HILDA ANNA MENKE DEVEREUX, 97, of Bellville, Texas, passed away December 8th, 2019, in Bellville.
She was born June 12, 1922, in Weimer, Texas, the daughter of John Henry and Anna M. (Oeltjendiers) Menke. Hilda grew up and attended schools in Baytown. She was united in marriage to Benjamin F. Devereux, Jr., on December 25th, 1941, in Baytown, Texas, where they made their home until the late 70’s before moving to Bastrop. Hilda was employed with the Internal Revenue Service as a keypunch operator.
She and Benjamin were married for almost 70 years. They enjoyed short trips and always wanted to be home before dark. Hilda crocheted, did oil paintings and was a great artist.
She is survived by her grandsons: Brian Devereux (Renee) of Knoxville, Tennessee, Wendell (Rebecca) Devereux of Prattville, Alabama and Wayne Devereux of Rye, TX; five great grandchildren: Taylor, Addison, Tyler, Molly, and William. She was especially enchanted by her great-great-granddaughter, Ariel. Also grieving her loss: daughter-in-law Zandra Devereux, and sister-in-law Dorothy Menke Smith.
Hilda was preceded in death by her parents, John and Anna Menke, husband, Benjamin Devereux, Jr., two sons, Benjamin Devereux, III and William John Devereux and grandson, David Devereux.
This bit of history was written by Hilda Devereux in 2016. She was 94 years old.
These are some things I was told about my grandparents who lived in Germany. They lived in a two-story brick home in Rastede, Germany. The living quarters were upstairs. They had a huge wood stove and baked bread for the community.
When Jesse (my brother) and I were six or eight years old, Daddy told us many stories about his life in Germany. We would sit on their bed with them in our night clothes, and we enjoyed everything he said. He told us there was a lake not far from their home, and he loved to skate on the ice-covered lake. Germany is a very cold place in the winter time. Daddy loved school there; they learned a lot more than in our schools here in Texas.
In the lower part of their home they had a place with a concrete floor slanting down to their cornfield. They had two or three cows, and every morning they hosed the floor clean. All that good manure washed down to their cornfield. In the spring they planted corn and had a very good crop.
They left Germany because my grandmother was anemic; the doctor told my grandfather that she would not live long in that cold climate. That’s when my grandfather and three other men who were considering moving to Texas made three trips to Texas before they moved. One of those men took his family to Oklahoma. Another moved his family somewhere in Central Texas.
Grandpa rented a farm in Schulenburg, Texas. They packed up all their dishes, bedding, and clothing. It was all put in a steamship named the Hannover. They left from the port of Bremen on January 21st in 1909. The following March 26th, my dad was nine years old. He was born in 1900, and my mother, who was born in Texas, was born on January 6th of 1900. She was three months older than my dad.
This paper that my dad saved listed the family as:
Menke
Johan age 34 Johana 5 ½
Helene 33 Helen 3
Edward 10 Adela 1 ½
Johan 8
Henry 8
All the mothers and babies stayed in the lower part of the ship. My dad (as a boy) was very friendly and never saw a stranger. He was all over that ship. When he saw a door higher up, he pulled it open, and the captain said, “Hello, come on in.” He also said, “Would you like to hold this big wheel? It drives the ship.” So Daddy did, and he felt six feet tall doing that. Then the captain said, “I want you to have lunch with me and the other crew.” So Daddy was seated next to the captain. Later, Daddy went down and told his mother all about it. She said, “Be sure you don’t do something to get you in trouble.” Another exciting thing that happened was that he was the first one to spot a whale splashing around near the ship. Being on that ship was a great adventure for my dad.
They did not go to Ellis Island. They went on to Baltimore where several families went off with their belongings. Then they went on around Florida and docked in Galveston. There, all their belongings were put on a train headed for Schulenburg. It was night as the train traveled, and there were many fireflies. Dad said his mother said, “It looks like this whole country is on fire.” That was their first time to see fireflies.
In Schulenburg, friends met the train and got all their things into the house Grandpa had rented. The next day a farmer brought a cow and calf for them as a gift. Someone else brought some pigs, and another brought some chickens. That’s what people were like in 1909. They were blessed.
After all got settled in Schulenburg, they farmed. Ed and Daddy had certain duties at the farm.
When they got to be eleven and twelve years old, some other farmers asked Grandpa if they could hire the two older boys to help on their farms. Ed (born 12/17/1898) went to the farm of the Ammen family, and Daddy worked in Weimar for Mr. Herder.
They did get to go home once in a while. They went to school in the wintertime when they had less work to do.
The next thing I remember was when Ed and John got to be 17 and 18 years old they worked for someone else. Ed heard about Dietrich Oeltjendiers. He went there and asked for work. He got the job and did great work there. Well, Dietrich (born 11/14/1854; died 2/2/1925) was Annie, my mother’s dad. So Ed lived with them. My mother (born 1/6/1900) did all the cooking and housekeeping and helped her dad get in a buggy to go to town. He was crippled, but he could manage the horses. When he got to town, he sat in his buggy in the middle of that wide street. The grocery man knew him and went to the buggy and got his grocery list. He came back with all he wanted, got paid, and Dietrich headed home. Then he had to have help, so Ed and Mama got him out and onto his cane-bottom chair which he swung to the right and then to the left and made it to the kitchen.
Dietrich had injured his back in Germany working for his dad. He was hauling a big load of clay (for making bricks) up the ramp when his dad scolded him for being so slow. When he got up close to his dad, the dad took his sharp shovel and hit his son across the handle bars of the wheelbarrow and cut off four fingers. That’s when he left home and finally came to Texas. How he managed that I do not know.
One thing I do know is that my mother kept up her subscription to the Weimar Mercury Newspaper all those years. When she was eighty years old, she saw in the “100 Years Ago” column, “Dietrich Oeltjendiers and his wife arrived in Weimar from Germany.” That was a shock to her – she never knew he had been married then.
Ed and Annie got married. They went to Hull-Daisetta (in southeastern Liberty County, East Texas) to the oil field. Ed worked in the oil field, and Mama was a waitress in the huge cafeteria.
They did well until Mama got sick. She lost weight and looked pale. Ed’s friends told him he should take Annie to Galveston and let her be in that salt water every day. So they took off from work and went to Galveston. Later it was learned that she had had TB. She was in the water every day and got a real good tan. She ate better and got well.
Then Ed was offered a job for a farmer in Garwood, a community in Colorado County, Texas located on State Highway 71 at the midpoint between Columbus and El Campo. When the time came to plant sweet potato slips, they planted all day. But Annie was way along pregnant, and she did not know that bending over to cover the plants would hurt her unborn baby. That night the baby came too early. Ed went for the doctor and pastor. When the baby arrived, he cried that night and part of the next day and died. The pastor baptized him before he died and gave him his name, Clarence Menke. They buried him the next day. When I get to Heaven, I will see my little brother Clarence.
After that, Mama’s dad needed help again, so they went back to his house. They were there about a year when Ed went to town with two horses and a wagon. He always had his Bible with him, and he was a good missionary. Wherever he went he told folks about Jesus.
This particular day he was stopped by three bad boys from the Bear family. They hated Ed because of his Bible life. They hit him in the head and killed him. When another neighbor went down the road he saw what was happening. He saw the boys leave, and he found Ed. So he turned (Ed’s) horses loose so they could go back home. The neighbor went to the sheriff and told him what had happened. By then the horses had arrived home, and Annie was very worried. The sheriff helped her get settled enough so she could make arrangements at the funeral home.
Annie was despondent for a long time. Finally John (my dad) got word of it in the oil field and headed for home. He stayed and helped her dad and Annie get through their pain.
Later on, John and Annie got married. They moved to a farm as a helper for that farmer. They had their own little house, and on June 12,1922, I was born. Two years later, Jesse was born. He was named after that farmer, Jesse Holman.
During cotton chopping time, they had several black folks come to chop. They always stopped and asked how the baby was doing. This time Mama told them he was very sick. He didn’t smile at her anymore. One black lady said, “Let me see him.” Soon as she saw him she told Mama she could help him. She sent Daddy to the drugstore to get some “acidity,” and she went to find some wild onions. She put the two together and cooked it a while and then cooled it. She held Jesse on her lap and fed him a little at a time. She got nearly a cupful down him, and then they put him to bed.
The next day early she asked about him, and Mama had him in her arms and he smiled again. He got well by God sending angels to help out. God has been so good to all of us.
The following two years there was a bad drought in the Central Texas area. The farmers made no crops or hay. They put a sign on the animals saying, “If you can feed me, take me” and sent them down the roads.
Daddy decided to go to Houston to find work. He went to the train depot first and was walking and observing what he could when a man walked up to him and asked if he was looking for work. He was Mr. Brown. Dad said yes, he needed a job. Mr. Brown said he needed a helper to go with him to Ennis (close to Dallas) to build a railroad scale. Daddy accepted the job, and he and Mama put their clothing and bedding in their Model T Ford with plastic or such curtains all around the car to keep us dry in the cold weather. The curtains had something like flexible plastic windows in them. Dad also had a large trunk which sat tied down behind the car on a shelf. Their drive to Ennis was on muddy roads. The local farmers all along the road were ready to pull the cars out with their horses or mules when they got stuck. They finally made it to Ennis.
Mr. Brown had rented an apartment that had space for our family and an extra bedroom on the side. He had a twelve-year-old daughter. His wife had died, so he needed full care for her. He asked Mama if she would see to it that his daughter got back and forth to school every day. That pleased Mama – she loved her, and all went well.
One day Mama, Jesse, and I went to the grocery store. We had to wait for the Sunbeam Train to pass before we could cross the tracks and went a few yards to the store. While Mama gathered her groceries, a lady had just put out some men’s socks and the box was empty. She asked if I wanted the box. I said yes – it was covered with pretty dark red paper. I was so proud of that box. I had it a long time, putting anything in it that I wanted to keep.
One night, Mama had pinto beans and cornbread for supper. We were all around the table eating when Jesse dropped a bean on the floor. He wanted that bean. Mama told him it was dirty now and he couldn’t have it. Jesse cried even louder and just kept on wanting that bean. Finally Mama picked it up and washed it. Then all was quiet. Jesse was happy, and the rest of us were relieved.
When that job was finished, we went back to Houston. Mama had an Aunt Annie and Uncle Ed Proctor there. We went to see them, and Uncle Ed told Daddy they were hiring men at the Baytown Humble Oil and Refining Company. Daddy went there the next day and got a job. He came back and got his family, and he rented a small house in Wooster which was on one side of the refinery, and Baytown was on the other side.
I got to be six years old and went to a one-room school that had four classes in it. I was in the first grade, and by the time I got to second grade most of us already knew a lot of what the fourth graders knew. We heard all that was taught all day long.
