24. Aubonne, Switzerland to Le Havre, France

In August/September, 1883 the Treuthardt family left their home at Aubonne, Switzerland.  They would depart by steamship from the port of Le Havre, France, on an ocean voyage bound to America. 

From Aubonne to Le Havre, what route did they take?   A Google search for the shortest, straightest northwest route displays 44 separate directions for the trip of 696 kilometers (433 miles), through mountains and hills, bypassing the largest cities including Paris.  That route by car is a 7 hour drive.  The directions are complex, and one would need a navigator to give frequent instructions to the driver.    

Of this we may be sure, the Treuthardts did not take the "straight" route as directed by Google.   

Regardless of the route, by what modes of transportation did they travel to the coast of France?   The most likely answers are "diligence" and train.   

The means by which the Treuthardts left their home and made their way with their belongings to the nearest Swiss train station was likely the diligence, which we would call a stagecoach.  Below is a description, written in 1803, of a diligence.   
[Note the photograph of a diligence in Toulouse, France in 1899.]

The following information is from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagecoach

For a picture of a Postkutsche in Brig, Switzerland, see also 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Postkutsche_brig.jpg

A stagecoach is a type of covered wagon for passengers and goods. It is strongly sprung and drawn by four horses, usually four-in-hand. Widely used before the introduction of railway transport, it made regular trips between stages or stations, which were places of rest provided for stagecoach travelers. The business of running stagecoaches or the act of journeying in them was known as staging.

The stagecoach traveled at an average speed of about five miles per hour, with the total daily mileage covered being around 60 or 70 miles.   

Stagecoaches in Continental Europe

Diligencia that was used between
Igualada and Barcelona, Catalonia.
A dedicated luggage deck is on the roof

A diligence surmounted with its impériale
 in Toulouse, 1899

The diligence, a solidly built coach with four or more horses, was the French analogue for public conveyance, especially in France, with minor varieties in Germany such as the Stellwagen and Eilwagen. The diligence from Le Havre to Paris was described by a fastidious English visitor of 1803 with a thoroughness that distinguished it from its English contemporary, the stage coach.

A more uncouth clumsy machine can scarcely be imagined. In the front is a cabriolet fixed to the body of the coach, for the accommodation of three passengers, who are protected from the rain above, by the projecting roof of the coach, and in front by two heavy curtains of leather, well oiled, and smelling somewhat offensively, fastened to the roof. The inside, which is capacious, and lofty, and will hold six people in great comfort is lined with leather padded, and surrounded with little pockets, in which travellers deposit their bread, snuff, night caps, and pocket handkerchiefs, which generally enjoy each others company, in the same delicate depository. From the roof depends a large net work which is generally crouded with hats, swords, and band boxes, the whole is convenient, and when all parties are seated and arranged, the accommodations are by no means unpleasant. Upon the roof, on the outside, is the imperial, which is generally filled with six or seven persons more, and a heap of luggage, which latter also occupies the basket, and generally presents a pile, half as high again as the coach, which is secured by ropes and chains, tightened by a large iron windlass, which also constitutes another appendage of this moving mass. The body of the carriage rests upon large thongs of leather, fastened to heavy blocks of wood, instead of springs, and the whole is drawn by seven horses.^[7]

The English visitor noted the small, sturdy Norman horses "running away with our cumbrous machine, at the rate of six or seven miles an hour." At this speed stagecoaches could compete with canal boats, but they were rendered obsolete in Europe wherever the rail network expanded in the 19th century. Where the rail network did not reach, the diligence was not fully superseded until the arrival of the autobus.

~from Wikipedia, the article on "Stagecoach"

18. Swiss-Texans at the end of the 1890's

Can you see what we have discovered, the places to which we have been, and the turns we have made?   We started out at a Krieg family reunion in West Texas in the early 1970's, visited a beloved aunt in 1977, have gone to more family reunions, said goodbye to a bunch of uncles and aunts (during the 1980's), taken a jaunt to a cemetery at Georgetown in the 1990's, and gotten a view of Walburg's St. Peter church.   We admired a pastor who served the Swiss families.

We found Fred Treuthardt.   We are learning how to observe signs of former lives in our long-unknown ancestors, especially Friedrich.   We have become acquainted slightly with his family life when he was an old man of 63 (a bit younger than me).    He was a grandfather, father, friend and farmer.

