Bio: Scheffer Family Unites (History/1881 - 1981)

Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Scheffer, Fassbender, Letsch, Louie, Jefferson, Durst, Cassidy, Bergmann, Scholter

----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 6/25/1981

Scheffer Family Unites (History - 1981)

By Dennis Blang

Descendants of Humbird Area Pioneer Family Reunite:

Franz Scheffer-Klute was already homesick by the time he and 3,000 other German and Polish immigrants landed in New York Harbor late in June of 1881. The long voyage from Hamburg on the cramped steamer was made even longer by a storm at sea that destroyed one of the ship’s rudders and left most of the passengers sea sick.

But Franz was determined to make a new home for himself and his family in “the land of opportunity.” He was eager to start a new life in America he had heard so much about with its freedom; its abundance of cheap land and its lack of military conscription.

It was actually his wife, Lisette, who finally convinced Franz to sell the gasthaus (inn) where he had been born 33 years earlier in the tiny village of Sundern, Germany, and pack up for America. Most of her family had already made the move and were prosperously settled in Wisconsin near a town called Humbird. That was where Franz, Lisette, and their two small children decided to settle, too.

After a six-day ride in the back of a lumber wagon, the Scheffers arrived in Humbird. (Klute, which referred to the district in Germany where they had lived, was dropped from the name when they arrived in America.) They lived with Lisette’s sister and brother-in-law for five months before buying a nearby 73 1/2 acre parcel of land for $700.

With the help of Lisette’s brothers, who had become successful builders and contractors in Wisconsin as they had in Sundern, Franz built the family’s first house and barn. The three-room house, furnished only with a table, bench and three chairs, was finished by Christmas. The family celebrated that special day in the same rooms of their new home that would be used for Scheffer family celebrations for the next 100 years.

Farming Was Hard Work

The German innkeeper soon realized that farming the wooded Wisconsin countryside was more difficult than making beds. Just 17 acres of the farm was tillable that first year and with the help of neighbors it was all planted into wheat. That year’s harvest of 130 bushels was sold for $260.

The next year Franz was able to buy two horses and a walking plow for $212. Gradually more land was cleared, and a variety of crops were planted. One of the most profitable was potatoes and as many as 10 acres were planted and dug by hand each year. The winter months were spent cutting wood, sometimes as much as 100 cords, which was sold in town for $1 per cord.

In 1892, Franz more than doubled the size of the farm by buying an adjacent 80-acre parcel. As the farm grew, so did the Scheffer family. The strict, German Catholic couple raised seven daughters and two sons.

Their first child, Frank, was two years old when the family moved to Wisconsin. By the time he was 12, Frank was responsible for all the plowing and tilling. When his younger brother, Joseph, left the farm to become a priest, Frank accepted even more responsibility for the farm’s operation.

Two years after Frank married Clara Fassbender in 1907, Franz died of lung failure at the age of 61. The couple stayed on the farm and when Lisette died in 1940, it became theirs.

During the first five years of their marriage, Frank and Clara had no children of their own so they adopted a two-year-old orphan from New York City. They named him Anthony. Six years later, Clara became pregnant with the first of seven children she would beara.

Frank and Clara expanded the farm operation by planting a greater variety of cash crops and developing a herd of 30 dairy cows. They lived in the farmhouse until 1948 before moving to a nearby home to spend their retirement years.

Frank, who fought reoccurring bouts of tuberculosis for more than 30 years, died at the age of 85. Clara, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, died of a stroke in 1959 at the age of 74.

Farm Ownership

Continuing the family tradition, Frank and Clara’s first-born son, Bernard, took over the farm operation in 1948 just a year after he married Anna Letsch. Bernard and Ann rented the Farm for ten years before purchasing it from Frank in 1958.

Again the farm was expanded, this time to 386 acres. In addition to increasing the dairy herd, Bernard began raising feeder pigs, butcher hogs and chickens. He also increased the crop acreage and diversified into strawberries and cucumbers.

Like the Scheffers before them, Bernard and Ann raised a large family—six girls and two boys. On January 1, 1979, they entered into a partnership with their oldest son, Douglas, to form “Scheffer Farms Inc.”

Douglas and his wife, Joan, now live with their four children in a trailer home on the farm. Douglas says they will move into the farm house after Bernard and Ann retire in a few years and will carry the
Scheffer farm tradition well into its second century.

Cows Not Needed Now

‘Tis the gift to be simple
‘Tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come home
Where we ought to be.
And when we find ourselves
In the place just right
‘Twill be in the valley
Of love and delight.
--An old Shaker hymn

The “place just right” has been just right for four generations of the Scheffer family.

Since it became the family homestead in 1881, the Scheffer farm has been expanded to more than five times its original size, new buildings have replaced the old, modern machinery and farming techniques have replaced manual labor. The story behind its development reflects the entire history of Wisconsin’s farming industry.

When Frank Scheffer began clearing the 17 tillable acres of his newly-acquired plot in 1881, he couldn‘t have imagined that his farm would eventually become one of the area’s most productive dairy farms. Wisconsin ranked third nationally in wheat production then and the main job of a cow was to pull a plow.

So Frank began by growing wheat. His first year’s harvest was a respectable 130 bushels which he sold for $260. As he cleared more land, he increased his wheat production and expanded into oats, corn and potatoes. In 1900, he sold 800 bushes of potatoes for a total of $178.15.

