DNRC/Montana Historical Society Oral History Project
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- Interviewee: Margaret Floersinger
- Interviewer: Lorrie Grosfield
- Date of Interview: August 17, 2016
- Location: Conrad, Montana
Introduction
This interview highlights Margaret Floersinger’s experiences farming and ranching near Conrad, Montana. The oral history provides fascinating details about Margaret’s early life in England, her move to Montana after World War II, and her life raising a family in rural Montana.Margaret’s experiences help provide a much clearer understanding of the important role women have played in Montana’s agricultural and ranching history.
Interview
[00:00:00] Lorrie Grosfield: Good afternoon, my name is Lorrie Grosfield and I'm from Pondera County Conservation. Today is August 17, 2016 and I'm here to interview Margaret Floersinger in Conrad, Montana. My first question Margaret, can you tell me a little bit about your birth, the place, your family, if you were involved in farming?
[00:00:35] Margaret Floersinger: No, I was not involved with farming when I was a child. I was born in the Isle of Man in the British Isles.
[00:00:54] Lorrie Grosfield: Could you tell a little bit about your parents. What were their names?
[00:01:01] Margaret Floersinger: My father's name was Harold Howard Sanderson. My mother's name was Julia Macken Sanderson.
[00:01:19] Lorrie Grosfield: Could you describe your siblings.
[00:01:22] Margaret Floersinger: I had two brothers; one was two years older than I, and I had another brother that was four years younger.
[00:01:33] Lorrie Grosfield: Do you care to mention a fond memory of your family growing up?
[00:01:42] Margaret Floersinger: Yes, I can. During the war, World War II, both my brothers and I were sent away to evacuation, and that was in Wales because of the bombing. Then I came back because I did not have a good experience, and my father and mother brought us all back to our homes.
[00:02:19] Lorrie Grosfield: Were you very young then?
[00:02:20] Margaret Floersinger: I was ten.
[00:02:25] Lorrie Grosfield: I'm glad you got to come back. Do you have any memories about your grandparents? Were they farmers?
[00:02:36] Margaret Floersinger: No, neither were. My mother's family were from Ireland from the south of Ireland, and my father's family were born and raised in England. They had hotels. My mother was born in a thatch roof cottage in Ireland.
[00:03:06] Lorrie Grosfield: Did you grow up in that same town you were born in?
[00:03:08] Margaret Floersinger: No.
[00:03:17] Lorrie Grosfield: I'm going to move along to some questions about your schooling.
[00:03:33] Margaret Floersinger: I was educated in England and Wales. I went to a private girls school in Wales. I graduated with a degree in bacteriology.
[00:04:00] Lorrie Grosfield: Were you involved in any activities with that degree in bacteriology?
[00:04:05] Margaret Floersinger: Yes, I worked at a lab in the process of developing streptomycin. That was just after penicillin had been discovered.
[00:04:23] Lorrie Grosfield: Oh my goodness Margaret. I'm so glad you did that, and probably saved a lot of lives. Would you tell us a little bit about how you met your husband and your married life?
[00:04:41] Margaret Floersinger: Yes, I met my husband at an engagement party of a girlfriend of mine. He was in the United States Air Force. He was working on the [unclear] airlifts. That was right after World War II. We were married in 1949 and came over here to Montana. That's when my farming experience started.
[00:05:18] Lorrie Grosfield: Was he a farmer?
[00:05:18] Margaret Floersinger: Oh yes, he was born on a farm and raised. All of his family were farmers.
[00:05:29] Lorrie Grosfield: Do you have some things you would want to tell us about your early life on the farm?
[00:05:39] Margaret Floersinger: Because it was quite different, I was born and lived in a large city, nothing to do with farming whatsoever, when I came over here I suddenly realized I had to learn to be a farmer. I learned a lot. I'd never driven a tractor before or bailed a bail of hay.
[00:06:14] Lorrie Grosfield: I can't imagine. Did it take quite a bit to run and operate your farm?
[00:06:23] Margaret Floersinger: It was an irrigated farm. First of all, we took care of Tom's family's farm and later on in life we bought our own land. It was irrigated.
[00:06:44] Lorrie Grosfield: Was there a division of labor of what was considered your job and his job for running and maintaining the farm?
