Why Amazonia? (They have monkeys)

I'm guessing this is from about the 1870s: train wreck in Amazonia, MO

     When the (Samuel/Anna) Jennis arrived in America in 1869, they soon settled in Amazonia, MO, a farming community.
     It's pretty sleepy. A village, really.
     Why did they settle there? —Aside from the fact that these immigrants traveled up the Missouri River (Amazonia is on that river), I just don't know.
     There's some circumstantial evidence that they eventually sought to escape Amazonia. After all, Samuel and Anna's sons, Frederick and John, left, in the early 1880s, for something better in the west. They eventually homesteaded in "Cottonwood," Montana (Beaver Creek/Lewistown).
     In about 1882, family head, Samuel, left Amazonia for New Orleans—evidently planning to collect the rest of the family when he set up there. According to one family account, he was never heard from again, so, since, by 1884, Frederick (and John) were flourishing in Montana, they invited mom (Anna) (and some of their siblings?) to move to Montana. She lived in eldest son, Frederick's, cabin, which was improved for the occasion. She died there, of pneumonia, two years later.

Locating Amazonia: on the Missouri, just north of St. Joseph,
which is north of Kansas City, MO

Old Andrew County map

     There are indications that the Flueckingers also settled in Amazonia—or at least in Andrew County, MO, where Amazonia resides. There's evidence that the Flueckingers and the Jennis knew each other. Perhaps there was a minor Swiss community there.
     The Andrew County website offers these historical factoids:

     A divided county during the Civil War, Andrew sent troops to both sides. In Aug., 1861 come 1500 from Andrew and other counties joined the pro-Southern Mo. State Guard at Camp Highly in eastern Andrew County while others joined a large Union cap in adjacent Gentry County. In 1861, Union troops seized “Northwest Democrat,” a pro-Southern newspaper, in Savannah and troops from Camp Highly seized the “Plain Dealer,” Union newspaper. Raiding Guerrilla bands overran the county through 1863. 

     Andrew County’s glacial plains support fertile livestock, grain, and fruit farms. In the county are One Hundred and Two and Platter rivers and forming its west border are the Nodaway and Missouri. In 1804 the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped on an island the mouth of Nodaway and members of fur trader Wilson P. Hunt’s 1811 Astorian expedition wintered near the river’s mouth.

     The state historical society offers this unhelpful remark:

     In the early days there was a village near the site of Amazonia known as Boston (q.v.). No information concerning why the name was changed to Amazonia when the present town was laid out could be found. It is said that the founder selected the name for its euphonious qualities. 

     Elsewhere, they explain:

Amazonia (q.v.) was at one time called Savanah Landing, presumably because it was the nearest town to Savannah [the County seat] on the Missouri River.

     I've been looking for images of Amazonia. Here's what I've found. Not much.

The United Methodist Church of Amazonia

Evidently, this is a hay ride to a pumpkin patch in Amazonia.

Amazonia and Wooldridge, MO: flood of 2011

Flückigerei*

An unidentified farming family

     Central to the Jenni saga—to which this blog is dedicated—are Fred Jenni and Emma Flueckiger, who married and produced many children, including Fred Jenni, Jr.
     The Fred & Emma marriage is somewhat of an enigma, perhaps because Emma died so young (in 1906, age 33).
     Pfft, and she was gone.
     We know a bit about Emma. Her parents were Friedrich J. "Fritz" Flueckiger and Anna Marie Scheidegger, who immigrated to the US, from (the vicinity of) Bern Switzerland, to Amazonia, Missouri in 1883. They sailed on the ship Suevia to New Orleans, "then up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers" (according to Ancestry.com bio of Anna Scheidegger).

The Suevia. "The Suevia was a passenger steamship built for the Hamburg America Line in 1874. It was assigned to transatlantic crossings between Hamburg, Germany and New York City, USA and played a role in German immigration to the United States." (Wikipedia)

     Emma would have been ten years old at the time.
     Eight years later (in 1891), she traveled to Lewistown, Montana, where she married Fred Jenni, son of Samuel.
     My guess is that the Sam Jennis and the Fritz Flueckigers of Amazonia, Missouri, knew each other; I'm guessing that their relationship had something to do with Emma (and Frieda's) marriages in Lewistown, MT, of all places.
     The Lewistown area was, of course, where the three Jenni sons happened to settle. It was a pretty obscure location.

