In this book, Good Earth, Black Soil, chapter five was called “the Ridge,” about the three Klein brothers’ time in Chicago in the mid-nineteenth century. Nicholas Klein, Margaret’s great grandfather, stayed with his uncle John Muller, the brother of his mother in 1868. A year or two later, his two younger brothers, Jacob Klein and Theodore Klein, also migrated to this Ridge area on the north side of Chicago, near Evanston, IL, where there was a strong contingent of immigrant people from Luxembourg, around St. Henry’s Catholic Church at 6335 N. Hoyne Avenue. This was the first church built at the northwest corner of Ridge Ave and Devon Ave in 1851, that was replaced by a larger building in 1872 costing $10,000, the first Luxembourg Roman Catholic parish in Chicago. St. Henry’s could be considered the mother of all churches north of Irving Park. For many years, its membership consisted largely of Luxembourgers, as a clearing house for new immigrants from Luxemburg. To this day, many people of Luxembourg origin throughout the Midwest know about “St. Henry’s on the Ridge.” As the population changed in the 1970s, the church was transferred to a Croatian parish. Nicholas stayed nine years in Chicago until 1877, when he purchased a 160-acre farm southwest of Granville, in Sioux county in northwest Iowa for $5.00 an acre in 1875. He was a homesteader. During his time in Chicago, the great Chicago fire took place in 1871, killing over 300 people. During those 9 years, he also married Marry Didier. Margaret’s great grandmother, Mary Didier (1853-1944) was born near Beckerich, Luxembourg, on March 9, 1853. Her father was John Didier (1827-1901) and her mother was Susan Kettel Didier (1824-1890). Mary Didier was the oldest child of seven brothers and sisters as their whole family immigrated to Chicago in 1871, when Mary was 18 years old. The most famous Luxembourg-American is Chris Evert, the tennis player, who was related to Margaret’s great-grandmother, who was also was a Didier sister of Mary Didier. It was there in Chicago that she met and married Nicholas Klein on February 5, 1873 in the northern part of Chicago, in an area called Rosehill. What do you know about your great-grandfather?
The book Good Earth, Black Soil, the three Klein brothers
This Good Earth, Black Soil book told the background story of Luxembourg and the three Klein brothers who immigrated from Tadler, Luxembourg, in the nineteenth century. Nicholas Klein (1849-1915), Jacob Klein (1851-1916), and Theodore Klein (1853-1932) were the three sons of Michel Klein (1812-1853) and Mary Muller (1820-1895). The oldest, Nicholas Klein, was the great-grandfather of Margaret. Nicholas came to Chicago in 1868, when he was 19 years old. He stayed nine years in Chicago from 1868-1977, until he migrated with his two younger brothers to Granville in the northwestern section of Sioux County, Iowa. The authors of Good Earth, Black Soil were the descendants of Theodore Klein, so that there was more about him rather than his brothers, Jacob, and Nicholas, who was Margaret’s great grandfather. What do you know about the immigration of your great grandparents?
The authors of Good Earth, Black Soil
Monsignor Frank W. Klein (1920-2006) and Dr. Suzanne L. Bunkers (1950-), wrote the book Good Earth, Black Soil (St. Mary’s College Press, Winona, Minnesota:1981). Dr. Suzanne L. Bunkers (1950-), whose mother was a Klein, was born and raised in Granville, Iowa. She got her BS and MA in English from Iowa State. Then she got her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980. This work may have been part of her doctoral thesis. She had taught at Iowa State University, Purdue University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Finally, she taught at Minnesota State University, Mankato, as an assistant professor, an associate professor, and then full professor of English, and now an emerita. Her written books include: Diaries of Girls and Women: A Midwestern American Sampler (2001), Inscribing the Daily: Critical Essays on Women’s Diaries (1996), In Search of Susanna (An autobiography in 1996) and Good Earth, Black Soil (in collaboration with Frank W. Klein in 1981). She is a leading expert on Luxembourg-Americans. Monsignor Francis William Klein passed away in 2006, at the age of 85 years. Monsignor Klein was born in 1920, in Adrian, MN, to Frank and Elizabeth (Kellen) Klein into a family of nine children. He was educated at St. Adrian’s high school. He attended St. Mary’s Seminary, Winona, MN, and St. Thomas Seminary, Denver, CO. He was ordained in Adrian, MN, in 1945. Msgr. Klein studied canon law for the Diocese of Winona at Catholic University, Washington, DC, earning a bachelor’s degree. He then earned an advanced degree in canon law at the Lateran University in Rome, Italy. For the next 50 years, Msgr. Klein served in the Tribunal of the Diocese of Winona. During that time, he served as Judicial Vicar, Vice-Chancellor, and was named a Monsignor on August 15, 1953. Meanwhile, he served as pastor for eight churches in the diocese of Winona. In 1988, Msgr. Klein was appointed to the Regional Marriage Tribunal for the St. Paul-Minneapolis province, serving dioceses in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Upon retirement in 1990, Msgr. Klein continued to serve as appellate judge for the Regional Tribunal of St. Paul-Minneapolis until 2000. He was proud of the publication of two books, to which he referred as “The Klein Book” and “The Kellen Book,” each of which traced the historical roots of his father’s and mother’s families to the 1400s in Luxembourg. Thus, these were two historical scholars of Luxembourg history. Has anybody ever written a book about your family ancestry?
