Johann Ludwig (August) ROEMER

                   John August Roemer was born 20 April 1894 on the Roemer farmstead in Ridgeley township, Scribner, NE. He was baptized, attended Sunday School, was confirmed, and later married in the St. John's Ridgeley Lutheran CHurch. He attended grade school at District #12, from which he graduated  in 1908. He enrolled in Scribner High School, though after completing the  ninth grade he  decided to remain  home to assist with the farm work.

It was customary f or early settlers to encourage their children to help with farm chores, such as gathering eggs, at an early age. They followed the counsel of the Apostle  Paul: "Anyone unwilling to work should not eat," (1 Thess. 3:10) When  John  was eleven years old and Bertha a few years  younger, Hattie instructed them where the hens had nests. They were in the chicken barn, on the hay mow, under the corncrib, granary and machine shed. One day they decided to put some of the eggs into the twine box on the back side of the grain binder. They continued this for four or five days. Then they took part of the eggs to the house and asked for another container. Their mother was pleased that the hens had reached a high level of production.

John's mother owned a small flock of sheep among which was a ram. When the boys carried a bushel basket full of shelled corn to the hogs and bent over to pour it into the trough or on the ground, the ram came running to give them a butt and  sent them sprawling on the ground. However  John knew how to handle him. When he saw the ram coming, he took a handful of corn out of the basket and  let him eat it out of his hand or scattered it on the ground. This kept the ram busy so John could feed the pigs without being attacked. One mornikng the ram had Bill Melcher hiding behind  a  leg of the windmill.  Bill picked up a 2x4 with which to clobber the ram over the head. He raised the lumber and aimed it at the ram's head. When the two were about to make contact, the ram moved his head, the 2x4 struck the windmill  leg a violent blow, and broke into many pieces.

One day John brought home a medium s ized tricky saddle horse. He put on thesaddle,  mounted, and rode  out of the barn. The horse immediately moved to a low place in the yard, lowered its head, got down on its knees, unloded the rider, scrambled around and stripped the saddle off over its head. Then John took the horse and saddle back into the barn, reset  the saddle, and tightened the girth. One day when  Otto Schallenberg, mounted on a buckskin, and John, on the trickster hourse, planned to ride around the section. All went well until they came to the culvert sest of Ridgeley Lutheran Church. The trickster walked into the culvert, put  his  head down, got on his knees, unloaded John, and  again stripped the saddle off over its head. Then the horse returned to the road, stared at John for a few moments, then started for home. John picked up the 50 pound saddle and walked home across the field, a bit over a mile. He was completely exhausted when he got there.


Plot 34D
                  

                   Bertha grew up around Scribner. Her father passed away when she was ten years old. He had Bright's Disease, which is kidney failure.She walked to grade school in the country 1 1/2 miles. A coupleof winters she went to confirmation school at St. John's Ridgeley Lutheran CHurch in the country. She went to school until the 8th grade in the country school. She always helped do chores even at an early age. She liked to be out of doors. She helped milk cows and take care of the horses. She would even help pick corn when they got home from school; byt hen it was getting dark and time to do chores.  Then in  the morning they unloaded their load of corn before they went to school, plus doing the morning chores. Very  seldom they got to go along to town. They went to town in horse and wagon. Their folks went and they would bring one rack of candy for all  of them that would have to last a whole week's time. She would help churn cream into butter, this their folks would take to sell along with some eggs or trade for groceries. They either kept the cream in cans down in the cave or in the "Summer Kitchen" which was west of the house in a tank where water ran in one end and out the other. The Summer  Kitchen  was a building where they cooked and baked in the summer time, that way the house didn't get too hot. Theycooked on a cook stove that burned "pig pen cobs" and wood. Her mother  made all their  clothes, knitted their socks and mittens in the  evenings by kerosene lamp sitting by  the heating stove. Their Grandma Romer (Eleanora Römer  geb. Wißner) lived with them and while she was peeling potatoes or other little things she would tell them stories. Her mother even raised geese that they  butchered  and had at Christmas time; that was a tradition. She also raised ducks and chickens that she hatched under hens. She used to help take the ducks down to the creek to swim, north of the barn. Until the mud turtles got them, pulled them  under the water by the feet, drowning them  and then eating them. During World War I there was a bad flu going around that a lot of people  died from. Some of her family got this flu and were really sick with it. She somehow did not get it so she did the chores.

