This is the story of our grandfather David Meister of going to prison for his Faith in Jesus. Grandpa Meister was born in 1891 and was the 5th child out of 15. This is his story:
Grandpa Meister
“Faith & Courage”
“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
(2 Timothy 1:7)
As a preamble to the story of Grandpa Meister, it is best to begin with a summary of the Meister family history. David William Meister (Grandpa) was the fifth of fifteen children born to Jacob and Mary (Otti) Meister, born in Harper, Kansas on October 10, 1891. A brief history of Grandpa’s family follows.
Our Great-Grandpa, Jacob Meister, was born on May 2, 1860, in Merishausen, Switzerland in the Canton Schaffhausen. He was the youngest of seven children and attended school in Merishausen from age six until fourteen years old. Unfortunately, little is known of Jacob’s family in Switzerland. His grandfather, Melchoir, was born June 28, 1784, in Merishausen and married Susanna Werner, born July 12, 1785. Jacob’s father, also Melchoir, was born February 26, 1815. He married Anna Weber in 1837. Anna was born in 1817. There are records of the Meister family in the Kirche St. Martin in Merishausen up to and including Jacob’s father. Thereafter the records of births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths are silent. We must conclude it was at this time the Melchoir Meister family left the state church and became members of the Gemeinschaft Evangelish Taufgesinnter, the European name of what became the Apostolic Christian Church in America. Literally translated, Gemeinschaft Evangelish Taufgesinnter means “Community of Evangelical Anabaptists.”
At the age of sixteen Jacob came to America. It is my understanding that compulsory military service in Switzerland was the main reason his family sent him to America. The Anabaptists of Switzerland adhered quite literally to Jesus’ teachings on loving our enemies and nonresistance: “But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matthew 5:39). Jacob initially settled near Metamora, Illinois, and worked as a farm hand for six years on various farms in central Illinois. Many Swiss had emigrated to this area of the U.S. at that time, including Jacob’s older brother also named Melchoir. Melchoir returned to Switzerland two-years following Jacob’s arrival in the U.S., leaving Jacob without relatives in the new land. It is surmised that Jacob would have been familiar with our Swiss church brethren, who emigrated to central Illinois, providing comfort and support for Jacob.
At the age of nineteen Jacob Meister received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior into his life. During his conversion, Jacob was counseled by Bro. Benedict Weyeneth. Bro. Weyeneth was originally sent from Europe by Bro. Samuel Fröhlich in 1847, to assist a struggling Amish-Mennonite community in northern New York State. Soon churches were established under the name Apostolic Christian Church. According to the records of the Roanoke, Illinois church, Jacob was baptized in 1879. In the ensuing few years, Jacob found employment as a farm hand in Kansas, where many of our Swiss brethren were relocating from central Illinois. While in Harper, Jacob met Mary Otti, who was from a Swiss family from Bern, Switzerland. On August 2, 1886, Jacob and Mary were married. For the first eight years of their marriage, Jacob and Mary farmed in Harper, Kansas. In 1894, they purchased a farm in Burlington, Oklahoma from a man who had staked his claim on the land the previous year during the famous, government sponsored “Cherokee Run” in the Oklahoma Territory. Since Jacob had been unable to participate in the “Run,” he purchased 160 acres of land by paying the man his $200 entrance fee plus a $14 filing fee. Later, two small towns were built in the vicinity, namely Burlington and Driftwood. Jacob, Mary, and the first seven of their fifteen children, who were born in Harper, Kansas (including Grandpa Meister), began the arduous work of homesteading on the vast American prairie. Their first home was a one-room structure built of blocks made from the prairie sod, i.e., soil held tightly together by its tough mat of roots. This sod had to be cleared before the land could be cultivated. Ultimately, a conventional eight room farmhouse was built on the property in 1901.