The success of those cash crops provided the capital Franz needed to begin raising dairy cows to produce milk. But because there was no green grass available to feed during the winter months, dairying was a warm weather business. The cows would dry up in the winter and be bred to calve in the spring when the new growth of grass was again available.

The meticulous records kept by Franz’s wife, Lissette, indicate that milk production from the farm’s small herd produced a total income of $78.15 during the summer of 1898. By 1901, that was more than doubled to $175.

Milk is Product

When Frank Scheffer took over the farm from his father in 1909, he continued to expand the milking operation. By 1940, he was milking 30 cows, had improved the milk and its butterfat content by joining the state-sponsored “Dairy Herd Improvement Program,” and was able to increase production through selective artificial insemination.

The original barn soon became inadequate and was replaced in 1943 with a 60-foot building that was moved onto the site from a nearby farm. Since then, the barn has been built adjacent to it. The original silo, built in 1910, still stands but is no longer safe to use.

Milking machines were first used to speed up the twice-daily chore in 1945, five years after electricity reached the farm. The machines, along with a bulk tank system installed in 1962 by Frank’s son, Bernard, permitted greater quality control. In 1970, the farm became qualified as a Grade A dairy farm.

Today, the 50 Holstein cows produce about 825,000 pounds of milk annually. The butterfat average is 650 pounds (herd average per year), double what it was in 1950s. All of the milk is shipped to the Taylor Reload Center, a National Farmers Organization transfer station which distributes Grade a milk to six different bottling plants in the Chicago area.

Other Ventures

Even though the farm’s major emphasis has become dairying, a variety of ventures has been pursued during the farm’s 100 years. Pig raising, for example, began shortly after the turn of the century.

From the mid-1950s until 1966, between 150 and 200 butcher hogs were raised and sold annually. After that, as many as 650 feeder pigs (raised to 40 lbs.) were raised each year until sagging markets forced an end to that business in 1979. Similarly, as many as 400 chickens were raised during various years to provide income from both eggs and meat.

A variety of crops have also been grown on the farm. Frank Scheffer’s original notion of primarily raising wheat was dropped in favor of crops more suitable for the soil and climate. The main crops today are alfalfa and hay (75 acres), corn (70 acres), and oats (35 acres).

Potatoes have continued to be an important cash crop on the farm. As many as 20 acres have been harvested each year for sale as both eating and seed potatoes. Other cash crops have included several acres of strawberries and cucumbers.

That kind of diversity and adaptation to change has been the hallmark of the 100-year struggle to build Scheffer Farms Inc. As a Centennial farm, the 386-acre dairy operation stands as a tribute to all those like the Scheffers who pioneered in Wisconsin’s farming industry.

“Tillers of the soil” said farmer Thomas Jefferson, “are the Chosen of the Lord.”

Family Reunion

A century of farming on the same land by four generations of the Scheffer family will be celebrated this coming weekend at the Bernard Scheffer farm between Fairchild and Humbird. More than 300 relatives from 15 states and two foreign countries (Germany and Singapore) will attend the celebration and reunion which family members have been planning for the past five years.

The centennial celebration begins Saturday morning with an open-air mass on the lawn just outside the farmhouse that was built in 1881. The mass will be concelebrated by Msgr. Gerald Durst of Columbus, Ohio, one of four priests to come out of the German Catholic family, and Fr. John Cassidy, pastor of St. Joseph Church, Fairview.

Other events will include a barbecued chicken and beef dinner served by neighboring farmers, live musical entertainment, old-fashioned hay rides, games and dancing. On Sunday, members of the immediate family will again gather at the farm to reminisce about the “good old days.”

Book Is Created

A comprehensive history of the Scheffer family was recently completed by one of Bernard’s daughters, Mary Scheffer-Louie. The several-inch-thick document includes a 16-page family tree that traces the Scheffer heritage back to 1759.

The seed for that book, as well as for the centennial celebration, was planted five years ago at a family wedding. As Mary explains in the book’s introduction: “Some of the stores my parents and aunts and uncles had to tell were fascinating. I knew I felt a closeness to my relatives, but I also realized I knew very little about my background. So I naively undertook the task of searching for my roots.”

The five-year search that followed involved hundreds of letters and telephone calls and thousands of hours poring over old letters, church records, courthouse documents and newspaper clippings. Some names and dates were even gathered from tombstones in area cemeteries.

“It really became an obsession after a while,” Mary says. “For the past two years it has been practically a full-time job trying to fill in the blanks and come up with the missing pieces.” The final product is a 235 page family history complete with detailed footnotes and references. It traces all four branches of the family—the Scheffers, Bergmanns, Scholters and Fassbenders

Centennial Planned

While researching the family history, Mary also began planning the Centennial Celebration. Preliminary announcements of the event were mailed to all known relatives two years ago to give ample time for travel plans and arrangements. A final invitation was sent late last year, and reservations have been pouring in ever since.

“In addition to the food, we had to make arrangements for tents and chemical toilets,” Mary says. “People will be sleep in nearby motels, in campers and even in the hayloft. We’re all really excited about it.”

Recognition of the family’s achievement will continue beyond this weekend. During the Wisconsin State Fair in August, the family will receive a Century Farm and Home Award. The awards program, sponsored by Hillshire Farms, honors families which have continuously held title to a farm or home for at least one hundred years.