Homespun Histories: Dalles & Susan Schneider Family Films

Framed photograph: Friedrich & Elisabetha Luithle’s 40th Wedding Anniversary, 1945. Courtesy Dalles & Susan Schneider. Image subject to copyright laws.

At age 5, my father took me to the North Dakota State Museum (in the current State Library Building) and the Bismarck/Mandan historic sites.  These visits instilled in me the importance of history and preserving it.

I was born in 1952 in Dickinson, North Dakota. I was raised on a farm south of Hebron, North Dakota. In 1957 my family moved to Bismarck.

During my grade school years, I spent my summers on my maternal grandparent’s farm. My mornings were spent with my Grandpa Friedrich Luithle, learning about farm chores, taking care of livestock and maintenance of farm equipment, most of all enjoying the rural way of life. My afternoons were with my Grandma Elisabetha Luithle. She taught me the German and Russian language,  family history and traditions that were important to her.  She stressed the importance of “never forgetting family”. 

Photograph: (Left to right) Edwin J. Schneider with sons Dalles, Harvey, Ronald and percheron horses, “Blackie” and “Beauty”; Schneider Farm, Hebron, North Dakota, 1957. Photograph by Elizabeth Schneider. Courtesy Dalles & Susan Schneider. Image subject to copyright laws.

These earlier experiences led me on a path of gathering and recording family history.  My grandma passed along her family collection of photographs from South Russia, North Dakota homesteading, the Depression Era, and life of the 1940’s and 1950’s. I remember my uncle and aunt taking 8mm home movies while they were living at my grandparent’s farm.  They documented everyday farm happenings and I sure wish I had their films in my collection today.

I began documenting my own life in the 1960s with a 35mm black and white still camera. In the 1970s and ‘80s I graduated to color film and 35mm slides, and then in 1978, I purchased my first motion picture camera - a Super 8 Canon 310XL, which I still have.

8mm film still: Dalles Schneider & son Austin, Bismarck, ND, circa late 1970s. Dalles & Susan Schneider Family Films collection. Courtesy Dalles & Susan Schneider. Image subject to copyright laws.

A majority of the films include my immediate family, my wife, Susan Hammer-Schneider and our children, Austin, Kari and Kael. Others that are in the films are my parents, Edwin and Elizabeth Schneider and my siblings. Also, my wife’s parents, Norman and Vivien Hammer and her siblings; including Susan’s cousins and relatives from Norway.

Some of the earlier films are of typical events such as our wedding, and then of course our children. Susan and I recorded much of our children’s daily events, life around the house doing yard work, enjoying the holidays, and our trips out to family farms, such as the Norman Hammer Farm in McHenry County, 3 miles west of Bergen, North Dakota.

At the Hammer Farm, I often helped my father-in-law cultivate between the rows of sweet corn while Norman drove his International Harvester W6 - which was small equipment in comparison with today’s farm machinery. Our family would visit the farm on a regular basis. I have reels of film that reflect these activities. Our kids loved to be there and now our grandchildren enjoy the experience as well. And of course we can look back at the home movies and see what the farm was like in previous decades, and see Susan’s parents going about their daily routines.

Outdoor activities, family vacations and community events are also a big part of what is recorded to film. The Drake Threshing Show of September, 1978, for instance, was an occasion our family enjoyed participating in. Drake, North Dakota is about 22 miles from the Hammer Farm. The Drake Threshing Show started in 1968, so the footage in my home movies would have been at their 10th annual. I attended their 51st annual threshing show this past year. Our family has turned out for these various threshing shows around the region, knowing that our grandparents and great grandparents farmed with those ways.

8mm film still: Drake Threshing Show, Drake, ND, 1978. Dalles & Susan Schneider Family Films collection. Courtesy Dalles & Susan Schneider. Image subject to copyright laws.

Other outings included picking rosehips. Susan and I would travel south of Bismarck on the Missouri River bottoms to pick rosehips. We had gone picking the summer of 1976 to make rosehip wine for our wedding that took place at the Hammer Farm, June 11, 1977. It was a gorgeous fall day when we took the Super 8 movie camera, and our first born, little Austin, back to our favorite picking area.