* * *

     But yet another woman named Flueckiger was married in Lewistown at about that time (1893): Anna Barbara Flueckiger:

According to this Ancestry.com "bio," this Flueckiger married Frederick (or "Ferderand") F. Hoffman on August 15, 1893.
     In tiny Lewistown!
     That's no coincidence.
     According to the bio,

• Anna Barbara Flueckiger was born in Hutwyl, Bern, Switzerland, in 1858. —Emma Flueckiger and her father were also born in Hutwyl.
• She arrived in the U.S. in 1883. —That's the same year that Emma's family arrived.
• Anna gave birth to a son (Fritz), in Lewistown, in 1905.
• By 1908, Anna and her family seemed to be farming in Salisbury, Maryland (Fred Hoffman perhaps died that year). 
• Anna eventually died in Salisbury, in 1945

     My hypotheses: (1) Anna Barbara was part of the "Fritz" Flueckiger family group that traveled to Missouri in 1883 (steamin' up the Mississippi, then the Missouri). Further, (2) she settled in Amazonia—or at least in Andrew County, Missouri. (3) Upon learning of Emma's marriage to one of the prosperous "Jenni boys" up in wild Montana, the families made arrangements for Anna Barbara to marry one of Fred and John's German-speaking associates, viz., Mr. Hoffman. ([4] Ditto for Emma's sister, Frieda, who married Mr. White in 1898.)
     The backdrop: (5) things were lousy in Amazonia, Missouri. (I did a little checking; the weather in Missouri was especially cold from 1879-1882.)

* * *

     There's one further alleged factoid mentioned in the bio:

1923: Death of Brother: Her brother Friedrich J. "Fritz" died on April 17, 1923, in Rushville, Nebraska....

     Well, that answers that question, I guess: Emma and Anna were connected all right; Anna Barbara Flueckiger was Emma Flueckiger-Jenni's aunt.
     It was all in the (extended) family.

* * *

     Who was Frederick F. Hoffman?
     He was a German, born in 1864, arriving in the U.S. in 1880.
     Some records indicate that he died in 1908, in Maryland. On the other hand, this 1910 Maryland Census record suggests otherwise:

     This document suggests that Frederick was still alive in 1910. Go figure.

     Incidentally, it also indicates that "Fritz," the son, was adopted (in Montana).

     I'll see what else I can find about Herr Hoffman.

* * *

     —Incidentally, just in case it isn't clear, these early Jennis (and Hoffmans, et al.) primarily spoke German (i.e., the dialect of German spoken in Bern). In their Montana households, I suspect, English was strictly a second language, at least for the first (the foreign-born) generation.

     Many of these pioneers (e.g., Fred and John Jenni) were occasionally local school officials. Imagine: the head of the local school, barely literate, with a heavy German accent. (I recall the slight oddness of my own father, c. 1963, taking over our local Cub Scout Pack (later: Boy Scout Troop)—with his slight German accent [in his case, his odd Germanisms were more noticeable than his accent]. Everyone just accepted it. Only in America!)

     And, unsurprisingly, these German-speaking people tended to associate, to work together, to form mini-communities. Such was the case in Cottonwood (Beaver Creek), in the early years. The likes of Fred Jenni created, I think, small Germanic (or Swiss) colonies. Naturally, that faded since the kids invariably spoke good (American) English, thus pushing German to the periphery.

* * *

     One more thing: I have a hypothesis. It's that, by the early 1880s, things were going badly for the Flueckigers of Amazonia. (That's my hypothesis #5.) We know that young Fred—followed by young John—left Missouri for Montana in 1881 or 1882 (they'd been there since '69). And we know that Samuel, age 53, left Amazonia for New Orleans in 1882, planning to collect his family once established there.

     A search for greener pastures? (An escape from decidedly brown pastures? Both?)

     Who knows. <end>

A "Frieda" mystery solved

Young Frieda Flueckinger, c. 1893

     You'll recall that Emma, wife of Fred Jenni (Sr.), died tragically at age 33 in 1906. That left her husband, Fred, a hard-working farmer, to deal also with a house full of children, including an infant.
     According to newspaper accounts, Emma's sister, Frieda White (née Flueckinger), then 26 years old, came to the assistance of Fred and his family. I recall reporting previously that, by that time, she had married Charles White—a much older man—and that she had a child with him in 1899. As far as I knew, she was still married to White in 1906.
     I am intrigued by Frieda, in part because we have a good photo of her, and, well, there you go. My perusal of Ancestry.com made clear that Frieda married again in 1907 but also that Charles L. White, her husband, was still alive (until 1915).
     I could find no record of a divorce decree.
     Frieda's marriage to White was common in the era. She was eighteen years old when she married; White was forty-seven. Pretty creepy, but that's a matter for another day.
     I examined Frieda's marriage license/certificate of 1907, when she married Frederick Huppi, and it appears that she made no secret of her having been married previously, to White.
     So did she get a divorce? Wouldn't that be unusual in 1906 Montana?
     I took another tack. I searched "Charles White" in local newspapers in the period between 1890 and 1920.
     Voila!
     It turns out that Charles White had mental health problems that involved violence, or at least threats of violence.
     I'll let the newspaper articles tell the story (though one wonders what they didn't tell).

2-2-98 Fergus Co. Argus

     Anything's possible, I suppose, but it's hard not to wonder if Frieda, at age 18, felt tremendous pressures to marry someone, even if he was more than twice her age. Pretty sad.

