Sepia Saturday -Tijuana, Mexico

At the turn of the last century and into the 1940s, U.S. citizens would go to Mexico on a whim for shopping and entertainment, since Tijuana was just across the border from San Diego. During Prohibition, they could go there to drink. There was also gambling, but that ended in 1935. After that, it became more of a family destination.
This photo was taken in 1938. My mother is riding the burro and her mother is on the left, sitting with Esther and Grace Meyers.

Here's a postcard from about ten years earlier.

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Sepia Saturday - Martin and Sarah Meyers

Grant and Gertrude

The photograph below has always filled me with discomfiting awe. It's not a photo I hang proudly on my wall, yet these are my ancestors, so I owe them my very existence. Would I be more eager to show them off if they were prettier and more refined? Certainly. But in researching their (and my) roots, I am filled with a different kind of awe. These people really paid their dues.

Remember Grant and Gertrude from a previous post?
Grant was my great grandfather. Below is a portrait of his grandparents and their children. I'm not sure exactly when the photo was taken, but Martin died in 1895, so we know it was earlier than that.  Martin, with his white beard, is easily recognizable as the patriarch. The poor little tiny woman sitting next to him, and looking very tired, is his wife Sarah. They are surrounded by their 15 (!) living children. I can only assume that there were additional children who died in infancy as they so often did in those days.

Martin's great-great-great Grandfather, Sebastian (Baschi) Meyer was born in Lucerne, Switzerland in about 1592.  He worked as a cabinet maker and was listed as a Mennonite (or Anabaptist.) His wife, Otilla, was of the same faith and was imprisoned for it, but escaped. Baschi and Otilla then moved to Zurich, where they had four of their five children. The family continued to be on the move as was typical of the Mennonites fleeing persecution. Their descendants ended up in the Palatinate region of Germany, eventually emigrating to Pennsylvania around 1710.

I wondered what it was that made people want to persecute the Mennonites. It really boiled down to one basic Mennonite belief - that people should not be baptized until they were of an age to understand and accept the religion. In many people's minds, that constituted heresy, which justified burning at the stake, drowning, decapitating, and other various tortures - all in the name of God. Thousands of Mennonites died this way. Many others were imprisoned and had their property taken.

The Mennonites adhered strictly to the New Testament. They also believed in non-violence, simple living, and separation of church and state. Mennonites in America opposed slavery from the very beginning. The Meyers who moved to Pennsylvania continued in their faith, although at some point they branched off into what's known as the Church of the German Brethren. It's interesting to look at the different related faiths, including Mennonite, Amish, Quaker, and German Brethren. In many cases, the differences in beliefs seem very small.

Martin was a minister of the church and was devoted to his religion. I have to wonder how much the rules of the religion or the adherence to it changed from his generation to the next. He is wearing the traditional beard with no mustache favored by religious pacifists, who associated mustaches with the military.  A number of his sons wear mustaches though, and at least one of his daughters is wearing a fancy collar, which might have been considered overly showy by their standards.

Martin and his family moved from Pennsylvania to Illinois, before finally settling in Morrill, Kansas. I can only guess that they moved because their farm was no longer of sufficient size for the family and/or that they were attracted by homesteading opportunities in Kansas with the 1862 Homestead Act. According to the Kansas State Historical Society, homesteaders were entitled to 160 acres of land, which they had to improve within five years. Many gave up and headed farther west or back east, because conditions were so harsh and improvements were difficult to make. Among other things, they had to worry about bitter cold, disease, locusts, outlaws, and lack of wood and other building materials. The tradition of simple living may have helped the Meyers endure, but I wonder if they ever regretted the move.

As I sit here in my centrally-heated house, with running water, electric lights, indoor bathrooms, washing machine, dryer etc., I can only imagine the hardships they had to endure. I am filled with awe and admiration for the pioneer spirit of these tenacious immigrants.

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Sepia Saturday - Grant Meyers and Family

Last week I featured my great grandparents Grant and Gertrude Meyers for Sepia Saturday. Here's another photo of them taken in the 1930s. You can see they're not in Kansas anymore.

And here's a picture of Grant's family, taken around 1895. The family was originally from Somerset, Pennsylvania, but moved first to Illinois and then to Morrill, Kansas. In this picture William Meyers (1839-1909) is wearing the striped pants. His wife, Martha Haines Meyers (1844-1916), has very thin features and is wearing a dress with a square pattern. They are surrounded by their nine surviving children, there were three more who died at an early age. Looking at this picture, I notice that the boys all seem to look like their mother, while the girls look like their father. This was perhaps a little unfortunate for the girls.

In the 1850 Census, the name is listed as Meyer for William and his family. The gravestones of William's parents both show Meyer as the name instead of Meyers, so the S seems to have been added with William's generation.

Grant is in the back row, third from the right.

Here is the full list of names:
Back row: Minerva (Willard), Milton, Sidney, Grant, William, Hans
Front row: Emma (Bowman), Martha Haines Meyers, Jessie (Moore), William, Mildred (Little)

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