[00:06:53] Margaret Floersinger: No, my husband did most of the work on the farm. I would just help when needed, more or less running for parts to town.
[00:07:14] Lorrie Grosfield: What activities did you enjoy the most in your experiences there with agriculture?
[00:07:20] Margaret Floersinger: We were involved with Farmers Union, Tom's family was, and so therefore I got involved with that. We were very active in that. A lot of 4H things. I have three children and my son was an FFA and my husband was an FFA. We were very involved in agriculture.
[00:08:03] Lorrie Grosfield: What are some of your fond memories of those times, Margaret?
[00:08:18] Margaret Floersinger: Well, I think it was just belonging to so many of the organizations, was something I enjoyed. My husband was involved in the Camp for Citizenship out in New York City. He served on their board. It was just a lot of that,it was just being with people.
[00:08:56] Lorrie Grosfield: Did you feel anything that you envied or missed from living in a rural life than in the city?
[00:09:04] Margaret Floersinger: Yes, because of my background, being able to go the opera and Shakespeare’s plays and what have you, it was pretty hard for me to adjust. I did a good job of adjusting when I come to think of it. Then we started getting some of these, like the concerts in Great Falls. I worked on those particular things and just being able to follow some of the things I missed.
[00:09:54] Lorrie Grosfield: Were there any significant events that impacted your life during this married time on the farm?
[00:10:06] Margaret Floersinger: You know I can't think...I don't know if this even pertains to that question, is I remember I was out on the tractor helping my husband and when I went back to the house in the evening to start my evening meal the phone rang. It was my mother from England and she said, "Where have you been?" and I said, "Well, I was out on the tractor all afternoon." I think she lost it on the other end. She said, "I didn't raise you to work in a field." It was a surprise, I guess, and I always laughed about that. It wasn't such a bad thing, you know. She was just so surprised.
[00:11:11] Lorrie Grosfield: Maybe she though you were inside more.
[00:11:14] Margaret Floersinger: She just didn't understand. It was a funny incident I always remembered.
[00:11:23] Lorrie Grosfield: Did she come to visit here in Conrad?
[00:11:27] Margaret Floersinger: She did come here.
[00:11:30] Lorrie Grosfield: She saw what the farm was like?
[00:11:30] Margaret Floersinger: Yeah.
[00:11:33] Lorrie Grosfield: Did she approve of the farm?
[00:11:37] Margaret Floersinger: Yes, when she seen it she was fine with it. After all, her background was agriculture, but they didn't have a farm so to speak.
[00:11:57] Lorrie Grosfield: Did you get to go back to England to visit?
[00:11:57] Margaret Floersinger: I've been back; I just recently went back two years ago. Before that, no, I was busy raising my family.
[00:12:16] Lorrie Grosfield: If you were going to describe what a farming lifestyle was to someone that was a non agricultural person, like a friend when you were in your bacteriologist degree, how would you describe the farming lifestyle compared to their lifestyle might be?
[00:12:42] Margaret Floersinger: I think it's a wonderful lifestyle. I think it's the best grounding for young people to grow up in.
[00:12:55] Lorrie Grosfield: That’s very good. Were there any locations on the farm that were special to you?
[00:12:59] Margaret Floersinger: My garden, I always raised a big huge garden.
[00:13:11] Lorrie Grosfield: Was that garden comparable to anything in England that brought back memories for you?
[00:13:16] Margaret Floersinger: Well, you know a lot of times I kind of yearned for the kind of gardens they had over there, but you can make that happen here, too.
[00:13:28] Lorrie Grosfield: You had three sons on the farm?
[00:13:31] Margaret Floersinger: No, I have a boy and two girls.
[00:13:40] Lorrie Grosfield: Okay, I'm sorry, were the chores divided amongst those three children, the girls and the son differently?
[00:13:47] Margaret Floersinger: No, not really. I can't remember that they really, they just helped. My younger daughter Heather liked the farm better than the other two.
[00:14:11] Lorrie Grosfield: Oh she did. What were her favorite parts?
[00:14:15] Margaret Floersinger: Raising her horse and going to 4H and showing her horses.
[00:14:23] Lorrie Grosfield: Are any of them involved in farming or ranching or agriculture now?
