USA > Wisconsin > Washington County > Washington County, Wisconsin : past and present > Part 8
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That the Germans in this country have a Culturaufgabe is the contention of their best and ablest men. They do not try the foolish thing of dominating the country. But they do try to stay true to their ideals of life as long as possible, to impregnate the American . mind with them. They wish to lay down their best qualities on the altar of our American civilization, hoping that they may be taken up into the woof of this nation's fabric. For instance, their love of the home, of thrift, of Nature, of arts and sciences, and last, though not least, their idealism which is worth considering in a country that often so glaringly illustrates Gretchen's complaint in Goethe's "Faust :" "Nach Golde drängt, am Golde hängt doch alles, wir Armen!"
"Those seventeen million German-Americans (in the United States)," says Prof. Hugo Münsterberg of Harvard, "know that the blood of their ancestors was offered for the unity of this nation; that the brawn and the brain of their fathers helped to build its
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prosperity; that their education and their character have given tremendous momentum to the glorious work of the nation, and that they themselves are just as good American citizens as the Anglo- Americans. Those Germans who sought their homes in Pennsyl- vania in the seventeenth century are to the millions of modern Ger- man-Americans what the Pilgrim Fathers are to those descended from English stock. The time has passed when the children felt ashamed that their parents were not of English but Teuton origin. * * The one man who is the idol of the nation has never lost a chance to tell how Dutch and Scotch and Irish and French bloods are mixed in his veins. This new feeling and attitude of the ma- jority necessarily demand a fundamental revision of the antiquated national theory. The American people are not an English people, nor a Dutch, nor a French, nor a German, nor an Irish. The Ameri- can nation is an entirely new people, which, like all the other great nations of the world, has arisen from a mixture of races and from a blending of nationalities. The ties of kinship do not connect it with England more than with Ireland or Holland or Germany or Sweden. All these races are united and assimilated here-not by a common racial origin, but by a common national task. They must work out in unity the destiny of a nation to which all the leading countries of Europe have contributed their most enterprising elements as bearers of their particular traits and ideals."
Even broad-minded, intellectual Americans-those who always have been friendly to German culture since their great writers have pointed to it-deplore the altogether too early passing of the Ger- man influence on the American mind, the neglect of the language, and the shedding of time-honored notions, and ask where that faithfulness is of which Tacitus has written. These being rigid facts, it is evidently nothing left to do but to treat them as such. But, happily, Nature strives to preserve and develop those qualities in man as well as in nations, which are most useful to her purpose. She cannot ignore the large strain of German blood in the American nation and any good that springs from it and aids her will certainly be used. Blood will always assert itself. It is asserting itself al- ready. This will be a nation in which all of the best and most available qualities of each of the elements that helped in its making are blended. This ought to be satisfactory to all.
CHAPTER XIV
THE "LATIN SETTLEMENT"
Whoever has read Dr. G. A. Zimmermann's historical work titled "Vierhundert Jahre amerikanischer Geschichte" ("Four Hun- dred Years of American History") has come across a passage where the author says, in translation :
"Mention should be made of the 'Latin Settlement' of the town of Farmington, Washington county, which was founded in the mid- dle of the '40s by the Jacobson brothers, Wermuth, Wm. A. Pors and Eghardt."
In truth, there existed in Washington county, though for a short time only, a "Latin Settlement," as the colonies of the highly cul- tured fugitives of the German revolution of 1848 were named. The influence of this creme de la creme of the German immigration can perhaps up to this day be traced in the "Farmington Turn- verein."
It happened in 1849 and on board of an emigrant sail that a num- ber of young men learned to know each other. An ocean voyage in the days of our granddaddies was a protracted affair-it lasted as many weeks as it does now days-and the travelers had much more chance and leisure than nowadays to study and fathom each other. They were Germans and German-Austrians. As university students they had more or less, if not in deed, at least morally sup- ported the German revolution of 1848, which extended into Austria. The rise of the people ended in a failure, the thrones of the poten- tates proved to be too firm to topple, freedom, the dream of the masses, was interpreted with "insolence," and many who had helped along, open-handed or under cover, preferred to get out of reach of the ruling powers, or to emigrate to the country of the free across the great pond, where they could better live up to their standards of life. They were academically educated people, and for this reason alone it was a matter of course that they should segregate from the bulk of the emigrants and find each other. Thus a double cord
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held them together: that of lost hopes, and that of intellectual no- bility. It did not take long before they had vowed eternal friend- ship.