One day at school, the whole bunch of students were playing Red Rover Come Over. We had two lines of us separated by a large margin, and then our side said, “Red Rover, Red Rover Come Over,” and one at a time one came running toward us as fast as they could and tried to break our line as we were holding hands with our neighbor. They tried to break our hands apart. This time, one big boy came through my right hand and my neighbor’s. He hit my right cheek full force. It knocked me down, and I screamed. We all went back in school. The teacher sat me in her chair at her desk. She told us she had to leave and get a neighbor from across the highway which led to Houston. She came back with a lady with two big bath towels. They washed my cheek and sent me home with a big bath towel wrapped around my head. When my mother saw me coming, she was scared and ran to meet me. She asked what happened. I told her we were playing Red Rover and a boy named Bob White hit my cheek. The next day, Daddy went to school to hear the teacher’s story. They all did what they could, and I got well.
Meantime, Grandpa and Grandma were living in Columbus in the low land close to the river. They rented a large farm close to the Colorado River. The river flooded their cropland every three or four years. That brought the silt from the river onto their cropland which made it rich. Their house was up higher and never flooded.
One year Grandpa made twenty bales of cotton. When he sold all of it, he bought Grandma a beautiful new woodstove. It had chrome on it. The back was raised and had two warming ovens there. It had a water tank on the right side for hot water all the time. I don’t know how many burners it had, but it had a large oven. She baked the best bread anyone ever tasted.
Grandpa also bought a large truck with high sideboards that would hold enough picked cotton to make a bale. In addition, he bought a cream separator. They had a small building with a concrete floor in it just right for the separator. Aunt Clara was in charge of that. She poured the milk into a large bowl and started the machine. The cream came out one side, and the skimmed milk stayed in the big bowl. She put the cream in a large milk can just for that and moved it out to the road where creamery men picked it up with the other farmers’ cans.
We went to see them once a month. It was always so much fun to be there.
Aunt Mary, Aunt Clara, Uncle Fred, and Aunt Hattie were still at home. All the others had married and had their own farms. Everyone wanted to play outside after we arrived about dark. I was about ten or twelve years old, and they wanted Jesse and me to go out and play. Jesse stayed with Mama, but I went out with them. Then Uncle Fred said, “Hilda, see that big bump on that tree root?” It was a moonlit night, and I saw it. I put my hand on it, and it moved. I screamed, and all the grownups came out to see why I screamed and found out it was a huge frog. They made all of us go back inside.
I do remember the Depression years. Daddy was fortunate to have his good job at the refinery. (Later became Exxon.) Many people were out of work.
Every other week we filled our car full of groceries -- flour, cornmeal, shortening, dried beans, and canned goods -- and drove to see Grandpa and Grandma near Columbus. That place was called Matthew’s Place. Grandpa rented that place. They were always so glad to see us and thanked Daddy for coming. Then on Sunday, most of the married children came to see them, and it was like a family reunion.
Now, back to our family -- Mama and Daddy bought two lots of land on 221 Magnolia Street in the Baytown area. Baytown lies on the northern side of Galveston Bay near the outlets of the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou. They built a nice house. It had a kitchen, a living and dining area on one side, and two bedrooms on the other side. They added a bathroom and a porch on the back side and a long front porch.
I had a long way to walk to the elementary school. They had five grades there. Later they built another building closer to our home and had 6th, 7th, and 8th grades there. The Robert E. Lee High School was in Goose Creek. The city now known as Baytown was originally three separate towns, Goose Creek, Baytown, and Pelly. The first of these was Goose Creek. Daddy sold his home and moved to Goose Creek.
One day, the weather looked bad, and it soon thundered with lightning and rain. Mama and Daddy were sitting on the swing with Jesse between them. They were surrounded by wisteria vines on two sides. I was curious and stood at the edge of the porch with my arm around the porch post. I was looking down at the block before you would get to our block, and I saw lightning hit a tree at the far end of that block. It traveled right down the street and scorched my arm. I said, “OW!” and Daddy jumped up to see what happened. He took me to the bathroom and washed it and put some cream on it. It healed fast. I learned not to be outside in bad weather.
After two or three years, we moved to Cedar Bayou (in Baytown). Daddy rented a house on five acres of land. This was called Walter’s Place. I was twelve years old, and Jesse and I caught the school bus to school.
At this place, Jesse and I learned to ride a horse and a mule. We would ride bareback – I on horse and Jesse on the mule. We raced to the far end of the place and back to the barn again.
We also had two cows, and I had to learn to milk a cow before breakfast. Then after Thanksgiving Day, they took me out of school to stay with Mama. She was expecting a baby in December. In case she started having pains, I was to go to a neighbor’s house to have her call the doctor. It so happened that Daddy was home the night Mama started having pains. He drove to town and got the doctor and his nurse to come.
Jesse slept all through that night. I heard the commotion and got myself dressed and waited. Daddy came in, sat with me a while, and said it wouldn’t be long before the baby arrived. Then he went back to Mama. It took all night before she delivered, and Johnny was born December 30th, 1934. After the doctor and nurse left, Daddy came and got Jesse and me to see our little brother. They named him John William Menke. The next day, Daddy did a lot of washing and got everything back in order. I made breakfast and washed clothes and took care of Mama.
Mama had taught me how to make bread, and one day Mrs. Rutherford, our next-door neighbor, came in the back door and asked what I was doing. I said I was making bread. She was so excited and asked if I would go over to her house and show her how to make bread. Mama agreed, so I would make up the yeast and then go to her house and make yeast up for her. By the time I got home, it was time to add flour and water, mix it well, and knead it and let it rise. I ran to her house and did the same thing. I went back home, and it was about time to punch it down and knead it again and cut it into two pieces. I had two greased pans ready and shaped the loaves and put it in the pans. I covered it with a clean dishtowel and let it rise again. I did the same at her house. She said she could put it in the oven at 375 degrees and bake it. So I didn’t have to go back after that.
About a week later, Mrs. Portis, who lived across the street from Mrs. Rutherford, heard about it and wanted me to do it all for her. I did all three places until they learned how.
The next year, I wanted to go back to school in Cedar Bayou. Mama and Daddy thought I knew all I needed to know and weren’t all that interested, but I kept on wanting to go back to school. Then they let me. It didn’t bother me that I missed a class and was a year behind my friends. Later my parents were glad they had let me finish high school. I graduated in 1940, and Jesse graduated in 1941.
We did not have a telephone, so I asked Daddy if he would see if the owner of Smith’s Store would let me leave his number to have Woolworth call if I could work for them. I had applied earlier, so I went back and gave them Smith’s Store number. They did call and Smith’s Store sent their delivery boy to come and tell me that I was wanted at Woolworth. As a result, Mama had to take Daddy to work so she could have the car to take me to work. Then Jesse got a car and could take both of us to work.
Jesse and I also wanted to be confirmed. We made arrangements with Pastor Oberhaus. We met with him at 8:00 AM every Saturday and got to work by 9:00 AM. After two years, we were confirmed.
One morning I was walking into Woolworth to work, and I met Ben Devereux and Richard Woods as they were coming out. We were all so glad to see each other. We had graduated together. Then I said, “I must go punch the clock.” They said, “Oh, you work here?” I said yes, and we parted. That afternoon, Ben came and found me at my counter. He asked me for a date, and I said okay. He said he would pick me up at 7:30 that evening. That was fine with me. This must have been in February or March.
In October, Ben asked me to marry him and when should we do it. I said I would like to be a June bride, and he agreed.
Then on December 7, 1941 we had Pearl Harbor! I can still hear President Roosevelt say on the radio, “We are at war!” That upset everybody.
When Ben got off his shift on the tugboat he said, “We can’t wait until June to get married – they might call me into service, and I want you to be mine!” We decided to get married on Christmas Eve. Later my friends said, “You just married Santa Claus!”
I was nineteen, and he lacked one week of being nineteen on New Year’s Day.
After a year and two months, our son “Benjie” was born. The very next day, Ben got his letter to be inducted into service. He had a week before he had to leave by bus to go to San Antonio.
He was sitting in line with other boys waiting, and two marine generals walked in and said, “We need two men to be in the marines.” Ben jumped up fast, and he and another man went with them. Ben had heard that the marines were better to their servicemen than the army was. He never regretted that move. He was at boot camp for six weeks in California. He got a badge for being an excellent sharpshooter. That qualified him and sent him to Norman, Oklahoma to learn all about artillery. He ended up being the man at his base who put bombs under planes, and if they came back and had not dropped a bomb, everyone stayed away from the airstrip in case he bumped and the bomb would explode. That never happened at all.
They were sent to the Philippines where they cleared the land for their base. The mountains were nearby, and they heard shots coming from that range of mountains. They discovered the Japanese had a stronghold there, and our planes dropped bombs on top of them. A plane went close to the windows where they were with their machine guns. They could see the men still sitting there in the plane, and blood was coming out of their eyes and noses. They were dead. After that, the base was built without any interruption.
In the meantime, my folks moved to Brenham. Benjie and I would stay a month or two, and then we stayed that much time with Ben’s folks in Baytown. We would take a bus from Baytown to Brenham. I had two suitcases and a heavy baby to manage. That worked out well until Ben got home 2 years 8 months later.
Ben arrived at the train depot in Houston. His dad took us there to meet him. Before Ben got home, Benjie and I prayed for Daddy and I had an 8X10 picture of Ben, so Benjie kissed that picture and knew what Ben looked like. When the train stopped, I told Benjie that Daddy was coming home to us. When Ben stepped off that train, we were all smiles. Benjie reached out both hands as I was holding him and gave Ben a big hug. Then Ben hugged me and his dad. It was such a good feeling to be together again.
Ben had to be back in California to get his discharge. We bought a Dodge car and drove through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to Santa Anna, California. Ben stopped at the marine base, El Toro, to see when he should be there to go to San Diego. We had two days, and then he left.
Benjie and I stayed at a motel near the airport and went to a new church that was just getting started. It was a Lutheran Church. Then we waited for a call from Ben to come pick him up at El Toro.
Ben had gone with a truckload of marines to get his discharge. After being discharged, he walked by a jewelry store and saw a pretty gold cross necklace. He went in and bought it for me. I still have it.
Benjie had a good time every time we stopped at a restaurant. He got to put the quarter in the jukebox and press the button. When it started playing, he looked up at Ben as if he was God.
Benjie had been begging a lot to go home. When we left Santa Anna, we made the mistake of telling him we were on our way home. It took two days before we got there, and he was almost sick. We arrived at my folks’ home about 10 or 11 at night. Daddy came out to greet us, and Benjie went to Mama’s room and crawled in bed with her and said, “Grandma, I will never leave you again!” Mama wondered what we did to him that he was so upset.
Back to my Grandpa and Grandma. They were staying at Uncle Fred’s and Aunt Clara’s place close to Columbus. Grandpa died in 1953. Grandma died in 1954. They are buried in the Lutheran cemetery in Cat Spring. RL Menke took us there when we left the reunion. His parents are buried there also.