Where is Luxembourg?
All the talk in the summer of 1981 in Dell Rapids, South Dakota, was about the fact that there had been a book written and published about the genealogy of the Klein family. Each member of the Klein family got a copy. I think that they paid for it. This book explored the roots of Margaret’s father, Pete Klein, who was part of this Klein family. There were even some pictures of Margaret’s uncles doing research on this project. The big question that everyone had was “Where is Luxembourg?” The Kleins had all assumed that they were German, since many of their grandparents spoke a dialect of German. It turns out to be Luxembourgish. As the borders of many European countries have changed over the centuries, many had assumed that Luxembourg was part of Germany. On all the documents about entering the USA, all the Kleins said that they were from Germany. Many of the current day Kleins were surprised that their ancestors, with many of their friends, were from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. In fact, there are centers of Luxembourg immigrants in the USA in Wisconsin and Iowa. This book about the Klein family had a lot of material about farmers from Luxembourg, not Germany. Luxembourg city is today one of the richest cities in the world. They all knew about the history of the immigrant German speaking farmers in Iowa and South Dakota, but did not expect that they were from the small country of Luxembourg. Do you know where Luxembourg is?
The Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society
Today there is a Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society that has a web site explaining all the famous sites in De Smet. Laura grew up on her family’s homestead, attended school in De Smet’s first school, worked her first job on main street, went courting with Almanzo across the prairie, and started her own family in De Smet. Thus, the town of De Smet lets you journey into Laura’s life and history with a visit to a shanty where Laura and her family spend their first Dakota winter in 1879. Back in 1981, Laura’s life could be followed on TV with the popular “Little House on the Prairie” show that is still on TV in reruns. There are over 1,000 artifacts from the Ingall’s times in De Smet. The De Smet Discovery Center invites children to try a sewing machine or read Braille. They can visit the Living History Covered Wagon Camping Space, experiencing their heritage on the quarter-section of land that Charles Ingalls had. Children can drive a covered wagon, attend a one-room schoolhouse, twist hay, grind wheat, make rope, and wash clothes. They can experience the homesteading history that shaped the USA, since people were lured to the Midwest by the prospect of free land from the Homestead Act of 1862. These exhibits are open every day from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day. Each summer since 1971, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Pageant has welcomed visitors from around the world to watch Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books come to life on the outdoor stage. Just across the road from Charles Ingalls’s homestead land, overlooking his planted cottonwoods, visitors can watch the sunset during the show. You can walk out to Silver Lake, a pothole lake. There is a Wilder Welcome Center to answer your questions and help you discover what to see and do in De Smet. The current railroad depot was built in 1906 after a fire on April 23, 1905 destroyed the original one. The brick walkway on the west of the depot ground was laid by the Chicago Northwestern Railroad Company in 1906, so that there is a Depot Museum. There also is the De Smet Cemetery, southwest of town on a beautiful hilltop, and the Edward H Couse Opera House from 1886. Have you ever been to the Laura Ingalls Museum?
