Wedding Wednesday: Puffed Sleeves, Revisited

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It has been nearly a decade since I first featured this photograph on Homestead Genealogy, and at that time, I had never seen the original. The old photocopy in my possession was washed out and grainy, the young couple’s faces barely discernible, and the border with the photographer’s mark was not included. When a nearly pristine original made its way to me last year, I was elated: finally, every detail of the 1896 wedding portrait of my great-grandparents Mathias and Elisabeth (Hoffmann) Noehl of North Washington, Chickasaw County, Iowa, could be fully appreciated, and, in addition, the photographer’s mark offered a new clue about the couple’s lives as newlyweds.

Mathias Noehl and Elisabeth (Hoffman) Noehl, St. Peter, Nicollet County, Minnesota, 1896; digital image 2023, privately held by Melanie Frick, 2024. Courtesy of Richard Buscher (1933-2023).

In this photograph, Elisabeth, with dark hair and eyes and full brows that would be the envy of many young women of today, gazes steadily into the distance, her right hand on her husband’s shoulder and her left holding what is likely a Catholic prayerbook. Her dark dress boasts the elegantly puffed sleeves so popular in the mid-1890s, and a floor-length veil is affixed to the back of her head. A substantial floral arrangement is perched atop her head, cascading over her forehead, while smaller floral sprigs are fastened to her collar and her gathered bodice. These may well have been wax flowers, and appear to be orange blossoms, which were a popular choice for bridal wreaths. Elisabeth, who had immigrated to America from Germany at the age of twenty, had celebrated her twenty-seventh birthday less than a week prior to her marriage.

Mathias, blond and with a fair complexion, gazes in the opposite direction as his bride, his posture upright but casual as he poses seated in a wicker chair, one elbow resting on the arm. He wears a dark suit and vest with a white shirt and necktie, and a floral corsage has been attached to the front of his jacket. What may be a watch chain peeks out underneath. Mathias wears his hair short and has a full mustache; like Elisabeth, his expression is serious. Twenty-eight years old, Mathias had by that point spent a decade in America after emigrating from his native Germany.

Years later, he wrote of his meeting with Elisabeth:

“One day I was standing in front of the house of a venerable old priest, in whose service for five years I found living a good woman. She was reflecting what vocation she should choose. The old pastor had advised her to spend the rest of her life with him, as housekeeper, but on the other side of the house, the nuns beckoned to her, “Come and join us, Lizzie.” Then it happened that I passed by. I was in a neglected condition. My suit of clothes appeared to have seen better days. A hailstorm seemed to have come over my hat. My blond hair lay around my temples unkempt like dried up flowers of the cemetery. When she heard that I had come from her neighborhood village, Holsthum, she said to herself, “That is a disgrace to the whole valley of Prüm. He must be hidden from the streets of North Washington, even if I have to marry him. Perhaps there is hidden in that neglected and careless fellow a good provider, and, if I succeed in making a good Christian out of him, I can earn besides a good crown in heaven.” She thought further, “This is Leap Year and Eve had the job in paradise, a breath-taking job it was, to make the marriage offer. At my first attack, he fell on my breast. Father Probst then tied me to him, on the twenty-second day of September 1896, and he made the knot so tight that I could not think to get away from him anymore.”
Memoirs of Mathias Noehl (Translation)

Although the couple married in Iowa, the mark of the photographer Bancroft on this cabinet card reveals that their wedding portrait was not taken there. St. Peter, Minnesota was well over one hundred miles from North Washington, Iowa, where their marriage had been solemnized on 22 September 1896. What could have brought Mathias and Elisabeth there? I don’t have a good answer. It seems highly unlikely that the couple, certainly not well-to-do, would have set off on a leisurely honeymoon tour of the Midwest; more plausible is that they ventured to Minnesota, where Mathias had spent his first years in America, in order to visit Mathias’s aunts and uncles and/or to scout out a potential place to settle. Mathias and Elisabeth did later reside in Minnesota, but only briefly; after their first two children were born in Iowa, their third child was born in Meeker County, Minnesota in the spring of 1900 following a failed stint in Alberta. However, within months, the family had returned to Chickasaw County, Iowa. A few years later, they made a brief attempt to homestead in Saskatchewan, but, again, ultimately returned to Iowa to raise their nine children. In any case, it is known that Mathias had connections in Minnesota, and undoubtedly some familiarity with the rail lines—one of which did indeed pass through St. Peter.

As North Washington was a small community—its population has hovered between about one hundred to one hundred fifty residents for the past century—a photographer was presumably not available to Mathias and Elisabeth on the day of their marriage. Thus, the couple may have made a point to seek out a photographer during their travels north. For Elisabeth to have taken the effort to travel with her veil and flowers, it seems that this “photo op” must have been carefully planned, and indeed, as Mathias’s parents remained in Germany, it may have meant a great deal to the couple to have a portrait taken in order for Mathias to be able to introduce his parents to his bride.