[00:14:31] Margaret Floersinger: My daughter Julia is. Her husband has a farm out in Dutton.
[00:14:35] Lorrie Grosfield: But not Heather, the one who liked it so much.
[00:14:40] Margaret Floersinger: She followed politics. She's in Richmond, Virginia.
[00:14:50] Lorrie Grosfield: Are any of your grandchildren in farming, or interested?
[00:14:56] Margaret Floersinger: I have a granddaughter that is attending vet school in Bozeman. She wants to become a veterinarian. Another granddaughter knows she is going to be a teacher.
[00:15:14] Lorrie Grosfield: Now I'm going to go on to our last set of questions on conservation. I would like to ask you your views on conservation with your farm, for example, with water or soil or planting trees and any other things that you can think of that might help our Montana History Project involving conservation in agriculture.
[00:15:52] Margaret Floersinger: Well I agree with most of what they're doing as far as the land is concerned. The logistics of it was not my problem. I just didn't have much to do with that. I'm for the farmer believe me.
[00:16:21] Lorrie Grosfield: Okay, that’s very good. Have you seen changes in conservation, things that you've been hearing about that are different then when you were first involved in agriculture?
[00:16:35] Margaret Floersinger: Oh I think so. There is a great deal of difference. I can't pinpoint them right now, but one thing is the machinery. The change in the machinery, I can't believe it, how much that has grown, because the farms are bigger, too.
[00:17:02] Lorrie Grosfield: Margaret, were there any connections between your studies in bacteriology and agriculture?
[00:17:19] Margaret Floersinger: I didn't understand that one.
[00:17:21] Lorrie Grosfield: Did your degree in bacteriology help you or add anything to the farming in any way?
[00:17:31] Margaret Floersinger: No not really. Not really because unless I studied plants and things like that, and I didn’t' do that.
[00:17:44] Lorrie Grosfield: It didn't have an impact on livestock or anything like that?
[00:17:45] Margaret Floersinger: No.
[00:17:48] Lorrie Grosfield: Did you miss working in that lab?
[00:17:49] Margaret Floersinger: Oh yes, I did miss it, but I got over it eventually.
[00:17:58] Lorrie Grosfield: That is wonderful that you studied that, just wonderful.
[00:18:04] Margaret Floersinger: Well, it was just what I was interested in at the time when I was in England.
[00:18:15] Lorrie Grosfield: Is the farm area still in your family?
[00:18:18] Margaret Floersinger: No, my husband developed Alzheimer’s a number of years ago, in 2000, and so we sold the farm. He died about eight years later.
[00:18:37] Lorrie Grosfield: I'm sorry Margaret. I think this will probably be the last question because this has to do with something you said. It says on our questions sheet: What would your mother and/or grandmother think of you in this history project on agriculture?
[00:18:59] Margaret Floersinger: Well they would probably be amazed that I was even sitting here. I didn't know my mother's mother that well. I never met her. She lived in rural Ireland and in those days you didn't travel like you do know. My other grandmother, she was a little different, and me being on a farm would not have been a delight to her by any means, but that didn't matter to me. She was just that kind of a person.
[00:19:37] Lorrie Grosfield: Different lifestyle.
[00:19:40] Margaret Floersinger: She was from a very wealthy family, and so that kind of think didn't interest her.
[00:19:56] Lorrie Grosfield: Did you meet her?
[00:19:58] Margaret Floersinger: Oh yes, I had quite a bit to do with her. She was not very friendly to my mother because she was Irish. Just like here, we have our differences about people, which we shouldn't.
[00:20:24] Lorrie Grosfield: Do you know what part of Ireland that was?
[00:20:26] Margaret Floersinger: It was County Meath, it's spelled Drogegda, but I don't know the Gaelic.
[00:20:48] Lorrie Grosfield: I recently did some genealogy on my great, great grandpa from Tiperary.
[00:20:52] Margaret Floersinger: Oh really?
[00:20:52] Lorrie Grosfield: I can't even imagine to go there.
[00:20:56] Margaret Floersinger: Oh it's beautiful. The island is an absolutely beautiful place. The green, you think everything is green here, but it's a beautiful green, bright, bright, there is nothing like it.