The young men who had thus drifted together were: Wilhelm A. Pors, Adolf and Gustav Jacobson, Leopold Eghardt, Otto and Karl Wermuth, Herman Schlueter, Hans Balatka, and Friedrich Bude. Their time aboard was for the greater part occupied with thoughts of the future and planning. They had heard that in Amer- ica people would get rich in a single night, and that vast tracts of land could be gotten almost for a song. The European press so often delighted in grotesque exaggerations of American conditions, and numberless readers have taken them for the truth. No wonder that our former students were building air-castles, as though they possessed Alladin's wonderful lamp. In their visions each one saw himself the owner of large domains with fine mansions, beautiful woodlands, fertile fields-in short, in an independent and happy state of life, and as free as any of the sovereigns of the many petty states of Germany.
They had agreed to continue their trip to the West at once after their landing in New York. In those days Wisconsin lay way out in the Wild West. So it came that the East with its industrious cities was hardly deemed worthy of any scrutinous look, and it was not until in Milwaukee that the travelers began to examine the surroundings closer. Their resolutions were not shaken. They wanted to go on the farm, to do farming on a big scale, to bring about a revolution in agriculture, to create models for the entire West, that should be astounding. The heaven-storming enthusiasm of the German ex-revolutionists of '48 knew no boundaries. "Arms interlocked with thee, I challenge fearlessly my century," they could apostrophize from Schiller's "Don Carlos." In the first few years there would be hardships, surely, but then: Domains which could arouse the envy of any German country-gentleman.
Action followed thought. They chose the town of Farmington in Washington county, where they bought 360 acres of land from Charles W. Detmering. It was divided into equal parts, and the chopping down of the primeval forest began. Hans Balatka sac- rificed the freedom of his bachelorhood and took to himself a neat German girl as a wife. She did the cooking and housekeeping for the men, and brought changes into the monotony of their meals and life in general. A hut was built of logs and rough boards, wherein a space was partitioned off for Balatka and his spouse. The intimate
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relations of married life shun the eyes of even the best friends. Owing to the unwieldy material, the work of the carpenters was, however, far from perfection. The roof especially had its short- comings. On rainy days Balatka had to open an umbrella in bed to prevent himself and his wife from getting drenched. The dif- ficulties grew, grew worse, took on towering proportions, and in the very same ratio, inversely, sank the courage of the settlers. Never- dreamed-of difficulties blocked their way. Harder than Hercules's work in the Augean stable appeared this wresting of a piece of arable land from a thousand-year-old wilderness. The beautiful dreams of country-seats faded, dissolved into nothing, like mental mirages.
At the end of the second month they all, with the exception of the Jacobson brothers and Wermuth had quit battling with the wilds. These did stick to the ground and turned out as well-to-do farmers. Hans Balatka removed to Milwaukee and became one of the fore- most musicians and directors of America; he also directed singing societies in St. Louis and Chicago. Herman Schlueter settled down in Chicago and gained the green twig in business enterprises. Wm. A. Pors went to Port Washington, studied law, and became an im- portant factor in local politics. Leopold Eghardt also settled in Port Washington and reached the top-notch of local honors by being elected county judge. Of all these broad-minded and highly intel- ligent men Friedrich Bude alone returned to Germany where he drifted into such miserable straits that he chose to die by his own hand.
Meteor-like was the appearance of these Germans in Washington county, but the bright line which they drew in the heavens of our prosy every-day life has up to this day not entirely disappeared, at least not with the older generation whose feelings and views to a great extent are still rooted in the soil of their native land, from which they draw strength, like Antaeus of the Greek fable.
CHAPTER XV
CLOUDS WITH SILVER LININGS
In an old poem by a local writer this stanza occurs:
" What land is that where every one Expects an 'Iron Horse' to run Across his farm, or he's undone ?- Wisconsin."
