Grandma Burr warned “Never Trust Russia!” by C.D. Burr

 

 Grandma Marie Burr's brothers: Gottfried and Friedrich Bamesberger, 1896 

Until she died in 1967, my husband's Grandma Marie Burr occasionally shared old photos of her handsome brothers in their Russian uniforms. She described her anguish at their disappearance around 1913 and the hard times she experienced as a young mother in Russia (now Ukraine).  She recalled the tensions of the early 1900s -- how the Russians took their land, dissolved their German community of Klein Neudorf, and sent her brothers to the salt mines with life sentences. 

In the early 1800s, Russia promised hundreds of German immigrants free farmland, autonomy, and no compulsory military service.  However, several generations later, after the 1905 Russian revolution, updated policies displaced thousands of families like the Burrs and Bamesbergers. In a heavy accent, Grandma Burr ended her stories of life in southern Russia with a warning:  "Never trust Russia!"

Marie was pregnant when she immigrated to the United States in 1913, debarking on a ship from Hamburg, Germany.  Accompanying her were her husband, Michael, and six children--a seventh deceased child remained behind in a grave.  Six more children were born in Cheyenne County, Kansas, including my father-in-law, Albert, and her last child, a son who died in infancy.  Marie was a widow in February 1925 when she buried the infant on a windswept hill in a cemetery next to the Salem Lutheran Church. Michael had died four months earlier. 

Twenty years before the Burrs arrived, my Zimbelman ancestors, with four sons and three daughters, emigrated from Rohrbach, Russia/Ukraine. Michael and Katherina had buried seven children on Russian soil and moved before their oldest son turned 21, the age for conscription into the Russian army.   The Zimbelmans settled in Cheyenne County in 1893-- each son eventually cultivating substantial farmland with Russian wheat seeds.  

I am grateful for the sacrifices of our ancestors, immigrants from a hostile land that is once again filled with people suffering from Russian aggression.

I pray  . . .

            --for peace in Ukraine, home of our ancestors, Michael and Marie Bamesberger and Michael and Katherina Zimbelman,

            -- for all displaced persons who have emigrated from violent homelands,

            -- for compassionate government immigration policies because, through our ancestors, “we were once strangers in a strange land.”  (Leviticus 19:34)

--Gratefully submitted by CD Burr

This essay first appeared on Elders Speaking 8/27/2024   Grandma Burr Warned

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"Papo's Hill" A painting and tribute to Albert Burr by CD Burr

The year before my father-in-law, Albert, passed away, I drove him out to the farm where he grew up north of St. Francis, Kansas.  The ground upon which he lived into his teens is rolling, rocky, and not quite as promising as neighboring farms bursting with abundant wheat and corn fields. 

No stately barn rests on the Burr piece of land, which is now littered with several decaying wood frames and fence posts.  Albert pointed out where their horse was housed in a squatty, leaning, bare-bones barn.  He described fruit trees that once grew behind the boarded-up house.   As a boy, he gathered eggs in a now-roofless chicken house, and eighty years later, he could still shake his head when remembering the dreaded job of cleaning the separator in the tiny cream-separating house (about twice the size of the outhouse).  In the family album, there is an old black-and-white photo of Albert with his dog, Pete, in front of this small building.  

As we drove around the yard, Albert spoke fondly of his home and the great times he had as a boy: a swimming hole not much larger than a ditch, the sticker-laden ground near the hog pen where the Burr Boys played baseball, and a quarter-mile-long hill that sloped into the yard.   He said that the hill was perfect for sledding.  Kids would come from neighboring farms – twenty or more — and use grain scoops as sleds.  Because it was dark, their parents would line up along the snowy hill with lanterns so their children could see the path. The scene must have been magical.  

As Albert weakened and made several trips to the hospital, I decided to paint the sledding-by-lantern-light scene that Albert had described to me almost a year earlier.   I hoped he could see the painting of “Papo’s Hill” before it was too late.   

In June,  Albert was admitted for his final stay in the hospital, where he waited to be transferred to the retirement home.  When I showed him the painting, he lacked the strength to speak, but his face glowed, almost like the lanterns on the canvas. He smiled and nodded.

Our dear father and Papo died June 16, 2014

This tribute first appeared on 12/12/17 on the Elders Speaking group blog.

Please "Follow" me on Facebook--CDBurr-- and Blue Sky

And/or join my contact list to receive occasional updates  cdburrwriter@gmail.com

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