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Tombstone Tuesday: Anna Barbara (Ruckdäschel) Poesch (1811-1887)

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Anna Barbara (Ruckdäschel) Poesch was forty-two years old before she saw something of the world. Born on 14 November 1811 in the village of Schönlind near what is now Weißenstadt, Bavaria, Germany, she was said to have been the daughter of Johann Georg Ruckdäschel and Eva Margaretha Brodmerkel. Nothing is known of her early years, but Barbara, as she was known, married shoemaker Wolfgang Poesch on 22 April 1833 when she was twenty-one years old. Five known children would be born to the couple in the years to come, the first that same year: Johann (1833), Catharina (1835), Anna Margaretha (1838), Lorenz (1847), and Paulus (1850).

In 1852, Barbara bade farewell to her eldest son when he departed in the company of another local family, that of Paulus and Elisabeth (Schmidt) Thoma, to seek a better life in America. Young Johann, nineteen at the time of his passage, must have sent a favorable report to his parents of his new home in northeastern Iowa; in 1854, Barbara, Wolfgang, and their four remaining children packed a trunk and left the village of Weißenstadt behind forever.

After making the trek to Bremen and then stepping aboard the Heinrich Von Gagern, the family was at sea for what may have been as long as two months. Barbara must have struggled to keep her family clean and fed in cramped conditions, but surely took solace in the companionship of others from their home village who traveled with them. Her eldest daughters, Catharina, eighteen, and Anna Margaretha, fifteen, would have been a great help to her in caring for the two little boys, Lorenz, seven, and Paulus, just four.

Barbara and her family disembarked in New Orleans on 27 Apr 1854. They may have been wary of lingering long in this bustling port; a devastating yellow fever epidemic had swept through the city the previous summer, and as April turned to May, the weather would likely have become increasingly hot, humid, and inhospitable. A steamboat would have provided the family relatively quick and reliable passage north, at the very least to St. Louis if not all the way to Iowa.

After an arduous journey across the Atlantic and through the Gulf of Mexico, then up the Mississippi River, Barbara was no doubt thrilled to finally be reunited with her eldest son upon their arrival in Clayton County, Iowa; in fact, numerous familiar faces from their home village would have greeted the Poesch family.

However, tragedy would soon strike—if indeed it hadn’t already. Four-year-old Paulus, listed as the youngest member of the family on the 1854 ship manifest, was not present at the time the family was recorded in the 1856 Iowa State Census, which suggests that he had died at some point in the intervening years, either in Iowa or en route there. Then, most likely within a year of that same census, Wolfgang succumbed to sunstroke. In his early fifties at the time, the physical demands of farming in the heat of an Iowa summer were apparently too much for him.

Although Wolfgang did not live to commemorate his silver wedding anniversary with Barbara, the couple was able to celebrate the marriages of their two eldest children: son Johann to fellow immigrant Catharina Weiss, and, in 1855, daughter Catharina to Friederich Thoma. Then, in 1857, Anna Margaretha married Wilhelm Heinrich Thoma. The Poesch sisters had, in fact, married two brothers, members of the same family with whom their brother Johann had emigrated from Weißenstadt in 1852. This made their children—nineteen between them—double first cousins.

Find A Grave, Inc., Find A Grave, digital image (www.findagrave.com : accessed 25 March 2024), photograph, Barbera Poesch (1811-1887), Memorial No. 148724753, Garnavillo Community Cemetery, Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa; photograph by Ken Johnson, 2016.

Barbara survived Wolfgang by approximately twenty years. The year 1860 found her living with the family of her daughter Catharina; a few years later, her son Lorenz would serve with the 12th Iowa Infantry in the Civil War, surely an anxious time for Barbara. Lorenz survived the war and married Wilhelmina Best in 1868. In 1870, Barbara lived with the family of her son Johann, and was perhaps still a member of his household during a bitter cold snap in early March of 1873 when her fourteen-year-old granddaughter, her namesake, sadly perished. Young Barbara, who had been ill, had entered an unheated room one night where she fell and lay undetected until morning, by which time her arms and legs were said to have frozen and she was too weakened to recover. Later that same year, Barbara’s son Johann died at the age of fifty.

By 1885, Barbara resided in the town of Garnavillo with her daughter Anna Margaretha, who was by that point also widowed. Barbara’s occupation was recorded as “Old Mother.” Having raised four children of her own to adulthood, and having likely had a hand in raising a total of twenty-five grandchildren as well, Barbara certainly earned her title.

Anna Barbara (Ruckdäschel) Poesch died at the home of her daughter in Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa, on 07 September 1887, when she was seventy-five years old. Her obituary, printed in a local newspaper, stated, “Her remains were conveyed to their last resting place on Saturday, followed by a large concourse of sorrowing relatives and friends. Rev. F. Sommerlad conducted the ceremony in his usual impressive manner.”

