Ernst was born in Germany and came to America as a young man and with his family in 1872. He grew up on his father's farms in Germany, Wisconsin and then in Valley County, Nebraska, where they moved in 1879. In Madison they came in contact with the Evangelical Association and became members of the church.
How Ernst met Anna Marquart is unknown, but it was probably in Valley County. Her parents immigrated to America from Germany and were living in Iowa when Anna was born. Her father died there when she was 7. He mother remained in Iowa and died there many years later. But somehow, Anna ended up in Valley County.
The following is condensed from the book "A History of the William Marks Family in Colorado" published in 1988:
After marrying in Hastings, Nebraska on February 16, 1881, William and Anna Marks settled on a homestead in Mira Valley, southwest of Ord, Nebraska. There in a sod house their first four children, Henrietta Johanna, Theodore Albert, Clara Augusta and Alvina Catherine, were born. William's older brother, Ernest C. Marks, who was a circuit riding Evangelical minister, served a congregation in northeastern Colorado prior to 1887. He returned to Nebraska with glowing reports of vast prairies waiting to be homesteaded. This news excited William, so in 1887 he went to Colorado, liked what he saw and filed on a homestead in Logan County, southwest of Sterling. On this land he built a long shed-type building of lumber to shelter the family and livestock until a house could be built. The building had a manger through the center to divide the living quarters for the family from the shelter for the cattle and horses. The loft was used as bedrooms. William then returned to Ord, NE, for his family.
In March of 1888 the Marks family traveled by emigrant car on a freight train over the newly established Burlington Route from Holdredge, Nebraska.On the train they had all their farm machinery, household goods, horses, cattle, and the entire family. When they arrived at Fleming, Colorado, their belongings and animals were unloaded and moved to the quarter section of land twenty miles southwest of Fleming. This homestead was about six miles southwest of a small settlement called LeRoy. At that time, LeRoy wasn't much more than a general store, a blacksmith shop and a sod school house which was also used for church services. The LeRoy townsite was laid out in early 1889 with just a few streets and 96 lots. Later the town had two general stores, a hardware store, a blacksmith shop, a post office, a small broom factory, the first Evangelical church in Colorado and a school. The 1890 census shows the population of LeRoy at 440. Today there is no evidence left of the town, except for the farm that occupies the spot.
On the homestead, a two story house was built the first year with a kitchen and bedroom downstairs and stairs up through the center of the house to bedrooms for the children upstairs. Later that year the family was able to move into the new house. A neighbor, Fred Grauberger, Sr., helped William build his home. Ida Esther Marks was the first child born in their new home on April 16, 1889. And five more children followed….Elsie Lydia, Gustave Adolph, Walter William, Oscar McKinley and Florence Anna. The first years that William and Anna were on the Colorado homestead were bad crop years. High winds had a bad effect on the crops in the early spring. Very hot summers followed with no rain. However, there was only one year, the summer of 1894, when they failed to raise enough potatoes to stretch from season to season.
During the winter of 1891 a severe blizzard hit the area and lasted several days. The horses chewed big sections of the manger boards for feed and the cattle kept tramping the snow that drifted into the sheds until they were closer to the roof than the ground. A rope was tied to the door knob at the house and then to the cattle shed so the men could find the way back and forth from the house.
In those early days there were no fences and the roads just ran straight from one place to another without regard for section lines. About the time the children reached the age of six they would take turns herding the cattle so they would not stray too far from home. Until about the turn of the century, the cattle had to be watched very closely because every homesteader had a piece of land that had been plowed and the lambsquarters (a ragweed) grew there. This weed would bloat the cattle when they would eat it. To keep the cattle and loose horses from drifting too far from home, it was often necessary for one or more of the children to stay out on the prairie for days at a time. Especially in winter, the animals, if caught out in a blizzard, would drift far south, sometimes as far as the Burlington railroad through Otis, Yuma and Wray territory.
Many rattlesnakes infested the prairies in those early days. Theodore recalls killing as many as half a hundred on a days ride. One time Alvina was gathering eggs and found a rattler in the nest, curled up and ready to strike. Prairie fires were quite common. One fire was probably started by the Burlington train near Yuma. A strong wind from the south drove it north very rapidly. All the men took wet sacks and barrels of water to fight the fire. In some places it was stopped by the gravel creek beds. Many people plowed fire guards around their homes, but the wind could blow a flaming tumble weed across the fire guard and start a new fire. After the wind went down they got the fires out.
By 1900, the family was milking forty cows morning and evening, by hand, no milking machines! All the children, both boys and girls, helped with this chore. The milk was kept in earthen crocks in the cellar, then the cream was skimmed off and churned into butter. The churn held thirty five gallons and was operated by the windmill with a pulley and belt. Anna would churn butter twice a week. She had a butter worker, a kind of trough board on legs with a long lever to press on to finish working the liquid from the butter. There was also a butter printer that would press the butter into one pound squares which were then wrapped in paper. The butter was taken to Sterling and shipped by train to Denver, where it brought less than ten cents per pound. Once butter prices soared to thirty cents per pound in 1898! The average twice-a-week churning was fifty pounds. At first the milk was kept cold by pumping water into a covered wooden tank between the windmill and the stock tank. The water was always cold because it came from the well. Later on a cistern was dug, which became the "refrigerator" in which to keep, not only the milk, but other perishable items cool. The Marks' were one of the first to obtain a cream separator (a DeLavel). This was a time saver in separating the cream from the milk and did a much more efficient job of it. It was greatly appreciated except when it had to be washed each time it was used! Each of the girls claimed that washing the separator was her chore but no doubt all of them shared in it.