She was born June 12, 1922, in Weimer, Texas, the daughter of John Henry and Anna M. (Oeltjendiers) Menke. Hilda grew up and attended schools in Baytown. She was united in marriage to Benjamin F. Devereux, Jr., on December 25th, 1941, in Baytown, Texas, where they made their home until the late 70’s before moving to Bastrop. Hilda was employed with the Internal Revenue Service as a keypunch operator.
She and Benjamin were married for almost 70 years. They enjoyed short trips and always wanted to be home before dark. Hilda crocheted, did oil paintings and was a great artist.
She is survived by her grandsons: Brian Devereux (Renee) of Knoxville, Tennessee, Wendell (Rebecca) Devereux of Prattville, Alabama and Wayne Devereux of Rye, TX; five great grandchildren: Taylor, Addison, Tyler, Molly, and William. She was especially enchanted by her great-great-granddaughter, Ariel. Also grieving her loss: daughter-in-law Zandra Devereux, and sister-in-law Dorothy Menke Smith.
Hilda was preceded in death by her parents, John and Anna Menke, husband, Benjamin Devereux, Jr., two sons, Benjamin Devereux, III and William John Devereux and grandson, David Devereux.
This bit of history was written by Hilda Devereux in 2016. She was 94 years old.
These are some things I was told about my grandparents who lived in Germany. They lived in a two-story brick home in Rastede, Germany. The living quarters were upstairs. They had a huge wood stove and baked bread for the community.
When Jesse (my brother) and I were six or eight years old, Daddy told us many stories about his life in Germany. We would sit on their bed with them in our night clothes, and we enjoyed everything he said. He told us there was a lake not far from their home, and he loved to skate on the ice-covered lake. Germany is a very cold place in the winter time. Daddy loved school there; they learned a lot more than in our schools here in Texas.
In the lower part of their home they had a place with a concrete floor slanting down to their cornfield. They had two or three cows, and every morning they hosed the floor clean. All that good manure washed down to their cornfield. In the spring they planted corn and had a very good crop.
They left Germany because my grandmother was anemic; the doctor told my grandfather that she would not live long in that cold climate. That’s when my grandfather and three other men who were considering moving to Texas made three trips to Texas before they moved. One of those men took his family to Oklahoma. Another moved his family somewhere in Central Texas.
Grandpa rented a farm in Schulenburg, Texas. They packed up all their dishes, bedding, and clothing. It was all put in a steamship named the Hannover. They left from the port of Bremen on January 21st in 1909. The following March 26th, my dad was nine years old. He was born in 1900, and my mother, who was born in Texas, was born on January 6th of 1900. She was three months older than my dad.
This paper that my dad saved listed the family as:
Menke
Johan age 34 Johana 5 ½
Helene 33 Helen 3
Edward 10 Adela 1 ½
Johan 8
Henry 8
All the mothers and babies stayed in the lower part of the ship. My dad (as a boy) was very friendly and never saw a stranger. He was all over that ship. When he saw a door higher up, he pulled it open, and the captain said, “Hello, come on in.” He also said, “Would you like to hold this big wheel? It drives the ship.” So Daddy did, and he felt six feet tall doing that. Then the captain said, “I want you to have lunch with me and the other crew.” So Daddy was seated next to the captain. Later, Daddy went down and told his mother all about it. She said, “Be sure you don’t do something to get you in trouble.” Another exciting thing that happened was that he was the first one to spot a whale splashing around near the ship. Being on that ship was a great adventure for my dad.
They did not go to Ellis Island. They went on to Baltimore where several families went off with their belongings. Then they went on around Florida and docked in Galveston. There, all their belongings were put on a train headed for Schulenburg. It was night as the train traveled, and there were many fireflies. Dad said his mother said, “It looks like this whole country is on fire.” That was their first time to see fireflies.
In Schulenburg, friends met the train and got all their things into the house Grandpa had rented. The next day a farmer brought a cow and calf for them as a gift. Someone else brought some pigs, and another brought some chickens. That’s what people were like in 1909. They were blessed.
After all got settled in Schulenburg, they farmed. Ed and Daddy had certain duties at the farm.
When they got to be eleven and twelve years old, some other farmers asked Grandpa if they could hire the two older boys to help on their farms. Ed (born 12/17/1898) went to the farm of the Ammen family, and Daddy worked in Weimar for Mr. Herder.
They did get to go home once in a while. They went to school in the wintertime when they had less work to do.
The next thing I remember was when Ed and John got to be 17 and 18 years old they worked for someone else. Ed heard about Dietrich Oeltjendiers. He went there and asked for work. He got the job and did great work there. Well, Dietrich (born 11/14/1854; died 2/2/1925) was Annie, my mother’s dad. So Ed lived with them. My mother (born 1/6/1900) did all the cooking and housekeeping and helped her dad get in a buggy to go to town. He was crippled, but he could manage the horses. When he got to town, he sat in his buggy in the middle of that wide street. The grocery man knew him and went to the buggy and got his grocery list. He came back with all he wanted, got paid, and Dietrich headed home. Then he had to have help, so Ed and Mama got him out and onto his cane-bottom chair which he swung to the right and then to the left and made it to the kitchen.
Dietrich had injured his back in Germany working for his dad. He was hauling a big load of clay (for making bricks) up the ramp when his dad scolded him for being so slow. When he got up close to his dad, the dad took his sharp shovel and hit his son across the handle bars of the wheelbarrow and cut off four fingers. That’s when he left home and finally came to Texas. How he managed that I do not know.
One thing I do know is that my mother kept up her subscription to the Weimar Mercury Newspaper all those years. When she was eighty years old, she saw in the “100 Years Ago” column, “Dietrich Oeltjendiers and his wife arrived in Weimar from Germany.” That was a shock to her – she never knew he had been married then.
Ed and Annie got married. They went to Hull-Daisetta (in southeastern Liberty County, East Texas) to the oil field. Ed worked in the oil field, and Mama was a waitress in the huge cafeteria.
They did well until Mama got sick. She lost weight and looked pale. Ed’s friends told him he should take Annie to Galveston and let her be in that salt water every day. So they took off from work and went to Galveston. Later it was learned that she had had TB. She was in the water every day and got a real good tan. She ate better and got well.
Then Ed was offered a job for a farmer in Garwood, a community in Colorado County, Texas located on State Highway 71 at the midpoint between Columbus and El Campo. When the time came to plant sweet potato slips, they planted all day. But Annie was way along pregnant, and she did not know that bending over to cover the plants would hurt her unborn baby. That night the baby came too early. Ed went for the doctor and pastor. When the baby arrived, he cried that night and part of the next day and died. The pastor baptized him before he died and gave him his name, Clarence Menke. They buried him the next day. When I get to Heaven, I will see my little brother Clarence.
After that, Mama’s dad needed help again, so they went back to his house. They were there about a year when Ed went to town with two horses and a wagon. He always had his Bible with him, and he was a good missionary. Wherever he went he told folks about Jesus.
This particular day he was stopped by three bad boys from the Bear family. They hated Ed because of his Bible life. They hit him in the head and killed him. When another neighbor went down the road he saw what was happening. He saw the boys leave, and he found Ed. So he turned (Ed’s) horses loose so they could go back home. The neighbor went to the sheriff and told him what had happened. By then the horses had arrived home, and Annie was very worried. The sheriff helped her get settled enough so she could make arrangements at the funeral home.
Annie was despondent for a long time. Finally John (my dad) got word of it in the oil field and headed for home. He stayed and helped her dad and Annie get through their pain.
Later on, John and Annie got married. They moved to a farm as a helper for that farmer. They had their own little house, and on June 12,1922, I was born. Two years later, Jesse was born. He was named after that farmer, Jesse Holman.
During cotton chopping time, they had several black folks come to chop. They always stopped and asked how the baby was doing. This time Mama told them he was very sick. He didn’t smile at her anymore. One black lady said, “Let me see him.” Soon as she saw him she told Mama she could help him. She sent Daddy to the drugstore to get some “acidity,” and she went to find some wild onions. She put the two together and cooked it a while and then cooled it. She held Jesse on her lap and fed him a little at a time. She got nearly a cupful down him, and then they put him to bed.
The next day early she asked about him, and Mama had him in her arms and he smiled again. He got well by God sending angels to help out. God has been so good to all of us.
The following two years there was a bad drought in the Central Texas area. The farmers made no crops or hay. They put a sign on the animals saying, “If you can feed me, take me” and sent them down the roads.
Daddy decided to go to Houston to find work. He went to the train depot first and was walking and observing what he could when a man walked up to him and asked if he was looking for work. He was Mr. Brown. Dad said yes, he needed a job. Mr. Brown said he needed a helper to go with him to Ennis (close to Dallas) to build a railroad scale. Daddy accepted the job, and he and Mama put their clothing and bedding in their Model T Ford with plastic or such curtains all around the car to keep us dry in the cold weather. The curtains had something like flexible plastic windows in them. Dad also had a large trunk which sat tied down behind the car on a shelf. Their drive to Ennis was on muddy roads. The local farmers all along the road were ready to pull the cars out with their horses or mules when they got stuck. They finally made it to Ennis.
Mr. Brown had rented an apartment that had space for our family and an extra bedroom on the side. He had a twelve-year-old daughter. His wife had died, so he needed full care for her. He asked Mama if she would see to it that his daughter got back and forth to school every day. That pleased Mama – she loved her, and all went well.
One day Mama, Jesse, and I went to the grocery store. We had to wait for the Sunbeam Train to pass before we could cross the tracks and went a few yards to the store. While Mama gathered her groceries, a lady had just put out some men’s socks and the box was empty. She asked if I wanted the box. I said yes – it was covered with pretty dark red paper. I was so proud of that box. I had it a long time, putting anything in it that I wanted to keep.
One night, Mama had pinto beans and cornbread for supper. We were all around the table eating when Jesse dropped a bean on the floor. He wanted that bean. Mama told him it was dirty now and he couldn’t have it. Jesse cried even louder and just kept on wanting that bean. Finally Mama picked it up and washed it. Then all was quiet. Jesse was happy, and the rest of us were relieved.
When that job was finished, we went back to Houston. Mama had an Aunt Annie and Uncle Ed Proctor there. We went to see them, and Uncle Ed told Daddy they were hiring men at the Baytown Humble Oil and Refining Company. Daddy went there the next day and got a job. He came back and got his family, and he rented a small house in Wooster which was on one side of the refinery, and Baytown was on the other side.
I got to be six years old and went to a one-room school that had four classes in it. I was in the first grade, and by the time I got to second grade most of us already knew a lot of what the fourth graders knew. We heard all that was taught all day long.
