Undaunted mother Mines tamed prairieby Irene Scott and Nathan Arneal During this centennial year of Old Settlers, we are featuring a strong amount of history. You’ll see signs all over town highlighting sites of significance to North Bend’s history. And if you venture out to Woodland Cemetery, you’ll get to meet some of the area’s real old settlers. That may sound a little morbid, so let me explain. We are placing placards around the cemetery telling the stories of some of the pioneers and influential people buried there.
Today in this space, I want to introduce you to one of those pioneers, an amazing woman named Margaret Elizabeth Mines. I use all three of her names because apparently she went by Elizabeth, and that’s the name on her gravestone. However, in the story below she’s referred to as Margaret. The story below is lifted from a tetralogy of columns written by Irene Scott in the North Bend Eagle in July 1937 titled “Dear Old Timer.” Irene, who passed away in 1981, had an amazing way with words, as you will see. I have summarized and paraphrased a few things below, but I am leaving the bulk of this in Irene’s voice. (By the way, to avoid any confusion due to the double byline, this first part you’ve been reading is written by Nathan. As previously alluded to, Irene no longer works for the Eagle.) Irene (Hamilton) Scott also happens to by the wife of my first cousin three times removed, Elmer Scott, according to ancestry.com. Margaret Elizabeth Sorgenfrei married William Henry Mines on April 2, 1862. Soon the newly minted Mines family (spelled Miens at the time) left Germany for a three-week crossing to America, leaving on William’s 31st birthday. They arrived in New York City March 25, 1864, strangers in a strange land, but well content, with 30 American dollars to their name. William has served as an apprentice to a brick mason in Germany and got a job making bricks in New York. Neither could speak a word of English and they were expecting a baby in three months. The Mineses made their first American home in the midst of a settlement of good Irish women who saw her condition at once and took her right into their hearts. She gradually picked up English, with her natural German accent strangely mingling with the broadest of Irish brogue. Soon little William Junior arrived and soon after that, the family moved to Michigan where Margaret had family. There, four more children were born. When the youngest was three months old, they decided to move to Nebraska. Mr. Mines when first to secure a job in Fremont. Soon Margaret followed, writing William a letter telling him when her train would arrive. When Margaret Mines and her little brood arrived in Fremont on that eventful day in the late ‘60s, William was not there to greet her. Set adrift in a strange town with none too much money and five children didn’t daunt her, and it wasn’t long before she decided on a course of action. She led her children into the depot and left the oldest, William Junior, in charge. Next she chartered a taxi and set out for the foundry where he worked. Can’t you just imagine his surprise when she walked in on him at his work, for he hadn’t gotten the letter she had written to tell him of her coming and wasn’t expecting her at all. Satisfied that he was safe, she next had her taxi man take her to a real estate office where she rented a house and from there she went to a second-hand store where she bought furniture to make a home. Then she went back to the depot for her children and luggage and together they went home. The first home sweet home of Margaret Sorgenfrei Mines in Nebraska lasted just one year when once more she ventured out along on the pioneer trail with her five children, leaving her husband in Fremont at his job so that the wherewithal to live might still be theirs. In those days the new homestead law in Nebraska made it possible for anyone, man or woman, married or single, to acquire 80 acres of land simply by putting a given number of acres under cultivation and by erecting some sort of dwelling on the land in which the homesteaders had to live for five years. Margaret Mines decided to become a homesteader. They found a likely looking 80 north of the Maple Creek in the Pleasant Valley neighborhood, adjoining the homestead of Fritz Rodewald. [The Mines’ homestead acreage is on the west side of the section that now contains St. Matthew’s Lutheran church, about four miles west of Webster]. There they built a little sod house and the mother and her five children settled down for their five-year term of self-imposed separation from their father. During all that time they only saw him once at Christmas and once during each summer, for the only means he had of getting to them was the time-honored one of placing one foot before the other until a destination was reached. On one such trip to be with his family at Christmas, Father Mines arrived with his ears frozen solid. Read the full story in the print or e-edition. <<Back to the front page |