We have seen that he was part of a core community of Swiss-Texans.   The central activity that brought them together was church.    In these early days in Texas among the Swiss immigrants, there were many celebrations, weddings, births and baptisms -- not so many funerals.   Not knowing the culture or the times, we don't know many things, including whether it mattered much to be the patriarch of the Treuthardt family.  

I am pleased with this progression from a group of individuals forty years ago, to focusing on one man (Friedrich) and then zooming out again, not just on Friedrich's family but to his neighborhood in Texas over a hundred years ago. 

17. Photographers

Who took that picture of the double Baptism in 1897?    Maybe it was a traveling photographer.   However, I believe the photographer could be narrowed down to one of two men who belonged to this group.    
 

Some unknown photographer went to great trouble to arrange this wonderful picture, manage to get dignified faces from everybody, and produce a perfect snapshot.    This is the only photograph of the Baptism event that I have come across.   The photo is barely 5 x 4 inches, making one think that the snapshot was not done by a professional but by an amateur photographer who processed the film and did not produce very many copies of the photo.    It was preserved intact in Aunt Anna's photo album (which was originally Ida's album).    

My Aunt Anna stated to me in 1977 that she thought her uncle Arnold Treuthardt took the picture, because he had a camera and a darkroom.   Arnold had knowledge of state-of-the-art photography of the late 1800's and early 1900's.  In 1897 he was 22 years old.  
   

Nineteen years after my 1977 interview with Aunt Anna, on October 11, 1996, I visited with the grandson of Arnold Treuthardt.    John Treuthardt, who lived in Richardson, Texas, recalled seeing a camera which Arnold had built himself.   Arnold's granddaughter, Barbara Kiser, also informed me that he took pictures and had a camera and a darkroom.   Aunt Anna was correct in her memory about this.    My father also mentioned that Arnold was a photographer.  

There is another contender for the role of photographer, in the man Henry Bouffard.   A few years after the Baptism photograph was taken,  Arnold married Henry's sister Louise Bouffard, on February 14, 1902.   

This information came to me in August of 1997, when Betty Sue Foy wrote to me concerning her grandfather, Henry.    She reports, 

"My grandfather, Henry Bouffard, was an amateur photographer and it was my understanding that he had a dark room set up in his milk house where he did his own developing."     According to Foy's document, "Descendants of Jacob Ischi(y)," Henry Bouffard was born in 1879.    At the time of this photograph, in 1897, Henry would have been 18 years old, and not a member of the family through marriage yet.    The Treuthardt, Ischy and Bouffard families were all well acquainted, though, and it is possible that an 18-year-old might have taken the picture. 

There is no doubt in my mind that the (eventual) brothers-in-law Arnold and Henry encouraged each other in photography.     I only wish we had access to more of their pictures!    

 

16. Baptism Day of Anna Krieg and Louise Treuthardt, 14 February 1897

The Baptism Day of Anna Louise Krieg and Louise Elisabeth Treuthardt

February 14, 1897

These two Baptisms are documented in the 100th anniversary edition of St. Peter Lutheran Church of Walburg, Texas.   The infants are cousins, Anna Louise Krieg and Louise Elizabeth Treuthardt.   Anna's birth date is November 21, 1896.   Louise was born in December, 1896.   This picture was in the possession of Anna (my Aunt Anna) in 1977.   (See notes at the end of this post to find out how I got a copy of it.)   She told me she was one of the babies in the photo. 
 

It was February 14, and the tree was leafless.  Everyone was wearing long sleeves, and most were wearing several layers.    A few people look windblown and cool.   The children's patience was being strained, not to mention that of some other people who wished they could be someplace else.   Isn't that the way it is when people gather for a family photograph? 

The Treuthardt Grandparents

In the front row center are seated Friedrich Treuthardt, age 63, and his wife Anna Johanna Geiser Treuthardt, age 50.    Grandfather Friedrich (or Fred, as his tombstone records) lived exactly ten years, minus two days, after this picture was taken; he died February 12, 1907.  Grandmother Anna lived an additional thirty-nine years, to age 89; her death date is March 11, 1936. 

 The Babies' Parents

The honored mothers are seated on either side of the grandparents, each holding her baby.  Their husbands stand behind them--in perfect symmetry--between the wife and parent. 

Seated next to Grandfather Fred is his daughter Ida (Treuthardt) Krieg, and behind them is her husband Gottlieb Krieg.  Ida is 25 years old, and Gottlieb is age 26.  Ida is holding baby Anna.