One day at school, the whole bunch of students were playing Red Rover Come Over. We had two lines of us separated by a large margin, and then our side said, “Red Rover, Red Rover Come Over,” and one at a time one came running toward us as fast as they could and tried to break our line as we were holding hands with our neighbor. They tried to break our hands apart. This time, one big boy came through my right hand and my neighbor’s. He hit my right cheek full force. It knocked me down, and I screamed. We all went back in school. The teacher sat me in her chair at her desk. She told us she had to leave and get a neighbor from across the highway which led to Houston. She came back with a lady with two big bath towels. They washed my cheek and sent me home with a big bath towel wrapped around my head. When my mother saw me coming, she was scared and ran to meet me. She asked what happened. I told her we were playing Red Rover and a boy named Bob White hit my cheek. The next day, Daddy went to school to hear the teacher’s story. They all did what they could, and I got well.
Meantime, Grandpa and Grandma were living in Columbus in the low land close to the river. They rented a large farm close to the Colorado River. The river flooded their cropland every three or four years. That brought the silt from the river onto their cropland which made it rich. Their house was up higher and never flooded.
One year Grandpa made twenty bales of cotton. When he sold all of it, he bought Grandma a beautiful new woodstove. It had chrome on it. The back was raised and had two warming ovens there. It had a water tank on the right side for hot water all the time. I don’t know how many burners it had, but it had a large oven. She baked the best bread anyone ever tasted.
Grandpa also bought a large truck with high sideboards that would hold enough picked cotton to make a bale. In addition, he bought a cream separator. They had a small building with a concrete floor in it just right for the separator. Aunt Clara was in charge of that. She poured the milk into a large bowl and started the machine. The cream came out one side, and the skimmed milk stayed in the big bowl. She put the cream in a large milk can just for that and moved it out to the road where creamery men picked it up with the other farmers’ cans.
We went to see them once a month. It was always so much fun to be there.
Aunt Mary, Aunt Clara, Uncle Fred, and Aunt Hattie were still at home. All the others had married and had their own farms. Everyone wanted to play outside after we arrived about dark. I was about ten or twelve years old, and they wanted Jesse and me to go out and play. Jesse stayed with Mama, but I went out with them. Then Uncle Fred said, “Hilda, see that big bump on that tree root?” It was a moonlit night, and I saw it. I put my hand on it, and it moved. I screamed, and all the grownups came out to see why I screamed and found out it was a huge frog. They made all of us go back inside.
I do remember the Depression years. Daddy was fortunate to have his good job at the refinery. (Later became Exxon.) Many people were out of work.
Every other week we filled our car full of groceries -- flour, cornmeal, shortening, dried beans, and canned goods -- and drove to see Grandpa and Grandma near Columbus. That place was called Matthew’s Place. Grandpa rented that place. They were always so glad to see us and thanked Daddy for coming. Then on Sunday, most of the married children came to see them, and it was like a family reunion.
Now, back to our family -- Mama and Daddy bought two lots of land on 221 Magnolia Street in the Baytown area. Baytown lies on the northern side of Galveston Bay near the outlets of the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou. They built a nice house. It had a kitchen, a living and dining area on one side, and two bedrooms on the other side. They added a bathroom and a porch on the back side and a long front porch.
I had a long way to walk to the elementary school. They had five grades there. Later they built another building closer to our home and had 6th, 7th, and 8th grades there. The Robert E. Lee High School was in Goose Creek. The city now known as Baytown was originally three separate towns, Goose Creek, Baytown, and Pelly. The first of these was Goose Creek. Daddy sold his home and moved to Goose Creek.
One day, the weather looked bad, and it soon thundered with lightning and rain. Mama and Daddy were sitting on the swing with Jesse between them. They were surrounded by wisteria vines on two sides. I was curious and stood at the edge of the porch with my arm around the porch post. I was looking down at the block before you would get to our block, and I saw lightning hit a tree at the far end of that block. It traveled right down the street and scorched my arm. I said, “OW!” and Daddy jumped up to see what happened. He took me to the bathroom and washed it and put some cream on it. It healed fast. I learned not to be outside in bad weather.
After two or three years, we moved to Cedar Bayou (in Baytown). Daddy rented a house on five acres of land. This was called Walter’s Place. I was twelve years old, and Jesse and I caught the school bus to school.
At this place, Jesse and I learned to ride a horse and a mule. We would ride bareback – I on horse and Jesse on the mule. We raced to the far end of the place and back to the barn again.
We also had two cows, and I had to learn to milk a cow before breakfast. Then after Thanksgiving Day, they took me out of school to stay with Mama. She was expecting a baby in December. In case she started having pains, I was to go to a neighbor’s house to have her call the doctor. It so happened that Daddy was home the night Mama started having pains. He drove to town and got the doctor and his nurse to come.
Jesse slept all through that night. I heard the commotion and got myself dressed and waited. Daddy came in, sat with me a while, and said it wouldn’t be long before the baby arrived. Then he went back to Mama. It took all night before she delivered, and Johnny was born December 30th, 1934. After the doctor and nurse left, Daddy came and got Jesse and me to see our little brother. They named him John William Menke. The next day, Daddy did a lot of washing and got everything back in order. I made breakfast and washed clothes and took care of Mama.
Mama had taught me how to make bread, and one day Mrs. Rutherford, our next-door neighbor, came in the back door and asked what I was doing. I said I was making bread. She was so excited and asked if I would go over to her house and show her how to make bread. Mama agreed, so I would make up the yeast and then go to her house and make yeast up for her. By the time I got home, it was time to add flour and water, mix it well, and knead it and let it rise. I ran to her house and did the same thing. I went back home, and it was about time to punch it down and knead it again and cut it into two pieces. I had two greased pans ready and shaped the loaves and put it in the pans. I covered it with a clean dishtowel and let it rise again. I did the same at her house. She said she could put it in the oven at 375 degrees and bake it. So I didn’t have to go back after that.
About a week later, Mrs. Portis, who lived across the street from Mrs. Rutherford, heard about it and wanted me to do it all for her. I did all three places until they learned how.
The next year, I wanted to go back to school in Cedar Bayou. Mama and Daddy thought I knew all I needed to know and weren’t all that interested, but I kept on wanting to go back to school. Then they let me. It didn’t bother me that I missed a class and was a year behind my friends. Later my parents were glad they had let me finish high school. I graduated in 1940, and Jesse graduated in 1941.
We did not have a telephone, so I asked Daddy if he would see if the owner of Smith’s Store would let me leave his number to have Woolworth call if I could work for them. I had applied earlier, so I went back and gave them Smith’s Store number. They did call and Smith’s Store sent their delivery boy to come and tell me that I was wanted at Woolworth. As a result, Mama had to take Daddy to work so she could have the car to take me to work. Then Jesse got a car and could take both of us to work.
Jesse and I also wanted to be confirmed. We made arrangements with Pastor Oberhaus. We met with him at 8:00 AM every Saturday and got to work by 9:00 AM. After two years, we were confirmed.
One morning I was walking into Woolworth to work, and I met Ben Devereux and Richard Woods as they were coming out. We were all so glad to see each other. We had graduated together. Then I said, “I must go punch the clock.” They said, “Oh, you work here?” I said yes, and we parted. That afternoon, Ben came and found me at my counter. He asked me for a date, and I said okay. He said he would pick me up at 7:30 that evening. That was fine with me. This must have been in February or March.
In October, Ben asked me to marry him and when should we do it. I said I would like to be a June bride, and he agreed.
Then on December 7, 1941 we had Pearl Harbor! I can still hear President Roosevelt say on the radio, “We are at war!” That upset everybody.
When Ben got off his shift on the tugboat he said, “We can’t wait until June to get married – they might call me into service, and I want you to be mine!” We decided to get married on Christmas Eve. Later my friends said, “You just married Santa Claus!”
I was nineteen, and he lacked one week of being nineteen on New Year’s Day.
After a year and two months, our son “Benjie” was born. The very next day, Ben got his letter to be inducted into service. He had a week before he had to leave by bus to go to San Antonio.
He was sitting in line with other boys waiting, and two marine generals walked in and said, “We need two men to be in the marines.” Ben jumped up fast, and he and another man went with them. Ben had heard that the marines were better to their servicemen than the army was. He never regretted that move. He was at boot camp for six weeks in California. He got a badge for being an excellent sharpshooter. That qualified him and sent him to Norman, Oklahoma to learn all about artillery. He ended up being the man at his base who put bombs under planes, and if they came back and had not dropped a bomb, everyone stayed away from the airstrip in case he bumped and the bomb would explode. That never happened at all.
They were sent to the Philippines where they cleared the land for their base. The mountains were nearby, and they heard shots coming from that range of mountains. They discovered the Japanese had a stronghold there, and our planes dropped bombs on top of them. A plane went close to the windows where they were with their machine guns. They could see the men still sitting there in the plane, and blood was coming out of their eyes and noses. They were dead. After that, the base was built without any interruption.
In the meantime, my folks moved to Brenham. Benjie and I would stay a month or two, and then we stayed that much time with Ben’s folks in Baytown. We would take a bus from Baytown to Brenham. I had two suitcases and a heavy baby to manage. That worked out well until Ben got home 2 years 8 months later.
Ben arrived at the train depot in Houston. His dad took us there to meet him. Before Ben got home, Benjie and I prayed for Daddy and I had an 8X10 picture of Ben, so Benjie kissed that picture and knew what Ben looked like. When the train stopped, I told Benjie that Daddy was coming home to us. When Ben stepped off that train, we were all smiles. Benjie reached out both hands as I was holding him and gave Ben a big hug. Then Ben hugged me and his dad. It was such a good feeling to be together again.
Ben had to be back in California to get his discharge. We bought a Dodge car and drove through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to Santa Anna, California. Ben stopped at the marine base, El Toro, to see when he should be there to go to San Diego. We had two days, and then he left.
Benjie and I stayed at a motel near the airport and went to a new church that was just getting started. It was a Lutheran Church. Then we waited for a call from Ben to come pick him up at El Toro.
Ben had gone with a truckload of marines to get his discharge. After being discharged, he walked by a jewelry store and saw a pretty gold cross necklace. He went in and bought it for me. I still have it.
Benjie had a good time every time we stopped at a restaurant. He got to put the quarter in the jukebox and press the button. When it started playing, he looked up at Ben as if he was God.
Benjie had been begging a lot to go home. When we left Santa Anna, we made the mistake of telling him we were on our way home. It took two days before we got there, and he was almost sick. We arrived at my folks’ home about 10 or 11 at night. Daddy came out to greet us, and Benjie went to Mama’s room and crawled in bed with her and said, “Grandma, I will never leave you again!” Mama wondered what we did to him that he was so upset.
Back to my Grandpa and Grandma. They were staying at Uncle Fred’s and Aunt Clara’s place close to Columbus. Grandpa died in 1953. Grandma died in 1954. They are buried in the Lutheran cemetery in Cat Spring. RL Menke took us there when we left the reunion. His parents are buried there also.
