The History of the Krehbiel family

transcribed by David L. Habegger

Since 1961 I’ve had a copy of “Prairie Pioneer: The Christian Krehbiel Story” by Christian Krehbiel. The book was printed by Faith and Life Press, Newton, Kansas and was copyrighted in 1961. 

Christian was an older brother of Valentine and was a very prominent minister in the General Conference Mennonite Church. He came to Halstead, Kansas from Summerfield, Illinois two years after Valentine.  He then became the lead pastor of the First Mennonite Church, Halsted, KS of which Valentine was the first pastor. Valentine had also started the First Mennonite Church of Christian (Moundridge), Kansas so was released from the position in the Halstead Church.

Christian tells of his birth in the Weierhof and of his early life there. This book contains information about the extended family in Germany and Bavaria and then of their coming to America. 

I have permission to copy parts of this history, and since it is also the history of your Krehbiel family, I thought you Krehbiel descendants would also be interested in having this history. The first chapter begins here.

Good Days and Bad in South Germany

On October 18, 1832, I arrived as the third child of my parents Johannes Krehbiel III and Katherine Krehbiel in the grand-parental home in the village of Weierhof, in the German Palatinate. The Weierhof had been the home of the Krehbiel family since 1671, when Mennonite persecution in Switzerland during the seventeenth century caused them to flee that country. The duke of the Palatinate offered asylum on the Weierhof as a hereditary possession of the family of six, the parents and four sons. The refugees, despite their ownership of more than a thousand acres of land, were forced to do lay labor to sustain themselves, since the land still was heavily forested.

[Initially the land was held by a lease that could be passed on from one generation to the next. It was several generations later that the Krehbiels actually owned it. The land had previously been a monastery that was destroyed by the 30 Years War. Much had remained as forest, but the land that had been farmed was overgrown with brush and weeds as it had not been farmed for some 30 years. DLH]

The Weierhof lies at the foot of the Donnersberg hills rising to meet the mountain, with flat land stretching out toward Marnheim. It belonged to the community of Kirchheim-Bolanden in the Rheinpfalz. On the east it is bordered by the Kaiserstrasse (Imperial Highway) Napoleon built to connect Paris with Mainz. To the south lie Dreisen Standenbühl, and farther on, Kaiserslautern.

Close to the village in a half-moon valley near several springs arose the Hollerbrunnen which flowed off in a pleasant river bed and, joining the water of the old brook, furnished the power for the mill wheel. Above this glen still stands a huge oak whose roots dig deep into the soil and whose wide-flung branches shade the valley.

[This tree was still standing when I last visited the Weierhof in 1993. The spring was fenced off by the U.S. Army  when they established a base close by in W.W.II. The Mennonite School was taken over by the Army.  When it was given back to the Mennonites the Army built a grade school right near the Weierhof. Gary Waltner of Freeman, South Dakota, who taught in the Mennonite school became the principal of the U.S. Army school. He is now retired and is in charge of the Archive in Weierhof, established by the Mennonite Churches of the area. DLH]

This village in earlier years had but four [Krehbiel] families–all farmers–and one mill. By the time I came into this world this had changed. The venerable building still stood, also the old church, and the cemetery with its beautiful Linden trees guarding the entrance. Four substantial farmhouses had been added, as well as a weaving house, a large parsonage with workhouses around it, and a handsome new church on the hill, its terraced steps bordered by young Linden trees. How beautiful it was!

[The new church, built on the plans of a Baptist chapel in Tottenham, England, was dedicated on Nov. 1, 1837. It is still used today. DLH]

Now in 1906 as I write, a Realschule [Secondary school] with about twenty professors and from 150 to 200 students has long been in operation. Whereas our ancestors worked for daily wages, the present owners employ day laborers. Here at the foot of the terraced steps leading up to the church was my father’s place of business and next to it the home in which I was born.

Recollections of My Childhood

On my chest I carry a scar, a reminder of God’s mercy to me even in early childhood. My dear mother told me that as a small child I had a severe case of croup, the result of a thorough chilling out on the ice. Her cousin, Valentin Krehbiel, who was visiting us at the time, prepared a Spanish mustard plaster to be laid on my chest. It saved my life. The heat engendered, however, burned the skin, leaving a scar which even now in my seventy-fifth year is very noticeable. I have also been told that when I was very young I nearly drowned in the brook at Ober-Florsheim. In these two rescues I recognize the protecting hand of God.

