28 February 2017


Let's take a look at Ludwig and Margarete, my father's great grandparents. Don't they look serious? Yes, of course, having your picture taken was serious and momentous. I wonder what was the occasion. Maybe they were just showing off their status.
The book in her hands is a small collection of poetry and sentiments, one for each day of the year. It's downstairs on my bookshelves somewhere. Someone long ago used it as flower press, whenever I open it, small trembling bits of disintegrating flora flutter to the ground.

My grandmother always and with pride mentioned that Margarete was from a mill estate on one of the meandering Franconian rivers. I found this picture of her childhood home on wikipedia:

My father tells me that as a child he used to cycle there with his friends during the summer, to watch the water mill and look for tadpoles. After the war, it was a hotel for a while, with a popular beer garden. Today, the big house is a retirement home.
When Margarete lived there as a child, the online census data of the kingdom of Bavaria also lists 13 cattle on the property. My grandmother always mentioned Margarete's father, the old W, the big mill owner and butcher. In Franconia, you do show off your wealthy relatives. It's all part of who you are.

But doesn't Margarete look exhausted, and much older than her husband (who was in fact seven years her senior). Between 1859 and 1874, she gave birth to nine children, six boys and three girls and lost two of them during the typhoid fever epidemic of 1872.
Ernst Friedrich, her fourth son, ran away from home when was 17 yrs old and according to my grandmother's handwritten records, he emigrated to the US that year. I think I found him, a tin smith, a painter, a carpenter, working first in New York and later for the railroad in California. Shipping records list him arriving in 1887, as 'Norwegian' albeit with German as his native language, his father and mother living in Bavaria. The last census records tell me that in 1930, aged 60, he lived as a lodger, single, in employment, in Los Angeles. If it is indeed him.

I have no record of Margarete's death but judging from that photograph, she probably did not live to a ripe old age. 

Ludwig, who looks slightly pompous here, certainly well fed, comes from a long line of prosperous metalworkers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, you name it. The oldest record of the family business that I have found dates back to 1562 and Daniel, Ludwig's eight-times-grand-father, registered as a blacksmith at the same address where my father's cousin are living now. Ludwig died when he was 64 years old, which was well above the average life expectancy at the time. (His oldest son, Karl, inherited the family firm, where my grandmother, Karl's oldest daughter, sharpened her business skills during WWI.)

Ludwig was well off. And Margarete must have been a good catch. I wonder, did they fall in love? Or was it all a shrewd bit of matchmaking? I suspect the latter. We are in Franconia, after all.


10 comments:

liv said...

I've only found an old book with pressed flowers twice. One a poetry book and one a stamp collecting book - still with lots of old stamps, the flowers pressed between blank pages.

Yes, Margarete does look tired. I'm sure even with that were better off must have still had plenty to do. I love these stories of your family and how much you know about them. It inspires me to search for more of mine.

Colette said...

1562, damn! GREAT photo of the 2nd great grandparents. I'm intrigued by Ernest Friedrich running away so young, living his whole life away from family and never marrying. Did he ever contact his family after he left?

am said...

Your old photos are a treasure. Thank you for continuing to share them.

The countryside and big sky where Margarete lived as a child are beautiful. Interesting that you found the photo on wikipedia.

Your Margarete and Ludwig are from the same era as my German Stecher ancestors from Achern The Stecher family is on my grandfather's mother's side (the earliest records of the family are in about 1680 in Renchen). Her father was a cooper and a day laborer. He arrived in the U.S. in 1981. His wife had died and he was lonely and followed his children to the U.S. My great grandfather's father came from Stadtlengsfeld in around 1856. He was a carpenter. His father was a weaver. This is all from my mother's side. The man at the very top of the page on the right side is my mother's father, Rudolf -- first generation American, born in Boston. He was typesetter for the Boston Herald and became a doctor when he was in his 30s. He served in World War I in France as a doctor. In the next row, the first photo is of him and my grandmother, Irene, whose family came to Canada from Ireland (County Cavan and Waterford) in the 1800s. Irene was born in Boston.

Here are three generations of my ancestors with roots in Germany -- the oldest generation coming from Germany in the 1800s.

Maybe I've shown you these before:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stecherdescendent/

Steve Reed said...

Interesting that you were able to track down Ernst (maybe). Margarete has a beautiful dress, though Ludwig's coat looks a bit ill-fitting.

Colette said...

Wonderful photos, and so many of them.

Anonymous said...

I remember reading a while back about old photographs and why people often have unsmiling faces. Some of it had to do with how long it took to take a photo, but mostly it was because smiling seemed odd. Check this out:
http://time.com/4568032/smile-serious-old-photos/
You have a wonderful collection of your family's history. It's truly a treasure.

TJ Davis said...

Of the photo, about a similar photo in our family collection my late mother said, "Nobody smiled, our teeth were all yellow and rotted, we didn't want anybody to see." Now, whenever I see a, "serious," pose like that I think of what mom said. It seems that dental hygiene was not well know during those times. I wonder.

Sabine said...

Apparently he did come for a visit and showed off a life he didn't really have. But hard to tell what is what. My grandmother had a way of retelling what she considered the truth.

Sabine said...

I love these photos and yes, your family lived not too far from mine, albeit in those days, it was quite a distance.

Sabine said...

Hello and thank you for this comment, makes sense, obviously!!