The Hummis Place was sold to Mr. George DeLay in the year 1895 and the George Henry Seebarts moved into town. A new house had been built, also, barn and sheds, on a piece of ground at the extreme eastern border of the village. The area purchased was composed of approximately five-and-a-half (city) town lots, 50' x 150'. One of the reasons for moving was undoubtedly the difficulties of the children getting back and forth to School, especially in the severe winter weather, and again in the flood conditions of early spring. All of the children were in grade school that year. Another reason was that George Henry an ever-increasing amount of commercial hauling (called trucking in our day) and was away from home and the farm for long periods. Still another factor was: his duties as Constable took him near and far at all hours of the day and night. So, while much was sacrificed in leaving the farm, it was better that the family should be in town within easy walking distance of the grade school. (There was no high school at that time in Emerado.) Uncle Will and Uncle Gus, who were then in the construction business, built the house and other buildings on our lots.

The lots on which the new buildings stood were at the eastern extremity of the town-site and at the east end of what is known at present as Hancock Street. They ran, in depth, north and south, from the end of Hancock Street north to the Great Northern Railroad tracks. The section line road (right-of-way) ran right along the east side of our lots, for their full length. However, the road did not follow this line because there was a coulee just back of our barn, so original travel was routed down the hill back of our barn and then swung to the left, across the coulee, and up a hill called the Monley Hill onto the Fort Totten Trail. (At this location the Fort Totten Trail came off of the Lee Hill which was just to the east of our back lots.) At the top of the Monley Hill the traveller could turn left before crossing the Great Northern Railroad tracks and go into the village of Emerado, or he could cross the tracks and follow the trail past the Emery Farm, following the Fort Totten Trail as wound its way along the old Lake Agassiz beach-head to the Turtle River area and beyond. So, when we built on these lots all traffic along this section line road, flowed right past our back door. However, there was a bad crossing below our barn, and the Township soon provided a new entrance from the south into Emerado. This road was later named Hancock Street. I still recall that travellers who did not know this new way into Emerado and onto the Fort Totten Trail going north drove into what had become our lane to the barn and found themselves confronting our barn-yard sheds and fences. So they would have to turn-around and come back down the lane and onto the new road.

Later on, when the automobile came in, traffic from the south sometimes became so fast that a "speeding driver" (about 25mph at that time) would not be able to make the left hand turn and would shoot right into our lane or run into the fence which was built along the east side of our lots. No serious harm ever resulted.

Comment: Mr. Hood, who owned one of the Emerado General Merchandise Stores, drove a team of black and white horses hitched to a black-topped single buggy. His horses were named Lightning and Thunder. One day he was coming back from his farm south of Emerado and a cloud-burst came upon him. It was raining so fast that he could not see the road and could hardly see the horses. So, when he reached our corner, he drove right straight into our lane, and brought his horses to a halt right in front of our back door. There they stayed, until the rain had subsided and he could go on into Emerado.

Notation: It was not many months after we moved into our new Emerado house (1895 or 1896) that I first saw the light of day. The specific date was December 17, 1896, I missed being a Christmas present by only eight days. I doubt that my birth would have added anything to the Christmas joy of our family, had it taken place on Christmas Day, for my mother was always the very heart and soul of our Christmas celebration at home. She would have been greatly handicapped in this role by giving birth to a child on the birthday of the Christ Child. Since I was the seventh child to be born to my parents, I doubt that there was any particular joy in our family on the occasion of my arrival except, probably, the joy that the ordeal was over. Be this as it may, I can truthfully say that I never felt unwanted. The more children Ma had, the more love she had to share with them. However, as a child, I did sometimes feel just a little bit neglected when my birthday was not observed just as I thought it should be because it is so close to Christmas, that we will just wait and celebrate the two events at the same time.

Mavorite Rita was born in Emerado on May 2, 1898. We always called her May, perhaps because she was born in the month of May. She never like either one of her maiden names and after leaving the home place, she always referred to herself, and signed her name as Mae.

By the time May came along, Ma had apparently had it, leaving the total at eight. Eight children in a family was not uncommon in those days of unplanned parenthood. It was a smal family as compared to that of Grandfather Ziebarth's fifteen. Nor were the children the economic problem which they are today; for they started helping at home and on the farm at a very early age. Recall the work Uncle Fred was doing at ages 12 and 16.

