Mamma

While she was still quite small, Grandpa had carpenters come and build a nice, solid little house with a big kitchen wainscoted with walnut boards from the place itself.

One fateful year a dreadful thing happened: the diphtheria came! I don't know how many of the family contracted it but four died; the oldest brother and three little ones. Grandma was never the same, mamma said; no more romping in the summer, nor singing. Another baby was born, and as Grandma was often ailing, mamma, the eldest sister, cared for her a good part of the time. She did not live to grow to childhood; probably Grandma was no longer able to nurse her properly. Eventually Grandma did recover her health and most of her spirits, but she never mentioned the lost ones.

My mother loved school. She was tiny with wavy golden hair - my cousin had the same fairy princess color and texture - but school was a welcome break from farm life.  Industry and thrift made a comfortable, well fed life. When Grandma and Grandpa retired from the farm to a house in Wapakoneta, Grandma had everything any other country wife had - even a front parlor with a pump organ, stereopticon with slides, and a cylinder phonograph with a lily horn.

Farm life was still harder than town life before the age of electricity. Water was pumped for the animals by a windmill and many labor saving devices were used in the latter part of the 19th century, but stock had to be fed, you walked to school no matter what the weather, homes were heated with wood from the carefully maintained five to ten acre wood lot. Cows were milked by hand - everything was done by hand - and the rhythmic schedule of seed time, harvest, & canning took all the hours of the days and the strength of all the hands available, even those of the children; John, Margaret (my mother), and Elizabeth.

It's hard for me to imagine my quiet, self contained mother getting so angry at her older brother's teasing that she ineffectively chased him, screaming "Hold still, Johnny! Hold still you, so I can hit you!"

So she visited another world in school and eagerly and quickly mastered the McGuffy readers (one of which survives in the family - C) and American history, arithmetic, spelling, and geography, that the system deemed necessary for a primary school education.  She had all the tools for learning and all her life she made use of them. She seemed to take so naturally to learning that she was offered the Boxwell test, a requisite for teachers of such rural schools.  Years later I studied European history in high school under the tutelage of an elderly spinster who had begun her career with the Boxwell test.

Mamma passed the test alright with good grades and theoretically she was properly prepared to get a job teaching school, but she was eleven years old and probably somewhat less than five feet tall; she never quite made five feet.

So she packed her little tin trunk (which my aunt, her granddaughter still has) and went to work at the hotel in Wapakoneta, four or five miles away.  I don't know whether she stayed at the hotel  - probably she lived with relatives - I don't think grandpa drove her back and forth. I don't suppose she was too happy at her work - it was mostly washing dishes - and I don't know how long she stayed at it, but as she grew a little and met the local boys, folks began to "pair her off" with a particular one, a farmer's son; that scared her. She wanted no more of the life of a farmer's wife and made up her mind to do something about it.  Somehow or other it became possible for her to go to Columbus to live with yet another relative from the German farm community, aunt Louisa Lechner, who lived there with her husband Conrad in what is now known as German Village, a neighborhood of German-Americans centered around the big Lutheran church, St. Paul's, where the German band played in Schiller Park and the Mannerchoir provided a social outlet for men.

Aunt Louisa and Conrad were childless but she mothered mamma. A young friend, Margaret Albright just then needed a mother's helper and little Margaret Kachelries was the answer to her need.  Aunt Louisa taught momma to cook, to sew handsomely, and the other housewifely arts.  After spending some time with the small children in the Albright home, she went our to work as a domestic. The only house she ever mentioned working in was a well-to-do establishment in what was then the wealthiest area in Columbus, the eastern side called Bexley, where Fred Lazarus, already a living example of the American success story, lived in the elite Jewish community.  Farther out was the Lutheran Seminary and Capital University, even then a respected name in schools of music. The home in which mamma worked belonged to a member of the state legislature, I believe; his street, Thurman avenue, bore his name. There she learned about a more elegant way of life; how to keep a home in a higher station of society at the turn of the century.

This may be the house, which was owned by Allen G Thurman - C.

After a spell of sickness and a visit home - hardly to be wondered at since she really had no chance to be a girl - her confirmation picture shows a little serious woman dressed in a pretty girl's dress - she came back to Columbus to Aunt Louisa's home.