Now the fact is that many were undone after the "Iron Horse" ran across their farm. The old settlers had some sad experience with the railroads, those most potent factors in the development of a country. Generously and blithefully they had helped toward build- ing the Milwaukee & La Crosse Railroad (now the St. Paul) by buying shares of the company and paying for them with mortgages on their land. In 1855 the construction of that railroad was com- pleted through the county.
In 1856 the building of the Milwaukee & Lake Superior Railway (now a part of the Northwestern System) was begun. It was to be an air-line road from Milwaukee to Fond du Lac, running through Washington county. Again the farmers put their shoulders to it by buying shares and hypothecating their properties to pay for them, for the days of fat bank accounts did not yet smile on them. The railroad company sold the mortgages to get the funds wherewith to build the road. Hardly had the road advanced a few miles into the county, just far enough to make the mortgages valid, when the com- pany on account of mismanagement went bankrupt, and the farmers had worthless shares, while the courts held the mortgages to be valid. Their hopes had vanished, their money was gone, only the debt stuck to them like a lost dog to a kindly looking gentleman, and they had to pay or be driven from their farms. It was hard in those days when money was scarce.
Next came the failure of the Milwaukee & La Crosse Railroad. Again the shares held by the farmers were not worth the paper they were printed on, and the mortgages on the farms were foreclosed. For years the farmers litigated against their creditors. The follow-
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ing resolutions adopted in a meeting in the town of Richfield on February 15, 1861, furnish the key to the situation :
"WHEREAS a number of farm mortgagors of this county have within a short time had suits instituted against them for the foreclosure of mortgages given to the Milwaukee & La Crosse Railroad Company, which company by fraud and by fraudulent representations made to us obtained said mortgages, and
"WHEREAS, we are all as unjustly subject to foreclosure at any moment, therefore be it
"Resolved that our Sheriff, Charles A. Cron; Jacob Bertschy, Register; George H. Kleffler, Clerk of the Court; Michael Bohan, Clerk of the County Board of Supervisors, and their deputies are hereby requested by us and our friends to refuse having anything to do with such foreclosure, either in serving papers or in filing them; in abstracting titles or in preparing papers for such foreclosure.
"Resolved that we will remember our friends, and mark our en- emies; and that anyone having anything to do with such foreclosure will be regarded as our enemy.
"Resolved, that we are all for peace, but if forced to extremities, we prefer defending ourselves to surrendering our homes and the homes of our children through such foreclosure."
In Hartford the "Home League," a paper in the interest of the mortgagors, was started. The "Washington County Democrat" also took up their cause. Said its editor: "We have received the first number of this paper ('The Home League'), published in Hartford by A. M. Thomson. It is a regular clipper, sharp as condensed lightning, and devoted entirely to the interests of the Railroad Farm Mortgages. We notice that this number has caused a tremendous fluttering amongst the Wall Street-influenced journals of this State. Pitch on 'em, Thomson, we'll hold your bottle and sponge."
But all of this was of no avail. No matter how hard the blow hit, how much misery it brought upon the unfortunate ones, how des- perately it was fought in the courts, there was nothing left to do but to pay or give up the farm. The demands in the county ran up to almost $200,000. But there was one satisfaction after all. The construction of the La Crosse Railroad was taken up by another company and pushed to a finish, and the county reaped great ad- vantages of it. The same may be said of the Lake Superior Railway. * * * * *
In the summer of 1862 large numbers of the settlers in this and the neighboring counties were seized by what is known as the "In-
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dian Scare" which almost precipitated them into a panic. Near the border line of Minnesota the Sioux Indians had gone on the war path, killing the settlers and pillaging the settlements, and in the South the war was raging between the States-reason enough to create high-pitched excitement. A definite and final explanation of that great "Indian Scare" has never been given. But it soon was found to be altogether groundless, and today only humorous anec- dotes are left of it.
