MARY'S GENEALOGY TREASURES
Bert Schwartzkopf Sr. arrived in Canada on March 27, 1927,
Next he went to Saskatchewan to homestead with his
Now he headed for the sugar beet fields of Southern
Back in Hungary, Mary and the girls ran the family farm
Finally, with the money Bert Sr. saved and a promise that he
In November of 1937, Mary and their three delightful girls
Now back in the sugar patch, Bert Sr. soon realized
After their son married in 1960 Mr. and Mrs. Bert
Family farm is what it is in the truest sense of the word.
at the age of twenty-nine to seek his fortune. The plan was
to earn enough money to return to his native Hungary, to add
to the family's small holdings. He left his wife and three
children, an aging father and two brothers. He was sorry to
leave his wife Mary that he had married in February of 1918,
in a cold unheated church. They were married for sixty-six
years in February of 1984. Both of the brothers soon left to
seek their fortunes. Elek went first to Brazil and then to the
U.S.A., and Joe went to Canada. Plans were harder to put
into operation than expected, as the great depression made
jobs scarce, money even more scarce. Bert Sr. did everything
from work on the railroad to odd jobs. He worked for the
International Nickel Plant in Sudbury, Ontario, helping to
build their large smoke stack, at that time the largest of its
kind. The depression eliminated many jobs. The men with
no visible family to support were the first to be laid off.
brother Joe. He can still remember the dirt floor and
the snow sifting through the planks on the roof, in the
three years he spent there. He and Joe cleared eighty
acres of land and started to produce some crops.
Alberta, where the laborer often had more money
than the farmer, because the sugar factory paid the
laborer. Government sometimes paid farmers a small
amount of money to employ people. He worked on the
Frank King farm, Mr. Brown's farm and on the Mr.
and Mrs. Charley Boulton farm.
that consisted of three acres of vineyards and about
twelve acres of farm land. They grew wheat, rye, corn,
sunflowers and potatoes. With the men folk gone Mary
did a commendable job of running the farm. She had to
hire people to plow and harvest the crop. She had to hoe,
weed, pick grapes and do other manual jobs in order to pay
the people she hired.
and his family would work diligently in the Boulton sugar
beet patch, he made plans to bring the family to Canada.
arrived. Unfortunately one of the daughters, Helen, died
an untimely death in 1963.
that working in the beet patch for someone else was
not the door to the promised land, especially since he
made more money making wine and moonshine in his
spare time than he and his family could make in the beet
patch from spring to fall. However, fearing the police
and getting caught and fined or jailed, he dug a hole and
buried his still near a clump of willows in a field near
Picture Butte. His career as a distiller now over, he
rented land from Joe Watson, which he farmed for two
years. He then rented land north east of Coalhurst from
Carl Johnson, now the Swidinsky farm. While renting
there he bought land north of Coalhurst formerly the
Andy Sherritt farm and several other pieces of land to
make the farm an economical unit. Bert and Mary Sr.
moved to the old Sherrit farm in 1947.
Schwartzkopf Sr. moved to Lethbridge and their son
kept up residence on the family farm.
Bert Sr. and Mary were out to the farm every day. Bert Sr.
would check the stockyards every morning to see
and to listen to the latest trend in the cattle business.
Bert Sr. had been a cattle feeder for many years. When
people ask, "how do you keep this farm so neat", their
son always said his mother and father hoed and watered
the trees.
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