In Dakota Territory there were no wide inviting streets with neighbors on each side, living in large stout homes. No hedgerows of Mulberry trees between mature productive gardens. Here their land had not been previously plowed, nor planted with wheat and flax. There was little more than prairie sod to build a rude shelter.

Walls of their homes were made with sections of virgin prairie sod cut from furrows made with horse drawn plows. They were plastered inside and out with a mixture of clay, straw and manure. For "beauty" they were whitewashed with lime. A hip roof of lumber and a ceiling was added for storage and insulation. An inside wall or two, a couple of windows and a door completed the home.

With shelter at hand, the immigrants had only to dig a well for water, provide shelter for the animals, plow and plant 60 or 70 acres, put up sufficient food for the long Dakota winter, and find work to get money for flour, salt and other necessities. With luck the children would not get measles smallpox or diphtheria.

With more luck they would not be struck by lightning or broken beneath the hooves and wheels of a runaway horse and wagon. With even more luck hail and grasshoppers would bypass their fields before harvest and they would survive the long cruel winter without losing toes or noses to frost.

Brotherfield Township, where our ancestors settled, was the "main station" of Mennonite Brethren congregations meeting privately in 1876. In 1877 they organized, with Cornelius Guenther, Eva Dürksen's husband, as first pastor and David Funk, Elizabeth Funk Dürksen's brother, his assistant. Within the new congregation there were conflicts, as there had been in Russia. Along with doctrinal disagreements were suspicions about the handling of assets that had been entrusted to a church leader before the immigration.

There was also the divisive issue of clothes fashion within the congregation. Many felt that progressive American styles, which included the wearing of flowers and ruffles, were not suitable and urged their pastor to speak out against them, but he would not. These and similar issues might have been weathered, but there was a new and potent force acting against the Mennonite congregation in Turner County.