In Touch with Prairie Living, May 2022
By Michael M. Miller
On November 8, 1993, I interviewed Eva (Gross) Schatz at the Marillac Manor Retirement Center in Bismarck, ND. Eva was 89 at the time of the interview. She died on April 2, 2002. I have fond memories interviewing Eva. Her heartwarming complete oral history audio and transcription are at http://hdl.handle.net/10365/14243.
Eva was born October 3, 1905, in rural Napoleon, ND, to Matthias and Barbara (Schweitzer) Gross. Eva’s mother was 17 years old when she emigrated with her parents, John and Christine Schweitzer, from the village of Strassburg, Kutschurgan District. Her mother got very homesick and said if she could walk back, she sure would. Eva’s father, Kasper, was the son of John and Benedicta Gross of Mannheim. John was a soldier in the Russian army. Eva was the oldest of girls in the family.
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