FRANK LUGERT – IMMIGRANT AND PIONEER

 

Researched and compiled by Terri Lewis Stern, great granddaughter of Frank Lugert.

 

BOHEMIA TO AMERICA

 

Frank Lugert has been described as one of Kiowa County’s most colorful pioneers and his story is one of typical immigrant courage.  He was born May 31, 1869 in the small village of Zebau (Czech name Cebiv) in the mountains of Bohemia.  Today’s maps will show the town on the western side of the Czech Republic, near the border with Germany.  The family must have moved to the nearby village of Leskau (Czech name Lestkov) before Frank left.  I came to this conclusion since his daughters claim Leskau as his native village and local parish records show Frank’s parents died there.  Both towns lie east of Prague, near Marienbad (Czech name Marienske Lazne).  At the time of Frank’s birth, the area was part of the Austrian Empire.  Formerly a crown colony of Austria, Bohemia was a region with both German and Czech-speaking citizens.  The Lugerts were German speaking, and the surname is a common one in Germany today.  Frank Lugert’s family has been traced in this area back through parish records to Paul Lugerth born in 1625, through the efforts of Deb Lugert Torgrimson, who descends from Frank’s brother, Joe.  One of eight children born to Mathias and Theresia Lugert, Frank and three siblings immigrated to America.   His only formal education was in Austria before he left.  When interviewed by reporters later in life, Frank described a colorful childhood in which he “worked with his uncle hunting wild boar and herding swine from Russia to Austria.”  (It’s more likely that this was Prussia, which lies 30 miles to the north, instead of Russia, which was hundreds of miles away.  An easy to understand mistake on the reporter’s part, given Frank’s accent.)  At 13, Frank was sent by his parents to cross the Atlantic to join his older brother Joe, who himself had immigrated when he was 12.  The Lugert boys were part of a mass chain migration of German Bohemians to Minnesota and Wisconsin, which began in the early 1850’s to escape the rising tensions and threat of conscription.   The Austrian army conscripted boys as young as 12, so it’s no wonder Matthias and Theresia Lugert encouraged their sons to immigrate to America.  

 

In an interview by the Kiowa County Star Review for the county’s 50th anniversary in 1951, Frank identified Hamburg, Germany as the port he left Europe from; and on his naturalization papers he put his landing in America on May 9, 1883, just weeks short of his fourteenth birthday.  Although I can’t verify his port of arrival or the ship’s name, there is much documentation of his arrival.  He came with a single wooden trunk no larger than a cooler you take to a family picnic today.  In it he had a family bible in German that took up a third of the space and only a few other possessions.  His grandson, Jimmy Jarnagin of Altus, Oklahoma, is the proud owner of the trunk and bible today, which has recorded significant family events in Frank’s life, mostly in German.  When he arrived, Frank wore a sign around his neck on his back and his front.  The sign stated he was an orphan who “must not be harmed” and had directions to Fredonia, Wisconsin to join his 19-year old brother Joe.  He spoke no English, and found it a hard language to learn while living in the German settlement in Wisconsin.  He made up his mind to learn, teaching himself so he could strike out on his own and work at a sawmill.  On May 19, 1885, their brother Charles landed in America to join Frank and Joe.  Frank and Charles lived in Cherokee, Iowa, where Charles settled and both brothers filed naturalization papers in 1891, renouncing forever allegiance to the Emperor of Austria. 

 

LAND OPENINGS IN OKLAHOMA

 

Frank participated in two of Oklahoma Territory’s historic land openings, the Cherokee Strip Run of 1893 and the 1901 land lottery opening part of the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Indian Reservation in the southwest corner of Oklahoma.  Stories he told about these events reveal much about his approach to life.  Before the 1893 run, Frank heard from a friend that only the good riders would have a chance.  So he bought a pony especially for the run and practiced daily on a racetrack at Guthrie until he became an expert rider.  He beat other riders to stake a claim on a farm seven miles east of Perry. 

