Toby, Violet, Melvin Hofer, Doris (Huron, SD)
(Toby and Violet had switched instruments for the photo.
"The picture on the right has it correct.
The C melody saxophone was the same sax
that I started playing on years later!"
comment by Jerry Vegter)
(recollections by Jacob Tschetter, continued)
I was baptized and taken in the church as a member, May 20, 1905, at the Salem Church. Here is where I spent my early Christian life, and later at the Bethel Church at Huron, where we tried to make ourselves useful in choir singing and teaching Sunday school and singing school. The Lord has saved and kept my till now at the age of 76. I am sorry to say that I have not lived so close to the Lord as I should and could have, but the Lord by his grace always has supplied and kept me in his faith, and I am sure he will carry me through.
In the years of 1908 to 1912 we bought land in Beadle County, and finally sold our old homestead farm and moved to Beadle County were we are now. We made the City of Huron our hometown where we retired and live now. The years of 1913 to 1943 were years of drought and grasshoppers.
What was raised had no price. Most of the farmers went bankrupt. The winter of 1920-21 was a hard winter. There was not feed enough and much stock was lost. Now while I write this March 9, 1966, we are digging ourselves out from a 3 day snowstorm and blizzard.
In the year 1913, the 13th of March, I married my beloved wife, Katharina Stahl. We were happy on our new farm. The Lord blessed us with a daughter Viola and a son Arthur. Yet farming was not so prosperous. We had hail, droughts. We got discouraged with grain farming, and in 1919 we sold our farm. We moved on a ranch in Sully County. In 1920, March 4, we took possession. Here we bought stock when prices were inflated. The depression came; property lost its value. Stock sold for less than half what we bought it for, and what we raised only brought 8 cents a bushel. Our hogs sold for $2 & $3 a head; cows for $20 a head. The result was that most of the new comers lost their farm, and so did we. But after all we see God's leading in all of this. God dealt graciously with us. We wanted to become wealth in a hurry; that was the motive. God withdrew our earthly blessings to draw us closer to him. He blessed us spiritually. Here we organized the Immanuel Church. For a number of years, I was privileged to lead or direct the praise, did teach Sunday school and was church secretary. Here Violet, Toby, and Doris were born.
