Muench Ancestry: Emil and Rosalia Muench's Photograph Collections:Robert

You'll find pages 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 in the archives at the right. Some of the photographs on them were in Ottillie "Tillie" Leeson's estate, and others were copied from collections shared by her siblings and nieces and nephews who lived in Canada.

Robert 'Bob' inherited his father's violin and always yearned to play it. In the 1980s he and Lee were welcomed into a large group of musicians and friends who, for thirty years, spent as many e-day holiday weekends as possible together. All had motorhomes or campers, and would rally wherever they could rent a hall or spaces in a campground, or just find a place in Idaho, Montana or British Columbia, Canada to get together. During those precious years Bob taught himself to play his father's violin, and became a musician welcomed to play with those of "Our Group", as we called ourselves. Several musicians were professionals, so Bob took great pride in playing with them. "Our Group" consisted of anywhere from two to four or five dozen fun-loving friends who lived in Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and British Columbia.

Cakes baked by Jean Monigold for one of the end

of the weekend potluck always held by "Our Group"

get togethers, in a members shop/garage.

Our Group played for our dances. This one in a shop

belonging to one of those we considered 'family.'

Bob is the fiddler on the right, fiddling with Roy Bredy,

and accompanied by Delbert Nieman on the accordian,

and Don Bonar playing banjo.Labor Day, September 5,
1982

ROBERT CHARLES "BOB" MUENCH was born in Swift Current while the family was moving from Winnipeg to settle on their newly acquired homestead. He was delivered by a doctor in the house they rented while they stayed in Swift Current for a month while enroute. When Bob was about a week and a half old, the family continued by oxen-drawn wagon, with a cow tied on behind it, traveling the last 28 miles. They went about 16 miles southeast of Swift Current, Saskatchewan, in the Bigford District before turning eastward to the S.E 1/4 of Section 34, Township 13, Range 11.

Life on the farm was harsh and challenging. Bob recalled one storm so intense that the rain drowned the gophers from their holes; the hail then killed them. After the hail melted, the area that was struck looked as if it was freshly plowed. 1915 was a bumper crop year, Bob said, with the largest yield ever for them while farming in Canada. However it was not to be their year. A fierce windstorm came with a prairie fire and burned most of the grain already harvested. The prairie fire caused much damage and burned cattle, horses and grain. 1916 through 1921, it was either too wet or too dry, or dust storms, or rust, reducing the crop to 10 bushels to the acre, or no crop at all.

English language was taught at school, German was spoken at home. The children, who went barefoot until the start of school, had to walk three and a half miles to school.

About the only contact the Muench children had with other children was at school or Sunday school or church picnics, or things like that. The family attended Interdenominational church at the schoolhouse in the summertime when they could get an itinerant teacher or student preacher. In the wintertime the children sometimes gathered at the school to have Sunday School.

Their father read the bible at home often with his children, and tried to explain the best he could. Bob's sister,Tillie said,

"But of course we couldn't understand and the older we got the more we drifted away from it."

When the weather was bad, all gathered around the table Sunday mornings and had a sing song, Bible reading and prayer. Emil played the violin and used to sit quite often, especially in the winter, and play it to entertain the family and for his own pleasure. Emil had a very fine voice and sang at church all of his life.

Bob moved with his parents to a farm at Chester, Washington, just south of Spokane, Washington in 1928. He never returned to Canada, except to visit his parents when he could after he married Leola Coultas They had a daughter, Lauralie “Laurie”, and a son, Stephen “Steve”.