 

Frank sold the farm outside Perry he’d acquired in the 1893 run and moved into town where he tended bar and became proprietor of a general store and saloon.  The 1900 Census for Noble County lists his occupation as “Saloon Barman.”   His younger sister, Theresia, who had come over in 1891 at the age of 16, joined him in Perry and kept house for the bachelor Frank until his marriage.  On January 14, 1895, 24-year old Frank and 19-year old Katie Malaske were married in the Catholic Church at Perry.  Katie was born in New York state, the daughter of Polish immigrants, John Lawrence Malaske (originally “Chmielecki”)and his wife Barbara Ostrowski.  Three children, Theresa, Frank, Jr., and Catherine, were born in Perry, living in a nice two-story home that sold for $600 when they left Perry.  A third daughter, Marguerite, was born in 1910 after the move to Kiowa County.  

 

In 1901 he decided to have a try at the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache opening and registered for the lottery at El Reno.  The land of the Comanche, Kiowa and Plains Apache tribes had been leased to Cattlemen for cattle range for several years.  Under the Jerome Agreement, the Indians were allotted their homesteads and the remainder of the area was available for settlement by others.  The lands in the Kiowa-Comanche country were to be decided by land lottery rather than a race for claims as in other openings.  The people registered at either El Reno or Lawton.  The homesteaders were then determined by the drawing of an envelope containing the person’s name and address.   Each winner then had the opportunity to “stake his claim in turn” according to the number on his envelope.  Over 160,000 people registered for the chance to obtain a homestead in the drawing.  The opening occurred August 1, 1901 and was the last large land opening in the present State of Oklahoma.  In the 50th Anniversary interview, Frank recalled, “I got the second to the last number in El Reno district, and there wasn’t anything much left.”  A friend working in the land office gave him the tip that finally meant his getting the farm.  He told him about a quarter section at the foot of the Wichita Mountains, and that it showed on the map that it had been filed on, but he happened to know it hadn’t.  He suggested Frank make a quick trip to the location and investigate.  He came by horse and buggy, driving day and night, then left his exhausted horses at Lone Wolf while he hired a liveryman to take him on down to the claim, which was nine miles to the south.  He liked what he saw—a fertile farm with a spring on it and bordering on the river “so I could go fishing if I ever had time.”  He was informed an official of the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railroad was planning to file on the quarter, but he resolved to beat him.  He did, by a few hours.

 

THE TOWN OF LUGERT

 

After he filed his claim on the 80 acres of land on October 3, 1901, Frank founded the town by establishing the post office.  On his first trip to the new site, he took the mail with him and distributed it from a tent until his store and home had been completed.  On October 24, 1902, the post office was officially established.  Frank sold out a part of his farm as lots for a town site, and it was decided that the new town should be named for him.   A thriving agricultural community sprang up almost overnight and business boomed.  In that first year or two several hundred people were attracted to the little town.  Courthouse records show the plat of the Town of Lugert was filed November 15, 1903.  At one time the population is said to have reached 400-500, but Oklahoma State Gazetteers published by R. L. Polk & Co between 1909 and 1918 show a population of only 100 in each year published with the population at 200 in the 1911-1912 edition.  A check of the 1910 and 1920 census shows the Village of Lugert with 77 individuals in 1910, and 67 in 1920, although many of the 1920 list are farmers, so it’s unclear whether they really were in the town.

 

There were no roads, only trails, and the only form of transportation was horseback, teams and wagons.  Panhandlers, escaped convicts and horse thieves were common.  The mountains, especially the one known as Flat Top, were reputed to be a hideout for outlaws.  Occasionally, some would come to Frank Lugert’s store.  Those considered the toughest were usually laughing with Frank before they left.  Some of the armed men came in one day and demanded a drink.  He told them that the best he could do was the popular patent medicine of the day, “Hostetter’s Bilious” which was 70% alcohol.

 

It’s interesting to note that Frank never carried a gun, although many men in the early pioneer days did.  He told a reporter that a friend advised him not to since the men who did carry guns had made it their business to know how to use them.  He’d be safer without one since he couldn’t beat them at their own game. 