HILDA ANNA MENKE DEVEREUX, 97, of Bellville, Texas, passed away December 8th, 2019, in Bellville.
She was born June 12, 1922, in Weimer, Texas, the daughter of John Henry and Anna M. (Oeltjendiers) Menke. Hilda grew up and attended schools in Baytown. She was united in marriage to Benjamin F. Devereux, Jr., on December 25th, 1941, in Baytown, Texas, where they made their home until the late 70’s before moving to Bastrop. Hilda was employed with the Internal Revenue Service as a keypunch operator.
She and Benjamin were married for almost 70 years. They enjoyed short trips and always wanted to be home before dark. Hilda crocheted, did oil paintings and was a great artist.
She is survived by her grandsons: Brian Devereux (Renee) of Knoxville, Tennessee, Wendell (Rebecca) Devereux of Prattville, Alabama and Wayne Devereux of Rye, TX; five great grandchildren: Taylor, Addison, Tyler, Molly, and William. She was especially enchanted by her great-great-granddaughter, Ariel. Also grieving her loss: daughter-in-law Zandra Devereux, and sister-in-law Dorothy Menke Smith.
Hilda was preceded in death by her parents, John and Anna Menke, husband, Benjamin Devereux, Jr., two sons, Benjamin Devereux, III and William John Devereux and grandson, David Devereux.
This bit of history was written by Hilda Devereux in 2016. She was 94 years old.
These are some things I was told about my grandparents who lived in Germany. They lived in a two-story brick home in Rastede, Germany. The living quarters were upstairs. They had a huge wood stove and baked bread for the community.
When Jesse (my brother) and I were six or eight years old, Daddy told us many stories about his life in Germany. We would sit on their bed with them in our night clothes, and we enjoyed everything he said. He told us there was a lake not far from their home, and he loved to skate on the ice-covered lake. Germany is a very cold place in the winter time. Daddy loved school there; they learned a lot more than in our schools here in Texas.
In the lower part of their home they had a place with a concrete floor slanting down to their cornfield. They had two or three cows, and every morning they hosed the floor clean. All that good manure washed down to their cornfield. In the spring they planted corn and had a very good crop.
They left Germany because my grandmother was anemic; the doctor told my grandfather that she would not live long in that cold climate. That’s when my grandfather and three other men who were considering moving to Texas made three trips to Texas before they moved. One of those men took his family to Oklahoma. Another moved his family somewhere in Central Texas.
Grandpa rented a farm in Schulenburg, Texas. They packed up all their dishes, bedding, and clothing. It was all put in a steamship named the Hannover. They left from the port of Bremen on January 21st in 1909. The following March 26th, my dad was nine years old. He was born in 1900, and my mother, who was born in Texas, was born on January 6th of 1900. She was three months older than my dad.
This paper that my dad saved listed the family as:
Menke
Johan age 34 Johana 5 ½
Helene 33 Helen 3
Edward 10 Adela 1 ½
Johan 8
Henry 8
All the mothers and babies stayed in the lower part of the ship. My dad (as a boy) was very friendly and never saw a stranger. He was all over that ship. When he saw a door higher up, he pulled it open, and the captain said, “Hello, come on in.” He also said, “Would you like to hold this big wheel? It drives the ship.” So Daddy did, and he felt six feet tall doing that. Then the captain said, “I want you to have lunch with me and the other crew.” So Daddy was seated next to the captain. Later, Daddy went down and told his mother all about it. She said, “Be sure you don’t do something to get you in trouble.” Another exciting thing that happened was that he was the first one to spot a whale splashing around near the ship. Being on that ship was a great adventure for my dad.
They did not go to Ellis Island. They went on to Baltimore where several families went off with their belongings. Then they went on around Florida and docked in Galveston. There, all their belongings were put on a train headed for Schulenburg. It was night as the train traveled, and there were many fireflies. Dad said his mother said, “It looks like this whole country is on fire.” That was their first time to see fireflies.
In Schulenburg, friends met the train and got all their things into the house Grandpa had rented. The next day a farmer brought a cow and calf for them as a gift. Someone else brought some pigs, and another brought some chickens. That’s what people were like in 1909. They were blessed.
After all got settled in Schulenburg, they farmed. Ed and Daddy had certain duties at the farm.
When they got to be eleven and twelve years old, some other farmers asked Grandpa if they could hire the two older boys to help on their farms. Ed (born 12/17/1898) went to the farm of the Ammen family, and Daddy worked in Weimar for Mr. Herder.
They did get to go home once in a while. They went to school in the wintertime when they had less work to do.
The next thing I remember was when Ed and John got to be 17 and 18 years old they worked for someone else. Ed heard about Dietrich Oeltjendiers. He went there and asked for work. He got the job and did great work there. Well, Dietrich (born 11/14/1854; died 2/2/1925) was Annie, my mother’s dad. So Ed lived with them. My mother (born 1/6/1900) did all the cooking and housekeeping and helped her dad get in a buggy to go to town. He was crippled, but he could manage the horses. When he got to town, he sat in his buggy in the middle of that wide street. The grocery man knew him and went to the buggy and got his grocery list. He came back with all he wanted, got paid, and Dietrich headed home. Then he had to have help, so Ed and Mama got him out and onto his cane-bottom chair which he swung to the right and then to the left and made it to the kitchen.
Dietrich had injured his back in Germany working for his dad. He was hauling a big load of clay (for making bricks) up the ramp when his dad scolded him for being so slow. When he got up close to his dad, the dad took his sharp shovel and hit his son across the handle bars of the wheelbarrow and cut off four fingers. That’s when he left home and finally came to Texas. How he managed that I do not know.
One thing I do know is that my mother kept up her subscription to the Weimar Mercury Newspaper all those years. When she was eighty years old, she saw in the “100 Years Ago” column, “Dietrich Oeltjendiers and his wife arrived in Weimar from Germany.” That was a shock to her – she never knew he had been married then.
Ed and Annie got married. They went to Hull-Daisetta (in southeastern Liberty County, East Texas) to the oil field. Ed worked in the oil field, and Mama was a waitress in the huge cafeteria.
They did well until Mama got sick. She lost weight and looked pale. Ed’s friends told him he should take Annie to Galveston and let her be in that salt water every day. So they took off from work and went to Galveston. Later it was learned that she had had TB. She was in the water every day and got a real good tan. She ate better and got well.
Then Ed was offered a job for a farmer in Garwood, a community in Colorado County, Texas located on State Highway 71 at the midpoint between Columbus and El Campo. When the time came to plant sweet potato slips, they planted all day. But Annie was way along pregnant, and she did not know that bending over to cover the plants would hurt her unborn baby. That night the baby came too early. Ed went for the doctor and pastor. When the baby arrived, he cried that night and part of the next day and died. The pastor baptized him before he died and gave him his name, Clarence Menke. They buried him the next day. When I get to Heaven, I will see my little brother Clarence.
After that, Mama’s dad needed help again, so they went back to his house. They were there about a year when Ed went to town with two horses and a wagon. He always had his Bible with him, and he was a good missionary. Wherever he went he told folks about Jesus.
This particular day he was stopped by three bad boys from the Bear family. They hated Ed because of his Bible life. They hit him in the head and killed him. When another neighbor went down the road he saw what was happening. He saw the boys leave, and he found Ed. So he turned (Ed’s) horses loose so they could go back home. The neighbor went to the sheriff and told him what had happened. By then the horses had arrived home, and Annie was very worried. The sheriff helped her get settled enough so she could make arrangements at the funeral home.
Annie was despondent for a long time. Finally John (my dad) got word of it in the oil field and headed for home. He stayed and helped her dad and Annie get through their pain.
Later on, John and Annie got married. They moved to a farm as a helper for that farmer. They had their own little house, and on June 12,1922, I was born. Two years later, Jesse was born. He was named after that farmer, Jesse Holman.
During cotton chopping time, they had several black folks come to chop. They always stopped and asked how the baby was doing. This time Mama told them he was very sick. He didn’t smile at her anymore. One black lady said, “Let me see him.” Soon as she saw him she told Mama she could help him. She sent Daddy to the drugstore to get some “acidity,” and she went to find some wild onions. She put the two together and cooked it a while and then cooled it. She held Jesse on her lap and fed him a little at a time. She got nearly a cupful down him, and then they put him to bed.
The next day early she asked about him, and Mama had him in her arms and he smiled again. He got well by God sending angels to help out. God has been so good to all of us.
The following two years there was a bad drought in the Central Texas area. The farmers made no crops or hay. They put a sign on the animals saying, “If you can feed me, take me” and sent them down the roads.
Daddy decided to go to Houston to find work. He went to the train depot first and was walking and observing what he could when a man walked up to him and asked if he was looking for work. He was Mr. Brown. Dad said yes, he needed a job. Mr. Brown said he needed a helper to go with him to Ennis (close to Dallas) to build a railroad scale. Daddy accepted the job, and he and Mama put their clothing and bedding in their Model T Ford with plastic or such curtains all around the car to keep us dry in the cold weather. The curtains had something like flexible plastic windows in them. Dad also had a large trunk which sat tied down behind the car on a shelf. Their drive to Ennis was on muddy roads. The local farmers all along the road were ready to pull the cars out with their horses or mules when they got stuck. They finally made it to Ennis.
Mr. Brown had rented an apartment that had space for our family and an extra bedroom on the side. He had a twelve-year-old daughter. His wife had died, so he needed full care for her. He asked Mama if she would see to it that his daughter got back and forth to school every day. That pleased Mama – she loved her, and all went well.
One day Mama, Jesse, and I went to the grocery store. We had to wait for the Sunbeam Train to pass before we could cross the tracks and went a few yards to the store. While Mama gathered her groceries, a lady had just put out some men’s socks and the box was empty. She asked if I wanted the box. I said yes – it was covered with pretty dark red paper. I was so proud of that box. I had it a long time, putting anything in it that I wanted to keep.
One night, Mama had pinto beans and cornbread for supper. We were all around the table eating when Jesse dropped a bean on the floor. He wanted that bean. Mama told him it was dirty now and he couldn’t have it. Jesse cried even louder and just kept on wanting that bean. Finally Mama picked it up and washed it. Then all was quiet. Jesse was happy, and the rest of us were relieved.
When that job was finished, we went back to Houston. Mama had an Aunt Annie and Uncle Ed Proctor there. We went to see them, and Uncle Ed told Daddy they were hiring men at the Baytown Humble Oil and Refining Company. Daddy went there the next day and got a job. He came back and got his family, and he rented a small house in Wooster which was on one side of the refinery, and Baytown was on the other side.
I got to be six years old and went to a one-room school that had four classes in it. I was in the first grade, and by the time I got to second grade most of us already knew a lot of what the fourth graders knew. We heard all that was taught all day long.
