David Siewert, Crystal homesteader, dies at Calgary in 1971

On Wednesday, June 23, 1971, the Idaho State Journal printed a short obituary for David Siewert, 83, whom it called "a pioneer Arbon Valley farmer." He had died that Monday, which by the calendar was June 21, at Calgary in Canada. The notice gives only an outline: a birth in Russia, a boyhood in North Dakota, homesteads in Idaho and a farm in Canada. The American Falls Press, the census takers and the land records fill in some of the years between, from 1917 to 1950, and every one of those records puts him on the Crystal side of the valley.

From Russia to Crystal

According to the obituary, Karl and Marie Siewert were German, and their son David came into the world in Russia on June 14, 1888. It puts his crossing to America in his boyhood and has him living at Kulm, North Dakota, until 1912. In 1912, it says, he left for Idaho and homesteaded near American Falls; after a period living north of Pocatello he took up a second claim at Crystal. The 1920 census adds that his birthplace was Bessarabia, that his mother tongue was German, and that he had been naturalized in 1919. It gives his year of arrival as 1910, when he would have been about 22, not a boy. The two sources disagree, and nothing read for this post settles which is right. No record of the American Falls homestead, or of his years north of Pocatello, was found.

He was at Crystal by the summer of 1917. When the Press printed Power County's draft registrants on July 10, 1917, the Crystal names included "616 David Siewert." His number came up early in the national drawing, and on July 31 the paper listed him thirteenth among the ninety-two men of the county's first call. He did not pass. On August 7 the Press named him among the "Men rejected for failure to pass all requirements of the physical examination," and three days later he was on the list of men discharged. The paper did not say what kept him out. Other valley men from those first calls went to Camp Lewis that fall, as the story of the farewell dances tells.

In October 1918, when the Press printed every Power County subscriber to the Fourth Liberty Loan, "Siewart, David" stood among the Crystal names.

His homestead was patented on April 16, 1920: 153.85 acres in Section 19 of township 9 south, range 35 east, in the Crystal basin. Joseph M. Thacker, William H. Wolverton, John S. Beene, Arthur L. Stewart and Charles Norton had received patents for land in that section between 1915 and 1917, so they were probably his near neighbors. That January the census found him there, 31 and single, farming land he owned with a mortgage on it. On August 6, 1931, he added 40 acres by cash entry, in Section 25 of the next township west.

Staying on

The years after 1929 emptied much of Crystal, as drought and debt sent family after family away (the Stories page tells it). Siewert stayed. The census found him at Crystal in 1930, spelled Siewart and born, it said, in Ukraine; in 1940; and again in April 1950, when the precinct was down to 23 households and he was still single. His age drifts from one census to the next, from 40 in 1930 to 69 in 1950, as ages in the census often do. The year before that last census, in February 1949, the Pocatello Tribune reported that a Dave Siewert, 50, was seriously ill at Mercer Creek in the Crystal country, and after a rescue plane stuck in the snow, a weasel brought him out on his way to the hospital in Pocatello, as the story of that winter tells. The age does not fit, and that report has the pilot snowbound with the Siewerts, as if more than one lived there, but no other Siewert is known at Crystal, so he was probably the same man.

What the papers read here do not tell is when he began farming in Canada, where that farm was, when he left Crystal, or whether Calgary had become his home. Apart from his parents, no relative is named; the only survivors it mentions are several nephews and nieces, left unnamed. It announced services for Friday, June 25, at the Henderson Funeral Home in Pocatello, with burial to follow in Mountainview Cemetery.

On this site: Crystal, where Siewert homesteaded; Crystal in the papers of 1911 to 1917, the settlement as it was when he arrived.

The story as reported

Idaho State Journal, June 23, 1971, page 2. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.

The Journal's Wednesday paper carried news of the death of David Siewert, 83, who had died Monday in Calgary, Canada. The paper described him as one of the early farmers of Arbon Valley.

Karl and Marie Siewert, his parents, were Germans, and their son was born to them in Russia on June 14, 1888. He crossed to America while still young. Until 1912 he lived at Kulm, North Dakota.

In 1912 Siewert came to Idaho and took up a homestead near American Falls. He lived for a while north of Pocatello after that, and later homesteaded again in the Crystal area. Along with his Arbon Valley land, he owned a farm in Canada; the paper did not say where it was or when he had it.

The obituary named no wife or children. Several nephews and nieces, none named, were his only listed survivors. His church was the Congregational.

Services were set for Friday at 2 p.m. at the Henderson Funeral Home, 431 North Fifteenth, conducted by the Rev. C. E. (Ken) Whitwer of First Congregational Church. Friends could stop at the funeral home beforehand, right up to the hour of the service. Burial was planned for Mountainview Cemetery.

David Siewert, Crystal homesteader, dies at Calgary in 1971

From Russia to Crystal

Staying on

The story as reported

Sources

Connected histories

Crystal