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The Thatcher’s Family

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When Matthias Hoffmann died in 1879 at the age of fifty-eight, he left a widow and six children, the youngest of whom was only four years old. Matthias, a thatcher by trade, had lived with his family in the village of Prümzurlay, Eifelkreis Bitburg-Prüm, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, near Luxembourg. He and his wife, Anna Marbach, had married in the village of Ernzen on 24 September 1861, and six children were born to them over the next fourteen years: Clara (1861), Nicolaus (1864), Jacob (1867), Elisabeth (1869), Eva (1872), and Matthias (1875).

It is not known how the Hoffmann family supported themselves after Matthias’s death, but as Anna did not remarry, she and her eldest daughters may have been able to earn an income from spinning, weaving, or the like, while her eldest sons may have hired out as shepherds or farm laborers. Perhaps Nicolaus, who was fourteen when his father died, was fortunate enough to have already had an apprenticeship in place; eventually he married and settled in the area, living out his life in Germany.

Prümzurlay, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany photograph, 2009; privately held by Melanie Frick, 2024.

For the others, however, new horizons were sought. Jacob, the second eldest son, who had been twelve years old at the time of his father’s death, was the first to immigrate to America. He traveled alone from Antwerp to New York in the spring of 1887 when he was twenty years old. One can well imagine the hard work that he—and his mother and siblings—must have undertaken in order to book his passage, quite likely with the expectation that he would pave the way for the rest of the family to eventually join him overseas. Jacob then made his way to northeastern Iowa.

Three years later, in the spring of 1890, his sisters Clara and Elisabeth followed. Within a month of their arrival in North Washington, Chickasaw County, Iowa, Clara, who was twenty-eight, married fellow immigrant John Seelhammer. One wonders whether they had been acquainted in Germany, or whether Jacob may have facilitated the match. Elisabeth, twenty, was not so quick to settle down; she found employment as a housekeeper for the local priest, Father Probst, who was a native of Luxembourg.

In the spring of 1891, matriarch Anna (Marbach) Hoffmann, who was by then fifty-five years old, voyaged from Antwerp to New York with her two youngest children, Eva, eighteen, and Matthias, sixteen. They too were bound for Chickasaw County, Iowa, where they would reunite with Jacob, Clara, and Elisabeth.

The 1895 Iowa state census indicates that Anna and at least four of her children resided in Chickasaw County: Anna headed a household that included her sons Jacob and Matthias, both of whom farmed; Clara lived with her husband, a shoemaker, and their children; Elisabeth resided at her place of employment with Father Probst and the Sisters of Charity. Eva is absent from the 1895 Iowa state census, but whether this is because she had moved elsewhere or was simply missed by the census enumerator is not known.

It was in Chickasaw County that Jacob married Margaret Nosbisch in 1895, and where Elisabeth married fellow immigrant Mathias Noehl in 1896. In 1898, however, tragedy struck the Hoffmann family, when Matthias, the youngest child of Matthias and Anna (Marbach) Hoffmann, died at the age of twenty two or twenty three. Another blow occurred that year when Jacob and his wife lost a child at one day old.

It was also in 1898, however, that Eva married in Chicago to Mathias Weyer, and by 1900, her mother had joined her there. Chicago wasn’t a surprising destination for them; Anna’s mother and two of her sisters had settled there decades earlier. Although her mother had since passed away, Anna would have had the opportunity to reunite with her sisters and to meet her nieces and nephews.

Ultimately, Anna seems to have remained in Chicago until her death in 1907; the cause was attributed to asthma. Clara and Elisabeth both raised large families in Chickasaw County, with Clara having eight children and Elisabeth nine. Eva had one child with her first husband, a farm laborer and beer peddler; after she was widowed, she remarried in 1913 to Milton Jonas, and lived out her life in Chicago.

Jacob, whom a local newspaper described as being “of that hustling, genial disposition which makes him companionable and agreeable whether the weather, or something else is or is not just to his liking,” set his sights on South Dakota shortly after the dawn of the new century, and later settled in Hidalgo County, Texas, with his wife and son—who was ultimately the only one of his six children to survive infancy.

Brother and sister Jacob Hoffmann and Elisabeth (Hoffmann) Noehl, Hidalgo County, Texas, 1940; digital image courtesy of Jacky Sommer, 2018.

Whether the scattered Hoffmann siblings were able to remain in close contact in the decades following their mother’s death is unknown, but it is known that Jacob returned to Iowa to bury his wife in 1929, and there is also evidence—in the form of a photograph—that Elisabeth visited her older brother Jacob at his orange grove in Mission, Texas, in 1940. Eva had died in 1936; Jacob would pass away in 1954, Clara in 1955, and Elisabeth in 1957. Of the fate of their brother Nicolaus who was said to have remained in Germany, however, nothing is yet known.

