Albert and Anna Black Stallman

Children:   Frances  Barbara   Pegge,  Sandy  Eddie

There is probably so much I don't know about my father, Albert Theodore Stallman, the fifth of eleven children born to Clemens Anton and Anna Mary (Schelle) Stallman, Jan. 1, 1908, at Breda, Carroll County, Iowa. He moved to Lyman County, SD with his parents in the spring of 1910. They lived there until 1913, then spent a few years in Aurora County (Plankinton and White Lake) before returning to the farm in 1918.

    Albert attended Cooper School south of the farm through the eighth grade. I don't think he grew to be six feet tall, but most of the other Stallman men did. Then he quit to help on the farm and work for other neighboring farmers to help supplement the family income. I believe at one time he became a partner with his mother on the farm, according to some of the documents I have found.

Ann Black Stallman Cordry

1991, Farmington, NM

    Anna was born Aug, 30, 1921, at Lower Brule, Lyman County, SD to Edwin Wesley and Esther Belle CREASEY Black. She attended Prairie School northeast of Reliance while the family lived in the area known as the "Buttes". In 1937 the family moved into Reliance and she attended Reliance High School until she married Albert at the age of 17 years. Oct. 3, 1938,  Anna Katherine Black married him in the rectory of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Reliance. They were members of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Reliance.

He was a hard working man as well as she was a hard-working woman. I heard a story once about how she and Albert's aunt, Anna Schelle, put up hay all day in the hot July sun. Both of them were eight months pregnant!  Albert and Ann  did as everyone else did, raised their own crops, livestock, chickens, gardens, not to mention children. Sunday mornings were set aside for church and Sunday afternoons friends came out for picnics, target shooting, seigning fish from the dam, etc. I remember him working in the field; combining, threshing, shocking cane and catching baby bunnies for us. Mom carried lunch to him in the fields. He always dunked his sandwich into his quart Mason jar of hot coffee. I thought he did it because he liked the way it tasted. He may have, but I have also come to believe that he may have done it when the bread became dried up and the coffee softened it back up. On the tractor or on the side mirror on the door of the truck always hung a metal jug wrapped in wet burlap to keep his drinking water cool. We would gather around him in the shade of the tractor or truck as he had his lunch. This is a good memory of my father and we all need to savor the good ones, don't we?

They farmed on their farm four miles straight south of Reliance (owned by Carrol Stewart in 1999) until 1950 when they purchased the HUSMAN Cafe in Reliance and sold their farm and moved to town. Above the cafe were rooms (I'm going to say six, but maybe it was four) (down the hall) and all across the front was the master suite (bedroom/living room.) They had a very good business and worked at it very hard. Every Sunday after church the cafe would come alive with hungry parishioners. Out behind the cafe was a huge barn where our dad stored two-foot blocks of ice he harvested from the Reliance dam. It filled over half of the two-story shed. The ice blocks were packed in sawdust and sold for use in ice boxes (refrigeration.) The building was a wonderfully cool place to play once it started getting hot out. Men would gather on the south side of the cafe to play horseshoes.

The marriage was dissolved in 1952. Ann moved  to New Mexico where she married Melvin "Fuzz" Cordry and remains there at this time (2000). They had two children:

  "Fuzz"  Cordry         Kelly, Linda and Brian

Kelly Duane, b. Nov. 22, 1953, at Farmington, NM. He graduated from high school in Farmington. He married Linda Ord and they had one son, Brian Cordry. They divorced after moving to Denver, Colo. One morning  he was on an interstate highway, riding his motorcycle to his place of employment (on his day off,) when someone dropped a dog from an overpass. The dog landed in his lap and after struggling to get out of the traffic and to the safety of the median, struck a section of concrete that had been removed from the median and was catapulted into the traffic. He died in July of 1992, at Denver. 

Karel Ann, b. July 23, 1957, at Rawlins, Carbon County, Wyo. She attended school in Farmington and there she married Chuck Krispin and continues to live there. They had one son, Chase.  Divorced.

Karel Krispin and Chase

ca. 1988

Albert and his children stayed in the cafe for a year or so. During the winter months he built feed troughs  in the cafe and sold them to the farmers. During the warm months he was the local house mover in Lyman and Brule counties, a trade he worked at until his death. His five children were eventually sent out to live with his mother and sister,  Anna Stallman and Victoria,  and the cafe was sold to Richard LaRoche.

My father passed away Mar. 20, 1962 at his home in Reliance. He is buried in St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery north of Reliance beside his parents, brothers, Paul and Ray, and sister, Victoria.
 

Frances, Barbara, Sandy, Karel, Eddie, Pegge, Kelly

ca 1975, Farmington, NM