 Mr.
and Mrs. George Soehnholz owned the sections to the east and north of the
Jones's. These children are the sons of Lee Otis and Emma Soehnholz, Lee's
first wife. This is Emma's mother, who was responsible, to a great degree
for their care. Paul Martin Jones, the younger boy, was born May 2, 1930.
The older boy, Arnold Heinrich Jones, was born June 4, 1925. The woman is
this picture was married first at Hamburg, Germany. Her husband was killed
and she remarried George Soehnholz. George took her child, Emma, and gave
her his name, Soehnholz. He also took his grandchildren, these boys, into
his household and provided for them.
The strong forces of these two cultures
co-existing one beside the other was really something of a strange
phenomena which, no doubt, has happened in other periods of history, but,
nonetheless, is an interesting scene to have been enacted on the wind
swept prairies of the central part of America.
These German people stayed strictly to
their own affairs. They were severe in their dedication to their own,
children, stock and land. The care they gave each of these was like a
religion, which was, indeed, an extension of their devout Lutheran faith.
The woman in this picture, exhibits her
affection for the younger grandson as she reaches for and holds his hand,
a gesture to differ with her otherwise serious looking outward
appearances. She cared for them, teaching them her language, her culture
and her respect for the land. History cannot be changed. The lines of it
are written upon the faces, the images, and the makeup of these old
photographs. Even as far back as the pages of the Bible, Christ said,
"God, hates a divorcing." If Arnold's second wife, Freda, had
not reached out with a love so great so as to ignore these prejudices
between German, Irish, English and Native American, there would have been
no association at all between these families. There would have been no
sharing of knowledge, or any other interchange. Because she did embrace
Lee's second family, and because Lee's second wife, Velma, was as willing
to build a bridge, there has been a bond of love and understanding,
reaching down now to a fourth generation of peoples.
At the corner, across the road from the
ranch home of the Joneses, sets a little area of sacred ground which once
held the old Lutheran Church where these people worshiped. On these
grounds is a remnant of markers. It is here these German people were
buried. The area is exactly five miles directly in a central location
between the two towns of Foraker and Grainola, Oklahoma.
Arnold Jones and Mildred Dahlke had one
son, Glenn Neal Jones, born December 9, 1948. Mildred died and Arnold
Jones married Freda Josephine Tanner. Arnold and Freda's children were:
1. Hugh Allen Jones, July 12, 1953
2. Dennis James Jones, July 14, 1954
3. Bruce Leon Jones, July 5, 1956
4. Arnetta Jo Jones, Stierwalt, June 25, 1957
5. Cynthia Lynn Jones, August 8, 1958
Paul Martin Jones, married Billy Jean
Johnson, born at Pawhuska, Oklahoma, Osage county. Their children are:
1. Paula Jean born July 20, 1950.
2. Debra Ann, born August 25, 1952
3. David L. Jones, August 18, 1954
4. John Martin Jones, January 29, 1967 |
