Wisconsin 1899 to 1902 - with thanks to Daphne Dempsey

This account of life for the Staeheli family while they lived in Wisconsin was provided by Daphne Dempsey, daughter of Theresa Staeheli. The document is undated, however, Daphne believes it was originally written in the 1940's. This first hand description reveals significant details of life for immigrants 100 years ago in Theresa's own words.

Some Memories of My Childhood in America

By Theresa Staeheli Jaeger

I was born in 1888 in Switzerland.  My father was Swiss and my mother came from the Tyrol in Austria.  We were a large family.  I was the eighth child born out of fourteen children. 

Father was a contractor of making roads or doing water systems.  I don’t know what he would be called in English, but in our hometown he was called “ein accerdnut (?) or tramirer”.  He was a good man but had a violent temper and in later years started to drink heavily.  On these occasions he would come home and knock everything about and also our mother who was a gentle soul and would plead with him to be calm and kind.  This would infuriate him all the more.

He was a very strong man of fairly large physique as I remember him, he had very blue eyes and black curly hair, a prominent nose and mouth.  He wasn’t bad to look at by any means.  Mother was fair of complexion and blue eyes too.  Her hair was brown with a good deal of copper shades in it and very, very curly too.  People would stare at her when she passed, she was so beautiful - so dad used to tell us.

Mother had very great humor and a naturally happy spirit.  Dad was very changeable and moody, but also very kind in his good moments.

Well, my parents raised a large family, as I said.  They had lots of happiness and lots of trouble too – some of their own making and some was just fate.  We all grew up in Switzerland.  Dad’s business began to fail.  He couldn’t seem to get contracts and he began to neglect his work and never can I remember him being at home of an evening. 

Even on Sundays he would go off by himself dressed in his best clothes, which mother always helped him put on, that is, his collar and tie.  She always did that and cleaned his boots while he waited for them. 

When my eldest brother Albert was 20 years of age, he went to America “where everybody had a chance to make good”.  Mother had wanted to go when she and dad were married, but he wouldn’t go then.  Anyway, Albert went and got work on a farm in the state of Wisconsin.

Albert was a very clever, likeable sort of boy and got on very well.  The farmer’s daughter was a “school-marm” and took a great interest in the boy and taught him much about the language and the ways of the country.  After a year in America Albert sent for us, the whole family.  It was Mother’s wish that we all go to America so that we girls, (there were seven of us) need not go to work in factories.  Many times I thought it would have been better than what we did in America where we had to go out and do housework which we then thought was wonderful. 

I was only eleven years old then and begged my Mother to let me go to some farmer who came to get me with a pair of mules hitched to a buggy.  I drove off with him and couldn’t speak a word of English, so there was no conversation, except the clicking noise he made with his lips to urge the lazy mules on a little faster.  It was about three miles to his place and his old Mother (she was 73) greeted me with a big smile and called me her dear, which she always did.  “Theresa, my dear” she would say to call me.  I was very puzzled at first, because in German a “tier” is an animal, yet of course I knew from the tone of her voice that she meant it as a term of endearment. 

The old lady had several sons and I believe also a daughter.  One son seemed to have left home in his youth and she never heard from him.  Another son was a Doctor and lived in a town called Dodgeville, about 74 miles away.  (The town we lived in was called Ridgeway)  The lady’s husband, I gathered, had been dead many years.  So, the son who came to get me, was named Steven.  There was also a hired man and another old man living with them who it seemed they had picked up and allowed him to work for his keep.  The old lady – I believe their name was Ries or Reace.  The old lady used to read the paper to him in her Welsh accent which I also learned, much to the merriment of my brothers and sisters at home.  They learned their English from the kids on the village. 

My first week at the farm was one of wonderment and strangeness.  The old lady took great pains in teaching me English, but by Saturday afternoon, she was putting my hair up in rags to make it curly for Sunday.  When I saw myself in the mirror I got such a shock that I seemed to get homesick and I started to cry – I really didn’t know why, but the next day after the dishes were washed up, I was told I could go home to my Mother.  This I did. 

