Kempf Family Exhibit Photographs

National Buffalo Museum
Jamestown, North Dakota
May, 1999

The boss crest of Kempf Coat of Arms, signified their origins as flour millers near Calw, on the Nagold River in northern Black Forest (Schwartzwald). The Kempfs were also advanced weavers from nearby Wildberg on the Nagold.	"Who is the Kempf family?" Reflecting on wedding traditions.
Gottliebina's hand-made Kanapee. Plachte from 1883 in Alt/Elft represents ethnic costume from 1865 to 1900, modeled by great-granddaughter Edna.	Bessarabian German Plachten were especially woven in vividly colored plaids (karierte) and vertical stripes (gestrifte).
Kempf family textile treasures included baptismal lace gown and clothing ensembles from the village of Beresina, Bessarabia with immigration to Kulm and Forbes, North Dakota.	Textiles treasures displayed included heirlooms from: 1) Gottliebina Stolz Kempf of Alt/Elft and Beresina, Bessarabia; 2) Carolina Schlabsz Zackmann of Beresina and Wittenberg, Bessarabia; and 3) Christina Hochstein Naegle of Norka, Volga.
Mrs. Elsie Pahl Gebhardt (born 1918, Kulm North Dakota) of Spokane, Washington = donor of Plachte, made in Paris, Bessarabia by her grandmother Carolina Zahl and her mother Otillia Bader Pahl, Kulm, North Dakota. Photographed at Jamestown Buffalo Museum at Kempf textile exhibit in June 1999; by Jay Gage, whose mother Katherina Pahl Gage is first cousin to Elsie (born same year), photographer: Jay “Surrey” Gage, Page, North Dakota, donated January 2005. Pahl and Bader families immigrated in 1898 at Spring Valley Township, Dickey County, between Forbes, Monango, and Merricourt, North Dakota. Elsie is holding baby shoes made by her grandfather August Pahl, shoemaker at Leipzig, Bessarabia, who immigrated in 1898 to Forbes, North Dakota, where he set up his shoe shop until 1942. The baby shoes were made in 1894 for his oldest son Jacob “Jake” Pahl, grandfather of Jay Gage. Jacob Pahl’s next oldest brother was Elsie’s father Wilhelm “Bill” Pahl (born 1896 in Leipzig, Bessarabia), who farmed Bader farm in Spring Valley Township, south of Kulm, North Dakota.