 

Businesses flourished, including the Lugert General Store, which had everything needed by the local community.  There were prospectors’ supplies, groceries, dry goods, boots, shoes, books, school supplies, patent medicine, guns and ammunition, blasting supplies, pictures, hardware, stoves, pots and pans, dishes, tubs, washboards, well buckets, pumps, harnesses, axes, hoes, picks, meat, cheese, cracker barrels, cold drinks, cookies and candy.   My father, Bill Lewis, remembers a barrel of sauerkraut in his grandfather’s store, and Katie Lugert’s recipe for Pork and Sauerkraut lives on as a family favorite, kept alive by Catherine’s daughter, Kathleen Broughton Gragg.  Frank also sold coal and later installed a gasoline pump.  Sugar sold for $4 per 100 pounds or 20 pounds for $1.  Rice was 20 pounds for $1.  Coffee was priced at 15 cents per pound for regular coffee, but imported peaberry coffee cost 20 cents per pound.  Always a good businessman, Frank Lugert issued small metal tokens, in values of one cent to one dollar, which were redeemable only at his store.  Apparently, it was a common practice in the Old West to issue store-unique tokens, as I found when viewing one of the Lugert coins at Jerry Adams’ token site on the internet.  At the time of its greatest population, in about 1910, Lugert recalls that the daily receipts for his general store amounted to $500 or $600, huge numbers for the time.

 

The little town grew up around the post office, general store and saloon until the town site of over 100 acres was crowded.  The town’s Marshall, Johnnie Webber, kept law and order.  There was one church, the Methodist Episcopal South Church.  Businesses included Borden’s feed and grocery; a billiards hall run by R.C. McCurdy which also served as a dance hall; a meat market operated by Noah Hanger and Walter Pruitt; a restaurant owned by Mr. And Mrs. England; Stephenson-Browne Lumber Co. with Howard Arnett, manager; Field and Smith Blacksmith shop run by Ed Hodson; the Lugert State Bank with Charles A. Huber and Joseph Huber president; the Smith Hotel; the Western Oklahoma Gin managed by F. E. Gillespie; Mrs. Clara Hill’s Restaurant; Hollingsworth Hardware; a drug store with Dr. R.S. Kirkland as proprietor; and two dry goods stores owned by John Stanaland and Houser and Garrison.  In 1908 there were 6700 bushels of shelled corn shipped from the town of Lugert.  This was over and above the amount consumed locally and used to feed stock.  When saloons were voted out of business in 1905, Mark Saueberg and Frank Lugert operated a liquor store a quarter mile southwest of the Lugert business district.

 

Pioneers recall the many parties and dances given by the Lugerts.  Their home was the social center of the section.  All were welcome until they showed by misbehavior they were not entitled to the social amenities.   Then they were tossed out forcibly.

 

The roadbed for a railroad line, extending from Kansas through Oklahoma into Texas, was completed in 1906, and the railroad track completed in 1907.  The Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railroad came through the center of town.  The town was laid out on a grid of five streets running east to west and six avenues running north to south.  The northernmost street was named Walnut Street, with Oak, Main, Locust, and Pine Street following it to the south.  The westernmost avenue was Choctaw, followed by Washita, Kiowa, Central, Caddo and Oklahama Avenue.  The little boomtown, called a ‘village’ in the 1910 census, was never to grow much larger due to a sudden, violent storm at noon on a hot April day in 1912.

 

LUGERT CYCLONE in 1912

 

This is how newspaper accounts were to describe the storm later.  “The spring of 1912 was a wet one, and the drought seemed to be broken. The fields were green with growing crops and the orchard was a mass of fragrant pink and white blossoms. Apri1 27, 1912, came hot and sultry and before noon the sky was a ragged mass of low-lying, leaden clouds. As farmers came in from the fields for dinner, jagged lightning flashed out of an ugly bank of clouds to the southwest, accompanied by rumbles of thunder, which shook the earth.  The noon train was heading for Lugert with its giant headlight burning.  By then the world around Lugert was dark as night.  Rain gushed out of the approaching cloudbank.  A monotonous roar followed the burst of heavy rain, and the houses shook under the impact of high winds.  Shortly, all was quiet outside; no wind, rain or thunder.  The storm passed directly over Lugert, all you could see was rubble and naked prairie—the town of Lugert had disappeared!” 