Jacob grew into the ministry of the Gospel even as a young man in his twenties. Serving with Bro. Gottlieb Kurtz initially in the Harper, Kansas church and then in the Burlington, Oklahoma church, after both families relocated there at the time of the Cheroke Run. As an aside, it was Bro. Kurtz, an uncle of Becky’s Grandma Bossart, who officiated at the marriage of Jacob Meister to Mary Otti. The first services of the Burlington, Oklahoma church were in the Meister’s sod house with overflow in the barnyard. Family stories from the children of Jacob and Mary are replete with the spiritual legacy imparted unto Grandpa and his siblings. Many stories have been told of singing in the Meister home. Jacob loved to sing and was a very good singer it is told. Mary, we understand, had a very quiet, yet sweet, melodic voice. The Apostle Paul’s admonition to the church at Colosse reminds us of the spiritual tone set by Jacob in the Meister household: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Colossians 3:16). Sadly, Jacob’s beloved Mary passed away on July 7, 1916, preceding him in death by twenty-one years.
Tragically, a schism occurred in the church in 1906-07, which seems to have centered mainly on the ostracization of Eastern European emigrants due to their cultural differences. The Meister family was one of a minority of Apostolic Christian believers who took a more open-minded view and accepted the Eastern Europeans as their brothers and sisters. Consequently, families like the Meisters were ostracized along with the Eastern Europeans, making life extremely difficult at a time when communal farming and co-laboring was the custom. It is known, perhaps, only to our family, that Bro. Kurtz called Jacob to his bedside when dying to ask forgiveness and to reconcile. The Meister family became part of the church called the Apostolic Christian Church (Nazarene) to distinguish itself from the “mother church,” the Apostolic Christian Church of America. Services in the newly formed ACCN were held in the Meister home, where Jacob was the teacher and minister. Shortly after the schism, elders from Europe, who had oversight over both American churches, came to America to ordain elders in the ACCN, with Jacob being the first to be ordained in a service held in Mansfield, OH. In the decades that followed, Jacob traveled from Oklahoma, serving churches as far away as Mansfield and Canada, encouraging and nurturing believers. The family still has in their possession cards and letters to Jacob from church members around the country expressing gratitude to Jacob for his loving care for the church.
Little is known about Grandpa’s early life on the farm. We know the work was strenuous and constant. The average day at the Meister home began and ended in prayer and teachings from the Bible. A memory shared by Grandpa’s nephew, Melvin, is as follows: “The earliest memories of his (Jacob’s) children were how he gathered them and the Edward Otti children into the farm living room on Sunday mornings and patiently taught them Bible stories and gospel songs. He was an excellent singer, and his theme was always magnifying his great and glorious king, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Teachings from Deuteronomy depict the emphasis on God’s Word Grandpa and his siblings were exposed to growing up: “Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 11:18-19).
The only early childhood memory Grandpa shared with me was the fact that he was extremely privileged to attend school up through the sixth grade. His school was a one-room schoolhouse located a couple miles from the Meister farm. Grandpa must have been particularly trustworthy, as the school hired him to arrive one hour early to start the potbelly stove. For this he was paid five cents a week. Grandpa always amazed me with his ability to recite verses from the McGuffey Reader so many years after he had learned them. A letter by a beloved teacher who taught two generations of Meister children states in part: “Anyone could tell by the Meister children’s attitude and behavior they had received good training. I had, and still have, the highest regard for the family and have most pleasant memories of them.”
On a trip in 1969 to see what was left of the old homestead in Oklahoma, I remember Grandpa pointing out where his one-room schoolhouse had been located. A special memory is when Grandpa took us to what he called an “oasis,” where there was an old house. We knocked on the door and a woman answered it, and Grandpa said he used to go to school with someone that lived there. The person who opened the door was the daughter of a blind old woman, Grandpa’s classmate, who was still alive and said she recognized Grandpa’s voice.
The story of Grandpa’s military service begins with the harvesting of the wheat crop in Oklahoma in or about the year 1916. While some farming implements may have been used back in the early1900s, much of the harvesting was done manually using a tool called a scythe. Farming was done communally out of necessity. Having finished harvesting the wheat crop on the Meister farm and, perhaps other farms locally, Grandpa and two of his brothers set out to harvest wheat, working their way north as the crop matured. They sent the money they earned back home to help feed the very large Meister family. As the brothers worked their way north, they eventually ended up in Canada, where they learned of a homesteading opportunity in Athabasca Landing, an area 100 miles north of Edmonton. In order to claim the land, they were required to build a cabin and live on the land for a period of two years.
