52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Week 49 Prompt - Winter

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 49

Prompt – Winter

I am not a fan of the winter season because of the short day light hours and the snow, but mostly I dislike the cold. Lucky for me I am able to turn up the furnace to warm up whenever I want to. Have you ever thought about what it would be like if this was not the case. In one of my previous blogs I talked about the time the furnace quit on a mid January Saskatoon winter night and it was just my sister and I at home alone. By morning it was quite uncomfortably cold in the house. But still we were protected by insulated walls so it could have been much worse.

This made me think of our early Mennonite settlers and their need for shelter facing either the Russian or Canadian Prairie winters. Shelter was necessary for life existence. When the Mennonites left Prussia to go to Russia their travels were slow and even though they set out in July they had not made it to their destination before the Russian winter set in. They wintered over in a village and were billeted out to locals (I'm not sure where it was). In the spring time they set out to their new promised land.  My third great grandparents – Aron and Helena Peters nee Krahn and their children would have been among those first setting out for the new colony in 1789. On arrival the next spring they immediately set to work on homes for shelter. They were promised wood to build their homes but alas none was initially provided and their new land did not have trees. Some of them dug holes into the ground and covered them with thatch to protect them through the next winters. And sadly many did freeze to death. 

 

Over the next 100 years in Russia, the Mennonite colonies built what is known as “village - farms”. They were given long narrow plots of land about 50 meters wide and their house / barns were set back about 30 meters from the street. It became necessary to build the house and barn and shed as one unit because of these narrow lots. The benefits were protection from outside marauders (seeing how it was attached to the home). The closeness accomplished their closed communal living that they wanted. Also it allowed the equanimity of the village meaning no one home had more land and thus its uniformity prevented social stratification among the villagers. The church usually had the central position of the village. As the sons grew up, new daughter colonies would be made thus continuing with the same system of uniformity while building their population. As the Mennonites thrived they were able to replace their original structures with brick and stone making a much sturdier home.

Fast forward 100 years and my great - grandparents, David and Katharina Peters and several children are among the 8,000 plus new Mennonite immigrants arriving in Manitoba in the 1870's. Upon disembarking the men set out to find their village site while the women and children stayed behind in tents (it was summer) until the land can be found forming their much familiar village - farms and hastily constructed temporary homes to live out the coming winter or two. They used what material they had on hand which was soil, sod, grass and timber from the nearby grove of trees. These temporary shelters are more commonly known as “sod huts” or “semlins”.  

They were big enough to hold themselves. Their roofs were made of sod.  At the same time they hastily put together a shelter dug in the ground for their livestock. The sod huts were replaced by log homes and roofs of thatch. In Russia they were use to brick and stone construction and had to be taught by other non Mennonite settlers how to build them. The inside was plastered with clay and hay acting as insulation from the elements. More often than not the floors were earth.  Over the next ten years these sod homes were replaced with their well constructed timber frame house / barns and usually wooden shingles instead of thatch roofs. 

They followed the exact layout of their Russian homes. It had one room for the girls and younger children. The second room became the parents bedroom and often doubled as a living room. Towards the back was a large room for cooking and dining. Off of this was a utility room which doubled as the boy's bedroom. Between the the utility and dining room was a hallway with a door at each end. You guessed it, this led to the barn where the horses, pigs, cattle and chickens as well as feed, grain and hay were stored.

There was a chimney built above the cook-stove primarily so as to direct the sparks outside and prevent fires in their thatched or timbered roofs. Its secondary use was a room for smoking and drying their meat.

During the early years in Manitoba they had lots of wood from the nearby treed area to stoke their stove but by the 1890's it was running out. The Mennonites resorted to their manure bricks used in Russia. They prepared this by spreading moist manure and straw to a foot deep. The horses were then walked over it until flattened and well mixed. It would dry out for a few days and then cut into squares where it was then stacked as to allow further air drying. It is said that once dried it was odorless and provided a slow burn to allow for adequate fuel in their stoves. 

 

My grandfather, Franz Peters was born 1n 1876, a year after their immigration. I imagine he was born into the sod huts of the time. By the time the timber homes were being built he would have been a teenager and probably was part of the building process with his older siblings and father. It is hard for me to realize that he was born into such a primitive home. Maybe he learned to crawl on an earthen floor. He probably huddled around the cook-stove for warmth in the winter. He probably toddled among the livestock in his barn / house home. He probably helped with the making of the manure bricks. I don't know this for sure but since Mennonites liked uniformity and sticklers for routine and not changing it;  it is quite likely that he did these things. 

Wendy