One day at school, the whole bunch of students were playing Red Rover Come Over. We had two lines of us separated by a large margin, and then our side said, “Red Rover, Red Rover Come Over,” and one at a time one came running toward us as fast as they could and tried to break our line as we were holding hands with our neighbor. They tried to break our hands apart. This time, one big boy came through my right hand and my neighbor’s. He hit my right cheek full force. It knocked me down, and I screamed. We all went back in school. The teacher sat me in her chair at her desk. She told us she had to leave and get a neighbor from across the highway which led to Houston. She came back with a lady with two big bath towels. They washed my cheek and sent me home with a big bath towel wrapped around my head. When my mother saw me coming, she was scared and ran to meet me. She asked what happened. I told her we were playing Red Rover and a boy named Bob White hit my cheek. The next day, Daddy went to school to hear the teacher’s story. They all did what they could, and I got well.
Meantime, Grandpa and Grandma were living in Columbus in the low land close to the river. They rented a large farm close to the Colorado River. The river flooded their cropland every three or four years. That brought the silt from the river onto their cropland which made it rich. Their house was up higher and never flooded.
One year Grandpa made twenty bales of cotton. When he sold all of it, he bought Grandma a beautiful new woodstove. It had chrome on it. The back was raised and had two warming ovens there. It had a water tank on the right side for hot water all the time. I don’t know how many burners it had, but it had a large oven. She baked the best bread anyone ever tasted.
Grandpa also bought a large truck with high sideboards that would hold enough picked cotton to make a bale. In addition, he bought a cream separator. They had a small building with a concrete floor in it just right for the separator. Aunt Clara was in charge of that. She poured the milk into a large bowl and started the machine. The cream came out one side, and the skimmed milk stayed in the big bowl. She put the cream in a large milk can just for that and moved it out to the road where creamery men picked it up with the other farmers’ cans.
We went to see them once a month. It was always so much fun to be there.
Aunt Mary, Aunt Clara, Uncle Fred, and Aunt Hattie were still at home. All the others had married and had their own farms. Everyone wanted to play outside after we arrived about dark. I was about ten or twelve years old, and they wanted Jesse and me to go out and play. Jesse stayed with Mama, but I went out with them. Then Uncle Fred said, “Hilda, see that big bump on that tree root?” It was a moonlit night, and I saw it. I put my hand on it, and it moved. I screamed, and all the grownups came out to see why I screamed and found out it was a huge frog. They made all of us go back inside.
I do remember the Depression years. Daddy was fortunate to have his good job at the refinery. (Later became Exxon.) Many people were out of work.
Every other week we filled our car full of groceries -- flour, cornmeal, shortening, dried beans, and canned goods -- and drove to see Grandpa and Grandma near Columbus. That place was called Matthew’s Place. Grandpa rented that place. They were always so glad to see us and thanked Daddy for coming. Then on Sunday, most of the married children came to see them, and it was like a family reunion.
Now, back to our family -- Mama and Daddy bought two lots of land on 221 Magnolia Street in the Baytown area. Baytown lies on the northern side of Galveston Bay near the outlets of the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou. They built a nice house. It had a kitchen, a living and dining area on one side, and two bedrooms on the other side. They added a bathroom and a porch on the back side and a long front porch.
I had a long way to walk to the elementary school. They had five grades there. Later they built another building closer to our home and had 6th, 7th, and 8th grades there. The Robert E. Lee High School was in Goose Creek. The city now known as Baytown was originally three separate towns, Goose Creek, Baytown, and Pelly. The first of these was Goose Creek. Daddy sold his home and moved to Goose Creek.
One day, the weather looked bad, and it soon thundered with lightning and rain. Mama and Daddy were sitting on the swing with Jesse between them. They were surrounded by wisteria vines on two sides. I was curious and stood at the edge of the porch with my arm around the porch post. I was looking down at the block before you would get to our block, and I saw lightning hit a tree at the far end of that block. It traveled right down the street and scorched my arm. I said, “OW!” and Daddy jumped up to see what happened. He took me to the bathroom and washed it and put some cream on it. It healed fast. I learned not to be outside in bad weather.
After two or three years, we moved to Cedar Bayou (in Baytown). Daddy rented a house on five acres of land. This was called Walter’s Place. I was twelve years old, and Jesse and I caught the school bus to school.
At this place, Jesse and I learned to ride a horse and a mule. We would ride bareback – I on horse and Jesse on the mule. We raced to the far end of the place and back to the barn again.
We also had two cows, and I had to learn to milk a cow before breakfast. Then after Thanksgiving Day, they took me out of school to stay with Mama. She was expecting a baby in December. In case she started having pains, I was to go to a neighbor’s house to have her call the doctor. It so happened that Daddy was home the night Mama started having pains. He drove to town and got the doctor and his nurse to come.
Jesse slept all through that night. I heard the commotion and got myself dressed and waited. Daddy came in, sat with me a while, and said it wouldn’t be long before the baby arrived. Then he went back to Mama. It took all night before she delivered, and Johnny was born December 30th, 1934. After the doctor and nurse left, Daddy came and got Jesse and me to see our little brother. They named him John William Menke. The next day, Daddy did a lot of washing and got everything back in order. I made breakfast and washed clothes and took care of Mama.
Mama had taught me how to make bread, and one day Mrs. Rutherford, our next-door neighbor, came in the back door and asked what I was doing. I said I was making bread. She was so excited and asked if I would go over to her house and show her how to make bread. Mama agreed, so I would make up the yeast and then go to her house and make yeast up for her. By the time I got home, it was time to add flour and water, mix it well, and knead it and let it rise. I ran to her house and did the same thing. I went back home, and it was about time to punch it down and knead it again and cut it into two pieces. I had two greased pans ready and shaped the loaves and put it in the pans. I covered it with a clean dishtowel and let it rise again. I did the same at her house. She said she could put it in the oven at 375 degrees and bake it. So I didn’t have to go back after that.
About a week later, Mrs. Portis, who lived across the street from Mrs. Rutherford, heard about it and wanted me to do it all for her. I did all three places until they learned how.
The next year, I wanted to go back to school in Cedar Bayou. Mama and Daddy thought I knew all I needed to know and weren’t all that interested, but I kept on wanting to go back to school. Then they let me. It didn’t bother me that I missed a class and was a year behind my friends. Later my parents were glad they had let me finish high school. I graduated in 1940, and Jesse graduated in 1941.
We did not have a telephone, so I asked Daddy if he would see if the owner of Smith’s Store would let me leave his number to have Woolworth call if I could work for them. I had applied earlier, so I went back and gave them Smith’s Store number. They did call and Smith’s Store sent their delivery boy to come and tell me that I was wanted at Woolworth. As a result, Mama had to take Daddy to work so she could have the car to take me to work. Then Jesse got a car and could take both of us to work.
Jesse and I also wanted to be confirmed. We made arrangements with Pastor Oberhaus. We met with him at 8:00 AM every Saturday and got to work by 9:00 AM. After two years, we were confirmed.
One morning I was walking into Woolworth to work, and I met Ben Devereux and Richard Woods as they were coming out. We were all so glad to see each other. We had graduated together. Then I said, “I must go punch the clock.” They said, “Oh, you work here?” I said yes, and we parted. That afternoon, Ben came and found me at my counter. He asked me for a date, and I said okay. He said he would pick me up at 7:30 that evening. That was fine with me. This must have been in February or March.
In October, Ben asked me to marry him and when should we do it. I said I would like to be a June bride, and he agreed.
Then on December 7, 1941 we had Pearl Harbor! I can still hear President Roosevelt say on the radio, “We are at war!” That upset everybody.
When Ben got off his shift on the tugboat he said, “We can’t wait until June to get married – they might call me into service, and I want you to be mine!” We decided to get married on Christmas Eve. Later my friends said, “You just married Santa Claus!”
I was nineteen, and he lacked one week of being nineteen on New Year’s Day.
After a year and two months, our son “Benjie” was born. The very next day, Ben got his letter to be inducted into service. He had a week before he had to leave by bus to go to San Antonio.
He was sitting in line with other boys waiting, and two marine generals walked in and said, “We need two men to be in the marines.” Ben jumped up fast, and he and another man went with them. Ben had heard that the marines were better to their servicemen than the army was. He never regretted that move. He was at boot camp for six weeks in California. He got a badge for being an excellent sharpshooter. That qualified him and sent him to Norman, Oklahoma to learn all about artillery. He ended up being the man at his base who put bombs under planes, and if they came back and had not dropped a bomb, everyone stayed away from the airstrip in case he bumped and the bomb would explode. That never happened at all.
They were sent to the Philippines where they cleared the land for their base. The mountains were nearby, and they heard shots coming from that range of mountains. They discovered the Japanese had a stronghold there, and our planes dropped bombs on top of them. A plane went close to the windows where they were with their machine guns. They could see the men still sitting there in the plane, and blood was coming out of their eyes and noses. They were dead. After that, the base was built without any interruption.
In the meantime, my folks moved to Brenham. Benjie and I would stay a month or two, and then we stayed that much time with Ben’s folks in Baytown. We would take a bus from Baytown to Brenham. I had two suitcases and a heavy baby to manage. That worked out well until Ben got home 2 years 8 months later.
Ben arrived at the train depot in Houston. His dad took us there to meet him. Before Ben got home, Benjie and I prayed for Daddy and I had an 8X10 picture of Ben, so Benjie kissed that picture and knew what Ben looked like. When the train stopped, I told Benjie that Daddy was coming home to us. When Ben stepped off that train, we were all smiles. Benjie reached out both hands as I was holding him and gave Ben a big hug. Then Ben hugged me and his dad. It was such a good feeling to be together again.
Ben had to be back in California to get his discharge. We bought a Dodge car and drove through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to Santa Anna, California. Ben stopped at the marine base, El Toro, to see when he should be there to go to San Diego. We had two days, and then he left.
Benjie and I stayed at a motel near the airport and went to a new church that was just getting started. It was a Lutheran Church. Then we waited for a call from Ben to come pick him up at El Toro.
Ben had gone with a truckload of marines to get his discharge. After being discharged, he walked by a jewelry store and saw a pretty gold cross necklace. He went in and bought it for me. I still have it.
Benjie had a good time every time we stopped at a restaurant. He got to put the quarter in the jukebox and press the button. When it started playing, he looked up at Ben as if he was God.
Benjie had been begging a lot to go home. When we left Santa Anna, we made the mistake of telling him we were on our way home. It took two days before we got there, and he was almost sick. We arrived at my folks’ home about 10 or 11 at night. Daddy came out to greet us, and Benjie went to Mama’s room and crawled in bed with her and said, “Grandma, I will never leave you again!” Mama wondered what we did to him that he was so upset.
Back to my Grandpa and Grandma. They were staying at Uncle Fred’s and Aunt Clara’s place close to Columbus. Grandpa died in 1953. Grandma died in 1954. They are buried in the Lutheran cemetery in Cat Spring. RL Menke took us there when we left the reunion. His parents are buried there also.
