Govert Harmony Sunday School

Are you ready for another story about Govert? This story is dedicated to LuKayzee, who is working on her middle school history report on Govert township. Govert is her birthright. That is yet another story, one perhaps LuKayzee will write herself.

The story I am going to tell you was first told in 1911 and has not been re-told in more than 100 years. You are in for an unparalleled peek into the earliest days of Govert township through the eyes of a congregational missionary assigned to southern Harding County and the Moreau River Valley.

When the missionary visited Govert town, my Grandfather Govert Van der Boom was 27 years old, and Govert township was then little more than gumbo, prairie grass and widely-scattered, newly-minted claim shacks. You might even call the story “pre-historic” because it was written and published before anyone else recorded the early history of Govert. I hope my grandfather read this story in the June 1911 edition of The American Missionary. He would never have dreamed his granddaughter would find it in the twenty-first century.

The story of Harmony Sunday School is told in the words of Reverend Vaclav Vavrina who, himself, was homesteading about three miles north of the road that connected Govert and Redig, closer to Redig than Govert, then more of a trail than a road as we think of a road today. Reverend Vavrina would have become a familiar and welcome sight in his one-horse buggy, man of God, homesteader, and neighbor.

Up for time travel today? Lock the hatch, strap on your helmet, buckle your seatbelt, secure your coffee, stay alert and help me parse the history of Govert as it was set out in June 1911.

A MODERN ABRAHAM
By Rev. V. Vavrina
Missionary for South Dakota

In the fall of 1909 the semi-arid but fertile region in the Belle Fourche, South Dakota land district, was open to settlement, and people began to take possession of the vast uninhabited wilderness. Two young men in an Eastern town of South Dakota heard one Sunday night a sermon about Abraham leaving Ur of the Chaldees and journeying to Palestine to become the founder of a race that would serve God. Reference was made to the new lands opened to settlement, and that young men with the faith and spirit of Abraham were needed, to take possession of the land, to become exponents of righteousness and pioneers for the Kingdom of God. The two young friends listened attentively and the appeal took possession of their hearts. They said, after the service, “Let us go, even like Abraham, for the country is opened before us.” They started out in search of a homestead and opportunity. They found it near the southern end of a long range of hills called Slim Buttes, on a treeless, fertile plain, seventy miles from the railroad.

 

Govert was selected as a name for the new post office, that being the name of one of the young men. Soon new settlers began to flock in and take possession of the choice land. In a short time there has grown up quite a community.

My attention was called to this new settlement by Rev. Emil Dietrich, the General Missionary for western South Dakota. I stopped to see the young men. It was interesting to see that while one took care of the store and work outside, the other tended the kitchen and kept house very neatly. They requested me to come over and open up a religious service, offering their living shack, 12 x 19, for the meetings. About twenty-five people were huddled together in the little shack, sitting on dry goods boxes and boards when I came. I shall never forget with what eager desire they participated in that first religious service at Govert. After the service a Sunday-school was organized. About ten of those present were children, while the rest were young men and women. A two-class organization was effected, and one of the young men was elected a teacher of the adult class. Since then the Govert Harmony Sunday-school has met regularly every Sunday, no matter what the weather; the adult class in the shack and the children in the store. It is a pleasure to be among them and listen to their discussions of the various questions brought out by the Sunday-school lessons.

Reverend Vavrina’s story rings true and is consistent with family stories and my research. However. We can be suspicious, but we really can’t discern how much of this article is rhetoric calculated to exhort evangelic fervor in the society’s missionaries, how much is intended to encourage the reign of the faithful in new homesteading communities across the prairie. Reverend Vavrina may have waxed evangelical composing his article about Govert, as The American Missionary is decidedly evangelical. As for me, I heartily suspect my very Dutch grandfather would not have pumped his fist in the air and declared: “Let us go, even like Abraham, for the country is opened before us.”

 

Would that Reverend Vavrina had been more direct in his composition, but he bequeathed to us more than enough clues to conclude Harmony Sunday School was organized in our Govert town. The settlement Reverend Vavrina visited was at the southern end of the Slim Buttes. Check. The settlement took the name of one of the two founders who was named Govert. Check. The settlement was created in 1909 the same year Govert entered his homestead. Check. The settlement was 70 miles from the nearest railroad which, at the time, would have been Belle Fourche. Check.

 

Those of you who have been following Thru Prairie Grass are familiar with the details of those early years. The town of Govert in Govert township was founded by Govert Van der Boom and Howard Jacobs, friends in Wessington Springs in the eastern part of South Dakota, the former in his late twenties and the latter already entering his 30s. “Young men”, sure, they would have accepted that description. They both had strong religious foundation, and would have attended religious services and mission programs on what was probably their only free day, Sunday. They were businessmen, Howard a harness-maker and Govert a grain buyer, and they saw homesteading as a business opportunity. Nevertheless, they would have been inspired, perhaps in equal proportion to their business aspirations, to establish a community in which saloons were unwelcome as precursor to immorality. This fits.

