By the Sweat of His Brow

Book excerpt: “If I had promised to be a priest and kept my word, today I would be . . . a feted-up, high-living hypocrite in the so-called vineyard of the Lord, and not a farmer . . . earning his bread by the sweat of his brow.” Defying his Catholic parents’ insistence that he join the clergy, twenty-year-old R. M. Probstfield emigrates from the Rhineland to Minnesota. After some continental rambling and the federal government forcing Native Americans from the Red River Valley, a decade toiling for the Hudson’s Bay Company persuades him that the Valley’s rich soil offers opportunity, and as one of the earliest settlers establishes Oakport Farm near the well-timbered Red River. Documented from a multi-generational journal and illustrated with vintage photographs, By the Sweat of His Brow sets the Probstfield family’s daily activities in the context of state and national agricultural, social, and political history and opens a window on rural life at the eastern edge of the Great Plains from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. This meticulously researched, eminently readable book colorfully depicts a complicated patriarch, loving wife, and eleven children eking out a living. It will appeal to history buffs and scholars alike.