Journal entry from Ridgeville: Daughter of a pioneer

By LYDA LANIER

Her travel journal entry starts with ordinary details: the time she got up, what she wore, the temperature outside.

She records traffic and road conditions and what farmers are doing out in the fields if it’s not raining. She writes down the time she reaches Norwalk, the first stop on her way to Mitchell, S.D.

For Ramona Schroeder, formerly of Norwalk, taking a road trip to Mitchell is familiar but never routine. With an independent spirit for adventure, she’s traveled in that direction six times in the past several years.

Monie, as she is known by her friends, is a genealogist. In addition to doing research locally, she travels to South Dakota, where her great-grandfather Jacob Puetz homesteaded in the 1880s. She immerses herself in his life, reading old newspapers and talking with relatives.

In addition, she’s been exploring other family names: Erpenbach, Schlimgen, Zehnpfennig, Deitlehoff, her mother’s birth name, Hartwick and Koster, making connections and fitting them into the family tree.

And she travels alone, a practice she started in the 1960s while living and working in Milwaukee. She decided to drive to Chicago by herself to see the Loop and take the Lake Shore Drive along Lake Michigan. “I was not afraid,” she said, “to drive in Chicago.” Nor was she afraid of flying, visiting New York City in 1964 for the World’s Fair, flying to Utah for downhill sking, Philadelphia in 1976 for the Bi Centennial, Lake Tahoe, and Cooperstown, New York for the induction of Robin Yount into the Baseball Hall of Fame. At each destination she rented a car to attend these special events and visited historical landmarks and museums.

Monie’s driven the original Route 66 and the Great River Road. On road trips west she’s toured the Black Hills, Custer State Park and took a side trip into Wyoming to see the Devil’s Tower, surprising people when they learn she travels alone. Her theory: “If you wait for someone else, you aren’t going to get there. At these places,” she said, “I had the pleasure of seeing and doing something I was interested in and enjoyed.”

Before she retired, Monie worked for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation for 21 years. Evenings she was director of recreation and exercise programs for young people and adults. About 15 years ago, Monie, now 77, became interested in genealogy, taking classes in family research at Milwaukee Public Library. This has resulted, as she put it, “in a lot of traveling around.” So far that’s been in Wisconsin and South Dakota. Next year she’ll be venturing into Iowa, continuing research of the Puetz family.

Meanwhile, as I am writing this story, she is already in Mitchell, South Dakota for the seventh time. In 2015, she was in Mitchell twice, in September for 10 days, attending the state fair in Huron, and again in October. People are getting to know her out there, librarians, the local chambers of commerce, inn keepers and waitresses at her favorite restaurants.

In Mitchell she’s eaten at the American Legion (a real restaurant) often enough she’s learned a local custom; tourists park in front and come in the front door; locals park in back and come in the back. Last year the waitress recognizing her remembered Monie drinks decaf coffee.

Along with attending genealogy workshops at the state fair in 2015 and again this year (“There is always more to learn,” Monie said) last year she had a plane ride in a single engine, four passenger airplane. Flying between Yankton and Pierre and over the Missouri and James Rivers gave her a bird’s eye view of the trail the wagon trains followed in the late 1800s, a route that Jacob and Gertrude Puetz followed. “That,” she said, “was awesome.”

These side trips are an integral part of Monie’s travel experiences. She stays open to possibilities. Seeing someone at the South Dakota State Fair wearing a t shirt that said Puetz, she stopped to talk. A number one Packer fan (season tickets, a Packer wristwatch, a Packer shirt that says Schroeder [no relation]), she was wearing her Packer pin at a beauty shop in Parkston, South Dakota. That pin generated a conversation with the hair dresser whose son plays for the Detroit Lions. She checks out antique shops, looking for, as she calls it, “treasures for Shirley,” her friend who has an antique shop in Norwalk. She visits Catholic churches and cemeteries, the Corn Palace and Wall Drug and eats buffalo burgers, these events recorded in long hand on lined pink paper in legal size notebooks.

“I’ve always been treated kindly by people where ever I’ve been,” Monie said who travels with a CB radio and a trac phone in the car. Monie’s sister Thelma has her itinerary and they keep in touch. “I am not afraid to travel alone,” Monie said, “and I would encourage anyone to go ahead and do it.”

Following in the footsteps of her ancestors so to speak has earned Monie special recognition. Ramona Frances Schroeder is recognized as a pioneer daughter, receiving a certificate from the Mitchell Area Genealogical Society, stating she is a descendant of Jacob and Gertrude Puetz who resided in the Territory of Dakota prior to November 2, 1889. Jacob and Gertrude would be so proud.

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