2-15-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     —A week after White's self-surrender:

2-22-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     He didn't stay there long, as we'll see. I suspect that Frieda and her son had at some point moved in with Fred Jenni to get away from Charles.
     Four months later:

6-21-05 Fergus Co. Argus 

     Three weeks later:

 7-14-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     Subsequently, the authorities check in on White, who claims to have taken poison....

7-14-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     White requests being sent to the asylum, where he'd been housed months earlier. But he was released.

8-8-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     Request granted:

8-29-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     I have found nothing else about White's institutionalization and death. The records at Ancestry.com, such as they are, indicate that White died in 1915. I can find no newspaper articles reporting his death.
     As I said, Frieda married in 1907, two years after winning a divorce from White. (See below.)
     Here's a collection of relevant documents:

1900 Census. Charles White family included. (Frida and son Clarence are part of the household).

Frieda and Charles' wedding papers, 1898

1907 wedding documents

     But where did Frieda and her new family go? When did she die?

     I'll have to get back to you.

Re Warm Springs State Hospital
From Archives West.

Prior to 1869, Montana Territory made no special provisions for mental patients, their care generally being left to regular hospitals. The Helena Weekly Herald in a September 19, 1867, article on the county hospital commented on the need for a territorial insane asylum, stating that the county hospital was not the proper place for a "lunatic." 

Two years later the 6th Territorial Legislative Assembly passed a law authorizing an official territorial insane asylum to be owned and managed on a contract basis by private parties. A board of commissioners was established with one representative from each judicial district to oversee the asylum, establish rules for its operation, and perform periodic inspections. 

Until 1877 St. John's Hospital in Helena served as the territorial asylum. By 1874 it was accepting sufficient numbers of patients committed by Governor Benjamin Potts to require the construction of a separate building behind the main hospital. In 1877 Drs. Armistead H. Mitchell (1831-1898) and Charles F. Mussigbrod (d.1893), owners of a hotel and spa at Warm Springs, Montana, were awarded the contract for the care of the territory's mental patients. By 1886 the partners had expanded their operation from 160 acres to 1640 acres and from two buildings to thirty-two buildings, including a larger hotel, a house for convalescents, a separate building for violent patients, a large plunge pool, a laundry, storehouses, icehouses, and many other outbuildings. From 1891 to 1907 the hospital was run by Dr. O.Y. Warren, who was in turn succeeded by Dr. J.M. Scanland, son-in-law of Dr. Mitchell. Under private operation, the asylum continued to operate the hotel and run a large farm, specializing in pedigreed cattle. 

In 1910 a constitutional amendment was passed allowing the state to acquire the asylum. Negotiations were begun and on December 1, 1912, the Warm Springs hospital became a state institution. Dr. Scanland continued as superintendent. In 1917 the governor appointed a special commission to investigate charges of gross mismanagement and corruption at the hospital. The hospital management was exonerated of all charges. Gradually under state operation the emphasis changed from a custodial asylum to a hospital, as more modern procedures were adopted, but efforts were hampered by low funding. Care costs in 1938 of $.60 per day per patient were the lowest in the nation. As concepts of treatment of mental patients changed, the average patient load dropped dramatically from a high of over 1900 in the early 1950s to 1112 in 1972. Numbers of admissions per year were higher, but average length of stay was much shorter. Over the years the hospital operated under a variety of names including Mitchell and Mussigbrod, Insane Asylum of the State of Montana, Montana State Hospital for the Insane, Montana State Insane Asylum, Montana State Hospital, and Warm Springs State Hospital.

The Right to Procreate: The Montana State Board of Eugenics and Body Politics
From Women's History Matters

In 1924, headlines across the state decried the “butchery of the helpless” at the Montana State Hospital for the Insane at Warm Springs, where eleven inmates were forcibly sterilized. Hospital staff responded that all sterilizations had received the required approval and that eugenics was “necessary to the future welfare of Montana.” Eugenics—the idea that “human perfection could be developed through selective breeding”—grew in popularity in the early twentieth century, including support for forced sterilization. The movement reached its zenith in Montana in the early 1930s, and, despite growing concerns, the practice of forced sterilizations continued into the 1970s. 

 

Montanans’ support for forced sterilization was part of a national trend. Eugenics proponent Albert E. Wiggam, a national lecturer and trained psychologist, helped spread the eugenics gospel in Montana through a column in the Missoulian. “Already we are taxing ourselves for asylums and hospitals and jails to take care of millions who ought never to have been born,” Wiggam wrote. Many Montanans agreed, including the Helena mother who wrote the state hospital in 1924 in support of sterilization polices. “I am a tax payer. That means I wish there was no insane, no feeble minded, and no criminals to support and to fear. . . . The very fact that these people are inmates of state institutions proves that they are morally or mentally unfit to propagate their kind.” 

Montana institutions began sterilizing selected inmates in the 1910s, but it was not until 1923 that the state legislature created the Board of Eugenics to regulate the practice….