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A Jolly Sleighing Party

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It was a chilly January night in 1905 when a group of six young people set out on a sleighing party, traversing the thirteen miles from Center to Bloomfield in northeastern Nebraska. The Bloomfield Monitor reported:

A jolly sleighing party from Center, composed of Mr. and Mrs. Geo. A. Neilson, Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Saunders, Miss Maud Walton and O.A. Danielson took in the “Adventures of Fra Diavolo” at the opera house in Bloomfield last Saturday night. After the play, they, in company with the Misses Neff, Peterson and Lee of the Bloomfield schools, and Miss Dunham, were invited to the hospitable and commodious home of Mr. and Mrs. W. B. Frymire, where they were regaled with oyster stews and entertained with music until the wee sma’ hour when the Center people started for home, all vowing that Bloomfield is not so worse and that Mr. and Mrs. Frymire are the best.
Bloomfield Monitor, Bloomfield, Nebraska, 26 January 1905

George A. Neilson had married Anna Leota Fenton three years prior, and both were twenty-four years old at the time of this particular sleighing party. Their son, Fenton, would celebrate his second birthday just a few days later, on January 26, and he was undoubtedly left in the care of a neighbor or his visiting grandmother while his parents were out, a nighttime outing on the snowy plains not being at all suitable for a toddler! George had managed the Edwards and Bradford Lumber Company in Center ever since his marriage, and as he was known to be an affable and outgoing young man, it is no surprise that he and his wife had a lively circle of friends.

Anna Leota (Fenton) Thoma and George Hiram Thoma, alias George A. Neilson, circa 1900-1905; digital images 2010, privately held by Melanie Frick, 2024. Composite image created by the author.

Notably, however, George A. Neilson was not his real name. Born George Hiram Thoma, son of Fred and Matilda (Hammond) Thoma of Clayton County, Iowa, George is believed to have initiated the use of an assumed name around the year 1900. He is thought to have left his home in northeastern Iowa in 1899, and as of June 1900, he can be found recorded in the U.S. Federal Census of Belden, Cedar County, Nebraska, as George Thoma. Employed as a clerk, he boarded with the family of Charles and Anna Nelson, who were Swedish immigrants, along with a number of other young men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-two: William Reynolds, Morris Nielsen, Thomas Caverhill, William Graham, Arthur Knapp, Albert Brodbrochs, Edgar Stevenson, and Ed Evans. However, a January 1901 news clipping tentatively presumed to refer to him and one of his fellow boarders uses the surname Neilson:

George Neilson and Art Knapp of Belden attended a party in Coleridge Friday evening.
The Coleridge Blade, Coleridge, Nebraska, 24 January 1901

At the time of his marriage in March 1902, which took place in northwestern Iowa, George presented himself officially as George A. Neilson. Decades later, affidavits from George, his mother, and his brother attested that this was an assumed name and that George Hiram Thoma and George A. Neilson were one and the same person. A marriage announcement used the name George Neilson as well and noted an impending move to Nebraska:

George Neilson and Miss Ota Fenton were married Sunday afternoon at the home of the bride’s mother, Mrs. John Hoffman, Rev. Fegtley officiating. Mr. Neilson has been an able assistant in the Edwards & Bradford Lumber Co. for some time past and is a worthy young man. The bride has lived in Ashton for a number of years and needs no introduction. The many friends join in wishing them many happy years of wedded life. Mr. Neilson expects soon to be moved to Nebraska where he will have charge of a lumber yard for the above named firm.
The Sibley Gazette, Sibley, Iowa, 27 March 1902

This move was to Center, where George immediately began placing newspaper advertisements for the Edwards & Bradford Lumber Company under the name George Neilson. He continued to use this alias until at least 1908, through several more moves; by 1909, when he applied for a homestead in western Nebraska, he had reverted to the use of his original name. No reason has yet been uncovered for George’s use of an alias, although it appears to have emerged sometime between June 1900 and January 1901 during his residence in Belden—or perhaps prior, if by chance he had shared his true name with the census enumerator in private.

“Beggar Prince Comic Opera Co. ‘Fra Diavolo,'” *Bloomfield Monitor*, 12 January 1905; *wspapers.com* (www.newspapers.com : accessed 25 January 2024).

As he squeezed into a crowded sleigh on the wintry evening of January 21, 1905, however, any secrets that George may have suppressed were likely at the back of his mind. Along with Leota and their group of friends, he enjoyed a play performed at Bloomfield’s opera house by a traveling theater troupe, followed by oyster stew, music, and good company at the home of the owner of a prosperous local hardware store. As night crept on to morning, it was time for the sleighing party to make their return trip to Center, and, just a month or so later, George and Leota—still, at that time, Neilsons—bade their friends a fond farewell as they moved on to the eastern Nebraska town of Newcastle.

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A Tale of Two Johns

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There has been an assumption made in multiple online family trees that the John Fenton who was born in 1785 in Sturton-le-Steeple, Nottinghamshire, England and the John Fenton who died in 1881 in the Union Workhouse in Clarborough, Nottinghamshire, England were one and the same.

However, when I considered the details, something didn’t quite seem to add up.

