Honoring Our Family: The Legacy of Gratitude This Thanksgiving

As Thanksgiving approaches, we would like to take a moment to thank the family members and friends who have been instrumental in our writing journey. We do not walk this writing pilgrimage alone; many individuals, both past and present, have helped us get to where we are today.

First off, our novels would never have become a reality if our parents had not instilled in us a love of reading and history. Our mother, an avid reader herself, always made sure our house was full of books. She would always find a way for us to order the newest titles from the Scholastic monthly book orders. We would often stop and browse the aisles of the large bookstore when we traveled to Sioux Falls. Mother always had a stack of books on her nightstand waiting to be read. Although our father may not have read books like our mother did, he subscribed to four area newspapers and spent his evenings reading every edition, scouring the sports pages for the latest scores and human-interest stories. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for helping raise all your children to be lifelong readers.

We grew up hearing our father speak with pride about his grandfather and great-grandfather's influence in settling and developing the thriving East Freeman community where we grew up. Our great-great-grandfather, Christian Mueller, was a prominent founding father of the Mennonite churches in East Freeman and a respected community elder. Our great-grandfather, John C Mueller, not only helped start the First National Bank in town but also assisted in establishing Freeman Junior College, which produced numerous teachers and nurses for our community and beyond. As a high school history teacher, Dad inspired his children to read stories about both our community and our country's history, which served as the basis for our historical fiction novels.

We are grateful for our wonderful, supportive parents.

This appeal for history inspired us to dig deeper into our family's history. What we discovered was both fascinating and inspiring. We were able to trace our Mueller roots back to the 1500s in Bern, Switzerland. During the Reformation, our ancestors joined the Anabaptist movement and soon experienced persecution from both the state and the Catholic church. This persecution drove our family from Switzerland to the Palatinate in Germany. In 1785, a group of Mennonites and Amish-Mennonites moved from Germany to East Galicia, now part of Austria, at the invitation of Emperor Joseph II. Then, in 1796, our ancestors moved to Russia at the invitation of Prince Edward Lubomirsky to farm and develop the fertile lands of what is now Ukraine. Through all the moves our family endured, they never gave up on their beliefs, remaining faithful to their Anabaptist principles. Settling into the villages of the Volhynia region of Russia, our ancestors lived peacefully, becoming expert farmers, millers, and equipment manufacturers, until 1870, when Russian Tsar Alexander II announced plans to eliminate the special privileges granted to the Germans who settled in Volhynia. Revoking military exemptions for these pacifist Anabaptists, prompted the village leaders to yet again seek a new homeland. Twelve scouts from the close-knit villages set out on a scouting expedition to North America in 1873 to search for a new home where they could practice their religion in peace and remain true to their Anabaptist beliefs. After exploring the Midwest region of the United States and Canada for four months, the scouts returned to Volyhnia with favorable reports and the recommendation to immigrate to the Dakota Territory.

Once again, our family packed up their lives and made the longest move yet in their history. Crossing Europe in wagons and trains, then boarding ships, they made their way to America, where they landed at Castle Garden in New York City. After weeks of travel. they boarded yet another train and headed across the continent, disembarking in Yankton, the Territorial Capital of the Dakota Territory.

How surprised were we when we discovered that our ancestors did not settle in the Red River Valley as originally planned because of unforeseen complications?  Instead they choose the rich Turkey Ridge Valley of Turner County sight unseen. Their faith in God's hand, leading them to their new homesteads, never faltered for these new immigrants.

The adversaries and challenges these new homesteaders faced were unimaginable to us as we dug into the memoirs and journals of these early pioneers. Building and living in sod houses, locust invasions, prairie fires, blizzards, food insecurities, and infant mortality threatened to break our ancestors physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Thankfully, they persevered and continued to believe in God's plan for their lives, leaning on His undying love and comfort in the trying times they experienced.

We are grateful for our determined, persistent, faithful ancestors.

Our great-grandfather had six sisters, whom we knew very little about as we began our project. Through our research and writing, we have been delighted and blessed to discover extended family members, descendants of these sisters, whom we previously didn't know we had. These extended family members have shared their invaluable knowledge about our family history and have aided us in our writing journey. We have also been fortunate to welcome others from our home community into our writing adventures. Blood is not the only way to create a family. Everyone who grew up in our home community, or had family who did, is part of the stories in our books and thus a part of our family.

We are grateful for our connections to newly discovered extended family members and community members who continue to aid us in our research and inspire us to keep writing.

This Thanksgiving season, we challenge you to contemplate your family history. Where did your ancestors come from? What adversities did they endure? How has their story shaped you into the person you are today?

Quoting from The Ancestor Hunt, we are thankful:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!