Letters Home to Schmerlecke

Thanks to the stewardship of the Bals-Lusebrink family, we have copies of three letters written by Henry Bals in 1904 & 1905, which he sent home to Schmerlecke, Germany from Crete, Nebraska.

It is my understanding that Ute Bals brought the letters from Germany to Nebraska during a trip in 2012. At that time, Gene was able to make scanned copies of the original handwritten letters and a few of those are displayed above. Ute then translated the letters into English for Gene and I have scanned copies of those handwritten translations. Since I have not received permission from Ute to share her work, I have not made those translations available.

I acquired the German and English scans from Gene in 2025 and used a combination of Transkribus and Google Translate to produce my own translations.

Transkribus is an AI-powered platform that uses Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to automatically convert images of historical documents and printed texts into machine-readable, digital text. It works by employing AI models trained to decipher various languages, scripts, and handwriting styles. I specifically used the “German Genius” Transkribus AI model. After minor cleanup (formatting & spelling), I copy/pasted the generated German text into Google Translate in order to acquire an English Translation.

The 2025 technology transcriptions compared to Ute’s 2012 translation are impressively similar. I have no doubt that if Ute were to make new translations, they would be near identical.

Crete Febr. 17 1905

Dear Father, Brother, Sister-in-law

Received your letter, we are very pleased that you are all doing well. Winter with its strict rule will soon have its way, the beautiful spring with its lovely days will make Father feel better again. We are all doing quite well, recently we had a bout of illness in the house, but now we are healthy and untroubled again. We have had four weeks of very harsh winter here, lots of snow and cold, down to 35 degrees below the target [zero]. We are quite used to temperatures down to 12 degrees below zero. We have a warm house, which I helped build myself, plenty to burn and eat, but the livestock is suffering greatly. When there isn't too much snowstorm, the horses and cows go out to the cornfield and the pigs prefer to eat outdoors rather than in the barn.

You would like to know how our agricultural business is doing. We wanted more land because Theodor is now out of school and can already help with some things, but couldn't buy anything suitable here. A neighbor of ours lives 100 miles west and twenty north. Elisabeth and I visited him there. We liked the area; we sold 240 acres here and there, with good pasture and hayfields. Afterwards, the deal didn't work out for us. The area suffers more from droughts, but still, money can be made there. The land is half as expensive as here. Because of the church and the sister school, we didn't have the latter there, so we sold it again there for the purchase price and are staying in our old place. Heinrich Siedhoff had bought our Farm. He said we shouldn't leave here and if it doesn't suit us where we bought, he'd give us back the purchase contract. We live here quite contentedly. I still have 40 acres leased, we can manage that without special expenses. We will work our land with 4 horses. A nice two-year-old shack (1000 pounds) weighs, we can also soon harness.

Ferdinand and family are doing well. He tells me he received a letter from you, and Theodor sends greetings from here. I haven't heard from Theodor (uncle) and from Franz and Auguste in a long time; they all owe me a letter.

Best regards from Elisabeth and the children, to Father and you and siblings.

Your brother and sister, H. Bals

Write Soon
Theodor [I think this is an add on from Henry’s son]

Crete April 17, 1905

Dear father, brother, and sister in law. We got your letter, some time ago, more than 2 month, that our Dad had left us. He will rest at the side of our loving mother. We hope, we will find them again in heaven. Sister Anna has not been at the funeral, Franz and Augusta have surely been with you. From last ones I didn’t hear anything. We are all right so far and everyone is healthy and content. Theodor is helping me in the fields but he ought to go to school now. Rye and wheat are growing well. Oats in sown in March and in already green. Over 20 acres are already plowed for corn, was after April 15th plowing and I want to harvest 20 aces that is a plow with a planter behind. So we have 58 acres with corn, 25 wheat, 7 rye, 15 oats, tümote, millet, sugar beets, for hay 8 acres, potatoes, 2. This we do sow, and harvest, and thresh, milk 6 to 8 cows, feed 30 to 50 pigs without paying a day's wages. The neighbors help each other with threshing, and transport the crop to the town.

As I already wrote to Theodor, I had taken ours back from Heinrich Siedhoff and sold it again on April 1st for 100 dollars more than what Heinrich had paid, for 5,100 dollars. I bought another one for 8,100 dollars and 120 acres. It's 2 miles from Crete. We're staying on this farm and paid 200 dollars rent. The man on our purchased farm paid 300 dollars rent, but by March 1st, 1906, or perhaps by winter, we'll move to our other farm. It's 85 acres of good land, 10 acres of hay, cattle yard, and a farmyard and pasture for 15 to 20 head of cattle. It is a well-equipped farm with plenty of pasture, a healthy location, water in the pasture, not quite 10 minutes from the Blau River, on foot + 1 1/2 mile to Crete.

We bought this farm mainly because of the Sister school. We are also entitled to send our children to the next high school, where books and schooling are free, but we have to pay more property tax on it. After this school, they can attend university in Lincoln. Girls are doing apprenticeships. Ferdinand is very happy with our purchase.

I can tell you, dear Josef, the merchantism with land brings a lot of sorrow and you are in danger to get in contact with advocates and courts.

Note: The scans of this letter are seemingly missing at least a first page and seemingly a last page or section. All text in italics is pieced in from Ute’s English translation.