The John Fenton who was baptized on 06 May 1785 in Sturton-le-Steeple, the son of Benjamin and Zillah (Williamson) Fenton, had married Sarah Halcon in Bole, Nottinghamshire, England, in 1809. They had eight children together and spent their married life in Bole, where John was a shoemaker, or cordwainer. John and Sarah can be found there in the 1841 England Census; Sarah died as a result of “Bilious Complaint” in 1843, but John was still the head of a household in Bole at the time of the 1851 England Census, when he lived with his second eldest son, Isaac. Two years later, Isaac married, and in the 1861 England Census, John can be found living with Isaac and his family at the Brandywharf Public House of Waddingham, Lincolnshire, England.

Photograph of the Cordwainer Statue on Watling Street in the Cordwainer Ward of the City of London; *Wikimedia Commons*, copyright Alma Boyes, 2007.

This is where accounts of John’s following years diverge. While some initially attributed records of a John Fenton who appears with wife Ann in the poorhouse of Clarborough, Nottinghamshire, England in 1871 and 1881 to the aforementioned John, the 1861 England Census makes evident that these were in fact two different men. At the same time that our widowed John Fenton, seventy-five, a retired cordwainer and native of Bole, was a resident of Waddingham, Lincolnshire, England, another John Fenton, sixty-seven, a woodman and native of South Leverton, lived with his wife, Ann, in Treswell, Nottinghamshire, England.

With confirmation of two John Fentons in two nearby places at the same time, and spurred by the recent release of the General Register Office for England and Wales’ digital image collection, I decided to search for any John Fentons who may have died in Waddingham or in Gainsborough—where Isaac Fenton resided as of 1871, his father no longer a member of his household—between 1861-1871. And, in short order, a record was located:

“England and Wales Death Registration Record,” John Fenton, 27 July 1862, death, Gainsborough, Lincolnshire; digital image, *General Register Office for England and Wales* (https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/indexes_search.asp : accessed 08 July 2023), citing HM Passport Office.

Our John Fenton died on 27 July 1862 at Nottingham Place in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, England, presumably at the home of his son, with whom he had resided in nearby Waddingham the previous year. Nottingham Place was what was known as a yard, or tenement housing, located near the banks of the River Trent. The death register noted that John had been seventy-seven years of age, that he was “Formerly a Cordwainer,” and that his death was a result of bronchitis. Present at his death was Frances Fenton; she was John’s daughter-in-law who had presumably cared for him throughout his last sickness.

This all makes much more logical sense than had our John Fenton died at the age of ninety-six—which would have been quite a feat for someone living in a poorhouse whom one can only assume was not receiving the best of care. Indeed, the idea that our John would have been in a poorhouse at all seemed suspect given his decades-long career as a shoemaker and his having at least one adult child who, as evidenced by the census, was able to take him in under his roof as necessary in his later years.

John in fact had three surviving children in England at the time of his death, and it is possible that he rotated between households in his later years. Five of his eight children preceded him in death, although one by a matter of mere weeks: his eldest son, John (Jr.), the only one of his children to emigrate from England, succumbed to typhoid fever while serving in the Union Cavalry in the American Civil War on 07 June 1862. It seems likely that John Fenton died unaware of his son’s fate.

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Back to School

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I first glimpsed this photograph behind clouded glass more than fifteen years ago. I was visiting the Garnavillo Historical Society in northeastern Iowa, a short distance from the Mississippi River, and I was thrilled to spy the face of my great-great-grandfather as a little boy in this cabinet card photograph of the Garnavillo School. However, due to its semi-permanent placement inside glass, it wasn’t until more recent efforts by the historical society to refresh their exhibits and digitize their collections that I was, happily, able to obtain a clear copy.

Garnavillo School, circa 1888, Clayton County, Iowa; digital image 2023, privately held by the Garnavillo Historical Society, 2023. Image shared with permission.

George Hiram Thoma, the son of Frederick Thoma and Matilda Hammond, was born in Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa on 29 September 1880. His parents were natives of Clayton County, and, right around the time that George would have started school, his father was known to have operated a restaurant in Garnavillo. Pictured here in the second row, fifth from right, fair-haired George, perhaps eight years old, regards the photographer with a still and serious expression, mimicking his teacher more so than some of his wiggly classmates. Thirty-six students were present for “Picture Day” at the Garnavillo School; this photograph, initially believed to have been taken circa 1886, was in fact more likely taken about two years later based on the birth dates of some of the youngest children pictured.

The teacher, Julia Downey, was said to have taught school in Clayton County for thirteen years prior to her 1893 marriage. Her students, with birth year in parentheses if available, are identified below:

Front row, left to right: Sophia Maack (1877), Ora Ahlitz (1879), Emma Harnack (1879), Severa Wirkler (1881), Harvey Maurer (1882), Norma Maurer (1884), Edna Brumm (1883), Adelia Kuhlman (1880).