According to the story of a contemporary, about a dozen Indians had at the time put up their wigwam at Horicon lake, not far from Hartford. Nearby some Germans had settled, and one of them had shot a pony belonging to the Indians, which had broken into his corn field. The redskins thereupon should have sworn to take revenge on the German who, frightened to death, ran to his neigh- bors and told them of a horrible Indian massacre that was breeding. Probably the threat of the vindictive Indian grew the farther it spread, as bad news so often does, like the wave rings from a stone thrown in the water grow bigger the farther they get away from the center. When it reached Hartford in the evening, the dozen of harmless Indians had grown to five thousand bloodthirsty savages. Even the cooler heads were seized by the excitement. On the fol- lowing morning the strong men of the place, provided with all kinds of weapons, rode on wagons to the seat of the supposed hostilities, while the women busied themselves at home, getting lint and band- ages ready for the wounded-to-be. There were touching scenes at the departure of those heroes.
But the bravery of the Hartforders was not to be tried to the utmost. When their main force had reached the lake, they only found a few Indians who at the sight of the armed men and their warlike attitude were at least as frightened as the Whites had been before. The rear-guard who was but half way was met by a wagon full of Mecklenburgers who convinced them of the uselessness of their expedition. They were armed with old shotguns, pitchforks and scythes. The excitement soon subsided. * * *
Another dark cloud that cast a gloomy shadow was what is called the "De Bar Tragedy." It was an atrocious lynching affair that marred the record of an otherwise remarkably law-abiding county. George De Bar, a young man who "walked with a somewhat sham- bling gait, and altogether had the make-up of a more than ordinarily harmless, though rather shiftless young man" worked in the summer
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of 1855 for a farmer named John Muehr in the town of Trenton, whose family consisted of himself, his wife and a boy, Paul Winder- ling. De Bar left Muehr's employ some time in July to work in Young's sawmill not far away. On the evening of August I he left Young's house saying that he would sleep in the barn where it was cooler, it being a sultry night. It proved to be a pretense, for he went to the house of Muehr to collect a small sum due to him for work, as he said afterwards. Muehr intended to treat his visitor to some beer, but when he brought it up from the cellar, De Bar standing at the head of the stairs dealt him a murderous blow with some hard instrument. The victim fell unconscious back into the cellar. The assailant then turned upon the woman with a knife, stabbing her and inflicting terrible but not fatal gashes on both sides of her neck. She fainted away from loss of blood. The cries of the woman awakened the boy who had gone to bed. He came to the room, but tried to escape when he saw what had happened. De Bar followed him into a corn-field, caught him and cut his throat from ear to ear, dispatching him on the spot. He then dragged his body to the house in which he thought were the dead bodies of Muehr and his wife, and set fire to it. Muehr, however, recovered from the blow and succeeded in saving himself and his wife from the burning building. De Bar fled to Milwaukee, but was discovered the next day and brought back to the county jail for his trial.
As the news of the shocking butchery, apparently done without any provocation, spread over the county, many voices were raised that the murderer should not escape the biblical penalty for such a crime. A few months before a perpetrator of a similar deed had been hanged in Janesville by a mob of infuriated lumbermen, and the lynchers went free. Besides, capital punishment had only re- cently been abolished in the state. Thus circumstances were grouped in a way to incite people to take the law in their own hands.
A special court session was held by Judge Larrabee on August 7. Because the air was heavy with threats of lynching, the judge ordered two companies of militia, one from Milwaukee and one from Port Washington. They were present at the trial. An indictment for murder was formulated by the grand jury. De Bar was arraigned, pleaded not guilty, and was being brought back to the jail by the sheriff and his guards when a frenzied mob overpowered them on the courthouse steps and seized the prisoner. He was knocked down, and a heavy stump and stones thrown upon him rendered him un- conscious. They then seized him by the legs and dragged him down
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the street, the closely following crowd kicking him on the head and pelting his body with stones. It was at one point proposed to draw and quarter him, but this medieval method did not find enough sup- porters. On he was dragged with ropes tied to his feet to a maple tree in front of the old gristmill and hung head downward, to a branch. He had been dangling there for a little while when he was cut off by some citizen who had not taken part in the execution. But the mob who wanted to make sure of his death again seized the rope and dragged him across the bridge to the eastern river bank where they again hung him to a tree, this time by the neck. When he was cut down an hour later, there was no doubt that he was stark dead. Fifteen of the lynchers were indicted and tried for murder, but they were set free because "the testimony did not sustain the allegation that he came to his death by hanging, there being a rea- sonable doubt as to his being alive when hung the last time."