She was born June 12, 1922, in Weimer, Texas, the daughter of John Henry and Anna M. (Oeltjendiers) Menke. Hilda grew up and attended schools in Baytown. She was united in marriage to Benjamin F. Devereux, Jr., on December 25th, 1941, in Baytown, Texas, where they made their home until the late 70’s before moving to Bastrop. Hilda was employed with the Internal Revenue Service as a keypunch operator.
She and Benjamin were married for almost 70 years. They enjoyed short trips and always wanted to be home before dark. Hilda crocheted, did oil paintings and was a great artist.
She is survived by her grandsons: Brian Devereux (Renee) of Knoxville, Tennessee, Wendell (Rebecca) Devereux of Prattville, Alabama and Wayne Devereux of Rye, TX; five great grandchildren: Taylor, Addison, Tyler, Molly, and William. She was especially enchanted by her great-great-granddaughter, Ariel. Also grieving her loss: daughter-in-law Zandra Devereux, and sister-in-law Dorothy Menke Smith.
Hilda was preceded in death by her parents, John and Anna Menke, husband, Benjamin Devereux, Jr., two sons, Benjamin Devereux, III and William John Devereux and grandson, David Devereux.
This bit of history was written by Hilda Devereux in 2016. She was 94 years old.
These are some things I was told about my grandparents who lived in Germany. They lived in a two-story brick home in Rastede, Germany. The living quarters were upstairs. They had a huge wood stove and baked bread for the community.
When Jesse (my brother) and I were six or eight years old, Daddy told us many stories about his life in Germany. We would sit on their bed with them in our night clothes, and we enjoyed everything he said. He told us there was a lake not far from their home, and he loved to skate on the ice-covered lake. Germany is a very cold place in the winter time. Daddy loved school there; they learned a lot more than in our schools here in Texas.
In the lower part of their home they had a place with a concrete floor slanting down to their cornfield. They had two or three cows, and every morning they hosed the floor clean. All that good manure washed down to their cornfield. In the spring they planted corn and had a very good crop.
They left Germany because my grandmother was anemic; the doctor told my grandfather that she would not live long in that cold climate. That’s when my grandfather and three other men who were considering moving to Texas made three trips to Texas before they moved. One of those men took his family to Oklahoma. Another moved his family somewhere in Central Texas.
Grandpa rented a farm in Schulenburg, Texas. They packed up all their dishes, bedding, and clothing. It was all put in a steamship named the Hannover. They left from the port of Bremen on January 21st in 1909. The following March 26th, my dad was nine years old. He was born in 1900, and my mother, who was born in Texas, was born on January 6th of 1900. She was three months older than my dad.
This paper that my dad saved listed the family as:
Menke
Johan age 34 Johana 5 ½
Helene 33 Helen 3
Edward 10 Adela 1 ½
Johan 8
Henry 8
All the mothers and babies stayed in the lower part of the ship. My dad (as a boy) was very friendly and never saw a stranger. He was all over that ship. When he saw a door higher up, he pulled it open, and the captain said, “Hello, come on in.” He also said, “Would you like to hold this big wheel? It drives the ship.” So Daddy did, and he felt six feet tall doing that. Then the captain said, “I want you to have lunch with me and the other crew.” So Daddy was seated next to the captain. Later, Daddy went down and told his mother all about it. She said, “Be sure you don’t do something to get you in trouble.” Another exciting thing that happened was that he was the first one to spot a whale splashing around near the ship. Being on that ship was a great adventure for my dad.
They did not go to Ellis Island. They went on to Baltimore where several families went off with their belongings. Then they went on around Florida and docked in Galveston. There, all their belongings were put on a train headed for Schulenburg. It was night as the train traveled, and there were many fireflies. Dad said his mother said, “It looks like this whole country is on fire.” That was their first time to see fireflies.
In Schulenburg, friends met the train and got all their things into the house Grandpa had rented. The next day a farmer brought a cow and calf for them as a gift. Someone else brought some pigs, and another brought some chickens. That’s what people were like in 1909. They were blessed.
After all got settled in Schulenburg, they farmed. Ed and Daddy had certain duties at the farm.
When they got to be eleven and twelve years old, some other farmers asked Grandpa if they could hire the two older boys to help on their farms. Ed (born 12/17/1898) went to the farm of the Ammen family, and Daddy worked in Weimar for Mr. Herder.
They did get to go home once in a while. They went to school in the wintertime when they had less work to do.
The next thing I remember was when Ed and John got to be 17 and 18 years old they worked for someone else. Ed heard about Dietrich Oeltjendiers. He went there and asked for work. He got the job and did great work there. Well, Dietrich (born 11/14/1854; died 2/2/1925) was Annie, my mother’s dad. So Ed lived with them. My mother (born 1/6/1900) did all the cooking and housekeeping and helped her dad get in a buggy to go to town. He was crippled, but he could manage the horses. When he got to town, he sat in his buggy in the middle of that wide street. The grocery man knew him and went to the buggy and got his grocery list. He came back with all he wanted, got paid, and Dietrich headed home. Then he had to have help, so Ed and Mama got him out and onto his cane-bottom chair which he swung to the right and then to the left and made it to the kitchen.
Dietrich had injured his back in Germany working for his dad. He was hauling a big load of clay (for making bricks) up the ramp when his dad scolded him for being so slow. When he got up close to his dad, the dad took his sharp shovel and hit his son across the handle bars of the wheelbarrow and cut off four fingers. That’s when he left home and finally came to Texas. How he managed that I do not know.
One thing I do know is that my mother kept up her subscription to the Weimar Mercury Newspaper all those years. When she was eighty years old, she saw in the “100 Years Ago” column, “Dietrich Oeltjendiers and his wife arrived in Weimar from Germany.” That was a shock to her – she never knew he had been married then.
Ed and Annie got married. They went to Hull-Daisetta (in southeastern Liberty County, East Texas) to the oil field. Ed worked in the oil field, and Mama was a waitress in the huge cafeteria.
They did well until Mama got sick. She lost weight and looked pale. Ed’s friends told him he should take Annie to Galveston and let her be in that salt water every day. So they took off from work and went to Galveston. Later it was learned that she had had TB. She was in the water every day and got a real good tan. She ate better and got well.
Then Ed was offered a job for a farmer in Garwood, a community in Colorado County, Texas located on State Highway 71 at the midpoint between Columbus and El Campo. When the time came to plant sweet potato slips, they planted all day. But Annie was way along pregnant, and she did not know that bending over to cover the plants would hurt her unborn baby. That night the baby came too early. Ed went for the doctor and pastor. When the baby arrived, he cried that night and part of the next day and died. The pastor baptized him before he died and gave him his name, Clarence Menke. They buried him the next day. When I get to Heaven, I will see my little brother Clarence.
After that, Mama’s dad needed help again, so they went back to his house. They were there about a year when Ed went to town with two horses and a wagon. He always had his Bible with him, and he was a good missionary. Wherever he went he told folks about Jesus.
This particular day he was stopped by three bad boys from the Bear family. They hated Ed because of his Bible life. They hit him in the head and killed him. When another neighbor went down the road he saw what was happening. He saw the boys leave, and he found Ed. So he turned (Ed’s) horses loose so they could go back home. The neighbor went to the sheriff and told him what had happened. By then the horses had arrived home, and Annie was very worried. The sheriff helped her get settled enough so she could make arrangements at the funeral home.
Annie was despondent for a long time. Finally John (my dad) got word of it in the oil field and headed for home. He stayed and helped her dad and Annie get through their pain.
Later on, John and Annie got married. They moved to a farm as a helper for that farmer. They had their own little house, and on June 12,1922, I was born. Two years later, Jesse was born. He was named after that farmer, Jesse Holman.
During cotton chopping time, they had several black folks come to chop. They always stopped and asked how the baby was doing. This time Mama told them he was very sick. He didn’t smile at her anymore. One black lady said, “Let me see him.” Soon as she saw him she told Mama she could help him. She sent Daddy to the drugstore to get some “acidity,” and she went to find some wild onions. She put the two together and cooked it a while and then cooled it. She held Jesse on her lap and fed him a little at a time. She got nearly a cupful down him, and then they put him to bed.
The next day early she asked about him, and Mama had him in her arms and he smiled again. He got well by God sending angels to help out. God has been so good to all of us.
The following two years there was a bad drought in the Central Texas area. The farmers made no crops or hay. They put a sign on the animals saying, “If you can feed me, take me” and sent them down the roads.
Daddy decided to go to Houston to find work. He went to the train depot first and was walking and observing what he could when a man walked up to him and asked if he was looking for work. He was Mr. Brown. Dad said yes, he needed a job. Mr. Brown said he needed a helper to go with him to Ennis (close to Dallas) to build a railroad scale. Daddy accepted the job, and he and Mama put their clothing and bedding in their Model T Ford with plastic or such curtains all around the car to keep us dry in the cold weather. The curtains had something like flexible plastic windows in them. Dad also had a large trunk which sat tied down behind the car on a shelf. Their drive to Ennis was on muddy roads. The local farmers all along the road were ready to pull the cars out with their horses or mules when they got stuck. They finally made it to Ennis.
Mr. Brown had rented an apartment that had space for our family and an extra bedroom on the side. He had a twelve-year-old daughter. His wife had died, so he needed full care for her. He asked Mama if she would see to it that his daughter got back and forth to school every day. That pleased Mama – she loved her, and all went well.
One day Mama, Jesse, and I went to the grocery store. We had to wait for the Sunbeam Train to pass before we could cross the tracks and went a few yards to the store. While Mama gathered her groceries, a lady had just put out some men’s socks and the box was empty. She asked if I wanted the box. I said yes – it was covered with pretty dark red paper. I was so proud of that box. I had it a long time, putting anything in it that I wanted to keep.
One night, Mama had pinto beans and cornbread for supper. We were all around the table eating when Jesse dropped a bean on the floor. He wanted that bean. Mama told him it was dirty now and he couldn’t have it. Jesse cried even louder and just kept on wanting that bean. Finally Mama picked it up and washed it. Then all was quiet. Jesse was happy, and the rest of us were relieved.
When that job was finished, we went back to Houston. Mama had an Aunt Annie and Uncle Ed Proctor there. We went to see them, and Uncle Ed told Daddy they were hiring men at the Baytown Humble Oil and Refining Company. Daddy went there the next day and got a job. He came back and got his family, and he rented a small house in Wooster which was on one side of the refinery, and Baytown was on the other side.
I got to be six years old and went to a one-room school that had four classes in it. I was in the first grade, and by the time I got to second grade most of us already knew a lot of what the fourth graders knew. We heard all that was taught all day long.
