SAMUEL KUEHN (Kühn) + JUSTINA PRIEBE
Samuel Kühn
Born at Paris, Bessarabia, South Russia on September 19, 1853.
Father was Andreas Kühn born 1827 at Paris, Bessarabia, Russia. Mother was Justina Floether born June 5, 1859 at Tarutino, Bessarabia, Russia.
Baptized September 24, 1853 at Alt Elft colony.
Confirmed 1863.
Married to Justina Priebe on May 15, 1878 at Paris colony
He had 10 siblings: 4 brothers; 6 sisters.
Siblings were: Karolina b. 1848, Elizabeth b. 1850, Wilhelm b. 1852, Dorothea b. 1857, Euphrosina b. 1858, Juliana b. 1860, Louise b. 1862, Ferdinand b. 1864, Emmanuel b. 1869, Martin b. 1866.
Father of 11 children (see below).
Five children were born at Benkendorf, Bessarabia, S. Russia and six children born at Krem, North Dakota, USA.
Immigrated to America at Krem, North Dakota in 1887.
Died April 5, 1913, at age 59 on his farm near Krem, North Dakota, USA. Interned in the St. Jacob’s Lutheran Cemetery at Krem.
Justina Priebe
Born at Tarutino, Bessarabia, South Russia on June 5, 1859.
Father was Daniel Ludwig Priebe born 1831 at Tarutino, Bessarabia, Russia.
Mother was Susanna Banek born 1832 at Tarutino, Bessarabia, Russia.
Married to Samuel Kühn on May 15, 1878 at Paris colony.
She had three siblings: 2 sisters, 1 brother.
Siblings were: Juliana, Elizabeth, Wilhelm
Mother of 11 children (see below), five born at Benkendorf, Bessarabia, S. Russia; six born at Krem, North Dakota, USA.
Died December 7, 1898 near Krem, North Dakota, USA at age 39 yr, 6 mo, 3 d.
Interned in the St. Jacob’s Lutheran Cemetery at Krem.
Samuel and Justina had eleven children. Records for all eleven of these children have been found. Four infants died at birth; two at Tarutino colony and two at Benkendorf colony in Russia. One died at Krem, ND as a toddler. Six children survived to adulthood. The number “eleven” comes from an inscription on Justina’s tombstone in Krem, ND. A specific inscription, carved in her tombstone, reads: “Mother of eleven children”.
A Family Story About Justina Priebe Kühn
~Data submitted by family researcher, Glenn Kuehn (Kühn)
The children of Samuel & Justina KUEHN (Kühn):
Samuel, b. 14 Dec 1878; d. 16 Dec 1878 at Benkendorf, Bessarabia, Russia. Age: 2 days (convulsions)
Jakob, born 1879; died at birth Tarutino, Bessarabia, Russia
Infant, born 1880; died at birth Tarutino, Bessarabia, Russia
Immanuel, born in Benkendorf. No other information recorded, suggests infant death
Bertha, b. 01 Oct 1882, at Benkendorf, Bessarabia, Russia
Sophia, b. 06 Aug 1884, Benkendorf, Bessarabia, Russia; d. 20 Jan 1944, USA
Friedrich, b. 05 Aug 1886, Benkendorf, Bessarabia, Russia; d. 1937, Terry, MT
Gotthilf, b. 25 Feb 1889, near Krem, N.D.; d. 03 Apr 1937, Terry, MT
Lydia, b. 09 Mar 1893, near Krem, N.D.; d. 11 Jan 1968, Glendive, MT
Immanuel, b. 08 Jun 1895, at Krem, N.D.; baptized 28 Jul 1895; d. 10 Aug 1896, at age 1yr, 2mo, 8das.
Gustav, b. 21 Mar 1898, near Krem, N.D.; baptized 30 Apr 1898; d. 15 Jul 1950, Fairfield, MT (by accidental dynamite detonation)
Narrative About Samuel and Justina Priebe:
Samuel Kühn and Justina Priebe are my great grandparents and the ancestors for many Kuehns who once lived in Prairie County, State of Montana, USA. They are the first generation of Kühns for our family who immigrated and lived in America. They were ethnic Germans of Russian citizenship when they first came to America. Their respective parents had lived their entire lives at the village of Paris, Bessarabia, Russia. Their children, Bertha, Sophia, and Friedrich, immigrated to America with Samuel and Justina. Offspring of these children and the three later children born in America including, Gotthilf, Lydia, and Gustav, married and raised families in various locations in the state of Montana including Terry, Glendive, Billings/Laurel, and Fairfield, Montana, and in Alberta, Canada. Gotthilf was my grandfather.
