Family History

  Lots of tidbits from both sides of the Shantz and Haas families.

Beccy with Douglas Haas. He is a second cousin to my mother Clarene Haas Shantz.
I (Beccy) remember going to hear him perform with my grandmother Ruby Haas as an older child/young teen. He gave me some CD's of him playing the organ on this visit captured with the picture above (summer of 2014).

Douglas Haas. Organist, choral conductor, teacher, born in Kitchener, Ont, 25 Dec 1936; Kantor (Stuttgart) 1967. He studied piano with Earl Moss at the Royal Conservatory of Music and organ privately with Frederick Geoghegan until 1958. He continued organ training with Fernando Germani at the Academy of St Cecilia in Rome, and served 1959-60 as organist at All Saints Anglican Church in Rome. Studies followed at the Academy of Music in Stuttgart (where he was organist at the Johanneskirche) and with Anton Heiller at the Haarlem Academy in Holland. Douglas Haas returned to Canada in 1967 as music director at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Kitchener, where he has commissioned, composed, and performed many new works, played in weekly noon-hour recitals, and acted as host to an international organists' concert series. He founded in 1968, and conducted until 1972, the Kitchener Bach Choir.
Haas has performed on tour in Canada, the USA, England, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, and has been a guest artist with the Canadian Brass, the Canadian Chamber Ensemble, the Toronto Consort, the London SO (Orchestra London), the Stuttgart Bach Collegium, and the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra, among others. He has recorded and has appeared frequently on radio and TV. He joined the auxiliary faculty of Wilfrid Laurier University in 1976 and of Conrad Grebel College of the University of Waterloo in 1982, teaching organ, harpsichord and fortepiano. Hass has been accompanist of the Cambridge Girls' Choir and of Kitchener-Waterloo's Renaissance Singers. In 1992 Douglas Haas received the Kitchener-Waterloo Arts Award for musical excellence.

This bed, the dresser with mirror (below) and the bureau (bottom) is the bedroom suite of my grandparents, Willard & Ruby Haas.

 

 

The house were my grandmother Ruby Alberta Hamacher Haas
was born to Gideon and Louisa Hamacher. 

My grandparents sold their farm and bought this 3.2 acre parcel of land. 
This picture was taken in 1960.

They built the workshop first and lived in it while they built the house.
The moved into the house in 1957.

The back of the house.

When Grandma Katie passed away in 1981, Uncle Eldon bought the property and he and Auntie Shirley moved in. It was then re-zoned by the City of Kitchener and became 1720 Fischer Hallman Drive.  In approximately 2009, it was sold to a developer and when visiting in the summer of 2014 this is what the property looked like.

To the left of this shed is the location of the school house where my grandmother
Katie Hintz Shantz went to school. She only went up to Grade 5.

Our Old-Order Mennonite heritage: where old meets new!

(picture taken July 2014)

The parking lot was full!

Corn brooms at the doors: 'cleanliness is next to godliness'

There are so many sects of Mennonites. This group in the Waterloo area are called "black bumper Mennonites". It was interesting that there were a couple of horse and buggies parked in this church parking lot.  There is also a group dubbed the "hook and eye Mennonites" because wearing buttons was too worldly.

The house where Katie Hintz Shantz was born.
The home has several lean to additions since that time.

This butcher block work bench was made by my grandfather Sylvanus Shantz 

for his workshop.

When the property was sold, Uncle Eldon dismantled it, refinished it and installed it in his new shop which he built on his new property.

This hosta is growing in Grandpa Allan Shantz' s backyard. Hosta holds a special place in my heart because my Grandma Haas always had hosta growing in a flower bed along the size of the barn. It was beautiful! I planted some in Dickson Hill, took it to Webster, AB and now it is growing in Regina.