Stolanus Wingenbach, Blacksmith

by Sharon Wingenbach

February 2024

My dad recently gave me this cross. He made it in his garage when he and my mom (Bertha Wingenbach, nee Scherger) were still living in their house in Medicine Hat AB. They're both 98 years old now, living in a seniors' residence in Edmonton AB.

The cross is 50 cm tall and made of iron. Dad did his best to duplicate the crosses his dad used to make in his blacksmith shop but this time, he couldn't put the iron in a forge to get it red hot. He had to use a vice, a hammer and an anvil.

I knew his dad had been a blacksmith in Prelate SK. He made hundreds of wrought iron cross grave markers in Prelate and the surrounding area. My dad was his helper for most of those cross-making years.

So I started asking Dad what he knew about blacksmithing.

  Picture: 1 - Wrought iron cross grave marker

The story begins with my great-grandfather.

Georg Wingenbach

  Picture: 2 - Georg Wingenbach

My great-grandfather, Georg Wingenbach (1858-1940) was an ornamental blacksmith in Krasna, Bessarabia-so yes, we are Black Sea Germans, not Volga Germans. My understanding is that Volga Germans did not make wrought iron cross grave markers. And Catholics made most of them. Some Catholic cemeteries in SW Ontario have iron cross grave markers but very few are wrought iron.

FUN FACT-Georg was the last child of the third wife of Josef Wingenbach so I'm lucky to be here. Georg is the only one of his family to emigrate to America.

I know something about my great-grandfather because I found two chapters of his story in the Nord Dakota Herold German-Russian newspaper. His son, Alexius, submitted them. I checked-those are the only two chapters that survived.

I don't think Georg could read or write, especially in English. Yet the journals were written in first person. Alexius probably deserves credit for preserving his dad's story.

When George was 9, his father hired him out to a farmer. He was to take care of the children and go to school. But instead of sending Georg to school, the farmer made him stay home and work very very hard in his blacksmith shop. Georg was small and he had to stand on a block of wood to reach the anvil. He wrote, 'This did not make me any stronger and when I missed the spot I was to strike with the hammer, the farmer hit me on my head. My boss was hardly ever friendly but rather, he was a brut.' Georg worked under those conditions for one year. Then he ran away.

When Georg was 11, his dad died. 'I did not have parents and so I had to live the life of a slave.' He went back to the farmer and the beatings resumed.

Years later, he must have spent time in the military because the second chapter starts, 'When I was discharged,....'

When he was discharged, he went to the near-by village of Postal to learn blacksmithing. The five apprentices there could build five wagons in 14 days. They didn't get paid for their work but they did receive clothing-three pairs of pants, three pairs of shoes, one summer jacket, one winter jacket and ten rubles. After 20 months, Georg graduated as an ornamental blacksmith and he got a job. Then he married Marianne Hintz. He was 23.

He specialized in building wagons. He could build about 70 wagons a year, earning 25 to 35 rubles per wagon. He made one fancy wagon for himself and it would turn heads.

Stolanus Wingenbach

  Picture: 3 - Stolanus Wingenbach with gread-grandson

My grandfather, Stolanus Wingenbach (1885-1980), was Georg's first son. I know something about my grandfather because, when he was 95 and failing, one of his sons, my Uncle George, visited often and wrote some of his story with each visit. Unfortunately, Stolanus died before Uncle George could finish.

Many many years later, my dad wrote a short ending.

Stolanus was 10 when he started helping his dad in the blacksmith shop in Krasna, Bessarabia. Georg was a good teacher. Stolanus was a perfectionist and he loved the work.

Blacksmithing was big business in Russia. Early in the morning, you could hear the blacksmiths starting up. And you could tell each blacksmith by the sound of their hammering.

In 1908, Georg and Marianne and their six children emigrated to North Dakota, USA. Stolanus regretted that he was not able to bring his anvil. He said it had the best ring of all the anvils in town. He was 23.

In North Dakota, Georg and Stolanus were both granted homesteads and so they became farmers. Most of the good land was gone by then but they could do blacksmithing on the side. They made a lot of branding irons.

In 1917, Stolanus, his wife Natalia (Volk) and three children followed her family and emigrated to SW Saskatchewan, Canada. Homesteading wasn't an option any more so they rented, first a farm close to Mendham, then Corderre, and last, by Blumenfeld.

Stolanus never did like farming. In 1938, after many tough years during the Dirty Thirties (drought and misery, 1929-1937), he finally gave up. They bought a small house in Prelate, 15 km North. It had an attached shed that was slightly bigger than the house and he made it into a blacksmith shop. He was 53.

Stolanus' biggest regret was that he didn't go straight into blacksmithing in the first place. On the other hand, he'd had nine mouths to feed during the Dirty Thirties. No one went hungry on a farm. They always had eggs, milk and meat. But people in towns had nothing and so farmers would often try to help by sharing what they had.

