A few personal facts. One of my great great grandmothers came from Germany. Her life was so difficult she committed suicide. My grandfather for some time ran 9 miles each morning and evening to work. Not bragging just necessity to make a living around 1900. The amount of work it took to clear land by hand was unbelievable to us today. No wonder life expectancy was under 40. Dying was a fact of life like we can not understand. The winter brought puneunomia. The theft of two milk cows could be the difference in life and death of a family.
The following was written by the youngest daughter of my great-great-great grandparents.
My parents left Germany in the year 1845. Their plan was to settle down in Indiana. Some friends of theirs who traveled with them had friends living in Indiana and wanted my parents to settle down where they were going. They came across New York State on a canal boat along the Erie Canal. While on the ocean, a baby girl was born. Mother knew the child was dying when she was two weeks old. She pleaded with father to get off at the first landing they would come to, which was Cleveland Ohio. The same night the baby died. They were in a hotel and the owner was very kind to them. He saw to it that the baby got a grave and coffin and that the baby had a decent burial. Mother often expressed the wish that she could go back there. She thought she could find the grave. They were told in 1869 that the cemetery was still there and in the middle of the city. A daughter two years of age had been buried in Germany. One brother, John, was five years old when they left the fatherland. The new friend in Cleveland advised father not to continue his journey to Indiana, which was a long way off, but said he would help him find a job, and when father would have more money, then they could look for land. They thought this was the sensible thing to do as they were rather low on funds. The man found him a job as a shipping clerk at fifty cents a day. Father had steady work for three years. Then the depression of 1848 came and all business shut down and banks closed. Father thought the only and best thing he could do was move to Wisconsin. A friend of his lived there who owned 80 acres of land and had written to father to come and buy the land. The land was located five miles north of Port Washington. The transfer of the land was signed by the President of the United States (James Polk) and was listed as being located in Washington County (which part is now Ozaukee), and in the Territory of Wisconsin.
The family was supposed to land at Port Washington, but there was no landing place, so they took them to Sheboygan. There they hired a team of horses and a lumber wagon to take their "Hab' und gut". It consisted of two large iron bound chests which they had made in Germany, and four chairs which are still in existence. They have never come apart as they were put together without being glued. They wore down very low from being on the rough floor -- the floor having been made of logs sawed lengthwise. It was difficult to sweep the floor.
Well, my poor mother described the awful forsaken place to which they arrived on that bleak, dark, November day. The trees were so large that when they were leafed out, they could not see the sky unless they looked straight up. With scarcely any provisions, they thought they would have to starve. They then had three small children, as two sons, Henry and George, were born in Cleveland. George was three months old when they came to Wisconsin. After father paid for the land and ten dollars for the one room cabin, he had only a little money left. He knew he would have to save that for taxes and the few most necessary things they had to have. The roof was so poor that when the little boys got up after a blizzard, they had to shake the snow from their pants before putting them on. There were no oxen or tools of any kind to start clearing the land. They did not have a cow for three years. They wondered how they would get a job to earn provisions. Then father was told to walk four miles through the timber to the southwest and he would come to what is now called the Milwaukee River. Across the river he would find a few American families who hired men to clear their land. There was no money, but they would pay in what they called due bills, which could be taken to the store and traded for what you needed. He managed to get there and ask for work. They said there was plenty of work but no money. So, in lieu of cash, they agreed to give him provisions consisting of flour, bacon, turnips, potatoes and barley to roast for coffee which they drank black. Mother said that if only we had all the four we needed for bread. Often the flour got so low and she did not know if father would be able to get more flour before the bread was all gone. Father would leave on Monday morning and get back Saturday night. It was so dark in the woods that he would lose direction so John and mother would call and yoo-hoo until finally they got an answer, and keep it up until he got home. On one dark, rainy night father lost his way and went directly from home. He said he never would have reached home that night, had it not been for a cow bellowing for her calf. When he heard that, he followed the direction of the sound and landed a ways from home.
Father did not always have work from the so-called "lazy Yankees." The thrifty German immigrants thought the older, richer settlers were very lazy to hire their work done for them, although they appreciated the chance to earn provisions. When no hired out, father would chop trees on his own land. So after a time, there was a little clearing around the cabin so we could see sunshine. Mother hoed around the stumps and sowed a few handfuls of wheat. When it was ripe, she cut it with a sickle.