 

What else. The Govert post office mentioned by Reverend Vavrina began operating with the appointment of Howard Jacobs as postmaster on May 27, 1910. Reverend Emil Dietrich was appointed general missionary for western South Dakota in April 1910 by the Congregational Home Missionary Society, and three months later (July 1910) Reverend Vaclav Vavrina was assigned as missionary for southern Harding County and the Moreau River Valley. This also fits.

If you accept the two young men being Govert Van der Boom and Howard Jacobs, and of this little doubt exists, you may wonder who did what in Reverend Vavrina’s narrative. Gary Lehman and I have concluded that his Grandfather Howard tended house and my Grandfather Govert tended the store and the fields. Govert was the healthier man and had farming experience. Howard would have been voted to be the teacher of the adult Sunday school class because Howard was a native English speaker and Govert spoke with a heavy Dutch accent. We can consider that settled. Maybe Reverend Vavrina’s vagueness was intended to give his reader a story that could apply to any homestead settlement. Or maybe an overworked missionary-homesteader was meeting more people than he could cache in memory and by the time he put pen to paper he couldn’t remember which man was which. Which leads us to …

The article was published in June 1911, but when did Reverend Vavrina visit Govert? The usual delay between a missionary activity and the coverage in The American Missionary was two months, sometimes more, sometimes but rarely less. In this case, the delay may have been considerably more. If Harmony Sunday School was organized during Reverend Vavrina’s second visit to Govert, as the article suggests, the date may retreat several months from publication back to the fall of 1910 when the heat of summer had passed and the mornings in claim shacks began with a chill. As for his first meeting with Govert and Howard, August 1910 may have been Reverend Vavrina's earliest opportunity after filing his homestead on May 21, 1910, and his July 1910 assignment as missionary to the Moreau River Valley. We can do little better than this, and this is probably good enough.

What follows is a picture from the early days of Govert.

 

I can’t prove the picture was taken the day Reverend Vavrina visited Govert to form Harmony Sunday School; I also can't disprove it. The two claim shacks, Govert's and Howard's, store and residence, are already “stitched” together over the section line looking just like I had always imagined. I don’t recognize the people, but maybe you do. My Grandmother Emma is not in the picture, but this picture would have been taken before Emma made homestead entry in Butte County in May 1911. My Grandfather Govert also is not in the picture; perhaps he positioned himself alongside Reverend Vavrina, one step behind and one step to the left of the photographer. Curiously another picture, in a different South Dakota prairie community with different people but similarly posed, accompanies an article in the November 1911 edition of The American Missionary.

Our takeaway is a confirmation of details of the founding of the Govert community and a clearer understanding of what life was like in early days of Govert. When researching a little-documented prairie town that has long ago returned to dust, any details are welcome wherever found. The firsthand observations of a witness, someone who shared words that memorable day with Govert and Howard and with homesteaders who quit their shacks and delayed their work so they could gather together in community to worship, gives history a patina that carries us far beyond facts. Those who lived in Govert township in 1910 were excited about the missionary coming to visit them, they were eager for social interaction, they were optimistic about the religious structure provided by churchgoing. Maybe they even showed off a little in the presence of a visitor as people are known to do. And, by golly, they washed up pretty good.

Listening to the wind blowing through the prairie grass ... Kate 

WELCOME TO THE GOVERT COMMUNITY!

HISTORY IS HAPPENING AND YOUR COMMENTS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME.

Can you identify anyone in the picture?

PLEASE CONTACT KATE

at thruprairiegrass@gmail.com

Notes:
[1] Although newspapers allow people like you and me to assemble a good substitute history, the Govert Advance repository of issues published between 1911 and 1928 was reduced to ashes in a flue fire in the attic of the publisher, Charles Laflin, in that latter year, and no stray copies from the earliest Govert years have re-surfaced in modern times.
[2] The Congregational Home Missionary Society provided missionaries to support the underserved in the United States in contrast to foreign missionaries who travel to another country to serve.
[3] The American Missionary article set out in this post: Vavrina, Vaclav, “A Modern Abraham”, The American Missionary, Volume 65 Number 1, p169, June 1911. You can find this periodical at books.google.com.
[4] The concept of a “modern Abraham” was used widely before, and after, 1911. Reverend Vavrina is attributing to the founders of Govert and other like communities the mission of biblical Abraham who was called by God to be the father of new generations of faithful followers. A modern Abraham could be used to describe anyone who leads the faithful, including missionaries like Reverend Vavrina himself.
[5] The dates attributed to the assignment of missionary duties to Reverends Dietrich and Vavrina can be found in The American Missionary. For Dietrich: The American Missionary, Volume 64, Number 6, page 180, June 1910. For Vavrina: The American Missionary, Volume 64, Number 9, page 409, September 1910.
[6] Even if the picture was not taken the day of Reverend Vavrina’s second visit to Govert, even should the picture not portray Govert, the image certainly is representative of Govert and that wonderful day Harmony Sunday School was organized.