Vacations are a main feature in the collection. We would go see extended family or other places of interest. Norway, California, Hawaii, Yellowstone National Park and so many other locations were well documented and they are enjoyable to look at again. They reflect a certain period of not only our own family’s lives, but they are a snap shot of America and the larger world during certain period and at specific places. The Super 8 movie collection totals 92, 200ft films reels. They are all filmed in color and are silent.

Photograph: The Schneider Family (left to right), Susan, Kari, Kael, Austin, Dalles; Bismarck, ND, 2018. Courtesy Dalles & Susan Schneider. Image subject to copyright laws.

By 1990, I was making the transition to VHS recording. I have a large personal archive of family activities during this decade all on tape. And around 2000, like most of us, I transitioned again to digital formats.

My interests today are similar to what they were when Susan and I were younger. We love to spend time with our immediate and extended families. We go see our son, Captain Austin, in the US Virgin Islands. I have a very good time being first mate and his fishing partner, which is a blast.

Photograph: Susan & Dalles Schneider, St. George’s Botanical Gardens, St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands, 2015. Courtesy Dalles & Susan Schneider. Image subject to copyright laws.

And we spend a lot of time on our daughter Kari and son-in-law Casey’s ranch with our 4 grandsons and granddaughter. So, I get to go back to my farm life working cattle, and running machinery, and helping out wherever possible.

With our youngest son Kael, wherever he might be living at the time, we always enjoy the sights and experiences he shares with us and it is a lot of fun. We get a nice broad variety of experiences visiting each of our children. It's awesome.

Regardless of the medium, I continue in the footsteps of my family members before me. I make record of our lives for future generations to know these stories and have a sense of history. I know my children appreciate the family trees, home movies and photo albums, and I think my grandchildren and great grandchildren will too. I look forward to our films going onto the Internet Archive with the assistance of the Al Larvick Fund, so others can experience the value in all our home movies and so the films can perhaps shed light on what life was like for some of us during that time.

~ Dalles E. Schneider, Home movie maker, Bismarck, North Dakota.

The Dalles and Susan Schneider Family Films collection will be available for viewing on the Internet Archive in the near future. To get updates on all things Al Larvick Fund, subscribe to our e-newsletters here.

This article and video was created from a 2019 interview recorded at the State Historical Society of North Dakota as part of the Al Larvick Fund’s oral history program, Homespun Histories. The program’s mission is to contextualize regional films by capturing related stories through the filmmaker and/or their collection custodian(s). Dalles Schneider is a 2017 Al Larvick North Dakota Grant recipient. He continues to participate in Home Movie Day events hosted by the State Historical Society of North Dakota and the Al Larvick Fund. The North Dakota based grants are provided by the Al Larvick Fund in collaboration with The MediaPreserve. To learn more about Dalles’ collection visit his grant recipient page here.

8mm film still: Dalles Schneider with Super 8 film camera and carrying case, late 1970s. Dalles & Susan Schneider Family Films collection. Courtesy Dalles & Susan Schneider. Image subject to copyright laws.

Homespun Histories: Vernon Baltzer Family Films

As a librarian at the State Historical Society of North Dakota, Stephanie Baltzer Kom works in the archives division. A lot of what she does has to do with preservation and access. Her job is to make sure that the  publication collections are properly preserved, repaired, and virtually accessible for genealogists and other researchers.

Kom’s interest in personal histories began with her own. “My grandmother had a giant binder that her sister put together [that held] family records. I read through a lot of it because it contained old letters and I could learn so much about my family and extended family that way.”

Still Photograph: Vernon Baltzer, circa 1960s. Courtesy Stephanie Baltzer Kom. Image may be subject to copyright laws.

It was through the binder, family photos, and her grandfather’s home movies that Kom discovered meaningful insights into her past. “Vernon Baltzer was my grandfather and I never met him. He died right before I was born. He filmed the home movies that I eventually inherited. Even though he’s not in the films much, because he was behind the camera, there is one reel he appears in. And there are many relatives I am able to see at a time in their lives when they were younger, before I knew them. In some cases, like with my grandfather, I was never able to meet them. The home movies are important because it’s a different experience watching people in motion. You can learn so much through the films.”

Watch this oral history video, Homespun Histories: Vernon Baltzer Family Films. Here Stephanie Kom discusses her family history and the value home movies bring to her personal heritage and our broader shared past.