Mother was so afraid of the Indians. They would come around out of curiosity, walk into the cabin and look around. If there was some little thing they spied, they would let her know by signs and motions that they wanted it. So what few things she had, she hid in the big chest, out of sight. Mother had a few picture cards that she brought along from the old country, and o, how glad we as younger children were when we were allowed to look at them, usually on Sunday, Christmas, Easter or on Good Friday. We also had to make sure that our hands were washed clean. It makes my heart ache to see so many pretty pictures with such lovely colors thrown away when we would have walked miles for a pretty colored card.
When a few years had passed, some of the settlers had clearings. Mother picked wild strawberries and raspberries and walked seven miles to Port Washington to sell them. Straight it would have been five miles, but there was no direct path. She had to go out of her way to get to the right road with a pail or basket of berries on each arm. She would get form 2 1/2 to 7 cents a quart from the people in town. The money she would save for taxes and for most necessary things. She wore out so many dresses in the berry bushes. The men wore out their clothing working in the woods. Mother would have to put patch on patch. In time there wasn't anything to patch with. Often she said, "If only some one would bring me things to patch with." She said that hope was the only thing that kept her courage up, -- thinking that some day it would be better. She would have to leave so early, before it was daylight in the woods. They had no clock. One time she awoke and saw how light it was. She thought she had overslept and yet it seemed she had just gone to bed. She was so very tired, but she hurriedly got ready with her two loads on her arms, for she knew that she would have to get ride of her berries and be home in time to get her baskets ready for the next day. The season was so short. After she got a short way from home, it became pitch dark. She could not see her hand before her face. Now what would she do? Turn around and go back home? No, she would no more get home and she would have to start out again. The moon light had deceived her. She walked on in the darkness. When she got to Port on the bluff where the Catholic Church now stands, she saw the first pink ray of the morning sun. She sat there and wept and waited until long after the smoke started to rise from the chimneys and then waited some more. She did not want to be impolite and go to her customers before they had had their breakfasts. After a sleepless night, she had to hurry home and repeat not only the picking of the berries, but she had six people to wash for and had to leave something for her family on which to exist.
After three years, they had saved thirty dollars to buy a cow. Father walked to Milwaukee and bought a cow and drove her home. The family was all anticipation. Mother had told her what good things they would have when they had milk, so they all went to meet father and the cow. He drove her into the yard and milked her. Lo and behold, she never gave another drop of milk. She was an old strippling that never would be fresh again. Father sold her to the butcher for nine dollars and was "out" 21 dollars. Then heavy hearted, they had to wait another year before they could buy another cow. We might say, "Why not borrow money?" yes, they did borrow 100 dollars from a man living nearby. She showed them 100 dollars and took 20 dollars from it, saying that this is the interest for one year. With the remaining money, they bought a yoke of oxen so that they could speed up the clearing of the land.
Mother said living was very cheap in Cleveland. They enjoyed the fresh fruit. The prices were so low, especially on peaches. Mother brought a few apple seeds from Cleveland and planted them. One of the seeds grew to be a fair-sized tree and bore a few apples. One apple stayed on the tree and ripened. Mother cut the apple in as many pieces as there were children and grown ups just so they would know how an apple tasted. Little taste they would have gotten! Later on they planted wild plum stones. When they were little trees, they had a man come over and graft tame plums on them with little twigs they brought with them. We had lovely tame plums. We picked them by the bushel. We had now way of keeping them so whoever wanted them were welcome to them. At threshing time, we set a tubful outside so they could eat them and fill their pockets. I remember the first peach Uncle Jake and I ever tasted. Father came from Port with the big lumber wagon. It always seemed a great event to us little children to run out and meet anyone of the family when they came from town. Father told us to look in the back of the wagon box and eat one. They were clingstone and hard. They smelled better than they tasted. A boat had arrived in Port while father was there.
