History Through Houses

                                                                 HISTORY THROUGH HOUSES

In July of 1982, my mother and I made a nostalgic trip back to her hometown and birthplace, Fennimore, Wisconsin.  Fennimore held special memories for me also, as I spent a couple years of my very early childhood there and later spent enjoyable summers on my grandparent's farm.   

                                                              My Mother's Birthplace

On January 8, 1906, a brown eyed dark haired baby was born to Will and Mary Riddiough on a farm just south of Fennimore.  She was to be the oldest of their four daughters.  In the picture above, the buildings can barely be seen from the road. 

 Mother's Home in 1925

Mother and Father were married in 1926 at her parents home (above).  This is where she lived in 1925 and was most likely the site of her wedding, February 16 ,1926.

                                                      

                                                             The Tuckwood House

The Tuckwood house sits on a corner in Fennimore.  This is the house that my mother and father moved to when Fern and I were small (from 1933-1935).   Fern was 3-5 years old and I was 1-3 years old).   I remember Fern and I having chicken pox when living in this house.  Fern loves to tell the story about when mom and dad were having a prayer session in the small living room with my father's sister and her husband, Hazel and Roy Wauchope.  The Wauchopes were very religious and our mother felt sure they did not approve of bad or off-color language.  The door to the upstairs where Fern and I were playing on the steps (as children sometimes do) opened into the living room.  Somehow, Fern slipped and came tumbling down the steps and hit the door at the bottom of the steps.  The door flew open with the impact and she landed into the room.  My sister immediately picked herself and uttered a resounding "OH SHIT!  Everyone stared in surprise then laughed.  Fern expected to receive a spanking for her faux pas, but it never came much to her relief.  

                                                           

Retirement Home of Carl and Marie Fischer

Mother's grandparents, Carl and Marie Fischer, lived in a house not too far from the Tuckwood house after their retirement from farming.   I remember it being painted brown.  It was a sad occasion when mother's aunt Edith suffered a stroke and died.  I do remember a visit to the house during that time, but nothing else ... have no recollections of Carl and Marie.  Fern and I were each a given juice size glass to remember her by.  I still have mine.  

                                                                            

Happy Summers on the Farm

My grandfather, Will Riddiough, moved from farm to farm during his lifetime.  Pictured above is the last one on which they lived for many years.  It hold so many memories of my summers on the farm.   My job was to go to the mailbox and get the mail each day.   Playing with all the kittens and the Collie cow dog, Scotty, kept me more than occupied.  My job, along with Scotty, was to go and bring the cows in for evening milking.  Actually, the well trained cow dog did all the rounding up and driving to the barnyard.  I just followed along.  I was eight years old when my grandfather saddled up Tops, hoisted me aboard and sent me happily plodding along in the pasture warbling my favorite cowboy songs.  I was in cowgirl heaven.  Tops was a plow horse, though grandfather referred to her as his "western horse".  Looking back she was most likely a large quarter horse.  I never saw him ride, but he did have all the gear necessary.  I spent hours currying Tops when she was stabled in the barn.

                                                            

My love affair with horses started at an early age.

The Orchard Farm  1926

This is the first farm that my mother and father moved onto after their marriage on February 16, 1926.  It was called The Orchard Farm.  Times were hard, and I don't think my father enjoyed farming that much.  They, too, moved from farm to farm.  After the 1929 crash, they left farming and moved to Illinois where they both worked at and orphanage call "The Youman City of Childhood".   Mother worked in the kitchen and dad worked in the diary milking cows as I recall. 

Homeless for a while .....  Fern with friend.  Fern and I slept in the trailer.
Mom and Dad slept in the tent.  

 

 Cabin at Krause Kabin Kourt

My parents moved to La Crosse in 1937 where they lived in a tent and trailer for a few months then moved into a one room cabin with cement floors then in a two room house in Green Acres where Fern and I spent our early childhood.  In 1940, they bought the four room house on Barlow Street where they would live until my father's death in 1981.    Notice the Model A Ford ... that was my Father's.

Green Acres ... Fern and I standing in the doorway.
Our job was to help de-bud all the peony bushes and pick
strawberries and raspberries ... a condition put forth
by the landlord, Frank Moore.

Thanks to Scott, I have a picture of the house on Barlow Street.   Railings had been added to the front stoop, but the house looks pretty much the same as when Fern and I lived there.  

 

Olden Days!

