Did You Know: Brethren in North Dakota, Montana, and Minnesota

The Church of the Brethren in Northern North Dakota, Montana, and Minnesota

Keith Sheller 

The Church of the Brethren was alive and active in the northern plains of the U.S. during the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century as noted by two descendants of Albert Sharp, an early minister to the Brethren.  Here are excerpts from the written memories of his daughter, Ruth Coffman, in her memories of her life.  This essay concludes with information taken from Arlene Barley Sheller, granddaughter of the Rev. Sharp.  Ruth was a member of the English River Church and the mother of Eldon and Paul Coffman.  Arlene’s membership was in the Ivester Church, and she is the mother of Keith and Dan Sheller.

  Ruth writes, “Father joined the Church of the Brethren in 1883 during meetings by D.B. Gibson.”  Ruth’s mother was already a member and had attended Mt. Morris College and Academy.  “Land developers were always urging people to go west, or north, and stake out claims, so in 1898 the folks moved all their possessions by train to North Dakota.  Usually an entire train consisted of pioneers and their goods.

 “When they landed in Cando, North Dakota, they found a small house in which to live and were somewhat crowded!”  (Seven children plus parents.)  “Father took out a claim about 21 miles northeast of Cando and in the summer of 1900 they built, and moved into a sod house….One of my older sisters told me that in 1903 while mother was in Ohio attending an Annual Conference, Father bought ‘real’ wallpaper as a surprise for her.  Before that the walls were covered with newspapers…..

 “(My brother) Clifton started helping a neighbor soon after we moved to the claim and he subscribed to the ‘Youth’s Companion.’….We always took the ‘Gospel Messenger’ and the ‘Missionary Visitor.’

 “The church house was built in 1904 or 1905.  Before that the services were held in the school house.  I don’t remember my father when he wasn’t a minister; the older children  do.  He was ordained in Cando in 1899 or 1900.  The church was three miles from our house and we always went…At Sunday School we received papers with stories and colored cards with Bible pictures and verses.  I only remember one teacher on the farm.  I do remember several after we moved (back) to town.  Even before we were members we girls wore bonnets and longish dresses.  The dresses weren’t necessarily dark though; we always had light ones for summer.

 Lovefeast time was a big affair.  The Council or Business Meeting was held on a Saturday with a basket dinner at noon.  It usually lasted all day.  Then they went home to do chores except for a couple men who stayed to cook the beef in a large iron kettle over an open fire.  Usually several neighbor non-members would come to Lovefeast ‘just to see.’  There were nearly always visiting members who would have to be guests in some home for the night.  Sunday morning breakfast was served at the church and then we had the regular Sunday School and church services.  A visiting minister usually preached.

  “Evangelistic meetings were held in most Brethren churches sometime during the year.  Never in winter.  They would last two or three weeks and were conducted by a minister from a different church.  Some were ministers who spent all their time in evangelistic meetings at different churches.  These meetings were usually quite well-attended by members and non-members alike.  I can remember a few evangelists who shouted and pounded in the pulpit quite freely.  Hell was no fairy tale in those days!  My most pleasant memories of evangelistic meetings were going home at night with the moon shining and my head in Mother’s lap.  Half asleep, I could hear the creaking of the ‘spring wagon’ and the soft clop clop of the horses’ hooves in the dusty road.

  “As early as 1908 some of the settlers were becoming tired of the long cold winters and often dry summers of North Dakota.  One family—Fifers–had come from Virginia.  They had one of the very few phonographs in the area and had the record ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginia’ which Mr. Fifer was always playing.  They moved back to Virginia…At least five other families moved to California.

  “About that time land developers were in the community trying to get people to go to Cuba.  They were at our place but Mother refused to consider it.  I think Father would have gone.  One of our church families did go but came back in a couple years.

  “One church family moved to Egeland where a couple of other Brethren families lived, so the church building was moved to Egeland about 1910.  During the move Sunday School and church services were held in the Egeland school house.”

