupations for some time. They built not only a house but a barn of sod, both of whic h had roofs of rafters and boards, covered with sod smeared over with mud in order to make th em as waterproof as possible. In order to complete the houses a trip to Frederick was necessa ry, since that was the nearest source of supply for lumber. The horses were too young to driv e, so the trip was made with the ox team and required four days -- a decided contrast to th e rapid means of travel of the present time.
Making hay was quite as imperative as providing shelter. But cutting the hay with the bread k nife might have been all right to provide fuel for baking bread, but the oxen, the young mare s and the cow would need a good supply of fodder for the winter -- and the Hiebs had no mowe r -- and the precious forty dollars must be conserved.
George Hieb had a good neighbor, however, in the person of Valentine Mettler, and best of all , Mettler had a mower and a rake and was willing to loan them. So the hay was made.
All work and no play is not so good, the saying goes. The Hiebs therefore took the opportunit y to make a visit to the old home at Menno while their neighbor, Mr. Stein, took care of th e cows and chickens in return for the use of the oxen in breaking some sod on his claim. Th e Hiebs together with Mr. and Mrs. George Neuharth, made the trip which required four days. W hile in Menno, the Hiebs helped their parents harvest the crop and stayed for the threshing , earning a bit of money.
This done, both the Hiebs and the Neuharths gathered up seed wheat, feed and other necessitie s and loaded all of it, including their teams, in a freight car, shipping it to Frederick. Re aching that point they unloaded and proceeded with the teams and wagons loaded to capacity t o their claims. Part of the supplies had to be left behind and another trip was necessary t o haul them to the new homes.
On the return trip to Frederick, the pioneers gathered buffalo bones along the trail, loadin g their wagons with about a ton or so. These bones were in demand and brought them about $8.0 0 per ton. In November came another long trip, this one to Aberdeen where the new settlers fi led their final papers on the claims they had taken, at the U. S. Land Office at that place.
The first crop was seeded in the spring of 1885. The yield was small and the prices of grai n low. Mr. Hieb now recalls his wheat yielded only 10 bushels per acre and brought from 35 t o 40 cents per bushel. Flax sold for 90 cents to a dollar a bushel and yielded 8 bushels pe r acre, and oats only 15 bushels per acre. The latter grain was saved for seed and feed.
The crop was harvested with a combination mower and harvester purchased in Ipswich at a cos t of about $100. This trip to Ipswich remains vivid in Mr. Hieb's memory as it took four an d a half days, the traveling being mainly at night in order to escape the heat of the day. Ox en were unable to stand traveling in hot weather, Mr. Hieb says. While the oxen were restin g he was busy picking buffalo bones and had accumulated about a ton when he reached the town . These he sold for $13.00.
The new town, Eureka, did not come into being until three years after the Hiebs settled on th eir claims. Soon after the first trains arrived George Hieb, together with Jacob Hoffman, dro ve to the new town to get a load of lumber each. But they were disappointed as no lumber ha d as yet arrived. The town was composed of a mere half dozen buildings or so, he recalls, al l situated east of the railroad tracks on what was known as the school section. The present s ite of the town had not yet been surveyed, he says.
Mr. Hieb continued his farming operations until 1927, when he retired to a comfortable home i n Eureka. At the time of his retirement he had added to his original land holdings, owning ov er fourteen quarter sections, passing the task of cultivating the tract to younger shoulder s after forty-three years of active work.
Talking over old days with Jubilee book writers, he recalls that of the ten families who cam e with himself and his wife to McPherson County, only six persons survive, namely, Mr. and Mr s. George Neuharth, Henry Schnabel, Nick Lechner and himself. Mrs. Hieb died in 1933. He stil l makes his home in Eureka, but has spent the winter months in the milder climate of Californ ia with his son, George, who resides at Lodi, in the Golden Gate state.
There, as snow covers the wide fields of his old farm, he perhaps dreams of the old days, th e cold, stormy winters of Dakota and the memorable blizzard of January 12, 1888. He perhaps r emembers drouths of other years and compares them in retrospect with the most severe of all , those of 1936-36. In spite of all hardships and privations, it may safely be guessed that h is farm and the men and women who passed through the pioneer period with him still hold an im portant place in his affections.
A list of the names and residences of surviving members of the Hieb family follows: John J. H ieb, implement business, Eureka, South Dakota; Henry G. Hieb, farming, Eureka; Christina Wern er, farming, Eureka; Adam Hieb, merchant, Marion, South Dakota; Jacob Hieb, farming. McIntosh , South Dakota; George Hieb, factory superintendent, Stockton Box Company, Lodi, California ; Magdalena Neuharth, farming, Eureka; Katharina Mehlhaff, farming, Eureka; Emma Mehlhaff, ho usewife, Eureka; Willhelm Hieb, farming, Lodi, California; Emil Hieb, civil engineer, Unite d Air Lines, Cheyenne, Wyoming; Gustave Hieb, machine operator, box factory, Lodi, California ; Helen Holman, housewife, Denver, Colorado.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~davison/hieb.htm
http://pixel.cs.vt.edu/pub/families/permann.txt