Visiting in Hillsboro and Inman

March 15, 1935  For breakfast we went to Jacob Barkmans at Hillsboro.  Then we went to the hospital to visit the dear Uncle Heinrich Loewen.  He is very sick.  For dinner we went to Inman.  I went to H. E. Toews.  For night I went to Heinrich Friesens, my cousin.

The day before Cornelius and Jacob D. Friesen (1878-1962) had driven 175 miles to Clearwater, Kans., to go to the dentist.  It seems strange that they would have driven so far to go to the dentist since Meade and Fowler surely each had a dentist.  But sometimes Mennonites found a certain businessman or professional whom they trusted, and many of them would car-pool to see him.

In any case, such trips were a marvelous social opportunity, both to visit as they puttered along the highways at 30 miles per hour and then to visit friends and.  They had breakfast at Jacob G. and Anna Barkman, who were the grandparents of his future daughter-in-law Joan Barkman (future wife of his son Henry who was only three years old at the time). 

Then they visited an elderly Heinrich F. Loewen (1862-1935) in the hospital and who died a couple months later.  He was a first cousin to Cornelius’ former father-in-law, Jacob L. Plett.  Then they drove 50 miles east to Inman for dinner – I doubt they ate in a restaurant but surely at some relative’s house.  They would not have called ahead but just driven on the yard and gone to the door.  The wife would have set a couple extra plates at the table, and the family would have been glad for company. 

Then they spent the night at the Heinrich J. Friesens.  His wife Sara (Friesen) (1877-1959) was a cousin to Cornelius.  Cornelius’ father Gerhard T. Siemens had two sisters who survived to adulthood, and they had both moved to Nebraska.  Sara Friesen was the daughter of Cornelius’ aunt Helena (Siemens).  So everywhere that Cornelius went, he found relatives to visit.