Bertha loved to read and she would  sit up at night and read, read, read, and read some more.  They only got a weekly paper and it was in German.  She taught  herself to read German. She would read anything she could find. She always wanted to further her education. She  had heard of York  Business College inYork, NE,  but that  sounded like a long way off. But she wrote to them and during the winter months she went  to school, staying with either a family or in a boarding  house; part of her board and room was to keep the furnace fired up. While in York she visited a different church each Sunday. The Westphalen family, neighbors of theirs in Scribner, had relatives who lived south of York. This cousin knew Bertha was gong to York college and invinted her to a party at their home.  She could ride  the train to Fairmont, not knowing  that  she could have gotten off at McCool Jct. where the train switched to go to different towns. They  came and got her at Fairmont. At this party there were two brothers, Harley and Wallace Fassnacht. She took  a liking to the younger one, Wallace, who was more her age. They went with each other  and became engaged to marry. Then Uncle Sam was calling in young men to join the Army for WWI. He took his training at Camp Funston, KS. Then he was sent to France. He was over there for several months when she received word that he was killed while out on the battle field. Life still goes on, and Harley, Wallace's  older brother, asked  her to go with him. On March 23, 1921, they  were married at the Ridgeley Lutheran Church. Her brother, John Roemer, was the best man and Louise Graham,  Harley's cousin, was the maid of honor, and her niece, Irene Schellenberg, was the flower girl.

They  moved to  Harley's folks' place, 6 miles northwest of Fairmont, NE, and his folks moved to town. Every March a farmer hired his hired man to work for  him. The hired man lived with them.

On July 4, 1922, Harley  and Bertha had their first child, Wallace Alvin. Ten months later he became sick. The doctor from York came to the house and operated on  him on the dining room table. He had telescopic bowels. He passed  away on May 25, 1923.

When  Byrdene was born, "Wiese," a distant cousin from Germany, was staying with them, helping out, as she  was  a nurse. [This was undoubtedly Louisa Römer, Bertha's first cousin once removed,  who probably  came to the United States with her nephew, Karl Römer, in 1923.  Karl lived in Chicago. The Nebraska Roemers remember that "Wiese" came to Nebraska from Illinois.] She could speak only German; Harley could not understand German and neither could  the attending physician. Bertha was having problems and has stopped breathing. "Wiese"  was  trying to get the men's attention, but was having a terrible time making them understand. Finally they noticed Bertha, and the doctor got  her breathing again.

During the 1930s when times were so hard, Bertha and Harley made  do on the cream and egg money. Everything dried up and blew away during those  years. The Russian  thistles, or tumbleweeds, thrived during those  eyars.

In 1934 since the old house was in such a bad state of  repair, they built a new house. The main carpenter was a Danish neighbor. They found a misplaced cattle check,  which was several years old, in the old house. They were able to cash the check, which was  for about $1, 300, and it paid the cost of the labor in building the new house. They tried raising turkeys to help out with the income. The grasshoppers were so plentiful that the turkeys were hurded into the pasture and chased grasshoppers. The money from the turkey was used to buy  a furnace for the new house. It cost around $100.

In  later years Bertha raised many ducks and geese.  One year she raised 80 ducklings from one pair of ducks. She had a big  write-up in the York News Times with  pictures and all. Bertha enjoyed  nature, and especially taking a trip to Keokuk, Iowa, when she was 80 years old, to search for geodes, a crystal rock formation, along the Mississippi River. She slept with the others that night in a tent at one of the parks. Another trip she  enjoyed was through Eastern Texas with some neighbors, were trucking bees. She was hospitalized in May of 1978 and died June 11, 1978 with cancer of the pancreas.


