Ted was a route driver for a propane gas service. He also operated a “Roto Rooter” service and was  the bartender for the local bar in Waltham, Mn. His wife Myrna was a homemaker and also upholstered furniture for others. Later in life she worked in a funeral home as a hostess.

Ted died when I was fairly young. I remember him as a tall, muscular man who was very particular with the projects he undertook. I remember him building his own home and he would use a knife to mark the cuts as a pencil left too wide of a mark to do the precision cutting he demanded.

In his early years Hank went to California with his wife Margaret and he mowed lawns for people. He returned to New Ulm, Mn. and worked for a monument company selling grave markers for most of his life. He was an avid hunter and fisherman still active at the age of 95. Later in life in moved to Rochester, Mn. and was a caretaker for the Twins Motel across from St. Marys Hospital. Hank and his wife Margaret now live by their daughter in Janesville, Mn.

Hank and Margaret have always been special to me because they treat me as if I am their only son. They always call or send a card on the birthdays and special events of our family. When I call I can sense that everything else is put on the back burner until we have had a long chat. When I was a young child I was having a hard time learning to walk and as children would do would have to hang onto something to get around. Finally Hank couldn’t take it any longer and placed my small hands on my coverall suspenders and told me to hang on to them and away I went. That story has been in the family for years, and a lot of steps have been taken since but it all started with my Uncle Hank.

Herman worked at the Hormel hog processing plant in the early 1940′s. He built a barn outside of Waltham, Mn. where he raised chickens and a few cattle. He also owned a gas station in Waltham, Mn. where he made wagons and sold them. He had a lawn mower blade sharpening business for a while and he also made a machine to clean oil filters but the timing was wrong as disposable oil filters soon hit the market. Later in life he bought machinery and trucked them to Northern Mn. and Arizona for resale. His wife Loretta was a housekeeper for Alec Decker for many years in Waltham. He played the harmonica and was an avid camper and fisherman. Most of the Paters made their own campers when camping first became the rage. We would go camping as a group and when darkness hit you could hear Herman across the water playing his harmonica as he fished. I remember him as a man with a very friendly smile and he hunted deer until late in his life.

Francis was the first child born in the U.S.. She married Harold Thiesse who was a farmer in the Little Rock, Iowa area. After the death of her husband she moved to South Dakota to be with her children. She was a homemaker on the farm and helped with all the chores of farm work.

I remember Francis as a very hard working and thrifty woman. We were always welcome at the farm which was only about 20 miles from where I lived and many times I went hunting with her son.

Charles was the first son and 3rd child of Gerrit and Gerritje and was 3 months old when he came to America. Because he was my father it makes this post a little easier to write. Dad was an inventive type of person and drove truck most of his life after a short time as a mechanic for a carnival. He invented a saw that would saw off tree stumps below the ground and removed many stumps in the Worthington area. He made his own riding lawn mower which was the talk of the neighborhood. He even made a short foray into making a perpetual engine. I still believe to this day he could have accomplished it if he had the tools required to overcome the friction. The design of that engine weighs heavily on my mind to this day. Many of his days were spent making motorized vehicles that I could sneak out and ride on the streets around our neighborhood. He was a gentile man but large in life that didn’t back down from trouble. I only remember him getting mad at me one time which was a miracle by itself. You have to realize that I have been shot by a pistol and a hunting bow and arrow and have been in numerous car and motorcycle accidents. Thankfully he was very calm about the whole thing. My mother although she did not have the calm attributes of my father is still alive at the age of 97 and doing very well but time is wearing on her mind. She was a housewife most of her life but also worked in the chicken processing plant for a long time. In my father’s retirement years he had a small gasoline engine repair shop and was known very well in the area for his work with antique engines. Dad was never much of a hunter. He had no problem with the killing of animals for food but early in my life he gave me a pellet gun. I was so proud of a blackbird that I had shot and proceeded to show it to my father. As we both stared down at the dead bird he said something to me that stayed with me forever. “If you can’t eat it why did you kill it?” I had a pigeon that I had trained to come to me and sit on my shoulder whenever I called to it. Dad was going to town with his car and the pigeon flew along beside the vehicle and when dad stopped to try to shoo it home it landed on the car roof. Dad managed to chase it off but then it sat down in the middle of the road. A car came along and ran over the bird. Dad was broken hearted for a long time over the loss of the bird. I am sure it was one of the hardest things he ever had to tell me. My friends called him the gentle giant. He spent his final years in a nursing home with both legs removed. It was the final indignity for a man who never asked for help in his life. I was more than proud to call him my father. I can only hope in my life I can do enough for my children so that they have the same respect for me.

Hattie was the second child and was about 1 1/2 years old when she came to America. She was only 36 years old when she died. Her brother Hank tells me that she died from a rheumatic fever type condition which was no doubt made worse  by working in the chicken processing plant in Worthington as the damp conditions affected her lungs. Her husband lived 26 years longer and died when he was about 68 years old. He was a truck driver most of his life. Hattie passed away before I was born but from pictures I have seen she was a very beautiful young woman. Hank,  her husband lived in his later years in a trailor house in the back yard of his daughter and son-in-laws home. I never had the chance to meet him so this will probably be the shortest posting by me of a child of Gerrit Pater.

