Eden
Eden Township, Marshall County, South Dakota, USA
ST MICHAEL CEMETERY, NUTLEY TOWNSHIP, DAY COUNTY,
SOUTH DAKOTA
from a cemetery leaflet
By Sylvia Lams Jaspers
© May 22, 2002
A history of St Michael Cemetery must also be a history of
the people who settled the area and spent their lives here.
Sometimes those lives were hard and brief, but the hope of a
better future for themselves and their children kept them
looking forward. Most local settlers had first come from
Europe and settled in Minnesota - many of them in Stearns
County. That county was right along the route of the official
trail to Fort Wadsworth (later Fort Sisseton) which had been
established in 1864 in what is now Marshall County South Dakota.
Leading from St. Cloud on the Mississippi River, this military
trail was probably marked, as was usual, with four foot tall
mounds about every half mile - you were always able to see the
one in front of you and the one behind. Whether it was
overcrowding in Minnesota, the lure of free land, the glowing
advertising of the railroad companies or just the pioneering
spirit, they were drawn to follow that trail - across Indian
land to the hills and prairie beyond.
Webster, to the south, was a railroad town. Fort Sisseton
strung a telegraph line in 1881 and had a stage coach operating
round trips to Webster six days a week beginning in 1882. It
is generally acknowledged that, in 1883, Frank Schlekewy and
his wife Elizabeth Unger Schlekewy and their five children were
the first white family to settle in the odd triangle of land
left between the military reservation and the Sisseton-Whapeton
Sioux Indian Reservation. On January 2, 1885, their son, Frank
Jr. was the first white child born in the area - in their 16'
by 16' sod house in section 34 of Eden Township. (Marshall
County did not even exist until later that year.) Fainily
stories have it that the baby's diapers froze on his little
bottom, but the sod house remained their home for several
years. The Indian people were very friendly to them, offering
them corn and potato seed (?) for their garden. Of course, as
all the early settlers did, they burned buffalo or cow chips
and twists of slough hay in their stove for cooking and for
heat. Their home was also a wayside inn for other homesteading
families following the Wadsworth Trail.
These were progressive times. By 1887, only a quarter mile
north of their soddy, there was a townsite on their land with
a store operated by Waletich and Plut and John Katschover, a
saloon, and a church - and beside the church, a cemetery.
Although Frank Jr, Mary and Lizzie Schlekewy were born there
and survived, Tiny Carl and Henry and George were all laid to
rest beside the clapboard church. This unnamed church was
served only by itinerant priests - often missionaries who had
come to teach the Indians. In those days, priests did not build
churches. The people built churches in hope that a priest would
come. There was, as yet, no formal church organization in
Dakota Territory when Martin Marty, the Swiss-born former Abbot
of St. Meinrad in Indiana, had come to serve on the Standing Rock
Reservation in 1876. He had been inspired as a student by the
work of Belgian-born Father Pierre Jean DeSmet and yearned to
follow him. Martin Marty's prodigious efforts as a missionary did
not go unnoticed. In 1879 he was named Titular Bishop of Tiberias
and Vicar Apostolic of the Vicariate of Dakota. In 1889, when
South Dakota became a state, Marty became Bishop of the Diocese
of Sioux Falls.
Meanwhile, in Nutley township, Day County, to the south of this
small settlement, other soddies were being built and a church
(with rectory) dedicated to St Michael was built only a mile
or so from the one on Schlekewy land. Joe Schoenborn, who
arrived in 1885, gave 10 acres to be used as long as it was
needed by the church, reverting thereafter to his heirs. There
were stores and a creamery or two and even a mill in the
general locality, but it wasn't until busy Bishop Marty - with
too much territory and too few priests - decided in 1891 to
merge the two Catholic churches that the town of "Frank" was
born in this location. As was often the case, the first
settler's name was given to the town, but "Schlekewy" was just
too hard to pronounce - much less to spell! About 80 families
belonged to the newly formed St Michael parish when it was
dedicated on October 28, 1891 by His Excellency Bishop Martin
Marty of Sioux Falls, SD. Reverend M. Weiss was the new pastor.
Shortly thereafter, the churches were truly "merged" when the
unnamed structure was added to St Michael as a sacristy.
By this time, there were already four tiny graves in the
adjoining cemetery. Lizzie Orslan, parents unlisted, in
1885; Katherina Rauchwarter, daughter of Stephan Rauchwarter,
in 1886; Elizabeth Michlitsch, daughter of Ignatz Michlitsch
and Aloisius Trautner, son of George Trautner, Jr. in 1891.
The community had lost adults as well. Mary Unger, Widow of
George Unger and mother of Elizabeth Unger Schlekewy, died at
age 75 in 1889 and lies here, as does Stephan Rauchwarter,
husband of Theresia Lehner Rauchwarter who died at age 50 in
1888. At some point, the three graves from the Eden township
site were moved to St. Michael's as well.
