My dad, John Ditgen, was born in Trier, Germany, in 1874. He was 7 years 
  old when he came to America with his family in 1881. They settled in Nickerson,
  Kansas., later moving to Andale, Kansas, where he met and married Amelia Armbruster.
  They lived on a farm near Andale, and three of their children were born there,
  Thresia, Anna, and Albert. In 1905 they moved to Barber county and settled on
  a farm 4 miles east of Medicine Lodge, living there until 1950, when they
  retired and moved to Sharon. While living on this farm, seven more children 
  were born: Cecelia, Rosa, Roman, Julius, Alfred, Ralph, and Lucille.
     John and Amelia, better known as Mollie, with four other couples helped
  establish the St. Boniface Church at Sharon. In fact, Cecelia was the first
  child baptized there.
     The older children went to school at Walstead School, about 2 miles south
  of the farm. The middle children went to parochial school in Sharon, driving
  a horse and buggy to school. Later Ralph and I occasionally walked the 8 miles
  or tried to catch the "bread wagon" or neighbors going to or from town. However,
  most of the kids near us walked to school the 8 miles.
     Times were hard, but we had lots of fun as a family. I remember when Dad
  put up the 6-volt electricity plant which was run by the windmill. If the
  wind blew hard, we could listen to the radio for awhile. The day I remember
  most clearly was butchering day. Dad had the only scalding vat in the neighbor-
  hood. So we were up before the sun to heat the water and have it ready by the
  time the neighbors arrived with their hogs to be slaughtered. Ours were first,
  then we could all pitch in, grind the meat, and get started rendering the lard
  and filling the casings with sausage. Mom always had fresh baked bread and
  skillets of liver with the tenderloins cooking on the old wood stove. So we
  really had it pretty good. The one thing I really disliked doing was picking
  up the corn cobs out of the hog pen. These were used to start the fire in the
  cook stove.
     Wash day was another all day job. We carried water into the wash house to
  fill a large copper boiler and carried wood and cobs to heat the water. The
  white clothes were boiled with lye soap Mom had made, then put in the washing
  machine. It was a long drawn out job, but we always had nice white clothes. 
  Hanging the clothes on the clothes line was fine in summer, but winter time
  they froze before we had them hung up.
     Now the children are all married, except Roman. Thresia married Nicki Ricke
  and have 5 children. Anna and Tony Rausch have 3 children; Albert and Gladys 
  (Kidd) have 4 children; Cecelia and Arthur Ricke have 3 children; Rosa and
  Louis Dohm have 6 children; Julius and Rose (Dohm) have 1 child; Alfred and
  Monica (Koerner) have 4 children; Ralph and Margaret (Harding) have 1 child.
  I, Lucille, married Andy Stevenson and had 1 child.
  
                
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas,  pg. 157 
     Submitted by: Lucille Ditgen Stevenson