My paternal great grandfather,Ernst Karl Gottfried Falk, left the village of Ruhnow, now Runowo, in 1883, with a family that included one grown son, my grandfather, Herman William Falk. Becoming tired of the life of Prussian tenant peasants, they sought the greater freedom and opportunity of owning their own land in the United States.

They settled first near Le Mars, Iowa, but soon moved to Parkston, South Dakota. In 1902, with one adult son, John, from his first marriage, my grandfather,Hermann, moved to farmland in the province of Alberta, Canada, in the Bashaw, Wetaskiwin area south of Edmonton. My father, Arnold Falk, was born in 1903, into a family that eventually had thirteen surviving children from two marriages and an enormous spread in ages. Some of Hermann's offspring moved back to the United States.

Hermann retired to a small farm at Cloverdale, British Columbia, in 1920, and passed away in 1940. His family line is large and complex, with all of us living either in Canada or the United States.

Ties with Pomerania were largely broken in 1883, and Hermann always thought of himself as a "German American" until some of Hermann's grandsons, including myself, have started investigating family genealogy.

Les Falk

Kelowna, BC, Canada