St. John's Lutheran Church, Ridgeley, Dodge Co, NE:
Taufen 1896
Pathen: Bertha Spiegelberg, Bertha Keinen, Hein. Westphalen
                  

                   St. John's Lutheran Church, Ridgeley, Dodge Co, NE
Beerdigung 1900, No. 1
Heinrich Emil, son of Johann Roemer and his wife Louise geb. Schwed, born 4 Nov 1899, baptized 26 Dec 1899, died on 19 Jan 1900 and was buried on 20 Jan in the same year.


Plot 35H
Gravestone:
Emil Roemer
1899
                  

                   I went to grade schjool, which included the 9th and 10th grades, at District #12. I attended 11th and 12th grades in Scribner, staying at the banker's place during the week. I walked to school in Scribner on Monday morning  during the 11th grade. In the 12th grade, I  drove a Model T Ford, 1918.

All the water we  used in the house we carried in,  and carried out. We even carried our bath water, which we took on Saturday nights in a round wash tub, and water for washing out clothes in and back out. In the evening Mother would bring a sack of feathers, geese or duck, put them on the kitchen table, and we  would strip the feathers off the quill.  These were used for making pillows and feather-beds. On Saturday Mother and Hattie (Melcher) would  bake cakes and pies, etc. Then on Sunday afternoon we would have company or  go to visit the neighbors. Some of us younger ones would go on a picnic or to  boat riding in Fremont.

Around  June 16,  1916,  w e had a hail storm that wiped out our crops. Fifty  years later another hail storm hit our place, June 16, 1944. Crops were a total loss again.

In the fall of 1927 I and a friend went to Missouri. There I met Emma Peters. We corresponded back and forth. A year later,  on Sunday, December 2, 1928, we were married in the Trinity Lutheran Church in Alma, Missouri. We moved on the place where we live now, in the old house. The legal description is Northeast 1/4   23-19-6,  Ridgeley Township, Dodge Co.  NE.

On June 11,  1944, it really rained a lot, a round 15-16 inches. The Pebble Creek camp up and went out of its banks even  before morning. Some of the houses were floating away by the Fairgrounds. It came early, around 5:00 in the morning, so there were no lives lost. For several years  there were bad snow storms and  so much wind. They would open the roads one day, and the  next day it was blown shut. The men would all get in a wagon and rubber-wheeled tractor and would go to town to get groceries. They didn't follow the road; they would go through the fields. In the dry years of the 30s  the dust storms were terrible. Some places dust blew so much that you could not see anything except the top of the fences. When they planted crops several years, the grasshoppers were so bad. They moved in and the sky was full. It almost looked like clouds in front of the sun. We spread grasshopper poison in the alfalfa field with a dust pan. We mixed the poison with bran and then put it in a washtub and put it in the trunk of our car and drove through the alfalfa fields to save  the alfalfa seed. It made 10 bushel of seed an acre at $10 per bushel.


Plot 52E


St. John's Lutheran Church, Ridgeley, Dodge Co, NE:
Taufen 1901
Pathen: Louis Benner, Anna Gerke, Ida Brunke
                  

                   Otto Theodor Roemer was born on the farm where  he lived all his life. His father died when Otto was only four years old. He farmed for his mother until her death in 1943. In July 1941 Otto went to Minnesota to work in the harvest, as  the Nebraska  crops  were very  poor  that year,  InMinnesota  he met Gertrude Steinke while he was working on the farm where she  was staying. They wrote to each other for about a year and  then became engaged to be married. On August 12, 1942, they were married by Pastor Herman Joens at Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church near Scribner.

Otto had heart disease for about a year before passing away in 1954.


Plot 53G