The infamous Mr. Dugger

While growing up, I often heard the story of my father and all his brothers and sisters and how they all ended up in foster homes.  Of the six children, the three youngest, Eleanor, Ralph and William, went to live with the Carpenter family in Bassett, Nebraska while the older boys, Paul, King, and Mark went to farms in Eureka, South Dakota.  Paul lived with the Schrenk family while King and Mark went to two separate Straub families, Adam and Emaual Straub respectively.

As the story was handed down to me, the family breakup had something to do with my grandfather’s involvement with a “Mr. Dugger” and a religious group in Omaha, Nebraska that was consuming a lot of his time.  In continuance, the oral history mentions that all the children were taken in by “Saints” of the church.  For most of my life, this is all I knew about that saga and I never understood who Mr. Dugger was or how the children ended up going to these particular families in these particular towns.  That was all soon to end.

Mr. Andrew N. Dugger

 Recently, I Googled the name Dugger and discovered information that put everything in perspective.  I found out that Mr. Andrew F. Dugger and his son Andrew N. Dugger were early leaders in “The Church of God, Seventh Day,” an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists.  The Duggers lived in Bassett, NE, the home of Seely and Clara Carpenter, members of the church (“saints”), and the foster family of the three youngest children.  Furthermore, I discovered that a new church in Eureka, S.D. had recently been accepted into the General Conference and Andrew Dugger had been invited to hold services and council them.  Leaders of that church were none other than John and Peter Schrenk, the family that took in my uncle Paul, and brothers Adam and Emanual Straub, the families who took in my father, King, and my uncle Mark.

I know this will seem like “Ho-Hum” information to many, but in my effort to understand and know grandparents who I never met, it is a milestone discovery.

Understand the question!

Latest headline: “Skeptic finds he now agrees global warming is real.”  That is the latest assessment of a renowned scientist.

The problem with this headline is that there are very few people who would disagree with him and it has always been that way.  The disagreement is with the cause.  Is Global Warming caused by man’s activities or is it a natural cycle of events?  The liberals think man is causing the change while the realists (notice the choice of words) know that it is only a natural cycle that the earth has gone through many, many times.

The same kind of misunderstanding is in effect with the abortion issue.  The liberal “Pro-lifers” think that all those who don’t agree with them are “Pro-deathers” but the fact is they are only “Pro-choice.”  Like me, most “Pro-choicers” would never resort to abortion as a means of birth control but, unlike the “Pro-lifers,” neither would we presume to tell others how to believe.

There are Wars, Then there are Wars

The following study is the kind of thing you do when you have too much time on your hands.  You begin to ponder the most inane subjects until you are driven to the internet for answers.  In modern times, no question need be left unanswered if you have a computer.

I got to wondering about all the wars this country has engaged in since the Revolution in 1776, and the relative number of casualties compared to the population at the time.  In my era it was the Viet Nam conflict, and almost everyone knew someone who had lost their life in that war.  It seemed like almost every family in the United States was affected in one way or another.  In my father’s time, it was World War II, and in my grandfather’s time it was WWI.  I guess every generation has its war to deal with.

Anyway, to put things in perspective I will make some comparisons.  The Revolution and WWII were about even in their relative casualty rates with percentages of .21 and .24 respectively.  With the exception of the Civil War, those two wars had the highest casualty rates.  Likewise, the War of 1812 and the Mexican War were similar with rates of .062 and .057 respectively, less than one third of the WWII rate.  Generally, WWI had a high casualty rate, but the United States did not enter the fracas until late in the game and we still suffered a casualty rate of .11 percent of our population at the time, twice that of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War.  All the other wars, the Spanish/American War (.0032%), Korea (.0244%), Viet Nam (.038%), Persian Gulf (.0002%) and Iraq (.0004%) combined only add up to .0602%, about the same as the War of 1812!

Now, ponder if you would, the Civil War.  The Civil War had a casualty rate of 1.6363%, over twice the rate of all the other wars combined, including the Revolution and both World Wars!  Remembering my perception of things during the Viet Nam conflict, I find this number astounding.  I thought the Viet Nam numbers were high, but they are hardly a blip on the radar compared to the Civil War.  The Civil War numbers are 43 times as great!

The Easy Life?

As settlers pushed west from the original 13 colonies they inevitably followed two main corridors.  The northern route made use of the Ohio River and was through the Ohio Valley and the southern route followed the road through the Cumberland Gap pioneered by Daniel Boone.  Settlement of the vast area between the east coast and the Mississippi River progressed steadily for about two hundred years, but seemed to stall at the Mississippi River.  The reason for this was that it took a whole new set of techniques and talents to survive on the prairie, beyond the “tree line,” than had previously been necessary in the heavily wooded areas of the east.  History during this era is rife with stories of families who made the trek west only to return within a year or two completely disheartened.

Water was not as abundant, wood for building houses was almost non-existent in some areas, and even wood for fencing was not to be had.  Eventually, wells were dug to alleviate the water problems but early settlers were still dependent on the weather to supply enough water for crops, and rain on the plains, unlike Spain, did not fall on the plains.  Even in good years, the yearly annual rainfall on the plains only averaged about 17 inches, just about the same as the deserts of Southern California!

“Sod huts” provided crude shelter until lumber could be brought in from the east, but even these had their drawbacks.  One of my ancestors, Elias Frew brought his wife Fannie and their four children “out west” in a covered wagon and moved them into a sod hut.  Tragedy struck during an unusually wet rainstorm when the dirt roof collapsed, killing Fannie and two of her boy children.

Fencing might not seem like a pressing issue, but try to imagine being on a farm with an assortment of livestock without fencing.  Protecting gardens and water sources would be very difficult, and containing herds of horses or cattle would be impossible.  Some enterprising individuals went so far as to build fences out of mud, hence the term “uglier than a mud fence” but even that was labor intensive and only worked for small areas such as gardens. The fencing problem remained until the development of barbed wire.

For the few who were prepared to overcome these obstacles, a sizeable family farm could be established for a relatively low cost.  Now all they had to do was survive the tornados and the extended droughts that plagued the area every 30 years or so.