In my seventh year I was sent, together with the other children of the Weierhof, to the school in Bolanden. An old man named Reiss was my teacher, but I remember him only hazily. I remember more clearly that our parents arranged to have a school in the Weierhof. We met in the old church.

[This church was built in 1770. This was the first church that the people of the community were permitted to build, and even then permission required that it be unobtrusive in appearance, as if it were related to the barns adjacent to it. Today it is used as a shelter from rain during burials in the adjacent cemetery. The rear wall of the building was removed to make this possible. For quite a few years it had been used as an implement shed. DLH]

Our teacher was so new and inexperienced that the school had to be disbanded. I must have learned very little, for when we children were sent after the closing of this school to the nearby town, I could not keep up with the studies and was sent back to the small village school. A year later I again attended the larger school, but for only one year since my parents left the Weierhof to move to Bavaria. I also attended, but for only a short time, the catechetical instruction class taught by Pastor Reder. The memory of those meetings which brought me much blessing is still very vivid.

One Sunday afternoon four of us boys were roaming in the fields. A sudden inspiration to extend the walk to Biedesheim was put into action. This was where my aunt Mary lived, whose stepchildren often visited us. Our aunt must have noticed that we were troubled about something, for she questioned us closely. From our honest answers she learned the story and soon sent us home. But our adventure had been noted and up and down the street we had to endure laughing references to our “heroic adventure.” Fortunately, our parents did not punish us too severely since we had come home before dark.

My uncle Jacob, who had no sons as yet, was very good to me. Horses were my great pleasure. He had a handsome black pony which I was permitted to ride, though I was only nine. One day in the spring when the ground was a bottomless mud I was out riding. After several miles I decided to turn back. Everything went well until I rode down the steep bank toward the Pfrimm River. The horse sank so deep into the mud that I had to give him free rein. Taking advantage of this freedom, the horse stretched his neck and kicked his heels. The little rider, alas, found himself up to his ears in the mud. The horse, freed of its burden, ran home. A young ten-year-old friend, Christina Wohlgemuth, finding the runaway horse, hunted for me and found me coated with mud. He teased; nevertheless, he brought me safely back to my uncle's home.

I had another, more dangerous, horseback ride when I was stable boy for my uncle Peter. I took a roan horse down to the brook one evening for a bath, as was the custom on the Weierhof. An older boy rode beside me on another horse. Suddenly on the way home his horse shied at something and ran away. Mastering my Fritz with a tight rein I held him until the runaway vanished around the corner of the barn. Fritz tossed his head and kicked his heels until he had thrown me off on the sharp cobblestones. From this episode I carry no scars.

Shortly afterward my uncle Jacob sent me with the wagon to a field where Jewish friends of his were harvesting potatoes. He had offered his wagon for carting the potatoes off the field. The workers had not yet finished digging up all the potatoes, striving to save as much of the crop before frost as possible. Darkness fell before we left the field. Selichmann, feeling sorry for the little nine-year-old offered to do the driving. The youngster, feeling that his uncle had entrusted the wagon to him alone, indignantly refused, suggesting that his uncle had said Selichmann should work the brakes. He brought the horse, the wagon, and the Jewish family safely home. Since it was getting late, my uncle had sent one of the farmhands to meet me. But the old fellow did not reach for the reins in my hands; he would not have gotten them, anyway. But when we got home, he said, “Well, Christian, today you really were working with a lot of Jews.”

Apparently my uncle had a great deal of confidence in my way with horses, for soon afterward he entrusted me with a huge load of stones for the parsonage at the Weierhof. The errand accomplished successfully, I began to pride myself on my driving ability.

Two visitors stand out clearly in my memory. One was the son of the Krehbiels from Pfrimmerhof who had been kidnaped as a child and returned for a ransom. The kidnaper was later executed. The other visitor I also remember vividly. He was a young English millionaire who had been sent by his mother to study with our pastor Reder. Later, having married the minister’s sister, he would gallop over on his gray horse from Kirchheim-Bolanden.

[Two footnotes give the following information.] “The Eymann and Lehmann families later migrated to the United States, settling in Ashland County, Ohio.”

"Kleinschwabhausen, our new home, belonged to the district of Einhofen in the duchy of Dachau. Our farm was called Waspelhof, named after the previous owner, and my father was known as the Waspelfarmer."