She got a job at a necktie factory on High Street, where she either cut or sewed the ties; I expect she cut because she was always afraid to work on the power machines, A dozen or fifteen ladies worked six days a week on the second floor.  The probably worked at least nine hours a day, but to all of them it was a chance to make a living in a clean, light place under the benign proprietors, Mr. Benzin and Mr. Ustick, who encouraged them to work in a sisterly group who chatted as they worked and spent their hour at lunch time, after sandwiches were eaten, dancing, trying the latest steps, sharing each other's joys and sorrows, while their kindly employers (everyone agreed they were beloved) looked on. The work did not appear to be onerous, at least for the five years she spent there.

One day, all of the ladies went to work in their best dresses, not to work at all but to be photographed by newspaper reporters. It seems that a couple of young men in Dayton had made a machine that would fly and they actually thought it would be used commercially. Mr Benzin and Mr. Ustick, a forward looking pair believed so too, and as a promotion for their own business, they agreed to accept a shipment of silks by air all the way from Dayton. Crowds of people saw the box-kite land and Benzin and Ustick's precious bundle safely delivered  into the hands of the smiling proprietors, all in the full glare of publicity.

It appears that my grandmother may have a few facts jumbled here.  I believe that her mother and her employers most likely did witness the plane landing in Columbus on 7 November 1910, but even cursory research indicates a few differences from my grandmother's account: http://thefamilyparmelee.com/f-flight.html

Mamma and her young friends met young fellows from Capital University, perhaps at the Lutheran church in Bexley, where many of them attended services. In a group they visited Aunt Louisa's where they sang, played parlor games, pulled taffy, and ate her delicious coffee cake. Somehow or other, some students from Ohio State University drifted into the group and she met a young man named William (Billy) Sackried who was studying to become a mining engineer; his home was in Cincinnati, and he must have had a friendly way about him, because he seemed untroubled socially or physically by the limp he had. He also had a room full of electric trains and formed a "railroad corporation" with his friend Sid Seaman, complete with routes to cities, schedule of business, and even engineer caps. Billy wrote to mamma when he was home, sent her postcards of places he visited, spent time at Aunt Louisa's little evenings, and generally seemed quite impressed with the pretty little blond girl who, at this time was not quite so serious as she appeared at 12 or 13.   She was, in fact quite gay and frivolous, for her; she spent a week's pay, $5.00, on a gold bracelet; then she spent three week's pay for a hand made hat and had her picture taken in it. There was work to be done, of course, but life surely seemed more pleasant than it did on the farm. 

Billy also brought his friend, Sid Seaman, around to aunt Louisa's. Sid was a little older with a thin, rather handsome face that changed from gaiety to a sort of romantic melancholy. He had a high bred look and enough vanity to cultivate it. He had been away from home since high school graduation,  had worked several jobs, , had been "crossed in love" by an eminently nice school teacher in Dayton, then in a fit of melancholy daydreaming, he lost three fingers of his left hand; first, second, and third knuckle from the second to the little one, in an industrial accident. That curtailed his piano playing, which had included popular songs of the day and was a real social asset. His running accompaniments became oom-pah-pahs, but worse than that, he really didn't try to keep going to learn new tunes after any fashion.  He had saved money enough to take a couple of years at Ohio State in the brand new field of Electrical Engineering with which he had been enamored since a lecturer came through his home town of Williamsport, PA, and demonstrated the new miracle. 

Sidney Seaman's Lionel electric train engine, circa 1911

In those days, scholarships were all but unknown; loans for education were unheard of. Part time jobs weren't very common either. You worked or you didn't. Hours were long but if you wanted to try to squeeze and education in somehow, that was your business,  However, as late as the 1920's, a good many university professors were saying that if you had to work at the same time, you didn't belong in college: you were a working man, you should devote your time to that, and leave college to the upper classes.  They weren't always so wrong because of the hours involved. The best way was to save your money, go for a year, work again and go for another year. So at 25 or so, he became a freshman.

Well, I suppose mamma was touched by Billy's limp, but Sid Seaman's broken heart and injured hand must have moved her more: against the wishes of his mother, probably his father too, he decided to marry her. During the second year of his college career he became discouraged by the stiff mathematics requirements. Like many other students, he thought he could keep up by experience and studying at home and that everything would be better if they could be married. I don't believe her folks were overjoyed either; at least they didn't offer any sort of help in the way of a wedding. They felt she shouldn't have left the farm anyway and a 27 year old college boy was something outside their realm of experience.

