CHRISTIAN SCHNEITER, SWISS SETTLER IN CALDWELL COUNTY 1867

Narrator: Mrs. Sam Teegarden of Nettleton, Missouri

Christian Schneiter, father of Mrs. Sam Teegarden was born in Canton Berne Switzerland 1831. He came to the United States 1867, with a Swiss colony and settled in New York Township in Caldwell County, Missouri. The next year he sent for his wife and five children. He soon found out that there was good money to be made digging wells for the settlers who were flocking into the prairie land. He laid money and bought at first twenty acres and finally owned one hundred sixty acres. With much well digging on hand, he was gone quite a bit, leaving the farm work largely to the wife and nine children. Mrs. Teegarden recalls how her mother would work in the fields day by day and then go out on the prairies after the cows in the afternoon to milk.

Reminiscent of the 1934 drought, she recalls the 1874 drought when the farmers instead of digging wells to water their stock, as farmers do now, would turn them loose to find their own water in water holes and creeks scattered over the prairies. She could recall hearing the cows low in their great desire for water. Her sister Mary married John Shaney; both Mrs. Shaney and Mrs. Teegarden married farmers and settled in Gomer township.