John Matthew Schwartz

For the first six years of their married life, the couple lived with John’s parents, Joseph and Sophie Schwartz.  John trapped furs and sold them for extra cash.   From 1937 to 1940, John raised oranges from the two trees that were growing on the east side of the house by the garden.  He raised peanuts, corn and cotton for Joseph, gathering everything by hand.  He gathered honey  from the beehives, grafted trees, plowed fields with four horses.  Pecan season was in the fall.  Living at the house was, Edith, a sister, Albina, a cousin Irene Loika (8-31-1923), Sophie and Joseph.  (Irene had come to live with Joseph and Sophie in 1928, after her mother had died in California. She was 3½ years old, speaking only English, where German was the predominant language.   John,  20 years old, took a liking to this little girl very much.)  In 1939, Irene was 15 when Sophie Schwartz, the only mother she had known, died. Irene continued to live at the Schwartz home and became the responsibility of John and Edith.  In 1940 Joseph turned over the farm to John,  and they raised their first crop in October 1940.  They continued to live on the farm, as Irene graduated from high school.  Irene stayed until 1943,  She moved back to California in 1944.