The Peter and Elizabeth Tiessen Family Story
As told by Jake Tiessen, born in 1922
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 07, 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. 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.