[00:21:15] Lorrie Grosfield: I would love to see it. Well those questions were just purely a direction to go. Is there anything you'd like to say? I know your story is completely different than other women in agriculture because you came from a different country.
[00:21:41] Margaret Floersinger: Well yes, and a different background. I lived in a city and my father was an electrical engineer and so we followed his type of work. My background is just from the time I got married to now.
[00:22:10] Lorrie Grosfield: And there were many years that you were on the farm. Is that correct?
[00:22:15] Margaret Floersinger: Yes, sixty-three years, from 1949 until my husband passed away.
[00:22:26] Lorrie Grosfield: My goodness.
[00:22:28] Margaret Floersinger: It's a long time.
[00:22:30] Lorrie Grosfield: A whole lifetime.
[00:22:33] Margaret Floersinger: It is. There were times when I didn't enjoy it as much as I would if I could just go off to a concert or something, but most of the time I had children and I wanted them to have the opportunity that they had. It's a wonderful life. I hate to see farms...
[00:23:06] Lorrie Grosfield: Bought up by big corporations.
[00:23:09] Margaret Floersinger: Oh yeah, I hate to see that because young people, they need the land.
[00:23:20] Lorrie Grosfield: That is very good Margaret, and you believed it was very good for children.
[00:23:26] Margaret Floersinger: Most definitely. It's one of the best ways to live, fresh air and everything else. You can get dirty, too! I think it's a wonderful life for kids and families. I hope it never comes to the point where, actually seeing smaller farms disintegrating into big ones. I don't like that. To see these young men that are wanting to go into farming. I have a grandson from Dutton who is working on a ranch right now. When he was a little boy he used to go out with my husband to see the cows. We had cows, too. He had it in his mind from the age of four that he was going to be a cowboy, and he never lost that wish. When he graduated he told his mother, I'm not going to college, I am going to go and find myself a farm, and he did. He has such a work ethic. Sometimes I wish he'd relax. Every time his mother says to him, "Are you coming home for the weekend?" he says, "No mom, I've got work to do." He's a workaholic.
[00:25:20] Lorrie Grosfield: Is he in farming?
[00:25:20] Margaret Floersinger: Yes, the people are good friends, they have taken care of him so much, he is building up his herd, he's getting his cows, and he's doing just as exactly what he wants.
[00:25:39] Lorrie Grosfield: Here is Montana?
[00:25:42] Margaret Floersinger: In Montana, yeah.
[00:25:44] Lorrie Grosfield: Do you think he'll be able to get some land?
[00:25:46] Margaret Floersinger: I think so, I think that will happen. His father has some land, too. He'll always be a part of that. He wrote a story in high school about taking a bull and riding it. It's just like him, anything agriculture, you see one out of the family has done exactly what he wants to do. He just was not interested in going past high school.
[00:26:32] Lorrie Grosfield: To me that is one of the greatest things in life, to be able to do what you really want to do.
[00:26:40] Margaret Floersinger: You know, you're always pushing these kids to say well, you've got to go to college. No you don't have to go to college. Maybe we should have more schools that will teach young people to do other things besides being a psychiatrist or doctor or dentist. We need the other people, the ones who work with their hands. Those kind of schools I'm all for.
[00:27:15] Lorrie Grosfield: That would be wonderful.
[00:27:19] Margaret Floersinger: We've got them in England. If you want to be a mechanic, I can remember, when I was a librarian here for thirty years, and when the missiles were here we had a lot of young people coming into the library. This one young person came in and he used to talk to me and we'd banter back and forth. I can remember him saying he loved eagles. His passion was eagles. He said, "I don't have to go to college to study eagles, do I?" I said, "Well maybe some kind of a school because you've got to understand the bird." He said, "I’m not interested in going to college to get a degree in something I'm not enjoying." So you see what kids feel in their hearts. I said, "Well go for it!"
[00:28:26] Lorrie Grosfield: I wonder what happened to him?
[00:28:26] Margaret Floersinger: I've been curious ever since because shortly after they started dismantling, they didn't stay here for very long. We had a lot of young people from all over the United States staying here and going to school with the missile programs. I've got a book I want to show you while we're still on that.
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