Kom was fortunate to know her grandmother, Barbara Greitl Baltzer (1918-1997), who appears in many of the home movies. “My grandmother Barb was a great and highly intelligent lady. She was born in McClusky, North Dakota in 1918 and grew up with nine brothers and sisters in Napoleon. She played basketball and skipped two grades, graduating at 16. She served in the Women's Army Corps and was stationed in Missouri. I don't know how she met my grandpa, but I think it must have been around town in Napoleon after the war. Her sister told a story that Barb was dating a sheriff from Brown County, South Dakota when she met grandpa, and that the sheriff was preferred by Barb's family. 

Still photograph: Barbara Greitl Baltzer, Women’s Army Corps, circa 1940s. Courtesy Stephanie Baltzer Kom. Image may be subject to copyright laws.

Barb was mainly a homemaker and the rock for her six kids, but she also worked at the Post Office in Bismarck for many years. She was active up to her death--swimming at the Y and bowling. She loved to garden and had amazing flowers in the front yard of the house. Barb was a strong lady who was never afraid to speak her mind. She was also a most excellent grandmother. We spent a lot of time at her house. She would make Sunday lunches every week for the whole family and we would spend a few hours there eating her great cooking and hanging out with our aunts, uncles and cousins. It was at her house that I discovered our family story--the large binder of letters and genealogical materials. Barb kept that and my grandpa's [genealogy] research in the playroom and I spent a lot of time reading it.”

Watch the memorial video Kom created to honor her grandmother here.

Kom recalled, “The [home movie] collection was in rough shape when I got it from my dad. There was mildew on a lot of the boxes that were around the reels and growing on some of the reels. [Once they’d been cleaned] I put them in archival boxes and made sure that the labeling went with them. And then stored everything in a closet up on a shelf. The room has some temperature control so that hopefully they'll last for a very long time.

And then the digital part of it, I now have a hard drive with all the digitized reels on it. I also have a copy on my computer. I subscribe to a service that backs up my computer [onto the cloud]. So it's living out there rather than just in my house. And then I've also uploaded them all to YouTube. I’ve shared the films that way with relatives and friends.

My family was really excited about it when I sent the [YouTube] link out and they actually told some other people and one person they told was the gentleman that helped get grandpa into the Aviation Hall of Fame. So yeah, they were all very excited about getting to see these films.”

Portrait Photograph: Vernon Baltzer, 1939. Courtesy Stephanie Baltzer Kom. Image may be subject to copyright.

The eldest of five children, Vernon Baltzer (1921-1980) grew up on a farm in Logan County, North Dakota, along with two brothers and two sisters. 

In 1943 he began his service for the U.S. military. He married Barbara Greitl in 1947 in Jamestown, North Dakota. After making a home and family in Napoleon, they eventually moved to Bismarck, North Dakota.

Baltzer began documenting his experiences with an 8mm film camera while in the military and continued filming people and places the remainder of his life.

Before Vernon Baltzer passed, he began research on his family tree, saving publications on his German-Russian heritage. He was a second generation American. His grandparents were from Germany and Germans from Russia (Bessarabia and Glueckstal).

Kom is the daughter of Terry and Donna Baltzer. Terry is the fourth son of Vernon and Barb Baltzer.  She and her family reside in Bismarck, North Dakota. Continuing in her grandparents’ footsteps, Kom keeps her family’s legacy alive through saving and sharing their history.

The Vernon Baltzer Family Films collection will be available for viewing on the Internet Archive in the near future. To get updates on all things Al Larvick Fund, subscribe to our e-newsletters here.

This article and video was created from a 2019 interview recorded at the State Historical Society of North Dakota as part of the Al Larvick Fund’s oral history program, Homespun Histories. The program’s mission is to contextualize regional films through capturing related stories through the filmmaker and/or their collection custodian(s). Stephanie Baltzer Kom is a 2015 Al Larvick North Dakota Grant recipient. She continues to participate in Home Movie Day events hosted by the State Historical Society of North Dakota and the Al Larvick Fund. The North Dakota based grants are provided by the Al Larvick Fund in collaboration with The MediaPreserve. To learn more about her collection visit her grant recipient page here.

Still Photograph: Vernon Baltzer (second in from right) and colleagues, circa 1970s. Courtesy Stephanie Baltzer Kom. Image may be subject to copyright laws.