Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/311

 Among these settlers was a family by the name of Wesinberger, who had grown prosperous, their forefathers having gone to Russia among the first, although they were not Mennonites. Christopher the youngest son, was among those drawn to go to the war, but the Wesinbergers were properousprosperous [sic], and paid the examining physician twelve hundred and fifty rubles (about one thousand dollars) to have Christopher "made sick" and pronounced unfit for service. With the approach of the Russian-Japanese War, when it was seen that Russia would be forced into war with Japan, the boys having married, and with sons of their own, who would have to "draw," the Wesinberger brothers sold their land and set sail for America. At the time the war broke out, John and Jacob were living on homesteads, in the county adjoining Tipp county on the north, Christopher having settled in western Canada.

It was while they were breaking prairie near my sister's homestead, that I became acquainted with the former, who, at that time owned a hundred and fifty head of cattle, seventy-five head of horses, hogs, and all kinds of farm machinery, besides a steam prairie breaking outfit and fifteen hundred acres of land between them.

During rainy days along in April, to pass the time away, I would visit them, and while sitting by the camp fire was told of what I have written above, but where they interested me most was when they discussed astronomy and meteorology. They could give the most complete description of the zodiacal heavens and the different constellations. It seems that astronomy had interested their ancestors