I used to walk along the railroad line which passed close to our house.  I was thrilled with the train passing so close and used to run out to wave to the train which later the old lady objected to and then there was another storm of tears.  I remember standing behind the kitchen door crying because she said I must not wave to the train.  The man in the express car was waving his hand or broom to me. 

Anyway, I walked home that Sunday afternoon and the time seemed very short when I already had to start back to the farmhouse to be there in time for supper, as the evening meal was called there. 

I worked there for three months when my brother Albert came to take me home.  He had hired a pair of horses and a buggy at the livery stables and I thought it was a marvelous way to travel, in fact, the end came far too soon.  I learned that I had earned the large sum of Twelve Dollars; being 50 cents a week for my pay!  I often did laundry washing too, under the lady’s direction.  I also did the dishes and sweeping; the beds we did together.  I also did the vegetables.  They were mostly potatoes; the meat was salt pork which was sliced and freshened in water and then fried.  Three times a day the potatoes were boiled for dinner.  What was left over, were fried for supper and breakfast as well.  We made rhubarb pies from her preserves, and the last two weeks I was there, she made apple pies out of green apples which were very sour, but made delicious pies.  She also used to make currant scones once a week.  They were good too.  We also had lettuce salad and radishes as it was springtime.  On Sundays, cake was served for supper.  That was about the variety of menu while I was there.  It was very easy to know what to cook. 

Well, towards autumn, my father, not liking Ridgeway, decided to move on.  My brother bought a pair of horses and a wagon which was rigged like a “prairie schooner” and we traveled that way, taking with us all our belongings, including bedding, stove, etc.  I believe we even had a little pig in the bottom of the wagon at the back.  And so we traveled along the roads through the State of Wisconsin, heading North.  I don’t recall the name of the County, but we must have traveled about one hundred miles through farm country mostly, buying our food supplies and feed for the horses along the way; camping along the side of the road whenever there was a stream handy for water.  We met with great kindness from the people we met in nearly all cases.  One place we stopped at the people wouldn’t have anything to do with us, but my Dad had been told that the man was a country-man of ours and would make us welcome.  His wife was Irish American and could not understand what we wanted and thought we must be Gypsies.  On walking away my father said “Those are fine country people of ours” with great sarcasm.  The man overheard him and came after Dad and said “Oh if you are Swiss, of course you are very welcome indeed”.  We had to stay with them and gave us a meal and were most hospitable.

After some more travelling, we arrived in a town of some size called Marshfield.  My eldest brother found work for himself and two younger brothers Caspar and Joe, about 12 and 14 respectively, in a furniture factory.  Albert also got credit at the store for the Sorekeeper said that if we were settling in the town and had work for thirty days, it was quite satisfactory.  So we settled about a mile out of town on a farm which we were to share the proceeds thereof with the owner.  There was a very fine house on it and about 40 acres of cleared land. 

When my brothers went to work, the local “smarties” wanted to challenge them and offered to fight.  Because there were too many of them, my brothers hit upon a ruse.  Joe had a pipe in a velvet case and when the larricans accosted him he pointed the end of the pipe case at the boys, holding the bowl part in his hand.  The boys took it for a pistol and informed the Police who came to question my Dad and brothers.  When explanations had been made the Policeman went away laughing! 

My eldest sister Mary did not like our mode of travelling, nor did she like to go out to work, she having always lived in the city in Switzerland and having done only embroidery at which she was quite an expert.  At least she had training in that line of work.  She also played the Zither quite well. 

We younger kids went to school and to a Catholic school it had to be.  The Sisters were very kind to us strangers and we had to sing our Swiss songs to them.  I forgot to mention that in the town of Ridgeway, we had all the the town kids singing our Swiss songs, and we in turn learned theirs.  I can still remember singing “Marching through Chorgia” with the words all jumbled and mispronounced, but we got the melody right.  We never forgot that. 

We moved about Wisconsin for about three years – up and down the State.  My father did not like America and he wasn’t satisfied anywhere.  When he found out that my Mother and Albert had planned to get him to America on account of his drinking habit, he was in a terrible rage.  In fact, he got into rages often.  We would all scatter and hide from him and Lord help the one nearest him. 