Second row, left to right: Aerney Tangeman (1881), Alto (Realto) Schumacher (1881), Erwin Wirkler (1880), Billy Gilmore ( ), Will Schumacher (1880), George Thoma (1880), Gretchen Gilmore ( ), Waldemar Krasinsky (1880), Louise Rohde (1881), Elizabeth Siebertz ( ).

Third row, left to right: George Tangeman (1878), George Hill (1882), Paul Rantzow (1879), Miss Julia Downey, Orville Roebken (1879), Gruel ( ), Abner Roebken (1881), Fred Nieter (1880), Fred Stickfort (1879), Emil Schumacher (1879).

Back row, left to right: Irving Maurer (1879), Bruno Tangeman (1879), Ed Breitsprecher (1879), William Blunck (1877), Henry H. Stickfort (1878), Julius H. Rohde (1879), Gruel ( ), Elmer G. Brumm (1878), Arthur (Art) Gruetzmacher (1878).
Courtesy of the Garnavillo Historical Society

Garnavillo boasted a brick, two-story schoolhouse with four rooms; however, this photograph seems to have been taken instead at the studio of the photographer, Mr. Tangeman, as a hanging backdrop is evident. The students pictured here were between the ages of approximately four and eleven, and one can imagine that a field trip to the photographer’s studio would have made for an exciting school day for them.

George Hiram Thoma, detail from Garnavillo School, circa 1888, Clayton County, Iowa; digital image 2023, privately held by the Garnavillo Historical Society, 2023. Image used with permission.

Little is known about young George’s school days, although he was apparently a motivated student as would go on to complete high school. The high school that he attended was not in Garnavillo, however, but in the town of Postville in neighboring Allamakee County. As his grandparents resided there, it is possible that he boarded with them during his high school years. As a teenager, George worked for a time at a local hardware store, volunteered with the fire department, and then, according to family lore, made his way west with his bicycle and changed his name—but that’s another story!

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A Yankton County Girl at the 1918 South Dakota State Fair

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As the summer of 1918 drew to close, seventeen-year-old Helena Nelson of Yankton County, South Dakota prepared to compete at the South Dakota State Fair as a participant in a local 4-H club.

YANKTON TO SEND CONTESTANTS TO FAIR

Yankton, S.D., Sept. 2.—After a series of contests here, Wilma Gilreath, Elsie Frick, Helena Nelson and Albena Sailer, will represent this county in the state contest at the state fair at Huron in September in the Liberty Food Club. In addition Wilma Gilreath, winner in the food contest, will also be in the canning contest, and will be associated with Lois and Dorothy Gross to make up the team in the canning contest.
Tabor Independent, 05 September 1918

In 1918, Helena was a student at the Southern State Normal School in Springfield, South Dakota. This was not terribly far from her family’s farm in Tabor, west of Yankton, where she had likely spent the summer before the fall semester began. In addition to pitching in on the farm that summer, Helena was also involved with the activities of the Liberty Food Club.

Helena’s older sister, Andrea, wrote in her diary that on the morning of Sunday, 08 September, “About five Jim took Helena on to town, as she was to start by car with Kecks at six for the fair at Huron. The rest of us had a late breakfast.” Helena and her siblings had attended a barn dance hosted in honor of a local soldier on furlough the night before, but that didn’t stop her from hitching a ride from her brother-in-law that morning after only a few hours of sleep! It was time to make her way to the state fair, one hundred and twenty miles to the north.

Helena Margaret Nelson photograph, circa 1918, Yankton County, South Dakota; digital image 2010, privately held by Melanie Frick, 2023. Based on family recollections, it is possible, but unconfirmed, that Helena is pictured here wearing a “uniform” of the Liberty Food Club.

The South Dakota State Fair, which dates to 1885, first introduced activities for youth in 1915 when a Boys State Fair Camp was held. Delegates were judged on their agricultural skills in regards to crops and livestock. The first Girls State Fair Camp took place in 1918, and included both food canning demonstrations and Liberty Food Clubs.

Liberty Food Clubs were a wartime invention and encouraged participants to assist with the war effort. An official bulletin of the United States government stated, “In order to become a member of this club each boy and girl enrolled in club work must sign a card pledging himself or herself, through food production and food conservation, to help win the war and world peace.”

While it is not known exactly what their exhibit or presentation may have entailed, the Yankton County girls did walk away as the winners of their event at the South Dakota State Fair. The Daily Argus-Leader of Sioux Falls reported, “Nearly a hundred valuable prizes were won by members of South Dakota boys’ and girls’ clubs in the final contests of the year at the state fair.” The different competition classes, aside from Liberty Food, included Pig Club, Baby Beef, Sheep, Stock Judging, Canning, and Sewing. Of Liberty Food, it was noted, “First, Yankton, State banner. Team Wilma Gilreath, Elsie Frick and Helena Nelson, all of Yankton. Second, Hughes county team, Alma Swanson Harrold, Ina Putnam Oahe, and Janice Lantz, Pierre.” One source suggests that twenty-four Liberty Food teams had competed in all.