Comment: This a good place in my manuscript to pay a tribute of gratitude to Ella Henrietta Seebart. She gave each and every one of us the priceless heritage of a strong and healthy body. Not one of us was either physically or mentally handicapped in any manner (There were times when we did not use all of the brains we had, but there was never any lack of basic grey matter.) Our mistakes were mostly caused by lack of judgement, but too, there were also other factors, such as environmental influences. In contrast to both the paternal and maternal record of her forebears, every one of Ella Henrietta's children lived and grew up into healthy men and women. Thus far, the youngest amongst those who have died was brother Charles at age 72, and the eldest, brother George, at age 92. More details on such matters on this will appear later in this manuscript under the heading of individual genealogical records of the Emerado Seebarts. Therefore we will now proceed to conclude this chapter with some

Economically speaking, we were a poor family; as were most of the families amongst whom we lived. It was not the Age of Affluence such as the present one. At this time our family was what was called "Good and Poor," meaning that we were, although poor, always regarded to be a family composed of good people, and there were times when when we were really poor. Our ancestors were Church people and we were Church people. Religion played a dominant role in the life of each member of our family: some more, some less, but always dominant. Our moral standards were based upon the Holy Bible, (especially the New Testament and the Ten Commandments) and we took both its commandments and the threat of punishments to be inflicted if we were disobedient, literally. Thank God for such a background! The church of our grandparents was the German Evangelical and its offshoot the United Brethren. When the services of neither of these churches was available, we were a part of John and Charles Wesleys' Church; the Methodist Episcopal. When Ma, like "the old woman in the shoe, had so many children she didn't know what to do," she stopped attending church, but she never stopped being a religious person and a Christian. To us, especially as children, Hell was a very real place of everlasting punishment for sin; and the Devil, with horns, forked tail and a pitchfork in his hands; (with which to turn us over on the red-hot coals of hell-fire), was a very real personality.

Ella Henrietta believed and practiced the Scriptural: "bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." She strove, continually to bring up her children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. She kept us in Sunday School as long as she could, and when we dropped out, she never let us forget what we were taught in Sunday School. I am happy and proud to say that not one of us completely departed from the Way.

To quote make a living for such a large family; Pa did many things. he served as Constable (Peace Officer) in the area: making arrests when warrants were sworn out, taking persons who were in trouble with the law to Court and to Jail. This required going anywhere at any time of the day or night. While farming on the Hummis Place, he gradually go into a lot of commercial hauling; much of it between Emerado and Grand Forks, and even to Arvilla and MecKinock and once and a while to Thompson and Reynolds. Although the Great Northern Railway ran west from Grand Forks, through Emerado and Arvilla; it was often cheaper to haul large quantities of commodities by wagon loads, because it did not involve the red-tape of railroad packaging and delivery. Many places and many persons were served more conveniently and more cheaply by direct hauling than by railroad shipping. In those days, before the rural delivery system was inaugurated, persons living a long way from an established post office which was served by a railway post office, located in the baggage car of a passenger train, were served by a sort of sub-station established in someone's home. (See my manuscript on Bellville and the Bonds; and the post office sub-station at the Bell residence.) Pa had the contract to carry the mail from the Emerado post office to the McCrae Place, about 12 miles south of Emerado, where such a sub-station was located. he made the trip once or twice a week. In the Wintertime, this was a "Bear-cat," but the mail had to go through, no matter what the weather might be. I can recall his coming into the house from one of those sub-zero trips with icicles six inches long hanging from his mustache. The horses would also have icicles hanging from the hair on their chins. The moisture of the breath would freeze as the breath was exhaled. I can recall going with Pa on some of his mail-carrying trips, but never in the winter time.

Comment: Although we, as a family, did not have much of this world's goods, we were always appropriately and adequately clothed. (Sometimes they were hand-me-downs from older brothers and sisters who had outgrown their clothing, but they were always worked over so as to fit our needs.) Ma was an excellent seamstress, and she taught her daughters the art also, thus making her work task much easier. she was also a marvelously-rapid knitter. Her steel needles flew so fast that the human eye could not follow their movement. "Artie Boy" often held the skeins of yarn on two outstretched arms while she wound it into a ball, and he was often called upon to retrieve the ball when it fell from her lap and rolled across the floor. (Sometimes I think she let it fall purposely, just to see the cat chase it—knowing that I was nearby to retrieve it from the cat.)

She knitted all the woolen socks, mittens, scarfs and caps for all the children until they grew up and refused to wear them anymore because they were "scratchy." What a woman!

Neither did we ever go hungry. We always raised a great big garden, in which all of us shared the work. Whenever the vegetables, the garden fruits and the wild fruits such as plums, choke cherries, goose berries, juneberries, etcetera, were ready; the canning process was put in motion. This went on until freeze-up time in the autumn. About the last food to be processed was the cabbage, which was finally shredded and put in a barrel, being salted layer by layer; and then it was placed in a warm corner of the shed, where we had the cook-stove, until about the first of November, to "work" (ferment). (One year we had a great big rain-barrel, -three fourths full of sour-kraut. When we played hide-and-go-seek in the house, I used to like to hide behind that barrel so that I could reach in and get a big handful of kraut.) We never missed the Vitamin C of oranges, so stressed today, for we got all we needed from the sour-kraut. (If we were real lucky, and Dame Fortune had smiled on us that year; we might get a real orange in our Christmas stocking or at the church's Christmas program.)