Next to Grandmother Anna is seated her daughter-in-law Louise (Ischy) Treuthardt, holding baby Louise, and behind them, Wilhelm Treuthardt, holding his child.  Will, born in 1858, is 39 years old.  His wife Louise, born in 1865, is 32 years old. 

The three older children belong to Will and Louise Treuthardt.   He and Louise were married at St. Peter in 1891.  The three children are Frederick William, almost 5 years;  Will F., Jr., not yet 4 years; Arnold, two years old.*  The baptisms of these three children are not recorded at St. Peter.  

*These children were identified by their daughters and nieces

 in June, 1997, at the Treuhardt reunion in Holland, Texas. 

These five children are all of the grandchildren of the Treuthardts in 1897.  No other children of Gottlieb and Ida were baptized at St. Peter, as the Lutheran church at New Bern became their new church home.  Their son Oscar, born in 1899, was baptized at New Bern, and all their other children as well.  Thus the association of the Kriegs with St. Peter, Walburg/Georgetown, was terminated by 1899.    Three additional children of Will and Louise were born later than 1897 and were baptized at St. Peter.  

 

 The Pastor and his wife

In 1977 Anna Krieg Fuessel (who was one of the babies in the photo) stated that she thought the pastor and his wife are pictured at the right of the photo.  The pastor in 1897 at the Walburg Church was Rev. Johannes Mgebroff.     

In February, 1997 (exactly 100 years after this picture was taken) Eddie and I went to Clifton, Texas, for me to interview Pastor Mgebroff's son (who was also a Lutheran pastor) at their home.    Pastor Fred Mgebroff was then 89 years old.    I brought along this picture to ask Fred Mgebroff whether the man in the picture was his father.    He did positively identify his father and mother, Pastor Johannes and Mrs. Helene Mgebroff.     

Pastor J. Mgebroff is the second from the far right, back row, the nice-looking young man with a beard, and his wife stands next to him, looking towards the group.    Pastor Mgebroff was born in 1868 in the Ukraine of southern Russia.  He graduated from the Pilgermission St. Chrischona in Basel, Switzerland, and was sent to Texas as a missionary.   In this photo he would have been 29 years old.  His wife, Helene Kummel Mgebroff, was well educated in "music, voice and domestic science."  Their marriage date is September 14, 1895, so on the date of the photo they had been married for exactly one-and-one-half years.  The couple remained at St. Peter barely another year, as they left Walburg to take a call at another Texas church, in June, 1898.

The scholarly Pastor Mgebroff was a pre-eminent historian of the Lutheran Church in Texas, having researched the first 50 years of the Texas Synod, and written a comprehensive history published in 1902.   It is said that he had an extensive theological library, one of the best in Texas.   In 1919 he died suddenly at the age of 51, a great loss to the early Texas Lutheran Church.   

It is a marvel that the little community of Swiss people had such a knowledgeable and excellent resource of spiritual care during those years.   Our history might be different if they had not had this influence.     

Notes:    
Within the year 1997, the Pastor Mgebroff whom we visited at Clifton TX, had died.   
Originally this picture was in the collection of my grandmother Ida Krieg, then she passed it on to her daughter Anna (my Aunt Anna), whose Baptism Day is recorded here.  After Anna's death, Anna's son Reinhold and his wife Katherine inherited the pictures and album.   At a family reunion Katherine showed the album to me, and I recognized it as the same one Aunt Anna had showed me in 1977.   The snapshot was small, not more than 5 x 4 inches.    My husband Eddie Kolodziej took a picture of the snapshot.   
It is a tribute to the quality of these old photographs, that even when enlarged, the images, details, and faces are clear.    Eddie took the picture with an SLR camera.   I doubt these days that digital reproductions are capable of doing as well, being limited by pixels. 
Other people in the picture have been identified, however, I will not make those identifications yet.    It is enough to know that these people were a majority of the Swiss people who had immigrated to Georgetown, with their descendants.   It is fairly safe to say that most of the people in this picture (who are 20 years or older) were born in Switzerland.        
 

This information comes from a paper that I wrote in 1997, 100 years after the photograph was taken.

I used this picture in August, 2008 on the invitation to the Krieg, Treuthardt, Walther reunion in Georgetown, Texas at Christ Lutheran Church.   

15. 1897, February 14 The Treuthardt, Ischy & Bouffard families

February 14, 1897  The Treuthardt, Ischy and Bouffard families