Moving to the Farm

April 15, 1930  We moved with everything to the farm. 

There is something of a mystery about where the Siemens lived in Manitoba.  Cornelius and his first wife Katie and their four children, Mary, Jake, Corney, and John, had returned from Satanta, Kans., to Manitoba in September 1918, because of the Spanish influenza pandemic and because of the risk of Cornelius being drafted into the US Army during World War I.  According to Delbert Plett’s family history, the Siemens rented a farm at Blumenhoff for the winter of 1918-1919 near where the Plett parents lived.  This was near Steinbach on the East Reserve.  Then in the spring of 1919, the Siemens rented a farm at Rosenhoff near Morris, which is where Cornelius had grown up with his parents.

Tragically Katie died of breast cancer in May 1920, and the widowed Cornelius and his four children continued to live at Rosenhoff (now renamed Riverside).  By the June 1921 census, they were living at a farm a mile northwest of Rosenhoff.  This is the farm on Section 31 on the Morris River that Aunt Betty showed us at the Siemens reunion in 2014.  Based on descriptions in his 1930 diary, they continued to live at this farm until 1930.

 

Census of June 1, 1921, showing Cornelius and children Mary, Jake, Cornelius, Johnny, and a maid Lizzie Kornelsen living on Section 31, the farm that Aunt Betty showed us.

Siemens farm on Section 31.

After three failed attempts to remarry as we recounted earlier in this blog, Cornelius finally remarried to Margaret Reimer of Meade, Kans., in March 1930.  He brought his new bride back to Manitoba to meet his family and relatives and to settle his affairs in preparation for moving to Kansas.  But according to his diary, they lived at one place and had a farm at another place.  This seemed a mystery to me until I found a land map from 1923 showing that they owned another quarter of land kitty-corner to the northeast on Section 20.

In early April 1930, Cornelius and Margaret arrived in Manitoba and were living at the house on Section 31.  Then on this day, April 15, 1930, they moved to their farm, as Cornelius indicates in his diary.  I had wondered why they had a second farm and why they did not live there all the time.  But perhaps they rented the house on Section 31 and owned and farmed the land on Section 20.  Perhaps the house on Section 20 was not suitable for living in winter, or maybe they moved into a barn or some other outbuilding in April that was good enough for summer living.  I would like to examine the land records for these two sections to see when Cornelius bought and sold this land, but unfortunately it is very expensive to order land records in Manitoba.  So that will have to wait until I become wealthy.

1923 Cummins land map showing places where Siemens lived near Rosenhoff/Riverside.