In the meantime we grew up and most of us worked out at anything we could get to do.  Dad and my brothers worked in the bush cutting timber or in the sawmills.  At one place we wintered in an abandoned logging camp because we could find no house to live in.  There were bunks still nailed to the walls.  We wintered there and it was four miles to town where Dad and the boys worked and the younger children went to school.  By this time I was living with my eldest sister Mary who got sickened of our way of living and got married to a Bavarian, Anton Kolbeck.  He was a very smooth talker and won her easily enough.  He was very proud of her and kind; a very strong man, but alas, too fond of drink.  When her baby came, I was sent to live with her.  So that was why I wasn’t with the others when they used to drive to school with a horse and sled.  They had old “Dolly” hitched to a homemade sled and first she took Dad and the boys to work at the mill early; they would hang the reins on Dolly’s back and give her a smack on the rump and tell her to go home where a feed of oats awaited her.  Then the kids would drive her to school.  On arrival at school, they would hang the reins on Dolly and send her home again.  Being winter time she could find nothing to eat on the way, so she would go home to the warm stable.  I can remember seeing the trees looking so stately with boughs bent with the weight of the snow on them.  Very, very cold, but so beautiful and no neighbor for a mile or two. 

All the time there was the same thing – some happiness, not too much food and lots of quarrelling.  Then we all moved South again.  Albert got himself a bicycle and in the course of time went West to the State of Washington – about a thousand miles away.  He had to cross the Rocky Mountains and on to Seattle, wanting to see what the country was like there.  He traveled all this distance on his bicycle.  Suddenly there were no more letters from him and Mother and Father worried terribly.  One day a letter came from a nurse in a hospital in a town called Sedro Woolley which said that Albert was there suffering from Typhoid fever and that all was being done to help him recover, but in about a week another letter came to say that he had died.  It was on the day after we had received the first letter.  Oh, what a sad time it was.  He was only 23 years of age.  He had contracted the disease from some bad water and didn’t have attention in time to save him.  We never could even get his belongings – his watch, bicycle, etc.

Albert had a very inventive mind.  He was always wanting to build an airship.  Also he had thought out gears for motor cars and claimed that with his gears cars could go up any steep hill as easily as on the level.  There’s no telling what he wouldn’t have done had he lived.  He said that in 30 years from his time, air ships would be as ordinary as the horse and buggy, and I think he was right.

Once in Marshfield Albert bought an old sewing machine in a second hand shop for 50 cents.  He bought a new shuttle which was missing and took it home to Mother and in five minutes it sewed as well as any new machine.  We had it for many years.  Albert had a way with women and horses – they both loved him.  He was absolutely fearless.  It was said that on one occasion he jumped right in amongst some wild horses.  He could do anything with them – they trusted him.  He had a Watchmakers shop in a place called Barnville in Wisconsin.  He used to come home on his bicycle and often go back at night.  On one occasion, (he always rode very fast) – he was six feet in height and broad in proportion, riding along fast, he ran into a farmer who was milking his cow in the middle of the road.  There was cow, milk, bike and men all over the place.  The farmer was in a rage; Albert asked him if he was alright?  Was he hurt?  No the farmer was not hurt except the spilled milk and they ended up laughing because when the farmer accused Albert of riding without a light, Albert said the farmer had no business milking his cow in the middle of the road. 

Albert always made pets of squirrels, lizards, etc.  He used to carry lizards inside his shirt. 

Notes:

Theresa Staeheli had six sisters and seven brothers, the youngest of which was born after the family reached America. 

It was the year 1899 when the family migrated from Switzerland to America.

In 1910 Theresa married Frank Jaeger, who was also born in Switzerland and who had migrated to Canada in 1905 at the age of twenty-two.

They were married in Victoria on Vancouver Island and lived in Burnaby and New Westminster where two years later their eldest son Karl was born. 

In 1914 they migrated to Tasmania, Australia where they settled and lived the rest of their lives and raised four more sons and one daughter. 

Frank died in 1945 at the age of 61 years and Theresa died in 1975, aged 87.