  Ruth’s sister was Iva who became the mother of Arlene Sheller.  While working for a family in Cando, Iva met a young man from Johnstown, Pennsylvania.  “They became interested in each other and eventually were married.  Chalmer was going to take up a claim in Montana so they took the train west right after they were married in March of 1910.

  “I had always dreamed of going to the Annual Conference of the Church of the Brethren.  When I found out that Father was going, I decided to go along.  That was the summer of 1920.  The Conference was in Sedalia, Missouri.  We went by train.  We changed trains at St. Paul, Minnesota, and also at St. Louis, Missouri.  The only other time I had been out of the state was when I went to Montana (to help Iva).

   “Both the trip and Conference were most interesting.  I thought Missouri was awfully hot!…The Egeland church congregation had been getting quite small.  Some of the older families were moving away and the young people were going to college and getting positions in other locations.

  Father got in touch with some other churches who wanted a pastor.  He and Mother finally decided on Fredericksburg, Iowa.  They moved in the fall of 1920 soon after Maude and I left for Mt. Morris College in Illinois.”

  Arlene Barley Sheller’s Life Story can connect us to one of Montana’s Churches of the Brethren.  She was born and lived on a farm near Froid, Montana for about nine years.  Her father built a wonderful barn that he was very proud of.  It stood on a farm of Ralph Clark’s family and when the barn was torn down, Ralph retrieved a piece of the weathervane for Keith and Dorothy Sheller.  Things got hard there on the ranch so the family moved to the Bemidji area in Minnesota.  Arlene writes, “During this time we used to go to church out in the country about 12 miles away from Nymore.  That is where the people that we really felt close to lived.  The Allens had moved there from Montana, and Stones, and Byers, and Browers, and Saathoffs.  We really looked forward to Sunday when we would get to go to church, and see all our friends.  Almost every Sunday somebody would usually ask us to stay for dinner, and so that was wonderful.  In 1925 I was baptized at the Church of the Brethren out in the country.”  Right after that their family spent two years in Florida, but Arlene’s older brother died there and the family was drawn back to the support of their church friends in Nymore.

  She goes on, “During those four years that we lived out in the country, we had a real active young people’s group.  There were quite a number of young people, and we would go to youth rallies. And at Christmas time we would go caroling.  We…had a great time.”

     After she finished high school, Arlene earned a two-year teaching certificate.  Arlene began teaching in the north woods of Minnesota.  She writes, “Just before school started, I did get a job teaching at the wildwood schoolhouse out in the country where we went to church.  That was just perfect.  I lived with the Allens, who lived about a mile and a quarter from school.  I only had four children and they were all children I had known since they were born.”  Among these was Edith Allen, who became the wife of the late Northern Plains and Western Plains pastor, John Ditmars.  When school was out, she went to McPherson, Kansas to spend the summer with her parents, who had moved there so that their children could have room and board while they attended college.  Her father, being a carpenter, thought he could find work anywhere, which he did.  A number of young people from the north woods were attending college in McPherson, so after one more year of teaching in Minnesota, Arlene returned to college in McPherson, where she earned her four-year degree and then moved to the Ivester community where she married Charles Sheller and settled down where the family had deep roots in central Iowa.

  One by one many of the families from the north woods moved away, as did the Barleys.  However, Arlene remained in touch with them until her death in 1985.  Those formative years in the Church of the Brethren were so meaningful to the tight-knit Brethren that they returned to the area for several reunions.  By the mid-seventies when Dan, Keith, and Dorothy Sheller attended the reunion with Charles and Arlene, all that was left of the school and the church were the concrete foundations.

 Besides Ruth Sharp Coffman, two of the other Sharp sisters also stayed in the Northern Plains.  Maude Schmudlach and Angeline Treloar lived in the Fredericksburg area.  Iva Barley lived in New Hampton until her husband retired and they moved to Sebring, Florida.  Gertrude married Stewart Hamer from the South Waterloo Church, and they settled in North Manchester, Indiana.