So, with the cabin having been built, the Meister boys began living off the land. I remember Grandpa telling me about the time he shot a black bear. The bear had two cubs that climbed a tall pine. Grandpa and his brothers chopped down the tree and captured the bear cubs and raised them as pets. Their nearest neighbor was a few miles away through deep woods, and civilization even much further. During one of their infrequent visits to “town,” several miles away, to stock up on supplies, Grandpa and his brothers learned they had received a telegram from their father. They were instructed to come home immediately, as they had been summoned by the government for conscription into the military. The U.S. was now entering World War I. Grandpa and his brothers did not have sufficient funds for the train fare home, so they boxed up their pet bear cubs and shipped them off to a circus in the US that had advertised in their small town for animals captured in the wild to be trained for the wild animal circus acts. Grandpa said they never heard back from the bear cubs and never mentioned how they raised the money. Eventually they were able to return home and obediently report to the draft board.
I never received the details of Grandpa’s conversion, but it happened during the time he had left home to harvest wheat and homesteading in Canada and before the time he appeared before the draft board. Grandpa told us he was baptized in a horse trough on the family farm. Unfortunately, we never asked for the date of his baptism or who else may have been baptized at the same time.
When Grandpa informed the draft board of his wish to claim conscientious objector status, he was denied and informed that he would be sent to prison unless he recanted. My understanding is that our church (ACC Nazarene) was not yet registered in Washington DC, which posed a problem for Grandpa’s request to be recognized as a CO. Further compounding the issue was the draft board accused Grandpa of being German and a German sympathizer (although he was Swiss) and the U.S., of course, was at war with Germany.
Grandpa never spoke of his ordeal in prison until we were in our high school years when we began showing interest in this subject. He initially was served a life sentence. He told me several times, “Mark, the happiest day in my life was when I was told my sentence was reduced to twenty-five years. I knew then that someday I would be allowed to leave.” While in prison, he and the other “German sympathizers,” mostly young Mennonite men, were subjected to cruel treatment. Grandpa told me that one boy was killed from torture involving pumping water down his throat. More than once, Grandpa and the other COs were instructed to dig their graves, were then blindfolded standing in front of a firing squad and then told to either renounce their CO status and take up a weapon or be shot. Grandpa said he then heard the “click” of the empty gun chambers. Most tortuous for Grandpa, however, were the bed bugs. He said that at night when it was totally dark, hundreds of these blood sucking creatures would emerge from the cracks in the walls of his cell and descend upon his body, biting him unmercifully. He said he would wind himself up in his sheet as tightly as possible, but this was to no avail. Grandpa was on cow milking duty at that time and every day, early in the morning, he would go to the barn to milk the cows. There happened to be a soap-like substance in the barn that was used for the milking process. Grandpa figured that this just might be effective in plugging the cracks of his cell walls, thus impeding the entry of the bed bugs. So, every day, Grandpa said he would conceal a little of the soap in the palm of his hand and carry it back to his cell, where he would cover the cracks. Eventually, it worked and Grandpa said this made him very happy. Another story I remember well had to do with Grandpa’s encounter with a notorious inmate, who was a large, nasty man imprisoned for murder. Apparently, this man relished ridiculing other inmates, particularly the COs. One day in the mess hall, Grandpa said he was seated directly across from this man. Running through his mind was the question, how will this man treat me when he sees that I pray before I eat. Grandpa said that the temptation was not to pray, but then the conviction came that he would be denying his Lord, so he mustered up the courage and prayed. Grandpa never mentioned what specifically happened next. I am sure he endured this heathen’s wrath and rejoiced that he was counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Christ. During this difficult prison experience Grandpa remembered and held onto the words of Christ: “Remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also” (John 15:20). I also remember Grandpa mentioning that he received many letters while in prison from his family, particularly Aunt Mary, as I recall. These letters, many of which still exist, made Grandpa very happy during his lonely prison time. Eventually, the war ended and the COs were released.
