In her 1941 book on the early history of McIntosh County, Along the Trails of Yesterday, Nina Farley Wishek writes of her life with the Germans from Russia among whom she lived. One chapter is entitled “German Maids Whom I Have Known,” for as the wife of the town’s leading business figure, Mrs. Wishek employed domestic help. Like other upper-class women across the prairies, she recruited her help from among the immigrant farmers’ daughters.
The maids told their stories to the lady of the house, among which, she writes, “the most pathetic of all experiences was that of Christina Klipfel and her sister Magdalena.” Mrs. Wishek recounts the harrowing tale of Magdalena Klipfel — but I’m not sure she got, or told, the whole story. It involves the difficulties of immigrants attempting to enter the United States during the trachoma scare of the early twentieth century.
Christina Klipfel came to service of the Wisheks in about 1902, as Mrs. Wishek recalled. Some of Christina’s family were already in McIntosh County, and the rest of them, she learned, had arrived — but she threw her apron over her head and wept when she told the Wisheks that her teenage sister, Magdalena, had been stopped at Ellis Island. Physicians there had found her infected with the infectious eye disease, trachoma — a leading cause of blindness in those days — and sent her back across the Atlantic, accompanied only by her mother.
During the voyage the mother pined, took ill, died, and was buried at sea. Magdalena arrived alone in Antwerp, Belgium, where she spent three years undergoing treatments, working as a maid, and saving her money. Then she sailed again for New York, only to suffer another medical rejection and return to Antwerp.
After this she shifted her strategy, went over to London, got additional medical treatments, learned English, sought the counsel of other travelers, and sailed again, from Liverpool, this time for Montreal, where Canadian authorities let her into the country. She traveled by rail to Winnipeg, thence to Ashley. Mrs. Wishek writes,
After all those years of separation and disappointment, she came to Ashley and was reunited with her loved ones. . . . Today she lives in Ashley, highly respected and greatly loved by relatives and friends.
I dug into the granular records and confirmed that Magdalena Klipfel, age 14, arrived in New York in 1903, but was sent back to Antwerp; that she returned in 1906, and was sent back again; and that she arrived in Montreal from England in 1909. Also I learned that after arriving in Ashley, she lived a long and full life. In 1913 she married a son of a prominent local family, Rudolph Spitzer, who subsequently became manager of the dairy that still dominates the skyline of Ashley. He died in 1934, but Magdalena lived until 1982 and was buried in Zion Lutheran Cemetery.
Here’s the mystery that remains. Records of entry reveal that Magdalena, age 20, sought entry to the US in 1909, via the port of entry at St. Albans, Vermont. Her nationality is given as Russian, her race, German. Point of origin, London, England. Occupation, domestic.
But her line in the border record is clearly stamped, “Debarred.” American officials refused her entry again. So how did she get across the border and have her happy reunion with her family in McIntosh County? I have the answer, I believe; I’ll tell you later.
