A Winter's Tale from Sioux County*

Unlike many other early Sioux County immigrant families, the Mennings, so says Charlie Dyke, had some significant bucks when they left the Netherlands.  That relative wealth did not mean their passage to the new country was a piece of cake.  They were still in the North Sea when their ship collided with another.  Both sunk, and, along with them, most all of the Menning’s worldly possessions.

 

Blessedly, some freighter picked them up, brought them to Grigsby, England, from which port they left again, arriving eventually in Quebec.  Their next stop was Waupun, Wisconsin; but their true destination was Sioux County, Iowa, and a chunk of land about two miles east and one mile north of Orange City, homestead land just inside the Holland Township line.

When the Mennings got here, like the other early settlers, their first abode was literally dug out of rich Sioux County earth.  Dyke doesn’t say what the Mrs. Menning thought of mud floors, but you can guess it didn’t take a half century for them to get a frame house.  Their first was a roughshod palace—14 feet by 14 feet.  Welcome to the New World.

 

But soon enough they had friends, good friends—the Schuts—from down the road a piece.  One winter’s day the Schuts came over for a little friendly neighborliness, two families—just imagine!-- packed joyfully into a domicile 14 by 14.  That’s right neighborly.  But there’s more to the story.

Neither family had weather.com on their iPad, so when a big storm blew up out of nowhere that afternoon, they were left out in the cold, so to speak.  Now the Mennings had a kind of lean-to just big enough for their team and their two precious milk cows.  The Schuts had taken a wagon over, so they had team as well and were more than a little wary of letting those good horses out in the storm.  Alas, there was no room in the lean-to.

They had no choice but to make do, so Mr. Menning took control by putting the Schut’s horses into their make-shift barn.  Then he grabbed more than a few armfuls of straw and littered the house before leading their two precious milk cows into what was, of course, the only shelter available, the house.  Charley Dyke says that before those beefy bovines got in, they made sure whatever foodstuff happened to be around were safely stowed on the other side of  that Great Room ( 14 x 14).

So there they were—two wooden-shoed families and two gracious milk cows, all warm and snuggly in a crackerbox that was, that winter’s night, the only port in the storm.  Once Mrs. Menning milked those two friendly beasts and then pulled out some precious chocolate, the whole gathering had one enjoyable evening together in a warm house, I’m sure, drinking chocolate milk and singing their favorite psalms, an image that is, I think, something out of early Van Gogh.

Charlie Dyke doesn’t say whether the beasts knew Dutch or the psalms, so whether or not they sung with, no one will ever know.

What is clear—what is for sure—is that those immigrant folks found a way to make do.

Just another tale of neighborliness from Sioux County’s early years. 

And those were the rich ones.
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Source: Charles Dyke, The Story of Sioux County. This post first published here February 13, 2012.