Grandpa modeled the words of Christ: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15). He never expressed bitterness toward the US government for his unjust imprisonment but only spoke of his experiences with soberness and a real earnestness to use his experiences to teach his grandsons about the power of forgiveness and the importance of living a meek and sanctified life. Rather than allow a root of bitterness to spring up in his heart, Grandpa put the abuse and indignities of unjust imprisonment behind him and, by the grace of God, lived a quiet, joyful, godly life. Grandpa shared with me that, while imprisoned, he promised the Lord that he would never miss a church service, should he ever be released from prison. I know, as evidence of his life and actions, that this promise did not stem from a belief that attending church was a way of being worthy of heaven, but to show his gratitude and undying devotion to his Lord and Savior.
According to a book written by Duane C.S. Stoltzfus entitled, “Pacifists in Chains,”1 imprisonment, persecution and even torture were common during World War I for the 504 conscientious objectors (CO) who were court-martialed during the war.2 The young men, like Grandpa were called pacifists. They were made up mostly of Mennonite, Brethren, Hutterites, and other German speaking Christian sects, who claimed CO status based on their faith and belief in nonresistance, as taught in God’s Word.
Hyperpatriotism spread throughout the land when the US entered the war. Those who refused to take up arms, particularly the German speaking immigrants, were persecuted by hateful mobs, sometimes confiscating property, such as farm animals and selling them for war bonds. These actions were intended to discourage other COs but instead were simply shameful examples of how the government failed to uphold the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religious expression and to safeguard U.S. citizens from torture and other forms of cruel and unusual punishment. The young objectors were considered “enemies on the homefront.”
At the inception of the draft, which targeted all young men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, a service exemption was established for any young man who was a “member of any well recognized religious sect or organization at present organized and existing and whose existing creed or principles forbid its members to participate in war in any form…”3 It is believed that the term “established churches” is possibly what led to Grandpa being refused an exemption. The entry to WWI was not long after the church schism and it is likely Grandpa’s church (Apostolic Christian Church Nazarene) was not recognized. The initial destination of all new recruits was to the various camps set up for training. It appears from the writings of Stoltzfus that the separation of COs from established churches from those from churches such as ours, which was not recognized, occurred at the training camps. It was there the COs had their first taste of persecution. “Confronted with what many officers regarded as disloyal insubordination, they responded forcefully with the measures of persuasion at their disposal: a kind word and polite request at the outset gave way to ridicule, bullying, intimidation, hazing, isolation, violence.”4 Grandpa never spoke of mistreatment at the training camp, but did say that he pleaded with the officers to allow him to undertake any noncombatant work whatsoever, such as truck driver or medic. This was refused, unfortunately, and he was shipped to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, the Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth being the nation’s chief military prison. “And in nothing terrified by your adversaries: which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God. For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake;” (Philippians 1:28-29).
A few stories from “Pacifists in Chains” serve to illustrate the inhumane treatment COs were subjected to at Leavenworth, including, most likely, Grandpa Meister.
