From Flowers and Rock candy to "Land! Land!" the Promised Land!

I read my (*MMM) Great-Grandmother's younger-life story as told by herself in 1990 in a tape recording. This was a year before she passed away at the age of 96. I do not know how many of our family members knew of this tape. It was a great surprise to myself just within the last couple years. My cousin phonetically wrote down everything our (*MMM)Gr-Grandmother said in the recording. In some places, she seemed to be thinking allowed, so for on-line reading ease, I have edited and interpreted some parts of the story (the "raw" story is available among family members). Although I never had the chance to meet her, I love her story. She ends it quite abruptly, but this is because she was sharing her young-age life story. The actual recording is now missing. My cousin who wrote this down and passed it along, did a great thing for the family. Those who never new (*MMM)Great-Gramma can, at the very least, cherish this story in their family memory books.

This is her story (edited, summarized and quoted for easier on-line reading - omitting family names) :

"I was born in Holland," she begins, "which was below sea level. Holland is a man-made land. They had to bring land up out of the sea and that was a very hard job to that. They got rocks from England and they put some straw and some junk on there and they did that until the were above sea level. And then they had to pump them all empty, I don't know what kind of pumps they had but they had some." She talks about how the earth was full of clay in the pumped area. They couldn't work with the clay-soil right away, so they let it set for a year. Then they tried to work the soil. They got a "big piece of ground" and she say's, "that's the way they did with the whole lot of the Netherlands then they always have big dikes around it and they protect the land from the sea." She lived right on an old dike. One side was farm land and the other side was the pasture land. "When the Spring came, on the side where the grass was it was all covered with flowers, beautiful flowers. There was Buttercups and Daisies and purple flowers and it was so pretty - the whole field, it was covered with flowers." One of Gr-Gramma's chores was to get the groceries. Her Mother would send her to town to get the groceries. She had to go through that flowery pastureland. Speaking of the groceries she would get, she says, "Not so much never, just a little bit of rice and a little bit of sugar and some of that rock candy that they put in the coffee and maybe some other stuff to put in the coffee and a loaf of bread, too, I think." "...That was all we ever really got so it was not such a big basketful because Ma had a big garden, always. So we had a lot to eat."

When sending her to get groceries, Gr-Gramma tells us that her Ma never said they had to hurry, just "get back by dinner" so she would quick get the groceries and she says, "it was so lovely that I would just lay down in the grass and I'd look up at the clouds and they were big white clouds." On the way back she couldn't stand the temptation and always "snooped some of the rock candy." When she got back Ma would say, "So - You snooped a Snoochty, huh?" Her mother never punished her for it. "She was a good old mother," she tells us. She said, "I knew it was wrong but I did it anyways but that was in my childhood days and I was only 12 years old."

This is "Ma"

(my Gr-Gr Grandmother)
(*MMMM).
This photo was taken
much later in life, after they
arrived in America.

Then she says her folks decided they wanted to go to America. "Pa, he wanted to go all the time already, but Ma said that she would not want to go so far away while her mother was still living yet." But then her Grandma died and Ma consented to go to America. They sold all their belongings and the property too.
They left sometime around April. "Ma packed two great big trunks and they were full of wool blankets." She says, "Then she stuffed some things in there; dishes I guess and her tea set and a sewing machine." She goes on, "...she stuffed those things between the blankets and they went to America with us." She says they sat in the train for a day in Holland. "I had lived in [...] [Groningen] where there was a top and a bottom..." I believe she means that Groningen is in the NE and they caught the boat in the SW of Holland - Rotterdam.
At the boat, the family met a couple boys who were helping them get to America. "They worked so hard to take us and get us there." After leaving the port, she says they crossed the North Sea to South Hampton, England. This is where they boarded the boat to America "So we went on that big boat but it was like a town almost. There was a lot of people and there was a first class and a second class and a third class and I think we were in the second class, but it wasn't the baddest class because the third class people they had to go way downstairs - that where their cabins was and we were about the middle." She goes on, "There a place where we could see the sea and it wasn't that bad..." She says that the sea became "real rough" They got hit back and forth when they were "on a bump," This was very tough on them and soon "we were sick and we had to throw up everything we ate almost." It took about three days for the kids to recover but her Ma was sick during the whole trip. She says it was a blessing that Pa didn't get sick. He didn't have time to be sick because he had to get things for Ma all the time. We were on the ocean for about ten days. At last they were hungry again so so they ate "all at once."
"Land! Land!" Everyone went on the top deck where she says, "We could see the harbor and the Statue of Liberty." She and her family were so happy! "Oh, we were all so thrilled to step on the Promised Land, you know, and we were so thrilled to see the Statue of Liberty." They landed and all had to get off the boat. "The whole bunch [of people]," she says, "chased off ahead of them and then we had to be examined, the whole lot of us did." They all did pretty well except her brother. "He had such a little eye and he was sick all the time," she says, "and they looked him over and over because they didn't wasn't no [want any] sick people here." "Mother," she describes, "was so worried that we'd be sent back to Holland but then he passed again finally and they let him through and boy was she glad." Then they could go on to the train. They were on the train to Iowa for three days. They ate some "ship crackers" they had taken from Holland. "That was all we ate," she says. But then they bought some apples. "We could buy them [apples] right in the train and so that's what we ate for three days."
When they arrived at the Orange City train station, her two brothers were there. Each with a buggy, but a buggy couldn't hold all of them (they were nine at the time). Those who rode in the buggy crowded in the back storage area. "We children we had to walk the whole ways on the railroad tracks because the[y] went right past our house." Her brothers told them where to go. "Boy, that was such a little house," she says. "Just a little living room and a little kitchen and the bedroom, it was small too." There was an upstairs attic. This is where the children slept. "We didn't have much furniture either. Just a stove so that Ma could bake bread," she goes on, "the bread was so hard we couldn't hardly eat it but that was the stove's fault that wasn't Mother's fault."
In the summer when it was warm, her Ma had to "do parasols" (make parasols?). "We always had parasols in Holland because it rained a lot and we had to go to church and we had to walk." Her Ma was hanging the the parasols by the chimney. She took one down and found a little brown animal. "Oh! What's that?" She took it along to the field. Gr-Gramma's brother said, "Oh, that's a muskrat." "Oh," Ma said. Her Ma was so worried about the muskrats being in the house that they fumigated it. The straw was burned and she says, "that made a funny smell that we had to get out of the house." Those "critters" were always in the house. She says, "There was nothing we could do about it." They lived there for two years. Her Pa wanted to farm for himself on his own piece of land. They finally found a farm tended to be kind of shady so the corn always wilted. She says they "didn't like that so well either, but then we lived there for two years." She describes this house as very small also. "Just a kitchen and a living room and a couple little bedrooms upstairs," she says. Then they were able get a farm west of there, "So the boys decided to rent that and that's where I spent the rest of my young days." She continues, "We lived there until I got married." "I married ----(*MMP). I was about 21, I guess. And then of course I was always at the house and that is the end of my story."


-I have been told that when (*MMM)Gr-Gramma was 16, she wanted to go to church, so she did. Her brothers and sisters never went to church but one daughter of a sister converted.

*see the post titled "The CODE" for an explanation