My aunt Gertie was the oldest child of the Gerrit Pater family. She was 3 years of age when the trip to America was made. I can only imagine after traveling a few hundred miles with my grandchildren in the back seat with all of their modern electronic toys to keep them occupied what it must have been like to keep track of a 3-year-old, a 1 1/2-year-old and a 6 month old baby on the trip to the U.S. You have to realize that they were actually serving as ballast for the craft and traveled in the lowest part of the ship with the cattle and wagons. Something about those hardships must have remained in her mind over all of her years as evidenced by the life she led. She led a simple life as a homemaker and was probably the most religious of all of the children. She also kept records of the family as to their births and marriages and deaths. Her husband Frank died quite a few years before she did and she lived many years in the High Rise Apartments in Worthington. Her husband was a quiet and thrifty man and spent most of his life working at a chicken processing plant in the local area. He would not have been remembered by any of the relatives as a hunter or gun owner, but he was the one that took me along hunting in my younger years. We marched through many a cornfield and weedpatch together. Gertie was involved very much in the Presbyterian church and was a personal favorite of my young son at the time and many times he would go and visit her at her home. The first 4 children of Gerrits family stayed close to Worthington, MN. while the others returned to the Waltham, MN. area where they lived previously because of job opportunities at the packing house in Albert Lea, Mn.

The following posts will be tales of the lives of each of the members of the Pater family. The first post will be on Gerrit Pater as related to me by two of his remaining sons and a little of my own recollection of the family.

 

Before they came to America in July of 1909, Dad (Gerrit) worked on the railroad. I think it was in Germany. After coming here he worked as a farm hand near Sioux Center, Iowa. He rented a farm in Iowa in an area called the Bottom. He also rented a farm from a Pete Johannes near Ashton, where I was born.  At my age of 4, we moved to Waltham and farmed there for seven or eight years at which time Dad sold out and retired to Hull, Iowa. We lived there for about 5 years and then moved to Rushmore where they lived until his death.

As far as hobbies are concerned, he didn’t really have any other than raise 12 kids. When we lived near Waltham he would go to town once a week to get a shave at the local barber shop and then go to the pool  hall and played cards with the boys. I guess back in those days it was a matter of survival and hobbies were not in the picture.

Just finished talking to Marvin & Katie on the phone and Marvin did’nt have any more to add to the above so hope this is what you are looking for. —– Original Message by Lawrence Pater, Gerrits youngest son. Marvin, mentioned above is the 2nd oldest living son.

Dad taught us all to hunt at a very young age. Ammunition was used wisely and sparingly and we were all given one .22 caliber cartridge and we had an old single shot rifle. We were expected to shoot carefully and bring home a rabbit, squirrel or some other edible fare for the table. (Reported by Henry Pater, Gerrits oldest surviving son.)

I remember a little of my grandfather but in those days the men of the family were the authoritive figure in the household. This trait has been passed down through the generations and has managed to survive the ravages of time although the later generation has given up more and more control to their spouses. I remember my grandmother more as she lived in my home town for quite a while as a widow and I would stop by after school for a snack and conversation. Later she moved to Waltham to be near her other children. She had her own little home and I can remember vividly her reading me stories out of a Dutch newspaper and her respect for the Queen of the Netherlands even after all of those years. I will always remember her as a loving woman who loved to caress you in her arms and seal the feeling with a hot piece of home-made bread.

They are buried in a small cemetery not far from my home. The home that they lived in at Rushmore is about 1 mile away from their final resting place. The wife and I place a flower every Memorial Day on their grave as I remember that due to their bravery in coming to the United States I am blessed by what I have today. 

I might even mention, that I know where that single shot rifle mentioned above is resting today, I hope my son realizes the importance of this piece of history. As far as passing on family resemblances I think my father Charles (Kors) and his oldest sister Gertie (Gerritje) bear the most resemblance to their mother and the rest of the children have the features of their father.

Thanks to Gerrit and Gerritje I have the basis for 12 more posts. I will try to write my views of each of their children and how they have evolved in their lives. These posts on the family will not be the views of their children, they will be the views I have had of them in my life.

One thing that will be noticed many times as you read the posts as they appear is that the children of Gerrit & Gertie were innovative, as shown by their building of their own campers, homes, their hobbies and the type of jobs they held. Some of them reflect the personality of the family as careers in sales and interaction with others is shown. Each of the people that I will be writing about has affected my life in one way or another. They have molded my very being from being able to solve my own problems, creating what is needed on my own and placing a extreme value on the importance of family. Whether those that know me like what they see or not is not of value, what is of value is how each and every one of my uncles and aunts has influenced me. I place each and every one of them on a very high pedestal.

Yes, sometimes it seems that things seemingly fall out of the sky into your lap. I had posted earlier about my wifes’ genealogy. All information was done previously by a relative and passed among the people that wished to have a copy. Of course we got a copy not really knowing why as we had no interest in genealogy at that time. I was caught up on my genealogy work and was starting to think about entering this data into my genealogy program. That’s when the thought hit me that I really needed a full blown program instead of the one that I downloaded for free from the Mormon website. Pro-Gen is one that is used overseas quite a bit and the Nobles County Genealogy Group also has one that as a member you can get a savings on so that might be my first avenue to explore. So I think I will wait for transfer of data untill I figure out what to do about the problem at hand.

As for the pennies from heaven. My nephew has reportedly the genealogy of my mothers side of the family but he has to find time to get it into a cd or some other medium and then he promises I will get a copy. So now my wife has the family history of her father and it is in my hot little hands. In the meantime I have received an e-mail from a cousin of mine and in it he passes on a request from a person wanting to complete the genealogy of my mothers family to use as a present for an anniversary of his parents. Of course I fill out all of the family information he is missing and through this meeting he promises to send me a copy when it is finished.

So there you have it, sometimes genealogy takes a strange pathway only to arrive at my door with two different sources of my mothers genealogy and a history of my father in laws genealogy. I keep looking out the door and in my e-mail and mailbox for the history of my mother in laws family to come out of the blue.

I know I expect a lot but the waiting begins.