Lessons of an Immigrant Father Kindle Edition

Migrants, wherever they move from or to, teach children the past and future. Scholars, educators, migrants, and casual readers can absorb context of what immigrant ranchers and farmers taught their sons when moving into the Dakota Plains after initial homesteading.What would an immigrant father teach in 1905?This exciting historical fiction novel presents subtle lessons pre-teen boys would need to find food, cook meals, wash clothes, train horses, manage livestock and poultry, and farm while explaining military conscription, Christian concepts, business and social interactions, and reminiscing about the "old country." Why? Would something happen to their father?Wietgrefe is a dying family surname. Likely the world has less than two hundred Wietgrefes. Lutheran German surnames demised during the 19th century due to wars and religious conflicts. Wars in one lifetime: rulers 1806-1871: Holy Roman Empire (Catholic), French to Independent Kingdom, Great Britian alliance (Anglican), North German Empire, German Civil War, Napoleonic (French) Wars, and eventually Prussia.Henry Louis "H.L." Wietgrefe, age seven, fled Hannover Lower Saxony by ship from Bremerhaven, Prussia on the SS Main August 14, 1869 with his parents and four siblings and immigrated to eastern Iowa as farmers. They sought a better life.A legal immigrant became a U.S. citizen. With five children and unable to afford his cattle's train fare, H.L. Wietgrefe (age 43) and his two sons, ages 12 and 13 (my grandfather), looking for a land-owning future, drove their meager herd in 1905 over 500 miles to a neglected 1880s homestead in northern South Dakota. Likely it was the last long-distance cattle drive in the U.S. Read more