As noted from the birth and death dates above, the Evangelical Lutheran Church records for this family are also divided among the parish records for Paris, Tarutino, and Benkendorf villages in Bessarabia. Thus, like his father, Andreas, when Samuel married Justina Priebe, he had to go searching for farmland to purchase some distance away from Alt Elft where his father, Andreas, had lived. He found farmland to purchase at a village called, Benkendorf. This was one of the last colonial villages that was authorized in 1863 for settlement in Bessarabia by German farmers.
Samuel’s father died when Samuel was 20 years old. Samuel was the oldest surviving son of his parents. Thus, Samuel probably remained at his parent’s farm at Alf Elft after his father’s death, helping his mother raise his six younger siblings ranging in age from 7 to 16 years. Five years after his father death, Samuel married Justina Priebe when he was 25 years old and Justina was 18 years old. They immediately moved to a newly opened German colonial village called Benkendorf, where Samuel found a farm to purchase. Justina was from the village of Tarutino, about 15 kilometers distance from Alt Elft. For the next nine years, Samuel and Justina worked their farm at Benkendorf and bore seven children for which records have been found. Eventually, they arrived at the decision to emigrate from Russia to America. How that decision was made, probably came through Justina Priebe’s brother, Wilhelm Priebe.
Rising Russian nationalism beginning in the early 1870s led to increasing dislike among the poorer Russian peasants towards the more prosperous and successful German farmers in Bessarabia. Also, the Russian czar began conscripting young German men from Bessarabia for the first time in 1871 for the czar’s army which waged a series of wars against Turkey and Japan in the late 19th century. The general political climate worsened for the Germans in Bessarabia. They were easy ethnic targets for becoming future political scapegoats. Samuel, like hundreds of other Bessarabian Germans, recognized that this meant future trouble and that it was best to make plans to leave Russia.
In 1885, Justina Priebe’s older brother, Wilhelm Priebe who was born at Tarutino, Bessarabia, but who later moved to a new daughter colony called Eigenheim after 1861, immigrated to America where he homesteaded near Krem and Mannhaven, North Dakota, in Mercer County, north of Stanton, ND. Wilhelm was a man with leadership qualities. He organized and led a sizeable group of about 50 immigrant families from the Bessarabian village of Eigenheim to North Dakota, USA. He organized the first ox cart caravan of settlers in South Dakota for the trek to western North Dakota to form the first homesteads north of the Knife River in Mercer County, North Dakota. Justina Priebe also had two sisters named Juliana Priebe Ziehmann (husband Christian Ziehmann; Brienne, Bessarabia; married 30 Nov 1879) and Elizabeth Priebe Neumiller (husband Johann Neumiller; Tarutino, Bessarabia), who were, of course, also sisters of Wilhelm. Wilhelm assuredly sent letters back to his three sisters in Russia, informing them of the advantages of leaving Russia and that they should come to America. In October 1887, the Ziehmann, Neumiller, and Samuel Kühn families sold their respective farms in Bessarabia and emigrated together to America. Thus, it is highly likely that Wilhem Priebe’s letters back to Samuel and Justina, the Ziehmanns and Neumillers, in Russia urging them to leave Russia had much to do with convincing them to come to America. Wilhelm and his three sisters’ families all homesteaded adjacent to one another near Krem and Mannhaven, North Dakota. We Kühns are most certainly in America as a result of William Priebe’s initiative and desire to get his three sisters with him in America.
Samuel had one major family responsibility to arrange before leaving Benkendorf colony. His aged mother, Justina Floether, was still living in 1887 and may have been living with him and Justina Priebe at Benkendorf. In one of my searches of films from the Brienne/Arciz colonial records where my maternal grandmother Lydia Richter Scheid was born, I happened on an entry for Justina Floether Kühn, wife of Andreas Kühn. Andreas and Justina were Samuel’s parents. A single entry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church records from Arciz colony has the entry: “Justina Floether Kühn, age 57, wife of Andreas Kühn transferred to daughter, Juliana Kühn Richter, 1887.” I speculate that Samuel moved his mother to the home of his sister, Juliana, at Brienne/Arciz, before he departed for America. Juliana was married to a man named Richter. Thus, my maternal and paternal ancestors (Richters and Kuehns) had already intermarried in Russia (see my pedigree chart for Richter ancestors from Arciz). Justina Floether died seven months later on April 29, 1888 at Neu Arciz colony at age 58.