After ordering COs to tear down an outhouse, “the sergeant said: ‘Now we’ll show you what your Jesus can do when you are in our hands.’ Soldiers threw one of then down into the cesspool, where he stood, chest deep in muck. They shoveled excrement on his head saying, ‘I baptize you in the name of Jesus.’”5
“The food was hard to eat, especially when worms appeared in the stew.”6
“The cell was about eight feet long by five feet wide, and eight feet high. The walls were of brick, the floor concrete. About six inches in front of the steel bars was a wooden partition, shutting out light and fresh air, except what came through the screen at the top and bottom of the door. In each cell there was a washbowl, a toilet, three blankets, and a tin cup. The primary furnishing was a wooden bed: a single board, about eighteen inches wide not quite six feet long. At mealtime, three pieces of bread and a cup of water passed through the bars.”6 At one point in the war the National Civil Liberties Bureau wrote to Secretary Baker of the Department of War on behalf of COs held in solitary confinement. “The letter described men hanging by their wrists from cell doors for nine hours a day, sleeping on cold cement floors, subsisting on bread and water.”7
“When the lights went out the bugs became more ravenous and the rats more active. There was no way to shut out the prison noises. Men talked in the corridors, their conversations mostly obscene and profane. Sharp cries came from the wing that held sexual deviants. And day and night I heard the cry of ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ - as regular as the ticking of the clock- the litany of some demented soldier, perhaps once healthy but a sensitive young man whose mind had cracked under military pressures and like a broken phonograph record continued to repeat the same note…At last the morning light, like a gray mist, filtered through the barred windows…There was a clang of bells, and the officer of the day made his rounds. The chains of the handcuffs rasped against the bars as they were applied to our wrists and another day of standing in shackles began.”8
The WWI Armistice was signed November 11,1918 and thereafter the COs were released from prison. However, not all U.S. citizens shared in the joy of their release. The Kansas City Star newspaper expressed outrage, suggesting the release of the COs was an insult to the men in uniform. Further, the Kansas House of Representatives berated the Secretary of War for releasing “slakers, cowards and traitors, and dangerous civic nondescripts.”9 Undoubtedly, Grandpa was aware of such scorn heaped upon him and others like him, who “rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name” (Acts 5:41).
The story of how our family ended up in Peoria is interesting. It originates with a plea from the elder of the Peoria church at that time (Bro. Meyer), asking for help on his farm, as his wife had just passed away. Practicing the Apostle Paul’s instructions in his letter to the Galatians: “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith (Galatians 6:10), Grandpa’s father felt a duty to aid this struggling brother and arranged to have Grandpa travel to Peoria to help on the Meyer farm. That same summer, Grandma (Lillian Kaufman from Chicago) was working at the Henry Baer Greenhouse. Her best friend, Elizabeth Sommer, who was the stepdaughter of Henry Baer, invited Grandma to spend the summer together working at the greenhouse. Grandpa did not provide additional details as to how exactly the Lord worked in his heart with respect to proposing marriage to Grandma. Grandma shared with me, however, that Grandpa’s proposal (delivered through the elder) came as a great surprise. Speaking of Grandma working in Peoria at the greenhouse, this reminds me of her story about when she was converting. She told me she was always singing after she gave her heart to the Lord. On one particular morning, she was leaving the home of Henry Baer and walking to the greenhouse for work. She happened to be singing, “Blessed Assurance Jesus in Mine,” and all of a sudden, the assurance that she had peace in her heart with her Creator overwhelmed her soul. When Grandma and Grandpa were first married, they lived in Chicago, where Grandpa worked for his father-in-law, John Kaufman, in his family furnace company. In 1929, Grandpa and Grandma moved to Peoria, where Grandpa went to work for the Henry Baer Greenhouse. Grandpa and Grandma raised five boys, David, Edward, Raymond, Paul and Walter.
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
(Micah 6:8)
Endnotes:
1 Duane C.S. Stoltzfus, Pacifists in Chains: The Persecution of Hutterites During the Great War (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).
2 Duane C.S. Stoltzfus, Pacifists in Chains: The Persecution of Hutterites During the Great War, 92.
3 Duane C.S. Stoltzfus, Pacifists in Chains: The Persecution of Hutterites During the Great War, 58.
4 Duane C.S. Stoltzfus, Pacifists in Chains: The Persecution of Hutterites During the Great War, 70.
5 Duane C.S. Stoltzfus, Pacifists in Chains: The Persecution of Hutterites During the Great War, 165.
6 Duane C.S. Stoltzfus, Pacifists in Chains: The Persecution of Hutterites During the Great War, 166.
7 Duane C.S. Stoltzfus, Pacifists in Chains: The Persecution of Hutterites During the Great War, 172.
8 Duane C.S. Stoltzfus, Pacifists in Chains: The Persecution of Hutterites During the Great War, 180.
9 Duane C.S. Stoltzfus, Pacifists in Chains: The Persecution of Hutterites During the Great War, 198.
mam, January 2026