Members of the Liberty Food Club who had successfully completed the work of the club for the entire year were to be given a diploma of achievement, but it is unknown whether Helena received such an honor. Not long after the South Dakota State Fair, Spanish Influenza struck her community and within a few short months she ultimately lost both her father and her sister Andrea. This was a tumultuous time for the Nelson family, especially as Helena’s older brother Ole was still away at war, and it seems very likely that any extracurricular endeavors would have fallen by the wayside.

The following year, the Boys State Fair Camp and Girls State Fair Camp became more formally known as 4-H clubs under the oversight of the State College Extension Service. World War I had come to a close, and Helena herself had completed her studies and become a country school teacher.

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Matilda the Midwife

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“Matilda was a midwife,” so goes the family story, “and delivered a lot of babies in the county.” Despite a lack of definitive documentation, and almost certain lack of opportunity for any formal training, this nevertheless seems plausible. Matilda J. (Hammond) Thoma (1859-1947) of Clayton County, Iowa birthed five children of her own, and it does not seem unlikely that she might have assisted at the births of others in her close-knit community. She had numerous nieces and nephews whose births she might have supported, and she may even have served as midwife at the births of some of her own grandchildren. Indeed, it was her granddaughter Ina Fischer, born in 1907, who recalled nearly eighty years later that Matilda had been a midwife, and a 1920 newspaper announcement indicated that another granddaughter, Jacqueline Chaney, was in fact born at Matilda’s home.

_{Matilda (Hammond) Thoma and Franque (Friend) Curtis photograph, circa 1922, Clayton County, Iowa; digital image 2023, privately held by Melanie Frick, 2023.}

Here, in one of only two photographs known to exist of Matilda, she poses with granddaughter Franque Friend. Matilda would have been in her early sixties at the time that this photograph was taken circa 1922; her hair, loosely coiled into a bun atop her head, seems to have gone mostly white. She wears a somewhat rumpled striped dress with buttons up the front and a wide collar in a contrasting fabric; this was not a studio portrait, but a casual snapshot apparently taken at home. Matilda appears to sit on a sofa near a window, a potted plant beside her, and striped wallpaper is visible in the background. She offers a small smile to the camera. Young Franque, perhaps ten years old here, stands next to her grandmother, grinning beneath the broad brim of a straw hat with a fringe of dark hair just peeking out. She wears a white dress with scalloped cuffs, a bow at the collar, and a leather belt.

Matilda, the daughter of Hiram H. Hammond (1813-1896) and Eva Margaret Stoehr (1831-1906), spent more than sixty-five years in Clayton County, Iowa, where she was born and later married Frederick Thoma (1857-1925). Four of their five children lived to adulthood; the youngest sadly died in a diphtheria outbreak at the age of ten. Following her husband’s death, Matilda eventually relocated, first to Texas with her daughter Roselyn and then to Wisconsin where she lived with her granddaughter Jacqueline. Few other details are known of her life, but what little is known suggests that she was a kind, competent, and maternal individual—just the sort to lend a hand as a midwife.

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The Sattlermeister of Trarbach

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August Heitz, one of a dozen children born to Carl Theodor Heitz and Anna Maria Moog, was born on 26 March 1846 in Trarbach, Bernkastel-Wittlich, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. His father was a tanner, and August was destined to work with leather as well: following an apprenticeship to learn the trade, and time spent as a journeyman to hone his skills, he became a sattlermeister, or master saddler.

_{Trarbach, Marktplatz vor dem Stadtbrand von 1857 [Marketplace before the Town Fire of 1857], Holzstich; ; Wikimedia Commons, copyright Bligny.}

August was thirty-one, likely well established in his trade, when he married Julianna Carolina Faust on 18 August 1877. Julianna, then twenty-one years of age, was the daughter of a cooper and likewise a native of Trarbach. The couple settled in their hometown, idyllically situated along the Mosel River and surrounded by abundant vineyards, and raised five children there: Julchen, Carolina, Anna Maria, Ida, and Adolf Heitz. A sixth child, August, died in infancy.

As a saddler in the final years before automobiles became widespread, August would have worked to make and repair saddles, bridles, and harnesses. He would also have trained others who wished to learn his trade, and the handwritten contract of at least one of his apprentices is extant. On 20 June 1901, the widow Anna Faust contracted her son, Otto, to a three-year apprenticeship under August Heitz, paying him a one-time fee of fifty marks for his tutelage. August promised to provide Otto with thorough instruction, health insurance and “contributions from his means,” whereas Otto agreed to diligent, orderly work and conduct. Otto would also be free on certain days to assist his mother “with her own work.” Interestingly, this contract notes that August was a tapezierer, or upholsterer, in addition to being a saddler.