Samuel age 35 and Justina age 28, with 5 year-old Bertha, 3 year-old Sophia, and one year-old Frederick, boarded a train at Kischinjew (now called Kiev), Russia, in October 1887 and left Russia. They returned to Germany. Thus, our family of Kühns lived in Russia for 73 years from 1814 to 1887. Earlier Kühn family ancestors had lived in Poland for 70 years, from about 1740 to 1814. Samuel and Justina’s return to Germany in 1887 in order to get to a ship port to travel to America, marked the first time in at least 122 years that anyone from our family had set foot on our ancestral soil in Germany. Our original German ancestors probably left the Calw (pronounced “calf” including both “l” and “f” sounds) district in the Black Forest region of the old German province of Schwabia (present day German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg) sometime around 1740 but before 1765. Their migrations over that 122-year span took them to Obernik, Poland, to the Duchy of Warsaw near Chudnow, Skeirienice, Poland, to Paris, Bessarabia, South Russia, then to the state of North Dakota, America USA.
The train that they boarded at Kischinjew took Samuel, Justina, and family to Bremen, Germany harbor. On November 17, 1887, Samuel and Justina registered as passengers no. 669 and no. 670, respectively, on the passenger ship, the S.S. America, which set out for a 13-day trip across the Atlantic Ocean. The S.S. America docked at the Baltimore, Maryland, immigration ship port on November 30, 1887. Our Kühns had arrived in America!!!!!!!!! When they registered with immigration authorities at the Baltimore harbor, the Kühn name was anglicized to “Kuehn” in immigration records. However, all of Samuel’s signatures on subsequent land and citizenship documents, of which I have copies, show his very legible signature with his name spelled “Kühn.”
The ship records vouching for the arrival of the S.S. America in Baltimore harbor on November 30, 1887, and the ship’s passenger list are available in the National Archives in Washington, DC. I found them there in year 1988. I attempted to get copies of the records for the departure of the S.S. America ship from the German harbor at Bremen, Germany, on November 17, 1887. However, most of the shipping records from Bremen, Germany, were destroyed during World War II during intensive allied bombing. All Bremen harbor records from the 18th and 19th centuries were lost at that time.
By 1887, the railroads in continental USA had been extended as far as New Salem, Dakota Territory. Samuel and Justina traveled by railroad from Baltimore, Maryland, to New Salem, North Dakota, and then 45 miles by oxcart north to the Krem/Mannhaven area (see story below about Justina Priebe). They spent the first winter living with one of Justina’s sisters and family. In December 1887, Samuel filed on a 160-acre homestead located on the southeast quarter of section 24 in township 146, north of range 86, west of the 5th principal meridian in Mercer County, North Dakota. The homestead application number was no. 7601. It cost him $4.00.
Samuel and Justina did not actually settle on their homestead until the spring of 1889. They probably continued to live with Priebe family members until their homestead was ready for occupancy. During their first working season of 1888, they began preparing the land and dwellings for actual settlement. They built a sod house 20 ft x 40 ft, a sod stable 20 ft x 100 ft and a grainary 16 ft x 40 ft. A 16-ft well was dug and eleven acres of sod were broken that first summer. They lived on this homestead for the rest of their respective lives. I have visited their former homestead. It is located exactly four miles straight north from the former village of Krem, North Dakota. A county road from the perimeter of what now remains of Krem takes you directly north along a section line to the former homestead quarter section. The outline of a former stone foundation for a building exists on the property under some aging cottonwood trees. A huge pile of stones lay nearby, obviously picked up and removed over many years from the nearby fields and pasturelands.
On June 15, 1888, Samuel and Justina filed for USA citizenship at Mandan, North Dakota. Five years later, on May 9, 1893, they were granted full citizenship. Their citizenship records are on file in the Sixth Judicial District Court of Morton County, in Mandan, North Dakota. Also in June 1888, Justina became pregnant again with her eighth child who would be my grandfather, Gotthilf (Gottlief) Kuehn. He was born on February 25, 1889, at Krem, North Dakota. Thus, he was conceived and born in America. He was our first family generation citizen born in America!!
Some family members dispute my use of the name “Gotthilf” for my grandfather. All of us remember that his first name was “Gottlief” and I would surmise that any documents that he signed during his lifetime used the name “Gottlief”. However, this must have been a personal preference of his. For the record, his official birth name was “Gotthilf”. It appears on his birth registration in the State of North Dakota and this name appears in several census records for the family in the State of North Dakota.
Four more children were born to Justina and Samuel in America. Gotthilf (Gottlief), my grandfather, was born on February 25, 1889, Lydia (married Heinrich Horning) born on March 9, 1893, and Gustav (married Helen Wilde) born on March 20, 1898. Toddler Immanuel, born on June 8, 1895, died on August 10, 1896, at age 1 yr, 2 mo.