 

 

The headline in the May 2, 1912 edition of the Hobart Republic declared “Violent Tornadoes Swept Kiowa County Saturday—Lugert Erased From the Map” with the following details:  “Lugert can properly be spoken of only in the past tense.  It was.  The cyclone, which struck it Saturday afternoon was complete in its work of destruction.  To give a list of the properties destroyed would be but to catalogue the houses which composed the town.”  The engine and coal tender remained upright on the tracks, but seven cars had been torn from the train and dashed to pieces along the right-of-way.  Four intervening cars were on the track, followed by nine additional wrecked cars and the caboose stood intact on the tracks.  The only building intact was the depot, and this structure had been blown several feet off its foundation.  The bank, hotel, gins, lumberyard, stores, and residences of the townspeople had been leveled and were a mass of tangled debris and wreckage.  Photos taken the day of the storm show the Lugert General Store standing alone surrounded by leveled buildings.

 

 

There’s a story that two missing boys, who, after a long search in the wreckage by their father, were given up for as being two of the unidentified storm victims loaded in one of the boxcars.  The next day, these missing boys came walking from the mountains southwest of Lugert unhurt, claiming that the cyclone had taken them up and set them down on the mountain top.  (The boys’ story is probably a tall tale that grew over time, since reports after the storm did not include missing boys or unidentified bodies in a boxcar.)  The families who had storm cellars and made it to the cellar in time were the lucky ones.   After the Lugert tornado, many a farmer in the county decided to build a storm cellar on the west side of his house.  The tornado of 1912 left 64 wounded and two dead, destroying 41 of the 42 business buildings, and Lugert was no more.  The dead were Mrs. J.O. (Lee) Stanaland and her daughter Eva.  In an Altus Weekly article on the dead and injured on the Thursday after the cyclone, great detail is given of the injuries, closing with this interesting paragraph: “A peculiar feature of these injuries is that nearly all of the patients have had trouble in locating themselves.  They do not have a clear memory of the events following the accident.  There is not a case of skull fracture in the entire number.  There were only two deaths at Lugert.  There were no brains, arms, nor legs scattered along the right of way from Lugert to Altus.  There was nobody brought here with a 2X4 thrust through his chest and his eyeballs hanging down on his cheeks.  No patient’s leg has been sawed off and none of them so far have given up to die.” 

 

DESERTED TOWN OF LUGERT

 

The town was soon all but deserted, but it did continue to exist on a much smaller scale to serve the outlying farming community.  Most survivors of the storm left.  In a 1951 interview for the 50th anniversary of Kiowa County, Frank told the Star Review about the town doctor who decided to leave.  “He told me he was leaving, that he wasn’t going to stay in a place where they had damned cyclones.  I didn’t like for him to say that.  I told him they might have a cyclone the next place he went to, and he might not get out alive the next time.”

 

With the same courage he had in first settling, Lugert rebuilt his buildings, this time of native stone that he himself quarried from the mountains.  He stayed on in the one-man town and in spite of the tremendous difficulties kept adding to his ever-growing fortune.  He bought most of the lots of the evacuating population, the rest going to two Lone Wolf businessmen.  He built many houses in an attempt to get people to repopulate the desolate town, but failed.  In 1940, he still owned every building in the deserted location.   He continued to run the general store and was postmaster.  His daughter, Marguerite Lugert Jarnagin, ran the post office and was the station agent for the Sante Fe depot.  Frank was a widower by then, his wife Katie having died five years earlier in 1935.  It was in that year, 1940, that the Oklahoma City paper, The Daily Oklahoman, published an article about Frank and the town.  Preliminary work was underway for a proposed $5 Million dam to be built on the North Fork of the Red River 15 miles above Altus, which would submerge the town of Lugert under 10 feet of water.  With the threat of national emergency looming in 1940 as the country considered entry into war, there was uncertainty about whether the proposed dam would be built or not.  Ironically, Frank Lugert had been an early advocate for the dam.  In 1907, he was part of a southwest Oklahoma delegation that went to El Paso to confer with federal officials over the possibility of irrigation for southwest Oklahoma.  