"What was it like in the olden days, mother?  You know, like when your were a little girl," asked our eleven year old Miss Curiosity Shop.  "Did they drive cars?  Did they have super markets?"

"Now must a minute, young lady," I replied, "I am not THAT old!  Yes, there were cars in those days, not as sleek and shiny as today's, but there were still cars.  And as for super markets, yes, there were a few, but they weren't as super as the ones of today."

So I proceed to give my young daughter, Nancy Lisa, a history lesson ... and after thinking about it for a bit, decided that my childhood experiences were indeed different from hers, just as my mother's childhood experiences were foreign to me.  Time to slip back into the "olden days".  

Running to the little neighborhood store to get a loaf of bread or quart of milk (in glass bottles) was my job in the "olden days". 

  

"Neighborhood grocery stores," I explained, "were often combined with a gasoline station and were the favorite shopping spot for families in those days, because that meant that fuel for the body and car could be taken care of all at one time.  Little mom and pop neighborhood grocery stores were common.  Since families could afford only one car, including ours, that meant your grandmother Strahl and I would have to walk to the nearest store during the day and purchase only what we could carry in our arms or tote in a wagon.  Did I mention that when your grandmother and grandfather moved to La Crosse in 1937, they both worked at the Knudson Texaco station, grandpa pumping gas and doing repairs and grandma doling out groceries and manning the cash register.  Grandpa sometimes filled in on those jobs also, though grandma never pumped gas ... that was the men's job" 

"There weren't any food laden aisles to wander down in those grocery stores," I continued, "nor shopping carts to nudge along.  Everything was neatly stocked on shelves behind a counter.  The grocery man waited on each and every customer, picking out the various cans of food as they were read from the list.  There wasn't any label reading in those days nor very many brands from which to choose.  You didn't quibble over price, either."

"Bakery items like doughnuts and long johns, my passion as a child, were stored in tall, glass cases with pull out trays.  Meat was kept in meat cases much like the ones that you see in butcher shops today, but the back room where the meat was cut up was often small and unsanitary.  One often wondered whether the man who pumped the gas washed his hands before weighing up the meat."

"If the store could afford one, a hand operated adding machine totaled up the purchases before they were rung up on a cash register, a stately, brass bell ringing object which would fall into the antique relic classification today.   If there were no adding machines, purchases were itemized on a sales slip and added up in the head and rechecked by the customer before payment made.  It was common to just charge it"

Above Photo is of my mother and father taken by the main door to the grocery area.  To the right were the gasoline pumps.  Notice the grocery part was IGA.  The gasoline was Texaco.  My father was 37 years old and mother was 32.  

Cooking was simple, out of a can, fresh, or home canned.  No frozen or packaged foods or convenience foods like cake and cookie mixes.  Pork and beans were the closest to a meal-in-a-can that could come to a homemaker's rescue in an emergency.  Potatoes were a mainstay of each meal with pasta dishes coming second.  No instant mashed potatoes, just wash, peel, and boil. 

If a homemaker was inclined, home baked cakes, cookies and pies along with sliced banana drowned in Jello were the desserts of choice.   No store bought cakes or pies in those days though there were packaged cookies.  My mother cooked over a kerosine stove, and I held a slice of bread skewered on a fork over the burner for toast.  It wasn't until I was about twelve years old, that mother got an electric stove and refrigerator.  Until then, foods needing to be kept cool were stored in an ice box.  Did we mind?  No, that is just the way it was. 

Nancy Lisa is about 8 years old in this photo.  She took ballet lessons.  Now her girls can ask her what it was like in her "olden days!"

 Johann Friedrich Carl and Hanna Marie Breese Fischer

(my great-grand parents ... my mother's grandparents)

It probably was with great trepidation that 27 year old Johann Friedrich Carl and  23 year old Hanna Marie Breese Fischer made their final decision to leave the security of the baron's estate and their families to embark for the new world.  Military and religious pressures had built up immensely in Germany.  Life was difficult for the Fischers and the work hard, for they were simple peasants who labored in the fields.  They lived in the village of Pommern which is on the northern border of what was Russian rule after the war I and II.  Every day a wagon from the baron's estate came to the village and got them. The thirteen children of Johann's' father (Johann F. Fischer-born 1831-married to Augusta Zander-born 1839) worked on this estate. (Augusta and Johann were married in 1845.)    