After Stolanus and Natalia moved to Prelate, son-in-law Pete Hoffart and Irene (Wingenbach) often would bring them eggs, milk and other farm goods.

Prelate had everything they needed-two hardware stores, a grocery store, a 'Jew' store (their word back then, not mine) and a dance hall. My dad said the best thing of all was the skating rink across the street from where they lived.

Stolanus was kept busy. He was the only blacksmith in Prelate and maybe 40 miles around.

He sharpened plough shears and repaired farm implements and machinery.

He built height extensions on trucks so that people could haul more wheat.

He made a few Bennett buggies which involved adding a hitch to a car (motor and windows removed) so it could be pulled by a horse.

He bought a whetstone wheel and added a seat and pedals. Then he could sharpen anything-knives, axes, blades-simply by sitting and pedalling.

None of the farmers around there bothered with horseshoes but sometimes, he was asked to trim horse hooves.

There was no need for branding irons in Saskatchewan.

But his bread and butter was tightening the metal rims on wooden wagon wheels. The rims were too big for the forge in the shop so he'd build a fire outside using the steel wheel rim of a steam locomotive. Sometimes he'd use old tires, cut into strips, as fuel. They'd burn very hot.

Rims were heavy and it took two people to put a rim into the fire. When it was hot, two people would use tongs to lift it out of the fire and onto the wooden wheel. Then they'd hammer it in place and quickly douse the wheel in water so it wouldn't burn. For that, he'd get $2 a wheel.

Stolanus would often start working at 5:00AM, doing things that weren't noisy like cutting threads. Otherwise, he made a lot of noice when he worked. He loved being a blacksmith.

My dad, John Wingenbach, born 1926, is the youngest of seven children. He was 12 years old when they moved to Prelate and for the next three years, he helped his dad every day after school and on Saturdays. He liked working with his dad. Stolanus would set aside the heavy work that he couldn't do by himself. Blacksmithing is very very physical.

Dad remembers them striking the hot iron in tandem. His father would use the smaller hammer to show Dad where to hit and then Dad would strike it with the big hammer.

Blacksmiths don't hammer hard every time, BANG BANG BANG. They hammer hard once and let the hammer bounce three or four times. Then they hammer hard once again. It sounds much like a bell-TING, Ting, ting, ting....

White hot iron is pliable and stringy. They hammer it to draw it out and shape it, turning it as needed, putting it back in the forge when it cooled.

Or they wrap a red hot rod around the horn of the anvil and curl it into a scroll or twist it, slice it, pierce it. Finally they plunge it into a tub of water. Done.

The only time they heat the iron white hot is when they want to weld two pieces together. Otherwise, red hot is hot enough.

Dad remembers sweat pouring off his dad's brow and down his nose. Sometimes Dad would bring him a glass of cold water and that would make him smile.

The only time Stolanus swore was when he hit his thumb with a hammer or when he dropped something on his feet. They didn't have steel toe boots back then.

Stolanus bought his iron from one of the Prelate hardware stores. Dad remembers dragging 20' long strips of iron three or four blocks home. They always had a pile of scrap outside.

He bought bags of blacksmithing coal there too. Blacksmithing coal is bituminous coal which is soft, mid-grade, the size of small gravel and black. It is low in sulphur and so it burns hot and clean. And it cokes up nicely. Coke sticks together in large chunks and keeps the heart of the fire intensely hot and covered so that the light from the fire isn't hard on your eyes. And it doesn't produce a lot of clinker (ash and harder pieces that don't burn up).

When he was working, Stolanus always kept a stockpile of wet coal on the sides of the hot forge and used it to replenish the fire.

The shop had two swing doors. Stolanus kept records-what he did that day, how much money he took in-by writing in chalk on the back of one of those swing doors. In the morning, he'd erase everything and start all over. We don't think he kept a ledger. Some clients wouldn't pay their bill all summer, until after harvest. He definitely kept records of that.

If Stolanus brought in $20 that day, he'd proudly announce at the supper table that he'd earned $20. He wouldn't bother to include the cost of the material he'd used or his time.

He never had a bank account. He never paid income tax. He never drove a car.

Blacksmith shops were gathering places for the men in the village. In Prelate, they all spoke German. Stolanus dealt with people from other communities so he did learn to speak English. He could also read and write well.

Stolanus made due without a lot of blacksmith tools that would have made his work easier. Yes, he was thrifty. But he also understood that blacksmithing as he knew it was coming to an end. Grandpa loved his job but he never intended to train my dad to be a blacksmith and take over the business.

Winters were slow. The shop wasn't heated, other than the forge, but when it wasn't too cold, he'd sometimes go there and repair braces and runners for sleighs. And that's when he made most of the wrought iron cross grave markers.

Stolanus's wrought iron cross grave markers

Making wrought iron cross grave markers was something Stolanus only did in his spare time.

When he started his blacksmith shop, he tried several different designs. Dad remembers him laying awake at night thinking up designs. I believe this to be true because my dad would do that.