 

The 1940 article described Frank as an industrious, thrifty and hospitable man, who at the age of 71 welcomed customers and visitors to his general store.  They tell the story of a few years earlier during the Great Depression when a Lone Wolf doctor announced that he intended to burn $20,000 worth of notes and mortgages received in payment for professional services. “Not to be outdone, Lugert joined with him in the ceremony and added to the bonfire what he now reluctantly admits was ‘more than $40,000.’  Such an act seems typical of the old gentleman.  He has always been kindhearted and although he has earned all of his money by hard work, he has always been glad to help his neighbor whose luck wasn’t so good.  As a father he has seen to it that his four children, Frank, Jr., Theresa, Catherine, and Marguerite, have had a better opportunity.  He tells in detail how he ‘paid $4.50 a month tuition to send those kids to grade and high school in Lone Wolf,’ a town nine miles to the north, before a school was established in Lugert.”

 

LUGERT SCHOOL

 

The following description of the school is from Pioneering in Kiowa County and was written by Pearson Wright. 

LUGERT, DISTRICT NUMBER 38

The first Lugert School was a one room building of wood, located near the railroad tracks.  The teachers were Charlie Cox and a Mr. Dooley.  Lugert outgrew this old building.  The second building, located north of the business district, was constructed of rock and brick.  It was a story and a half.  The two rooms on the lower floor housed 70-100 students.

Some of the teachers were a Mrs. Morey, Theresa Lugert, Mrs. Dahl, Roxie Boulware and a Miss Hammons.  This building was destroyed by the Lugert tornado.  The district built the third school building in the same location.  It was a brick structure that had two stories.  The second floor was used as an auditorium.  Sid Johnson and Adeline Bunch taught in it.  They were the last Lugert teachers. 

Lugert had its fourth school as the result of the raising of the dam.  The building was dismantled and the new school located about one half mile east, on what is now the Christian Retreat grounds.

The Churches used the school houses for their services.  The school board was composed of  Bill Pollard, M.C. Baggett and Otto Koeltzow.

Except for five years, two teachers taught through 1946-1947.  Lugert was transferred for one year in 1948.  It was then annexed to Lone Wolf and City View district in Greer County.

 

                I grew up hearing that my grandmother (Frank’s daughter Theresa) had been the “principal of a two room school house.”  When she died, I inherited her cedar chest and one of the items I found in it was a quilt top with names of 18 boys and girls, “Mrs. Hammons,” “LGS,” and “1934” embroidered on it.  I’ve suspected it was probably a gift made by the mothers of her students and that LGS stood for Lugert Grade (or Grammar) School, but not until I saw “Miss Hammons” in the article above did I know for sure.  The students named on the quilt are:  Audrey L. Lee, Virgil Ferguson, Claude Smith, Dorothy Blevins, Lucille Coffia, Wesley Riley, Oleeta Pollard, Afton Keeton, Sylvia Parker, Hazel Hendricks, Verla M. Buchanan, Theda Coffia, Noris Austin, Raymond Martin, Homer Riley, Alma Joe Lee, M. E. Stoltenberg, and Wanda Martin.  I developed an interest in quilting, spurred on, no doubt, by my grandmother’s reaction when she saw my first crude machine-made effort at the age of 13.  She said, “It’s not really a quilt unless it’s made by hand.”  Of course, I know that’s not true today, but my Maryland State Fair blue ribbons for the “hand pieced and hand quilted” category can surely be traced to that comment!  I have since quilted the Lugert top from her cedar chest and treasure it as a piece of my Lugert heritage.

 

                My father, Bill Lewis, who was born in 1930, was a student at the Lugert School.  During the Depression years, the family was separated, with his father working in Oklahoma City, while he and his mother (Theresa Lugert Lewis) lived in a house Frank owned in Lugert.  Theresa taught the 5th-8th grades, while another teacher taught 1st-4th.  My dad lived there as a baby and attended the Lugert School through the fourth grade (1936-1940) before conditions improved and the family was able to live together once again.  He remembers walking to school with his mother, and when the snow was deep, she would pull him in a little red wagon.   There was no electricity from the power company in those days.  They had a wind-powered blade that charged a bank of 20 12-volt batteries that provided power for the ‘cowboy’ music he remembers on the radio.  Only a few houses in the town were occupied then, including his Aunt Marguerite and her husband, “Dutch” Jarnigan, who ran the grain elevator.  His grandparents lived at the back of the Lugert General Store.  He remembers his grandfather Frank offering a stick of peppermint candy, “Shveets for the shveet,” he would say with his German accent.  My dad remembers that most students at the school were children of farmers in the outlying area, and that the school would close for 2-3 weeks when the cotton was ready for picking.  He tells us he writes with a unique printed handwriting today because his mom was the teacher and he never had to perfect his cursive writing.  I don’t know all the years my grandmother Theresa taught at the Lugert School, but I can surmise that she taught as early as 1920 (since the census lists the 24-year old Theresa’s occupation as public schoolteacher) and as late as 1940, with a break when she married in 1926 and probably moved to Amarillo where my Grandfather worked for Nash Motorcar.  I have a class picture from 1922 where she and her students are in front of the school.   I’m curious as to whether she actually taught in the school that was destroyed by the tornado (as the excerpt above claims), as she was only 16 years old when the tornado hit.