Times in Germany in the 1800' were uneasy. The Kaiser was forcing the men to go into military training which was hard and very cruel.  Though there had been German Jews from the 4th century, starting in the 1870s, anti-Semites viewed Jews as part of a Semitic race that could never be properly assimilated into German society.  Life was difficult for anyone Jewish.  Johann was believed to be a German Jew, but my mother related that when she asked about it one time, she was hushed and told "we don't talk about that".     

Carl and Hanna had eight children of whom my grandmother, Marie, was the second oldest.

Shown here are her parents and two younger brothers.

Carl's sister who had married into a wealthy family, made the decision easier as she gave them enough money for their passage to the United States.  So, with their small daughter, Anna, and Hanna pregnant with their second child, they left their homeland and families and sailed for America.  After arriving in New York in September of 1883, they took a train to Fennimore, Wisconsin where they stayed briefly with Hanna's brother, John Breese, and his family.  Fennimore would be their home.  Now, they would be known as Carl and Maria.  Shortly after arriving, Carl got a job as a section hand on the Narrow Gage railroad, and they moved into their own home near John Breese.  Language was a barrier as they spoke only German.  My grandmother, Maria Johanna Frederica Fischer, was born three months later, on December 5,1883.  

I think this is the "family farm" mentioned.  Pictured are sons, Fritz, Frank, Emil, and Charley

For ten years, Carl worked in a grain warehouse.  He did learn English.  And they did prosper.  My grandmother, Maria, was ten years old when Carl and Hanna purchased "Sunny Side" farm.  They lived there until 1902 when he sold Sunny Side and purchased a farm southwest of Fennimore.  This farm would remain in the family until the summer of 1963.  Carl and Hanna had eight children: Anna Fischer Riddiough, Maria Johanna Frederica Fischer Riddiough, Charles Fischer (he had a twin who died), Emma Fischer Masso, Edith Fischer (Edith died at the age of 51 of a stroke and was buried in Fennimore), Frank Fischer, Emil Fischer and Franz (Fritz) Fischer.  

My Grandmother, Mary, is on the right.    

First row: Charles-1889-1972, Anna-1881-1966, Carl 1856-1945, Maria 1860-1946, Mary 1883-1969, back row: Frank 1893-1973, Emma 1886-1973, Emil 1896-1986, Edith 1890-1942, J Frederick 1899-1949

Great-grandfather Carl (also referred to as Charles) Fischer was born March 14, 1856, at Popenhagen, Richenburg, Germany.  Great-grandmother Marie (Hanna) Breese was Born August 28, 1860, at Neumuehl (Penmuehl), Franzlourg (by Franzburg), Germany.  They were married May 14, 1880, in Franzburg, Germany.  They lived two years in Neumuehl before immigrating to America.  Carl and Hanna celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary May 1930 with all of their children present with the exception of Fred.  Hanna was sixty-nine and Carl was seventy-four.  Great-grandfather Carl died January 4, 1945.   He was 88 years of age.  Great-grandmother Hanna died January 26, 1946, at the age of 84.  They both are buried in the Prairie Cemetery, Fennimore, Wisconsin

This picture was taken outside of their home in Fennimore.  It was painted brown.  Carl is 71 and Hannah is 67.  They celebrated their 50 years of marriage three years later in 1930.

My Mother wrote her memories of her grandparents: 

"The Fischers, my mother's people, were quiet German folk, very reserved, quiet, and genteel folk.  I, Gladys, liked to go and stay with them.  They were so kind and special.  Grandma Fischer or Grandpa Fischer would get on edge at each other, but in a quiet way.  But, oh my, how the German would fly.  I spent many memory filled and happy hours as their oldest granddaughter visiter.   Grandpa Fischer was to have been of German-Jew descent, but it was always hushed up because of World War I and other problems.

                   *Johann F. Fischer (1831) and Augusta Zander Fischer (1839)

                    **Carl Breese (1835 Pommern, Germany)-Hannah Maria Wetterman         (8/28/1860,Neumuhl, Franzburg, Germany)

*Carl and **Hannah Breese Fischer > Marie Fischer Riddiough > Gladys Riddiough Strahl >>> Fern  Strahl Brye Ryan Tomazewski, Nancy Strahl Donnell Guenther, and Everette Strahl, Jr. >>>> Brent Brye, Randi Brye Hoffman, Lewis Brye, William Brye, Randolph Donnell, Samuel Donnell, Scott Donnell, Nancy Donnell Capo, Aaron Strahl, Farah Strahl Krueger and Shelby Strahl Hutchinson