All their food was raised right on the farm. As the children grew older they assisted in the farm work. Most of the farm implements were walking type. Listing and plowing the fields for crops were long, tiresome jobs. Hogs were raised for lard, ham, bacon and sausage. The garden produced cabbage for sauerkraut which was stored in barrels and later, in stone jars. There was always plenty of popcorn for snacks and popcorn balls, especially when company came! Potatoes were the staple on which these settlers depended. Corn was also raised, as food for livestock and the family, and the stalks became fodder for the cattle. The cobs, including those picked up after the pigs had eaten the corn from them, fueled the cook stove. The children also picked up dried cow chips, piled them up like haystacks and covered them with boards to keep them dry. These were used as fuel in the cook stove for cooking and to heat the home. Nothing was wasted in those days.
The family also raised sorghum cane which the children fed into a mill operated with a horse going in circles around a roller device that pressed the juice out. The juice ran into a barrel and then into a series of cooking pans over a fire pit. The dry pulp from the pressing was burned to boil the water out of the sorghum juice to produce molasses. The molasses was stored in wooden barrels and became a very tasty spread on hot cakes and corn bread, and could even substitute for sugar. The neighbors came from miles around with their sorghum cane to have the juice pressed out. In addition to pumping water and churning butter, the windmill powered a grinder for grinding corn into cornmeal and wheat into graham flour, not only for themselves but, again, for the neighbors.
After the turn of the century, William expanded the farming operation quite rapidly. The crops and the grasslands were doing much better, and the horses and cattle had good grazing in the summer. The winters were still hard with blizzards causing the cattle to drift far from home. Late in the summer of 1902, Alvina, Ida and Elsie came down with typhoid fever. On September 20, Alvina died at the age of fifteen years. Thankfully, Ida and Elsie recovered.
William bought a steam threshing outfit in the fall of 1907. Straw was burned in the machine to make steam. During the ninety day run, it was Gustave's job to keep it in straw and water. In 1908 help was hired to run the outfit. The machine age had started! William had Gustave run the steam engine so he could plow 100 acres of sod. Then in the fall Gustave was sent out threshing with the outfit. From 1907 to 1909 the homesteads that had been vacated in 1894 because of no crops, were all filed on again and most of the homesteaders had grain to thresh. Most of them paid in gold coins, and on weekends Gustave would come home with a pocket full of gold!
The cattle range was fading fast as grass was plowed up to make way for grain. In about 1812 the combines came along. The first were pulled by horses with a second team and wagon going along side to catch the wheat or other grain. Before the combine, it took a large crew of men several days to thresh one thousand or twelve hundred bushels. But with the combine, two or three men could put two thousand bushels in the bin in one short day. After many of the early settlers had left their homesteads for various reasons, William paid the taxes on fourteen or fifteen quarter sections. After a few years he received deeds on them and he later gave each of his sons a half section of land.
The family's mode of travel was first in a lumber wagon, then in a buggy, and then in a model T Ford. Bricks were heated in the oven, wrapped in blankets, and put in the wagon to keep the children warm on the five mile trip to church. One time the older children started to a church youth meeting in a bobsled. They got lost in a blizzard and had to turn the horses loose to find their way home (something a Model T couldn't do!) William was not known for his expertise at driving the Model T Tudor sedan. He still wanted to drive it like he did the team of horses, with the result that he often landed in the ditch in spite of his calling "WHOA" when it wouldn't stop, even turning it over a few times. But the Model T was patient with him and kept on running for many years.
The telephone came to the farm by barb wire fence! Since there was no "Bell System" out in the country yet, it was up to each farmer to provide his own equipment. The Marks homestead became the "Central" for three of these country lines. One went directly into the central office in Sterling. But if one of these members on the third line wanted to get a message to Sterling, it had to be relayed by whoever was at the Marks' phone at the time. Each party on the line had a specific ring, composed of a combination of short and long rings. And, of course, everyone heard each ring, so there was a lot of "rubbering" or listening in on other people's conversations. There was a special ring to be used in case of emergency such as a fire or an accident. Many times the lines were down because of cattle or machinery breaking through the fence. Oscar was one of the first to get disgusted with this method and helped to set up the first over head telephone wire system in the county.
Over the years each of the children married and had families of their own. In1925 William and Anna moved to Loveland, Colorado, where Theodore was pastor of the Evangelical Church, but then moved back to the farm in 1928. The old house was torn down and a new, more comfortable home was built. William and Anna celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary on February 17, 1931, at the LeRoy Church. All nine children were able to help them celebrate, as well as thirty-nine grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. A rather unique discovery was made in the number constituting the family tree on the day of the golden wedding. The family tree numbered an even fifty members, not counting the in-laws!
On September 19, 1938, William died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of eighty one. After William's death Anna continued to live in the family home until she suffered a stroke nearly ten years later. She then lived with her daughter, Henrietta until her death on April 20, 1949, at the age of eighty nine. An interesting fact is the longevity of the children in this family. One, Henrietta, was 106 when she died. Six were in their nineties - Theodore, 93; Clara, 99; Ida, 92; Walter, 90; Oscar, 91; and Florence, 92. Two were in their eighties - Elsie, 89 and Gustave, 84. Alvina was only15 when she died.