One day at school, the whole bunch of students were playing Red Rover Come Over. We had two lines of us separated by a large margin, and then our side said, “Red Rover, Red Rover Come Over,” and one at a time one came running toward us as fast as they could and tried to break our line as we were holding hands with our neighbor. They tried to break our hands apart. This time, one big boy came through my right hand and my neighbor’s. He hit my right cheek full force. It knocked me down, and I screamed. We all went back in school. The teacher sat me in her chair at her desk. She told us she had to leave and get a neighbor from across the highway which led to Houston. She came back with a lady with two big bath towels. They washed my cheek and sent me home with a big bath towel wrapped around my head. When my mother saw me coming, she was scared and ran to meet me. She asked what happened. I told her we were playing Red Rover and a boy named Bob White hit my cheek. The next day, Daddy went to school to hear the teacher’s story. They all did what they could, and I got well.
Meantime, Grandpa and Grandma were living in Columbus in the low land close to the river. They rented a large farm close to the Colorado River. The river flooded their cropland every three or four years. That brought the silt from the river onto their cropland which made it rich. Their house was up higher and never flooded.
One year Grandpa made twenty bales of cotton. When he sold all of it, he bought Grandma a beautiful new woodstove. It had chrome on it. The back was raised and had two warming ovens there. It had a water tank on the right side for hot water all the time. I don’t know how many burners it had, but it had a large oven. She baked the best bread anyone ever tasted.
Grandpa also bought a large truck with high sideboards that would hold enough picked cotton to make a bale. In addition, he bought a cream separator. They had a small building with a concrete floor in it just right for the separator. Aunt Clara was in charge of that. She poured the milk into a large bowl and started the machine. The cream came out one side, and the skimmed milk stayed in the big bowl. She put the cream in a large milk can just for that and moved it out to the road where creamery men picked it up with the other farmers’ cans.
We went to see them once a month. It was always so much fun to be there.
Aunt Mary, Aunt Clara, Uncle Fred, and Aunt Hattie were still at home. All the others had married and had their own farms. Everyone wanted to play outside after we arrived about dark. I was about ten or twelve years old, and they wanted Jesse and me to go out and play. Jesse stayed with Mama, but I went out with them. Then Uncle Fred said, “Hilda, see that big bump on that tree root?” It was a moonlit night, and I saw it. I put my hand on it, and it moved. I screamed, and all the grownups came out to see why I screamed and found out it was a huge frog. They made all of us go back inside.
I do remember the Depression years. Daddy was fortunate to have his good job at the refinery. (Later became Exxon.) Many people were out of work.
Every other week we filled our car full of groceries -- flour, cornmeal, shortening, dried beans, and canned goods -- and drove to see Grandpa and Grandma near Columbus. That place was called Matthew’s Place. Grandpa rented that place. They were always so glad to see us and thanked Daddy for coming. Then on Sunday, most of the married children came to see them, and it was like a family reunion.
Now, back to our family -- Mama and Daddy bought two lots of land on 221 Magnolia Street in the Baytown area. Baytown lies on the northern side of Galveston Bay near the outlets of the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou. They built a nice house. It had a kitchen, a living and dining area on one side, and two bedrooms on the other side. They added a bathroom and a porch on the back side and a long front porch.
I had a long way to walk to the elementary school. They had five grades there. Later they built another building closer to our home and had 6th, 7th, and 8th grades there. The Robert E. Lee High School was in Goose Creek. The city now known as Baytown was originally three separate towns, Goose Creek, Baytown, and Pelly. The first of these was Goose Creek. Daddy sold his home and moved to Goose Creek.
One day, the weather looked bad, and it soon thundered with lightning and rain. Mama and Daddy were sitting on the swing with Jesse between them. They were surrounded by wisteria vines on two sides. I was curious and stood at the edge of the porch with my arm around the porch post. I was looking down at the block before you would get to our block, and I saw lightning hit a tree at the far end of that block. It traveled right down the street and scorched my arm. I said, “OW!” and Daddy jumped up to see what happened. He took me to the bathroom and washed it and put some cream on it. It healed fast. I learned not to be outside in bad weather.
After two or three years, we moved to Cedar Bayou (in Baytown). Daddy rented a house on five acres of land. This was called Walter’s Place. I was twelve years old, and Jesse and I caught the school bus to school.
At this place, Jesse and I learned to ride a horse and a mule. We would ride bareback – I on horse and Jesse on the mule. We raced to the far end of the place and back to the barn again.
We also had two cows, and I had to learn to milk a cow before breakfast. Then after Thanksgiving Day, they took me out of school to stay with Mama. She was expecting a baby in December. In case she started having pains, I was to go to a neighbor’s house to have her call the doctor. It so happened that Daddy was home the night Mama started having pains. He drove to town and got the doctor and his nurse to come.
Jesse slept all through that night. I heard the commotion and got myself dressed and waited. Daddy came in, sat with me a while, and said it wouldn’t be long before the baby arrived. Then he went back to Mama. It took all night before she delivered, and Johnny was born December 30th, 1934. After the doctor and nurse left, Daddy came and got Jesse and me to see our little brother. They named him John William Menke. The next day, Daddy did a lot of washing and got everything back in order. I made breakfast and washed clothes and took care of Mama.
Mama had taught me how to make bread, and one day Mrs. Rutherford, our next-door neighbor, came in the back door and asked what I was doing. I said I was making bread. She was so excited and asked if I would go over to her house and show her how to make bread. Mama agreed, so I would make up the yeast and then go to her house and make yeast up for her. By the time I got home, it was time to add flour and water, mix it well, and knead it and let it rise. I ran to her house and did the same thing. I went back home, and it was about time to punch it down and knead it again and cut it into two pieces. I had two greased pans ready and shaped the loaves and put it in the pans. I covered it with a clean dishtowel and let it rise again. I did the same at her house. She said she could put it in the oven at 375 degrees and bake it. So I didn’t have to go back after that.
About a week later, Mrs. Portis, who lived across the street from Mrs. Rutherford, heard about it and wanted me to do it all for her. I did all three places until they learned how.
The next year, I wanted to go back to school in Cedar Bayou. Mama and Daddy thought I knew all I needed to know and weren’t all that interested, but I kept on wanting to go back to school. Then they let me. It didn’t bother me that I missed a class and was a year behind my friends. Later my parents were glad they had let me finish high school. I graduated in 1940, and Jesse graduated in 1941.
We did not have a telephone, so I asked Daddy if he would see if the owner of Smith’s Store would let me leave his number to have Woolworth call if I could work for them. I had applied earlier, so I went back and gave them Smith’s Store number. They did call and Smith’s Store sent their delivery boy to come and tell me that I was wanted at Woolworth. As a result, Mama had to take Daddy to work so she could have the car to take me to work. Then Jesse got a car and could take both of us to work.
Jesse and I also wanted to be confirmed. We made arrangements with Pastor Oberhaus. We met with him at 8:00 AM every Saturday and got to work by 9:00 AM. After two years, we were confirmed.
One morning I was walking into Woolworth to work, and I met Ben Devereux and Richard Woods as they were coming out. We were all so glad to see each other. We had graduated together. Then I said, “I must go punch the clock.” They said, “Oh, you work here?” I said yes, and we parted. That afternoon, Ben came and found me at my counter. He asked me for a date, and I said okay. He said he would pick me up at 7:30 that evening. That was fine with me. This must have been in February or March.
In October, Ben asked me to marry him and when should we do it. I said I would like to be a June bride, and he agreed.
Then on December 7, 1941 we had Pearl Harbor! I can still hear President Roosevelt say on the radio, “We are at war!” That upset everybody.
When Ben got off his shift on the tugboat he said, “We can’t wait until June to get married – they might call me into service, and I want you to be mine!” We decided to get married on Christmas Eve. Later my friends said, “You just married Santa Claus!”
I was nineteen, and he lacked one week of being nineteen on New Year’s Day.
After a year and two months, our son “Benjie” was born. The very next day, Ben got his letter to be inducted into service. He had a week before he had to leave by bus to go to San Antonio.
He was sitting in line with other boys waiting, and two marine generals walked in and said, “We need two men to be in the marines.” Ben jumped up fast, and he and another man went with them. Ben had heard that the marines were better to their servicemen than the army was. He never regretted that move. He was at boot camp for six weeks in California. He got a badge for being an excellent sharpshooter. That qualified him and sent him to Norman, Oklahoma to learn all about artillery. He ended up being the man at his base who put bombs under planes, and if they came back and had not dropped a bomb, everyone stayed away from the airstrip in case he bumped and the bomb would explode. That never happened at all.
They were sent to the Philippines where they cleared the land for their base. The mountains were nearby, and they heard shots coming from that range of mountains. They discovered the Japanese had a stronghold there, and our planes dropped bombs on top of them. A plane went close to the windows where they were with their machine guns. They could see the men still sitting there in the plane, and blood was coming out of their eyes and noses. They were dead. After that, the base was built without any interruption.
In the meantime, my folks moved to Brenham. Benjie and I would stay a month or two, and then we stayed that much time with Ben’s folks in Baytown. We would take a bus from Baytown to Brenham. I had two suitcases and a heavy baby to manage. That worked out well until Ben got home 2 years 8 months later.
Ben arrived at the train depot in Houston. His dad took us there to meet him. Before Ben got home, Benjie and I prayed for Daddy and I had an 8X10 picture of Ben, so Benjie kissed that picture and knew what Ben looked like. When the train stopped, I told Benjie that Daddy was coming home to us. When Ben stepped off that train, we were all smiles. Benjie reached out both hands as I was holding him and gave Ben a big hug. Then Ben hugged me and his dad. It was such a good feeling to be together again.
Ben had to be back in California to get his discharge. We bought a Dodge car and drove through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to Santa Anna, California. Ben stopped at the marine base, El Toro, to see when he should be there to go to San Diego. We had two days, and then he left.
Benjie and I stayed at a motel near the airport and went to a new church that was just getting started. It was a Lutheran Church. Then we waited for a call from Ben to come pick him up at El Toro.
Ben had gone with a truckload of marines to get his discharge. After being discharged, he walked by a jewelry store and saw a pretty gold cross necklace. He went in and bought it for me. I still have it.
Benjie had a good time every time we stopped at a restaurant. He got to put the quarter in the jukebox and press the button. When it started playing, he looked up at Ben as if he was God.
Benjie had been begging a lot to go home. When we left Santa Anna, we made the mistake of telling him we were on our way home. It took two days before we got there, and he was almost sick. We arrived at my folks’ home about 10 or 11 at night. Daddy came out to greet us, and Benjie went to Mama’s room and crawled in bed with her and said, “Grandma, I will never leave you again!” Mama wondered what we did to him that he was so upset.
Back to my Grandpa and Grandma. They were staying at Uncle Fred’s and Aunt Clara’s place close to Columbus. Grandpa died in 1953. Grandma died in 1954. They are buried in the Lutheran cemetery in Cat Spring. RL Menke took us there when we left the reunion. His parents are buried there also.
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