De Smet, a little town in South Dakota
De Smet is the county seat of Kingsbury County, South Dakota, with a population of 1,056 at the 2020 census. Less than 300 families live there. De Smet is a small town, a little over a square mile, at the intersection of U.S. Route 14 and South Dakota Highway 25. This small municipally even has a Wilder Field airport, three miles north of the town. De Smet is in the East River area, east of the Missouri River, which diagonally divides South Dakota. The plats for this town began in 1980, named for the Belgian priest Pierre De Smet, a nineteenth century Jesuit missionary who worked with Native Americans for most of his life. De Smet was a common name in Roman Catholic Belgium, that I learned from my time living there in in the mid-1960s. In the mid-1880s, prairie fires and crop failures caused many settlers to relocate their farms and homesteads to other areas. By 1917, De Smet was just a cow town, with a train passing through every day carrying cattle to market from Tracy, Minnesota, to Rapid City, South Dakota. However, this small town was the home of Laura Ingalls. The Charles Ingalls family arrived in De Smet in 1879. Their travels and pioneer life in Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa, and the Dakota Territory, would be later chronicled in the “Little House on the Prairie” series of books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. De Smet was the town where the Ingall’s family settled, and the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, author, and activist, Rose Wilder Lane. Charles Ingalls had moved to De Smet in 1879 with his wife, Caroline, and their children Mary, Laura, Carrie, and Grace. After first living in other locations in De Smet, the Ingalls built their permanent home that became known via Wilder’s writings as “The House That Pa Built.” Construction on the house began in 1887 and was completed in 1889. Laura Ingalls and her husband Almanzo Wilder lived just outside of De Smet on a farmland. In the winter they stayed in the town of De Smet, at least while the girls were still in school. After building a home and starting a farm there, Charles Ingalls helped to found the First Congregational Church of De Smet, later helping to build the church building, with the first service being held there on August 30, 1882. Ingalls and his wife, along with their oldest daughter Mary, were among the church’s eight original charter members. Now, do you know why De Smet was a nice place to visit?
Our visit to De Smet
While we were there in South Dakota, we took a couple of Joy’s cousins, Kim and Jackie, with us to visit De Smet, SD, about a three-hour trip, about 150 miles away. In 1979, when we, Joy, Margaret, and I, had been in the Ozarks, we visited the historic house museum of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) in Mansfield, Missouri, where Laura had lived from 1896 until her death in 1957, over 60 years. She began writing the Little House on the Prairie series in the 1930s, when she was in her sixties, aided by her daughter, but the real fame came after her death with the ten-year TV series, Little House on the Prairie with Melissa Gilbert as Laura from 1974-1984. Thus, De Smet was not the only museum for Laura Ingalls Wilder. However, back in 1981, there were more hands on things in De Smet and it was free, not like today. You could touch and feel the places where she grew up. I know the three young girls were impressed, but so was Margaret and I. De Smet was not as elaborate as today, but many of the same places were there with markers on them. We did our own little self-guided tour. The young girls were happy to run around and find a place that they had seen on TV. I think that Margaret got a set of Little House on the Prairie books. We had something to eat and came back to Dell Rapids. Everyone was happy about this little trip, where we got to see the background for a TV show that was based on stories in this nearby South Dakota town of De Smet. Did you like the TV show “Little House on the Prairie”?
Summer vacations in Dell Rapids, SD
During the summers of the early 1980s, we, Margaret, Joy, and I, all went for a vacation in Dell Rapids, SD with Margaret’s parents. We stayed at their new house in Dell Rapids, not at the farm. Margaret’s parents had bought a house in the town of Dell Rapids, since their son Mike, Margaret’s brother, and his wife Grace now lived out in the farmhouse. As I had limited income, it was nice to have a place to drive to where we had limited expenses. Besides, Margaret was happy to be back in South Dakota to visit with her parents and to keep up with her sisters and brothers, since they all lived in South Dakota. This also gave Joy a chance to get to know her first cousins and spend some time with her grandparents and go out on the farm to visit her uncle. A couple of her cousins were girls about the same age as her from 7-9 years old, Charity Olson, Rosie’s daughter whom she met in Germany, as well as Kim and Jackie Klein, Ed’s daughters, who also lived in Dell Rapids. Her other cousin Erika Klein, Ken’s daughter, lived in Mitchell, SD, while Lisa and Stacie Ries, Lois’ daughters, lived in Pierre, SD. We stayed in the basement of Margaret’s parents’ house. We also got to visit Chester, Mitchell and Pierre, SD, to see Margaret’s sisters and brother. Have you ever taken a vacation by visiting your in-laws?