 

A TOWN UNDER WATER

 

            To make way for the coming dam, the railroad was relocated in 1940 and so were the elevator and depot.  Marguerite Lugert Jarnigan continued as Depot Agent until it was closed in 1952.  In January 1942, Frank relocated his store and post office to a new building just east of the elevator, east of Highway 44.  The W. C. Austin Dam proposed in 1940 began construction in April 1941 and was completed in 1948.  The dam was built for flood control, water supply and irrigation, but serves the recreational users as well, with fishing, swimming and boating aplenty.

 

Officially named Altus-Lugert Lake, it is more often called Lake Lugert by longtime residents.  The Lake holds up to 133,000 acre feet of water when the dam is full.  The mean depth was reported at 21 feet, with a maximum of 71 feet in the 1984 Water Atlas published by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.  Over the years as water levels reached low points, the foundations of the town have been visible.  In the 1980’s bulldozers knocked down parts of old buildings that were considered hazardous to careless boaters.  During a 1998 drought, water levels were low enough for treasure hunters and nostalgia seekers to find old spoons and coins along the waters edge.

 

            Frank continued to operate the store next to the lake.  It was a popular gathering place for fisherman and others in the community and was only closed a few years before his death, when his health began to fail.  He lived to the ripe old age of 89, succumbing in his last years to symptoms that today would probably be diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease.  He died of pneumonia on September 1, 1958 and is buried next to his wife Katie in Rose Cemetery at Hobart, Oklahoma.  The Lone Wolf, Altus, and Kiowa County newspapers all gave homage to Frank’s historic contributions and the passing of a pioneer.  He has no descendants bearing the name of Lugert, since his one son, Frank, Jr. died childless in 1946 of an overdose of sulfa.  It was an experimental drug at the time and he was given it for pneumonia.  It’s an odd coincidence that both men did not survive pneumonia.  Frank’s three daughters, Theresa Lewis, Catherine Broughton, and Marguerite Jarnagin Jones each had one child.  The three cousins, each an only child, hold a special bond with each other and have fond memories of summers spent together and visits with their grandfather, Frank.  It is to these cousins, Bill Lewis, Kathleen Broughton Gragg, and Jimmy Jarnagin, that I dedicate this article.

 

 

Sources:  Czech Republic Archives; Frank Lugert Bible; 1900, 1910, and 1920 Oklahoma Census; Marriage and Death Certificates; Naturalization Papers; Land Records; Obituaries and articles from The Lone Wolf News, Kiowa County Star Review, Altus Times Democrat, The Blair Enterprise, The Hobart Republic, and The Daily Oklahoman.  Also, “Pioneering in Kiowa County,” published by the Kiowa County Historical Society, Oklahoma’s Water Atlas, Oklahoma State Gazetteer, and “Ghost Towns of Oklahoma” by John W. Morris, 1978.  Web site sources include the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International (www.cgsi.org), Filings of the El Reno Land District of Oklahoma (www.familytreemaker.com), and Jerry Adams token site (http://members.home.net/tokenguy/page34.htm).

 

Special thanks to Burna Cole of the Museum of the Western Prairie, Altus, Oklahoma; and my newly discovered cousins, Deb Lugert Torgrimson and Kim Jarnagin Barton.

 

Terri Lewis Stern

Edgewater, Maryland

May 2001, Updated Oct 2002