Every autumn, the big cellar under the house was filled with everything storable and preservable. About half of the space was take by an enormous bin of Irish potatoes which had been grown on our back lots. Amongst the other things stored there were: carrot roots and celery stalks, packed in sand; cabbage heads, wrapped in newspapers hanging from the undergirding house beams, pumpkins and squash lying on top of the potatoes and many other items. There were also a couple of five gallon crocks (crockery jars) containing eggs wrapped in newspaper and packed in oats. (These were a reserve against the cold winter months when the hens stopped laying eggs. They were used very sparingly, -- only for baking and some cooking. They had to last until spring.) For meat there were chickens (mostly surplus roosters raised during the summer months); ducks, geese, turkeys. In the spring of each year we always bought a couple of tiny pigs, just weaned, fed them through the summer months, and when it got really cold (usually November) my two older brothers (George and Charlie) would butcher the pigs and we would have pork products for a long, long time. Sometimes we had a steer to butcher in the Fall. If not, we would buy a half a beef or so from some farmer who butchered his own beef. In the spring of the year Brother Charlie set traps in the creeks into which fish from the Red Lake River and the Red River of the North would come when the snow melted and they were running high. In the autumn, George and Charlie brought in an abundance of such wild game as Prairie Chickens, wild Ducks, and wild Geese. Boy, oh boy! Were they ever good!

There were no Frigidaire in those days. Ice boxes were just beginning to come in. Butchers and Merchants had ice houses built around a cold storage room. Pa serviced all of these in the wintertime. Big blocks of ice were packed in saw-dust around a very thick-walled room with a very thick entrance door. the idea was to keep the heat out, and keep the cold in.

In addition to all the good foods mentioned above, we always had cows and that meant that we always had milk, and cream, and thick sour milk, and cottage cheese, and butter. Dried beans, dried peas, dried corn, popcorn, oatmeal, cracked wheat, molasses, and numerous other such foods were available in abundance in the stores of those days and were relatively cheap. (Almost all of our store-foods came in "bulk" (barrels & boxes) in those days.) A hundred pound sack of flour would not cost more than $1.50 to $2.00. We always had a wonderful home-made potato water bread, made from a riser (home-made yeast, which in turn, was made from the hops which we gathered along the Turtle River.) Ma baked about 8 or 10 loaves at a time and that would last about 1 week. If any one of us said: between meals, "I'm hungry," she would reply: "There's bread and butter in the cupboard. Go help yourself." and, if she were in a particularly generous mood, she would add: "You may put some sugar on it. Not too much, now!" My older sisters used to stick a slice of bread on a fork with a long handle, open the door of the heater or the kitchen range, hold that bread over the red-hot coals, and let it toast. Then they would butter it, sprinkle it with a little cinnamon and sugar and make a snack fit for a king. How that fragrance would permeate the whole house, and really make the mouth water. To have such a snack meant far, far more to any of us children than a bar of candy would mean to any child now-a-days! And it was good for us! Ma was a wonderful cook! If ever a cook could make something out of nothing it was her.

Observation: The above rather lengthy section has been deliberately included in this manuscript in order that the Aptos Seebarts children and grandchildren might have some inkling of the nature of man's struggle for survival and to get ahead in the early days. It is, of course, impossible, to tell them; or even to fully suggest to them how hard it was in those days to make ends meet (a common expression of that time), and to hold things together today; that there might be a tomorrow. It was the overcoming of these hard things that made men strong and women courageous. A fish that never swims against the current is soft and hardly worth catching to eat. The finest fish are the trout and salmon, which must fight their way up-stream every inch of the way.

Our yard, in the summertime was always the beauty spot of the town and countryside. Many persons, as they went by our place, slowed their pace or that of their horses, and just stared so that they might soak up a little of the beauty as they passed by. There were flowering shrubs, flowers, a variety of trees, vines, thriving garden and green lawns everywhere. Ma really had a green thumb, and she taught that skill to her children. In addition to that, she had the German trait of keeping everything at neat as a pin. Ma's motto in gardening and everything; inherited from Grandfather Weier, wasa place for everything and everything in it's place. She often said to us, "My father could walk into his barn or shed, or anywhere that he worked and lay his hand on the tool or the thing he wanted, no matter how pitch-dark it might be outside." On countless occasions, but particularly moonlit nights she would ask me to take a rake and pull the dirt ahead of her as she, with and ordinary house-broom, would sweep the entire lane from its entrance to the wood-pile beyond the out-house. What a worker! She had eight children with all the work accompanying the care and raising of them and did all such things as this besides. If the potatoes needed to be hilled-up and the boys (George, Charlie, Ed) had not been able to get-to-it on time, she would take her hoe and go down to the potato patch and hill potatoes in the moonlight. She really enjoyed doing it. She loved the outdoors. That kind of work seemed to be fun for her. She did all of this and lived to be 84. (Maybe she lived to be 84 because she did all of this.) She loved life, and lived it to the full. No saying was more oft repeated by her than, "Waste not, want not." Had this not been her practicing motto, I doubt if we ever would have made it.