Author: Donald Guenther

Written: January 19th, 2014

I had told about Johann Bernardus Delsman who had immigrated to the U. S. He had married Berhardine Eimers on June 24, 1851 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She had been born on March 8, 1830 in Bocholt to Wilhelm and Eva Eimers and eventually died in Two Rivers, Wisconsin on Oct. 7, 1915. I had noted that she was born in Bocholt, Westfalen, a small village near Ascheberg and even then she and Johann had been born and raised within a few miles of each other, they did not know each other in Germany, but met over here in the United States. In those days, many were emigrating from Westfalen and there has even been a book written about the fact that many of those who emigrated went to places where others in their village had gone and that was the case here. The spoke the native dialect of Low German, High German was something that you had to learn in school and the language at home was Low German. The Eimers family had originally come from an area in Bavaria near the modern Czech border called the Bavarian Woods (Bayerischer Wald). That had been a couple of generations before. But the family could not make it in Bocholt and so they decided to come to the United States and since there were already several German families from the Ascheberg area, they decided to head to Wisconsin. So far everything I have said is solid.

The trouble with oral history is a lot of it comes from children hearing these stories, they become distorted. Things that do not make sense are glossed over. I notice from the material that Brother Don has come up with that I have made some mistakes myself. So, for instance, there were seven children in the family of Grandpa Sam, not the ten that I had said. Also, there were four girls and three boys, not three girls and seven boys. When Grandpa Sam went to Peru, he left the family in Hammond, Louisiana, a town that was nearly wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. He did not leave them in Baton Rouge as I said. On the other hand, I was right in saying that his property in Peru was in the highlands of Northeast Peru near the point where the Amazon begins. So, the general trend is right, some of the things that I had taken as Gospel are not quite right. I bring this up because the next two stories that I am going to tell, I got from Aunt Mamie Sander and by the time that I got the stories, she was pretty old. I cannot vouch for the correctness of the stories.

So, here is the first story. The Eimers family boarded a ship (I do not know the port of embarkation) and started out for America. The old father (or grandfather, I was not sure which one was meant) became ill on the way and he knew that he was not going to make it. The passage in those days lasted anywhere from twelve to twenty days, so the trip was long and hard. He asked to be brought up on deck so he could look out and see if at least he could see the North American continent. So, they brought him up on deck, but all he could see was the ocean. He died and was buried at sea.

After the Eimers got to Wisconsin, there were at least two daughters, Bernhardine and the heroine of this story, whose name I do not know. At any rate, they settled in and worked like crazy. Our heroine must have been quite beautiful and she attracted the attention of a cultured and smooth talking man, a High German. The family was flattered, they spoke the local Low German dialect and here this fellow came along and so they married. But the fellow had some defects. First, he made his living as a professional gambler and when he met the Eimers family, he was in the midst of a real roll. The second defect was, he tended to chase other women. The third defect was, he liked to drink. So, this combination made for a hard home life. The couple settled in Cincinatti and they had four children. One day this smooth talking husband decided to take a river boat down the Ohio in the direction of St. Louis and New Orleans. Well, he simply disappeared. Fifteen years later, a broken down old man, ragged, in bad shape knocked at the door. The heroine had made a living for the family by working in a laundry, but she had made a reasonable life for herself and her family. She had not heard from her husband in fifteen years. She did not recognize the man, thought he was a beggar, but it turned out, it was her husband. So, she wrote to her mother, old Mrs. Eimers, and said, he wants to come back into her life and the lives of her children. Should she let him in? She still loves him so. Her mother wrote back immediately. Don’t be an idiot. The fellow is no good and he will bring you nothing but heart ache. So, she followed her mother’s advice. He did find a room (boarding houses were popular then) in the neighborhood and visited as often as he could. His luck never picked up. He died and she buried him. I do not know what happened to her nor to her children.

So, that was that. These old timers had sad stories and did dumb things just as the new timers do. Human nature never seems to change.

To be continued.