Mayor Mark Stricker (1936-2008) President of Matteson 1981–2008
Mark Stricker was first elected as the President of the Village of Matteson, IL, in 1981. He remained the mayor for over 25 years, most of the time that I lived in Matteson. I found his obituary. He had been a resident of Matteson for 45 years. Mark W. Stricker died of an apparent heart attack in route to St. James Hospital in Olympia Fields at the age of 72. His wife was Charlotte Stricker for 51 years and they had two children. Stricker served on the Board of Education for School District 159 before become a Village Trustee in Matteson. He was first elected Mayor in 1981 and served in that position until he died. Mark Stricker was a retired teacher of Tinley Park High School, where he taught for 36 years. Mark was a loyal and dedicated servant to the Village of Matteson. He truly loved and enjoyed his village and the people he served. He also was a volunteer of the Matteson Fire Department. He also was a great municipal leader for the entire south suburban region. He was the Past-President of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association, as well as an Executive Board Member and Transportation Committee Chair. He was also an Advisory Board Member of the Matteson Area Chamber of Commerce and a Board Member of the Chicago Southland Convention and Visitors Bureau. As a member of the Greater Chicago Council of Governments, he was one of 17 mayors in Illinois elected to serve on the Board of the Illinois Tax Increment Finance Committee. I liked him because he gave some stability to the village of Matteson during some trying times. Did you live in a town that had the same mayor for over 25 years?
The Abscam sting operation
Abscam was a FBI sting operation in the late 1970s and early 1980s that led to the convictions of seven members from both chambers of the Congress and others for bribery and corruption in 1981. The two-year investigation initially targeted trafficking in stolen property and corruption of prominent business people, but later evolved into a corruption investigation. The FBI was aided by the US Department of Justice and convict Mel Weinberg in videotaping politicians accepting bribes from a fictitious Arabian company in return for various political favors. However, a lot of it centered around Atlantic City casinos so that many of these people caught were from New Jersey and Philadelphia. More than 30 political figures were investigated. Six members of the US House of Representatives and one member of the US Senate were convicted. One member of the New Jersey State Senate, various members of the Philadelphia City Council, the Mayor of Camden, NJ, and an inspector for the Immigration and Naturalization Service were also convicted. The operation was directed from the FBI’s office on Long Island, under the supervision of Assistant Director Neil Welch, who headed the bureau’s New York division, and Thomas P. Puccio, head of the Justice Department’s United States Organized Crime Strike Force for the Eastern District of New York. “Abscam” was the FBI codename for the operation, which law enforcement authorities said was a contraction of “Arab scam.” The American-Arab Relations Committee made complaints about that. In March 1978, John F. Good of the FBI’s office in suburban Long Island created and oversaw this sting operation. The FBI employed Melvin Weinberg, a convicted swindler, international con artist and informant, and his girlfriend, Evelyn Knight, to help plan and conduct the operation. They were both facing a prison sentence. In exchange for their help, the FBI agreed to let them out on probation. Weinberg, supervised by the FBI, created a fake company called Abdul Enterprises in which FBI employees posed as fictional Arab sheikhs led by owners Kambir Abdul Rahman and Yassir Habib, who had millions of dollars to invest in the United States. Weinberg instructed the FBI to fund a $1 million account with the Chase Manhattan Bank in the name of Abdul Enterprises, giving the company the credibility it needed to further its operation. The FBI recorded each money exchange and, for the first time in American history, surreptitiously videotaped government officials accepting bribes. Each convicted politician was given a separate trial. During these trials, much controversy arose regarding the ethics of Operation Abscam. Many lawyers, defending their clients, accused the FBI of entrapment. There were 31 targeted officials, but only the following members of Congress were convicted of bribery and conspiracy in 1981: US Senator Harrison A. Williams (D-NJ), US Representative Frank Thompson (D-NJ), John Jenrette (D-SC), Raymond Lederer (D-PA), Michael Myers (D-PA), John M. Murphy (D-NY), and Richard Kelly (R-FL). Five other government officials were convicted, including the Mayor of Camden, NJ, Angelo Errichetti (D), and the Philadelphia, PA, City Council President George X. Schwartz (D). Also convicted were Philadelphia, PA, City Councilman Harry Jannotti (D) and Louis Johanson (D), plus an inspector for the US Immigration and Naturalization Service. The following people refused bribes and reported the incident to the FBI, John Murtha (D-PA), Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD), and Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse. Congress then set guidelines on FBI investigations. Have you ever heard of Abscam?
Gene Finnegan Remembers Living Eighty Wonderful Years 