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Origins

My mother was an intelligent, pretty woman of German descent.  Sometime in the last century, probably around 1870, my grandfather and grandmother came to this country from what is now the Wurttemburg part of Germany. I don't know who was the first to arrive, but as each family member get a start in the western Ohio farmlands, he invited brothers, cousins, friends, or was importuned by relations in the old country. They helped him work his farm or business, learning the new language and different ways, until they had enough cash to set up their own establishments. New Bremen, Freibourg, Minster (Meunster) arose beside Spencerville, Sidney, and Buckland. The Lutheran Germans and the Catholic Irish had farms beside each other and churches beside each other. They all sent their children to the one room schoolhouse to learn about America and most learned almost too well; they hardly knew their family origins. Maybe that was good or maybe it was bad, but it made for a peaceful, homogeneous community. It was generally conceded in those days that if you had a reason for leaving your birthplace, you would be willing to assume some responsibility for the good of the country which you adopted.

Grandpa, with his big soft brown eyes, his gentle ways, and somewhat scholarly education "he had learned Latin", was strongly averse to the forced militarism of Prussian-ized Germany: evel village boys and farm boys were conscripted for a period of duty and it was whispered "They drilled until the blood stood in their boots." Grandpa was a draft dodger, I guess. Cousin Conrad Lechner and his brothers probably felt much the same way, Why stay in a country with a fact turned toward military expansion - the Franco-Prussian War was either just ahead or just behind them - when you could go to a new country and make a good living without being a soldier?

Grandma was pretty and small and well shaped, even as an old lady. She always loved pretty clothes. I've often wondered about her antecedents. She had a sister Bertha and a sister named Dora, who was married to Grandpa's cousin Conrad. I've seen a picture f her mother in an elegant black silk dress, taken when she was an old lady, for her daughter's remembrance. She was the same as Grandma, a beautiful little woman with a fine carriage. Aunt Bertha, who was always known to exaggerate, whispered to my mother that they were related to Kaiser Wilhelm. Well, I never heard a word about Mother's grandfather - all I know is that this pretty lady with three pretty daughters came to Auglaize County, where they all married and in due time, she died.

So Grandma and Grandpa were married, bought a 40 acre piece of land, and built what they called a plank house, that it squared logs, as I understand it. They drained the flat, fertile land, and raised a family of seven children, of which my mother was the fourth. She told me how grandpa would sing songs for them (Hi lily, hi lily, hi lo, in German) and on summer evenings the children, with Grandma and Grandpa would play and tumble on the grass until it was  time to sleep.

Foreword & Prologue

31 December 1999

Dear Reader,

In the spring of 1988 our mother, Barbara Grace Seaman, nearing the end of her long struggle with breast cancer, gave me the manuscript for that which follows, and the commission to "Try to put this into some order". Now, nearing the end of this century, I have done so - very late - but as well as I was able. The work is neither a retelling of adventures nor accomplishments, nor even does it include many events from the major portion of her years with us.  It is not an autobiography per-se, but is autobiographical in nature. I believe that the work would have continued, but for her increasingly poor health. 

In the telling presented here, she mentions older diaries that she reports having destroyed herself and her subsequent regret at that destruction. This work encompasses her formative years through early adulthood and into marriage, it illustrates what she learned about life, herself, and others from that period, as well as why and how she learned  it. It therefore may provide cogent guidance for those who have the responsibility and good fortune to be in any way involved with the bringing to maturation of young people, from the standpoint of an intelligent layperson. Further, it has the interesting effect of illustrating the impact that the times and their events have had on her philosophy of life. 

Though obviously intended by her as a monologue, I have been enticed by her rare omissions of fact to make this something of a fascinating dialogue for me. I have made my few comments, with no change to her opinion or observation, as if in conversation with her and  hope that they are not seen by the reader as intrusive. My comments are generally taken from discoveries I made in other portions of the work and, in very few cases, from my own memory or observation. I present them in italics in order for them to be distinguishable from her words. It seems to me now that while she often comprehended things as they happened, many of the things she came to understand of this period of her life were clarified by subsequent environments and experiences.

Age and observation surely do bring wisdom.

John H. Judd 

1940-2018

Prologue

3 January 1983

The time has come for me to do a thing that I've been thinking about for years. I'm 71 years old and I just want to set down what things have happened to me, unimportant though they may be, and what little of the world I saw in the 20th century. Each time I've been tempted to start I've thought how small a contribution it is and desisted: it seems very vain and self centered to write autobiographically unless some lesson can be taught or something of value revealed.