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In 1925 our family, consisting of my parents, half-brother Peter,half-sister
Margaret Tiessen Gossen, Frank, Betty Tiessen Janzen, Nick,Agatha, Mary
Tiessen Harder, Katharine, and I moved to the Duke farm.
In the fall of 1927, my parents bought the farm I live on today from
Albert Bowman for $12,000. Dad ploughed one acre daily, the usual rate
with horse drawn ploughs. Our family moved to that farm in January of 1928
and on March 7, the house burned to the ground. Fortunately, we had a
second house on that farm and we were able to move into it with our
renters - the Deacon
Henry Wiens's - who had just moved here from the Canadian West.
When the hard times came my parents lost the farm, but
in 1930 they were able to buy it back for $6,500. My mother, Elizabeth
Fast Tiessen, died in 1939. In October of 1943 my father Peter Tiessen
died. On the day of my Father's funeral the electricity in our house, which
had been wired
recently, was turned on.
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My half-brother Peter died of tuberculosis in 1926, and my half-sister
Margaret moved to Niagara. In 1938 my brother Frank bought a farm on
concession B for $7,000. He also purchased a new steel wheel McCormick F
12 tractor, a two furrow plough and a disk, all for $1,000. Sister Betty
moved to Vineland; brother Nick farmed on concession 1 of Leamington, and
sister Agatha moved to Port Rowan. My sister Mary went to school in
Gretna,
Manitoba, then Toronto, and taught in Malden, Ontario; sister Katharine
became the first cook at the newly-built Mennonite Home, and I live on the
home farm on County Road 20.
As told by Jake Tiessen, born in 1922
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