I was about 13 years old when I tasted the first orange, pineapple and banana. My sister, Helen, brought them along from Milwaukee in 1875 when our father died. He was only 62 years old but had endured hardships enough to be over eighty years old. He, with my brothers Henry and George, stood in the water, getting trees felled for logs with which to build a barn. They had no rubber boots and the ice was not strong enough to hold them up. That was how father contracted Rheumatism and later palsy in both hands. Both hands trembled so that he had great difficulty in shaving himself, but he always managed to feed himself It made him extremely nervous. Father took sick the first year or two after their arrival. An American neighbor lady heard about it and sent a pan of milk for him. That was the first milk the children had ever seen. Brother Henry said, "I am sick too. I want some white coffee too." The same family gave Sister Helen a rag doll which was the only doll we ever had to play with. We always felt grateful and never forgot the kindness that lady bestowed upon us. This family soon left for their former home in the east. The ship on which they were returning for a visit floundered and sank within a half mile south of Port Washington one stormy night. Later her body washed ashore and was identified. No one knows how many passengers were drowned. A small baby was rescued whose parents much have drowned, as no one every found out who the child was. It was the only survivor. Many years afterward the anchor of the ship was found in the bottom of the lake. It can be seen in the Port Washington cemetery.
When our parents came to Wisconsin, Port Washington was a large as Milwaukee. It was not known which of the two towns would sometime become a large city. Like other towns of its day, the Civil War brought draft riots to Port Washington. The rioters got crazy drunk and started out to demolish things and forced other people to join them in their lawlessness. They meant to set fire to all the protestant churches. They pulled a lawyer's wife with her new-born baby out of bed and slit the featherbed open in their hunt for the lawyer. There was no way of sending messages so a citizen took a horse and rode to Milwaukee to get the militia which luckily was stationed there. The rioters put a cannon on the pier and watched the waterfront, ready to shoot the militia's boat. When the militia stopped a few miles south of Port Washington, they were notified of the rioters' intentions. They landed at Ulao and marched in. They surprised and arrested the whole group. The rioters had been planning to set fire to the unfinished Evangelical Church that very morning "for their breakfast." Some of the men who were being threatened by the rioters hid in hay but they were not safe any place, as the rioters had forks and stabbed into the hay, hunting for them. Later, during the trial of these men, brother John was called as a witness. The Milwaukee Journal had a good account of the riot in their Sunday paper a few years ago.
In the woods surrounding the home were many rather tame deer. Father had no gun and I do not believe he was any kind of a sportsman. The family never had any wild meat to eat. One day Mother thought she saw a shadow over the window. Her first thought was of Indians. When she looked up, there were three young deer looking through the window. There were also wildcats and lynx. Mother said how afraid she was that they might jump down on her during her long trips through the woods. She would pray every step of the way for God to protect her. She and the children were alone so much at night. They had no lamps or candles or lanterns. So brother John would whittle long sticks or shavings which he lit by the kitchen stove so Mother could read her bible. In the daytime she was so busy in and out of doors, she did not have time to read.
One day brother Gottlieb had to stay in bed all day so Mother could wash and dry his clothes. He had no other clothes to wear. Who would think of such a thing now-a-days, with so little clothes people now wear! My, they were modest in the olden days!
One morning early, father and mother went to town with the big lumber wagon and a team of oxen. When night came, Sister Helen wanted to meet them. She was only a few years old then. She toddled along until she got tired and fell asleep on the road. When the folks came to the place, they thought there was something in the road so they stopped and found her. The moon had risen just in time to save her from being run over.
After father felled the trees, the boys who were big enough to swing an ax, chopped the limbs off. Mother helped to drag them into large heaps so they, when they were dry enough, could have bush fires. A lot of this work was done in the evening. Every member of the family would go except me, the youngest. I was supposed to stay home, but I followed in the distance and would show up later. I managed to stay until the gang went home. By that time I was so sleepy and my knees would pain, also my feet. Mother would relent and carry me home on her back, telling me that would be the last time I was to try it out. Now at 74 years of age, I am as a little child and abhor to be alone.
In the early times one thing we children looked forward to was the tapping of trees in the springtime. The maple sap ran so that it sometimes took two or more of the boys time to drain the trough and strain the sap into a large kettle and keep a fire under it until late at night. They started again early the next morning. When the sap was boiled down, mother would finish cooking it on the kitchen stove. They carried it home on a neck yoke with a pail on each side. Mother would have four kettles boiling on her stove nearly all day and night. It would have to be watched so closely or it would boil over. With the first run of the sap she made maple sugar. This took a long time to get it just right. We children would get a chunk of ice or snow for her to try it out on. She could tell when it was just right to be put into the molds. My, how good it smelled and tasted. But we children ate so much of it that later we could not look at it. Later on in the season she gave it away by the gallon. She did not have dishes enough to put it in so had to use everything even the wash boiler. One time she could not do the family washing for two weeks until she could dispose of the syrup. For maple sugar she got the enormous sum of 1 1/2 cents a pound! The last of the sap she made into very fine vinegar. The sap would drip best when the temperature was such that it was mild during the day and yet freeze a little at night.