Justina died on December 7, 1898 at Krem, North Dakota, USA, at the age of 38. She died of emphysema and tuberculosis. At the time of her death, infant son Gustav was only eight and a half months old, daughter Lydia was 6 yrs, son Goffhilf was 9 yrs, Fred was 13 yrs, Sophia was 15 yrs, and Bertha was 17 yrs. Thus, the older daughters probably helped to raise Gustav during his infant and toddler years since he never really knew his mother, Justina.
Samuel at age 45 lived as a widower after the death of Justina for seven years until 1905. At age 52, on March 15, 1905, Samuel married widow Katherina Schuh Büchler (Buechler; born April 13, 1852 in Rorhbach, Russia) at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Krem, North Dakota. Katherina was from Expansion, North Dakota, a small town directly north of Krem on the Missouri River. Now, from this point in this story, the reader has to pay attention. The family tree becomes a briar patch. Into this marriage, Katherina (also known as Katherine or Katharina) brought a 16 year-old daughter by the name, Lydia Buechler and a 9 year-old son, August Buechler, from her first marriage to Johann Buechler. In year 1905, Samuel still had three children living with him from his first marriage to Justina Priebe; these were: Gotthilf Kühn age 16, Lydia Kühn (married Heinrich Horning) age 12, and Gustav Kühn (married Helen Wilde) age 7. Thus, the marriage of Samuel to Katherina formed a family of five children comprised of three Kühn siblings and two Buechler siblings. The two 16 year-olds, Gotthilf Kühn and Lydia Büchler, persumably developed a relationship very quickly and were married to each other fourteen months later. On May 16, 1906, Gotthilf Kuehn and Lydia Buechler, both age 17, were married at Stanton, ND. They were my grandparents who subsequently moved to Prairie County, Montana, USA in 1917. They are the ancestors of many Kuehns who lived at some time around Terry, Montana, USA in Prairie County.
So, Katherina Buechler, the mother of my grandmother Lydia Buechler Kuehn, is my normal great-grandmother. Samuel Kuehn is my normal great grandfather. Since Katherina married my great-grandfather, Samuel Kuehn, as his second wife, then it is correct to say that my grandfather’s father married my grandmother’s mother and my grandfather, Gotthilf, married his step-sister, Lydia. That is the briar patch in this family tree. It may sound incestuous, but it isn’t!!
Katherina Schuh Buechler Kuehn, Samuel’s second wife, died suddenly on February 14, 1908 of a heart attack as noted in a Hazen Star newspaper announcement dated February 20, 1908. Katharina Kuehn was buried in the St. Peter’s Community Cemetery. This rural cemetery is located about six miles north of Krem, ND. Her headstone is labeled: “Katharina Kuehn, 54 yrs., Feb. 14, 1908.” Two years later, Samuel remarried again on May 15, 1910, to widow Christine Bender (nee Boesler) at St. John Lutheran Church in Krem, North Dakota. The remainder of this story is taken from a news story written in the Hazen Star newspaper in 1913. Samuel planned to retire after the harvest of 1914. However, on Saturday afternoon, April 15, 1913, he, his youngest son, Gustav, then 15 years old, and a hired man, were digging stones out of a field. Lifting a heavy stone onto a wagon, Samuel ruptured a blood vessel in his brain and died instantly. He was 59 years old.
There is only one known picture in our possession today of the Samuel Kühn family. It is estimated to have been taken after 1910. It shows Samuel seated next to his third wife, Christine Bender. Standing behind them are two Kühn siblings, 13-year old Gustav Kühn and 17-year old Lydia Kühn (married Heinrich Horning on July 28, 1912 at Stanton, ND). There are no known remaining pictures of our great-grandmothers, Justina Priebe Kühn or Katherina Schuh Buechler Kühn. We have only one tangible family heirloom from the lives of Samuel and Justina. In 1992, during one of my visits to family in Terry, Montana, my aunt, Darlane Kuehn Pisk, showed me Samuel’s straight-razor for shaving. She gave it to me to share with the rest of the family. It is in my possession.
Both Justina and Samuel are interned at the Krem Cemetery, named the St. Jacob Lutheran Cemetery, in Mercer County, ND. I visited the cemetery on July 1, 1989. A tall white marble headstone marks their graves. The following weathered inscriptions are etched into the 76 year-old marble stone: “Justina Kühn, spouse—Samuel Kühn; born in Sürland,” and “Samuel Kühn, spouse—Justina Kühn; born in Paris, S. Russia.” Also, on Justina’s side of the tombstone is inscribed: “Mother of eleven children.” The word, “Sürland” literally means “southern land.” It was often used to designate “south Russia” where Bessarabia was located.
Prepared by:
Glenn D. Kuehn
1732 Pine Valley Street
Las Cruces, NM 88011
December, 2011