Barring this shocking and deplorable incident the county, as said before, always has been remarkably free from crimes, and the poet quoted at the beginning of this chapter was right when he wrote:
" What part is that where crimes are few, Misdeeds the same and lawsuits too, And juries don't have much to do ?- Washington County."
CHAPTER XVI
FRAGMENTS OF A CHRONIQUE OF 1860
In some newspaper offices the files are, if not the most valuable, at any rate the most interesting assets. They become more so with age, and if they reach the half-century mark, there is the editor's chance of getting up a compilation of "Things That Happened Fifty Years Ago," that may run all the year around and may be almost certain of being read and appreciated. I have found a mine of special features in the files of the "West Bend News." Among many things, I have dug out an almost complete account of the Twelfth Wisconsin Regiment of the Civil War, very interestingly narrated in sixty odd letters by boys from West Bend and vicinity. In the oldest of the files, the "Washington County Democrat" of the year 1860, a dusty volume bound in half-leather with marbled paper over the paste- board covers, I found a precious vein of humor running through the local columns. In idle hours I have deciphered the blurred lines on the time-stained rag paper of this old tome and have collected the wittiest items in a little book that was published privately in a very small edition, and apparently has made a hit. The writer's name was Josiah T. Farrar. If anybody would ask me where to find traces of the spirit of pioneer days in Washington county, I would confidently guide him to these items. It is in this chapter proposed to give an ample number of them so that the reader may grasp a little of that spirit, and also enjoy the unique waggishness of this country editor of ante-bellum days.
The weather is the most common, and also the most natural, topic of a country weekly. Few are the issues in which it is not treated in at least a few lines. Here is an item of March 19:
"Won't the fine, warm weather start the buds on fruit trees? And then, during the next month, won't there come a 'saverageous' cold snap and kill them all dead as a door nail?"
The excessive drought of the year 1859-60 evoked the follow- ing :
"No rain .- We haven't had a real good, soaking rain in this Vol. 1-7
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vicinity for almost a year-'twill be a year the last of next month. Rain is very much needed. The wells are almost all dry, cisterns more so, and water powers in some parts of the county are not what they might be. Water is scarce-distressingly so. It is kept almost exclusively for washing, irrigating and grinding purposes, very little is drank. Beer, in a great measure, has taken the place of Adam's ale as an imbibatory fluid. Don't we need rain ?- say!"
A graphic description of November weather is this :
"The weather is decidedly, deucedly and confoundedly moist .-
" 'The cold and scanty rain comes dripping down From sullen, overcharged, unwilling clouds.'
"Not so very 'scanty,' either, judging from the mortar-like mud which plasters the carpets of every man who has a marriageable 'fräulein,' and which adheres so tenaciously to the unclean soles and chameleon coats of the corps of electioneering candidates whose number is legion-for none but beaus and ticket-venders patronize our bottomless sidewalks during this abominable weather.
"The week has been nothing but a continuous interminable drizzle, and as we stick this indictment in type, the spiteful diminutive rain- drops hurl themselves with the force of bullets against our window, as if angry at our indignant protest.
"The clouds, like Queen Victoria and the Rev. A. B. Jackson, seem determined never to 'dry up.' They drop their vapor curtain now and then, just far enough to let Old Sol peep over and tantalize us with visions of firm footing and bright Indian summer days; and then rear their leaden battlements again, open their batteries, and pelt our long-drawn faces with their tiny missiles.
"The markets are dull, but Crinoline has risen, and Brilliant is higher; boots and shoes are fluctuating, and live stock is unsteady; dry hides are scarce, and in good demand.
"Bah! but this is enervating weather .- It takes all the starch out of one's spine and shirt collar-all the vim out of one's muscles and soul-all the gloss off one's wits and boots. A fellow's spirits collapse like a wet dish-cloth, or a boiled cabbage-leaf, and he feels as glum and blue as the dolorous shanghai who is visible from our window, with drooped and dripping tail, balancing himself on three toes, while his half-closed eyes are as lustreless as those of a dead mackerel-a fit representative of the party to which he has lent his beautiful name.
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