How glad we younger children were when we were allowed to go into the woods. The lane was of red clay and we would get stuck in it, so we had to walk the rail fence as best we could. There were no such things as rubbers. You can imagine how our feet would get. There was a nice creek running through our woods. In the spring of the year there were beautiful wild flowers growing there and a large patch of wintergreen which had berries on it.
It was lucky that the maple syrup season lasted but a few days as it got tiresome for the boy who had to stay there from early morning until eleven at night. Sometimes the sap would run so fast, the troughs would be running over when they got there in the morning. Brother Gottlieb was delegated to take care of the sap, with brother Jake to help. The older boys had to get the land ready for seeding. They sowed the grain by hand like in Bible times. The grain was cradled by hand and raked carefully so that they could bind it by hand. I remember the first McCormick reaper and later the self binder. We could hardly believe a machine could bind bundles. The younger children would carry the bundles together and the older boys would set them up after dark when they could not see to bind any more. We children raked the scattered grain into heaps and the last load was pitched in loose. It took 22 men four days to thresh with the old threshing machine which was run by horsepower. Grain was a good crop for many years. During the civil War father sold 500 bushels of wheat for $2.00 a bushel. The buyer paid him in gold pieces which father carried home in a bag. Some of the neighbors told father he was foolish to sell so soon. They were keeping theirs until hey could sell for $6.00 a bushel. Then the war ended an they got 75 cents a bushel. Father used his money to pay off debts on some land. During the war, clothing was very high; calico was 75 cents a yard. After the war, butter was nine cents a pound and eggs were seven cents a dozen. I remember selling springers for ten cents a piece to a hotel keeper.
When I was six months old, two sisters died of diphtheria. No one knew that diphtheria was contagious. Father was asked to be a pallbearer at a child's funeral, and soon after that, the girls got it, and also my sister Helen and brother Gottlieb. The doctors called the new disease sore throat and forbade them to drink any water. They just burned up with fever, and how they begged for just one drop of water. Mary, who was seven, died at eleven o'clock and five year old Elizabeth died at one. The folks had bought the family clock to tell what time they passed away. The parents were afraid Gottlieb would not live until they got back from the girls' funeral. A seamstress was staying with the children. When she left the room, Gottlieb got out of bed and drank all the water he had time to, before the girl returned. From that time on, his temperature went down. How sorry mother felt that she did not let the girls have water! My son Arthur is also buried.
At seventeen years of age, my brother John left home to make his own way in the world. My folks' greatest ambition was that their boys might escape the hardship they had endured. So, as often as they could, they invested in more land. They wanted each boy to have 40 acres. They did not quite succeed. Gottlieb did not want land. He became a carpenter. In 1883 he went west and took a tree claim in South Dakota. Later when he got a good price for his land, he bought 2780 acres of land in the Black Hills country, expecting to raise cattle. In four years they had no rain so he had to sell out. He moved to Rapid City where he again took up his carpenter work and was one of the men who helped build up Rapid City.
When the cholera got bad in New York, father's brother Henry Maechtle moved to Port Washington. Later on, my father's oldest brother, Jacob, came to this country. He figured that my father was a very wealthy man, for that amount of land in Germany, they could be so rich that they would not have to do a stroke of work -- just walk around with a cane and oversee the hired men. He was surprised to find that the entire family had to work hard. And they did not even have wine in the cellar! I heard him say that our people worked harder than the slaves.
To be a pioneer is not an easy life. Mother and I had a talk about the years of hardship on a Sunday morning the week before she died. I asked her, "Mother, did you ever wish that you had stayed in Germany?" She replied, "No, never. But I shed many a tear wishing we could have stayed in Cleveland." She said Germany was over-populated. The middle class and the poor people would own from one to several acres of land. With that, you were expected to feed your families. Out of the little income the poor get poorer each year, and the well-to-do get richer and more domineering. The poor had no chance whatever. She said there was no future for us or we would not have undertaken the perilous journey on the last ship that crosses the ocean before winter. They did not want to undertake the journey in mother's condition, but the house or rooms that they lived in were sold and there was not another place to be had. They either closed up their affairs on New Year's eve or left on New Year's eve. The Indiana friends persuaded them to come with them. Mother said she always felt grateful to them.
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