John "Bush" Opitz and Theresa Tachinger Opitz brought their
family here in 1888 and we have to guess that they brought
along the remains of their son Joseph from their former home
in St Martin, Minnesota. His grave here is marked 1876, but
he had a brother who was born April 16, 1876 and a sister who
was born July 19, 1877. His next sibling, named Joseph as
well, was born March 25, 1881. We have no details to explain
what happened.
In 1893, the infant Johanna Deutsch, parents also unlisted, went
to her final rest and we had the tragic story of Elizabeth
Buettner Schmaus who came with her husband Michael and young
daughter in 1885. They set up their home and had four more
children. In 1893, Elizabeth, 33 and expecting another child,
stayed at home to look after the farm while her husband went to
town for needed supplies. After feeding the livestock, she went
into premature labor, alone. Both she and the baby died. Her
tombstone in lot 74, grave 38 reads, "O denket es warte der
llmmel auf euchl Dann scheide lir gerlie am irdischen oich,"
which someone has translated, "0 think if ascension will wait
for you, then you will separate gladly to the mortal kingdom."
One can only imagine the homecoming and the desperation of a
young father left with five little ones. Who could say a word
against it when, only a few months later, he married the 18 year
old Polish girl, Maria Steppa. In 1901 they took their eight
children to Alberta Canada where their last six children were
born.
Gradually, a community grew up around the church. The Torkildson
brothers were the first blacksmiths, followed by Victor Nelson
who came to Frank with his wife Mary and son Orlie after the
brothers moved away. Nelson trained Martin Opitz who took over
the shop when Nelson left. Nick Trautner, who came in 1887 with
his parents, was, at the ripe old age of 20, the first merchant
in Frank circa 1896. After his marriage to Theresa Rauchwarter,
he built a larger store with a café, a rooming house, and a post
office, hauling his supplies from the railroad in Webster by
horse and wagon. His was the only telephone in the area. He
would arrange for a doctor to come in occasionally and would
advertise widely when a photographer was coming in for a
wedding so that others could be photographed as well. Nick came
to rest here when he was only thirty two.
The Angelus was rung from St Michael's tall bell tower every
day at seven AM, noon, and six PM. It was heard for many miles.
The parish housekeeper received the princely sum of $5.00 per
year for performing this duty. Father Joseph Buscher, pastor
from 1900 to 1904, had a two story rectory built and the old one
was moved to Eden Park. Joe Schoenborn and his daughter Maggie
lived above the dance hall run by his nephew, Mike Schoenborn,
who had a soft drink establishment in the basement. The story
about the strangers who showed up to sing and dance with the
locals, leaving just shortly before the federal agents arrived
to raid the "Blind Pig" in that basement is probably only gossip
and hardly bears repeating. A new community hall for dances and
celebrations was built in 1908.
Yes, the town of Frank was a going community, but an overwhelming
number of burials were among the young. In 1894, three infants
and three adults; in 1898, three infants and one adult; in 1899
two infants and one adult; in 1900, two infants; in 1902, six
little ones, an 11 year old and a 15 year old - and five of
these deaths were from one family; in 1913, six infants and one
adult. Not until 1920 does the tide seem to turn. Pioneering was
hard on everyone, but especially babies and children. There are
stories of homes being covered by snowstorms, drought,
grasshoppers, and near starvation, but these can be read in
other places.
The dismantling of the town of Frank when it was bypassed by
the railroad is the story of many other hope-filled towns. The
new community hall was moved to the new town of Eden to become
what is now Molly Bee's Bar and Lounge. The new rectory became
the residence of the Gerald Opitz family. Joe Schoenborn's
dwelling/dancehall is today the Opitz granary, and St Michael's
Church was moved into their yard to become their barn. But -
St Michael's Cemetery remains because John P. Opitz, another
early settler, bought the Schoenborn land when the church was
moved and gave two acres in perpetuity to the new Sacred Heart
Parish in Eden. It is a peaceful spot. We think it is a
beautiftil resting place for those gone on ahead -those whom we
hope will one day welcome us to the city they now inhabit -
the City of God.
At Eden, May 22, 2002
Sylvia Lams Jaspers
Resources: Conversations with Lucille Knebel, Olivia Opitz,
Cornelius Keintz, and Norma Johnson; Chilson's History of Fort
Sisseton, by Norma Johnson; History of the Sisseton-Whapeton
Indian Reservation, 75th Anniversary Committee, EDEN - The
First 75 Years, Interstate Publishing; Twenty Million Acres
(Gen. W.H.H. Beadle) by Barren Lowe; With Faith, Hope and
Tenacity, History of Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls, by
Robert F. Karolevitz; Heritage Seekers, Vol.20 #1, by Debby
Was; History of Europe, Hays, Baldwin and Cole; Marshall and
Day Counties Farm & Home Plat & Directories, Farm and Home
Publishers; History of Day County, by Day County Historical
Research Committee; Marshall County, South Dakota by Marshall
County Historical Society; various Jubilee editions of the
Britton Journal, Britton South Dakota; Records of St Michael
Cemetery.
E-mail: dwagner2@isd.net
©2003 DJW
Last Modified:
November 7, 2003