Eventually he settled on one design-a double cross with a diamond. This was stronger than, say, a single cross with no diamond, but also, both the double cross and the diamond allowed for additional areas that he could decorate.

He drew the design on plywood and used that as a pattern.

Then he used an anvil, a forge, a few hammers, a variety of tongs, several files and a punch drill to make iron pieces that lined up with the pattern. He'd often make several of each part and then assemble the crosses by riveting the parts together, when needed.

  Picture: 4 - Iron cross grave markers in the prelate cemetery

Each cross had five flowers. When my dad had nothing to do, he could always go to the shop and make flowers. Dad calls them flowers, a translation of the German 'Blume', but the official term might be 'quatrefoil'.

  Picture: 5 - Cross center

  Picture: 6 - Flower

Dad would take a flat sheet of thin iron and draw about 10 circles on it. He'd drill four holes in each circle, file each hole open on the outside, wrap the circles in iron and put a button in the middle.

Buttons were riveted in place. The side candles of twisted iron came to a point like a flame. The horizontal arms of the double cross came together at the ends and were banded. His crosses are about 6' high.

  Picture: 7 - Iron cross grave markers of Stolanus Wingenbach, blacksmith.

The quatrefoils, the buttons and the side candles are the distinctive features of Stolanus' crosses.

Sometimes families would choose name plates that they'd bought somewhere else but if they didn't, Stolanus would cut a heart or rectangle. Dad painted most of the names on the plates.

  Picture: 8 - Iron cross grave markers of Stolanus Wingenbach, blacksmith.

Stolanus charged $25 for each cross. We think he sold his last crosses for $40.

In the cemetery, the crosses were installed into a cement slab, facing East. Then they were given two coats of paint, mostly black, sometimes silver, sometimes white.

German-Russians usually ordered crosses individually after a funeral. It was cheaper to have a cross made by a local blacksmith than to buy a stone. And when they bought from German-Russians in their community, their community would stay self-sufficient a bit longer.

Stone grave markers are solid and cold, where as crosses are like lace, letting the light in. You can see through them-tall grasses swaying in the wind, the ever-changing blue sky above. They survive freezing winters and hot summers, wind and prairie fires. And survive they do.

Stolanus donated the cross that stands on top of the grotto at Blumenfeld. To an outsider, the grotto looks like a pile of prairie stones. But there are no stones in that area so many loads had to be hauled in from great distances by many teams of horses. Dad and his brother George made a few trips to Liebenthal. In 1983, the Saints Peter and Paul Church at Blumenfeld was declared a heritage site.

  Picture: 9 - cross that sits on top of the grotto at the Blumenfeld church

Every year, on All Souls Day, November 2, the entire congregation used to march several miles to the cemetery, carrying religious flags and banners, singing hymns and praying. They'd pull a few weeds while they were there but maintenance was done by the municipality. Cemeteries were simple natural places. No one bothered to plant trees and shrubs in Saskatchewan cemeteries. To preserve the crosses, they should be painted every second year. One year, someone painted all the crosses in the Prelate cemetery silver.

These wrought iron cross grave markers are now celebrated as German-Russian folk art. Stolanus' crosses stand in Prelate, Blumenfeld, Mentham, Fox Valley, Rosental, Krasna, maybe Josephstal and maybe Leader. Dad remembers when two crosses were sent to another community, Willie maybe. But in 2021, I found a photo on Facebook of one of his crosses close to Taber AB.

In 1946, when my dad was 19, he left home to get a job in the big city, Calgary AB. There is wasn't much blacksmithing done any more. Welders could join things without a forge. Mechanics could fix cars. Farriers could travel to farms with their tools.

When Stolanus closed his shop, he brought his tools to his son-in-law's farm, Pete Hoffart's, and he continued to make crosses for maybe another 15 years.

Dr. Tim Kloberdanz at ND State University studied wrought iron cross grave markers for decades. He documented Stolanus' crosses in 2002 and wrote me to say, 'I have studied iron crosses all over the world and your grandfather's crosses are truly among the most distinctive. He was not only a superb blacksmith. He was a true artist.'

Like so many of their neighbours, Stolanus and Natalia retired at St. Joseph's Home in Medicine Hat AB. He was 75.

Unfortunately, they were buried in Medicine Hat with a solid cold stone grave marker. No one thought of it at the time but some of us wish that they'd been taken back to Prelate where their legacy of German-Russian folk art is preserved.

Believe it or not, I once attended a club meeting of blacksmiths north of Cochrane AB. With a lot of help, I made a nail. I showed them photos of Stolanus' crosses and they surprised me by saying they'd like to see how he did the backs of the crosses.

Years ago, before digital photography, I went on a photo expedition to the Prelate area. That's where these photos come from. I dream of going back.

I wish SOMEONE had taken a photo of my grandfather's blacksmith shop.

FUN FACT-Stolanus made his wife's wedding ring out of a penny.

  Picture: 10 - My dad, John Wingenbach