It is unknown whether August also shared his knowledge of his trade with his surviving son, Adolf, as he ultimately made his career as a wine merchant. This trade was shared by two of August’s sons-in-law, as well, the husbands of both Julchen and Ida; Carolina’s husband was an innkeeper. Only Anna Maria did not marry; she joined a religious order.

_{August Heitz photograph, circa 1910, Germany; digital image 2011, privately held by Melanie Frick, 2023.}

Little else is known of August’s life in Trarbach, although it appears that through his trade he was able to provide a comfortable life for his family. The only known photograph of him seems to have been taken when he was in his sixties, sometime around the year 1910. Sporting a dapper mustache and a pleasant expression, he wore a collared shirt, necktie, vest, and double-breasted wool suit coat for the occasion.

August Heitz died at the age of sixty-seven on 23 December 1913, survived by his wife, five children, and, eventually, six grandchildren.

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A Young Member of the Catholic Cadet Corps

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In the summer of 1916, Gerald “Jerry” Adam of Sioux City, Woodbury County, Iowa, celebrated his eighth birthday. Shortly thereafter, he became a charter member of the city’s newly-established Catholic Cadet Corps under the leadership of Reverend Henry A. Janse, Reverend Thomas M. Parle, Sergeant C. A. Butler, and Charles Parsons.

_{Gerald Joseph Adam and the Charter Members of the C.C.C. (Gerald pictured second row, second from right), 1917 Year Book of the Catholic Cadet Corps (Perkins Bros. Co. : Sioux City, Iowa, 1917); privately held by Melanie Frick, 2023. Collection courtesy of David Adam.}

“The Catholic Cadet Corps was organized for the Catholic boys of Sioux City. It is now a citywide organization, and at the present time has a membership of 170. Companies are being formed in the various parishes of the city, so that all the Catholic boys of the city can enjoy the benefits of the C.C.C. For years the need of some such organization has been felt to solve the ‘boy problem.’ Until recently our Catholic boy had no organization of his own and experience has taught us that many of our boys drifted into the Y.M.C.A. on that account.

The Y.M.C.A. is a protestant organization in which our boy is not welcome, in which he can neither vote nor hold office and in which it is constantly insinuated that he is not even a Christian. Naturally this environment is not conducive to the best interest of our boy. The C.C.C. movement was inaugurated with the purpose of giving the Catholic boy surroundings which are in harmony with his faith. A tremendous amount of work has been done to make the C.C.C. attractive, instructive and helpful.”
1917 Year Book of the Catholic Cadet Corps

As a member of the Catholic Cadet Corps, Jerry would have participated in military drills and athletics, marched in parades and decorated the graves of Civil War veterans. He may have been among the group of young cadets who sang “America” at a local theater on Decoration Day 1917 to much applause. The C.C.C. also organized an ambulance corp that took part in numerous aid efforts, and afforded recreational opportunities for its members such as hiking, picnicking, and swimming at the nearby Trinity College.

_{Catholic Cadet Corps, June 5, 1917 (Gerald Adam pictured second row, sixth from right), 1917 Year Book of the Catholic Cadet Corps (Perkins Bros. Co. : Sioux City, Iowa, 1917); privately held by Melanie Frick, 2023. Collection courtesy of David Adam.}

Perhaps most significantly, the Catholic Cadet Corps may have provided Jerry with a sense of community and belonging at a place and time when Catholicism was not necessarily mainstream. “Boys of the C.C.C. are not ashamed of being Catholics—they are proud of it in this free land of the U.S.A.” The 1917 Year Book of the Catholic Cadet Corps made clear that uniforming each young member in a tailored wool suit was an intentional choice. “The fact that the Cadets have the best uniforms in the city makes them think more of their personal appearance, increases their self-respect and has a good influence on their every day lives—they strive to be as good as they look. The boys wear their uniforms to school. This places all the boys on the same level—no distinction between rich and poor—all are Cadets and all try to do their best in school.” Jerry even wore his uniform for a family photograph believed to have been taken circa 1916.

It is not known how long Jerry might have been involved with the Catholic Cadet Corps, but the year he turned ten was a tumultuous one for him. Not only was 1918 marred by war and a global pandemic, but his father was away for long stretches of time due to his employment at a naval shipyard, and then, tragically, his younger brother died at age five following a horrific accident. Jerry was left an only child with a grieving mother and a father occupied with the war effort; it can well be imagined that the leadership and friendship offered by the C.C.C. may have filled a void for him at this time.

Jerry would not be a lifelong Catholic, but his experiences in the Catholic Cadet Corps may have influenced him regardless. At the age of eighteen, he joined the Marine Corps Reserve, and at twenty, he and his bride—although she was not Catholic—were married by Reverend Le Cair of St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church in Sioux City. Although Jerry’s involvement with the Catholic church waned after that point, he continued to be actively involved in his community through fraternal organizations, as a Little League coach, and as a businessman and entrepreneur. As for Sioux City’s Catholic Cadet Corps, the wartime years seem to have been its heyday and any mention of the organization in the local newspaper dropped off within a few years thereafter.

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