Grandma came to America in 1929.
She was 23 years old.
Picture of grandma when she was still single.
She came to America with a girl friend.
They, like thousands of others, came by ship…
Grandma second from the right
She told me later, she never saw her father again and didn’t see her mother until after the war. She moved to Chicago, but came west to visit her Aunt and Uncle on the farm near Scotch Grove Iowa. Her aunt and uncle were her sponsors.
Grandma sitting with her Aunt and Uncle Fred and Hannah Otten shortly after coming to America.
While visiting them she met my grandpa. A big strapping farm boy who spoke low German and English.
Side note…Grandma spoke both High and Low German. She was a city girl from
Wilhelmshaven, Germany a port city on the North Sea
His parents were good friends with the Ottens….and the rest as they say is history. 
Grandpa told me his friends made fun of him for marrying a “city girl”
He said, “What’s it to them??? They could just to go to….@%#&” .
Grandma learned how to milk cows (by hand) . Grandpa told me he got grandma a couple of hundred chickens “so she could have her own egg money.”
Dad was born at home, (I’m pretty sure on the kitchen table)
Those had to be tough years..
Here’s a picture of grandma and my dad:
Here’s a song that reminds me of grandma….
and finally, here’s a picture of me….all decked out in my German leterhosen.
Tags: attitude, Christianity, family, farming, history, home birth, Iowa, personal, photography, suffering, thoughts
February 21, 2012 at 6:47 pm |
Love it! You look very cute and your Grandma is very pretty.
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thanks Michelle! DM
February 21, 2012 at 7:15 pm |
Great old photos that tell a wonderful story. Thanks for the uplifting post.
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thanks Rich! Appreciate your comment. DM
February 21, 2012 at 9:38 pm |
Thanks for sharing your interesting history.
DM
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You’re welcome!
February 27, 2012 at 10:12 am |
Love it! I think I told you this before but my grandfather, too, spoke a kind of Low German– but the Jewish version–Yiddish. He was not a farm-boy, however, he was a geeky Bronx Boy Scout! My grandmother was also an immigrant (but from Switzerland)– she came to the US in her teens– and spoke “High German” (I looked it up: Hochdeutsch) and Swiss German (Alemannisch). My mom always said that this meant that my grandmother had “married up.”
Your grandfather’s friends’ take on things is a different spin to that one!
When I think how different things were in the 20s and 30s (for women), what amazes me is how independent our grandmothers must have been– yours, to travel all the way to the US without her parents; mine, to get a graduate education and to work as a social worker in New York City, doing house visits in some really tough neighborhoods. How tough your grandmother must have been to travel to another country– and then become a farm wife in that new country, too! Just so interesting, and it only gets more interesting the more you learn!
Thanks, as always, for sharing!