The Leaving

 

Though this story is based on fact, the story is fiction. All names and places are fiction. Some of the details come from a family book, Folklore of A Pennsylvania Colony in Nebraska compiled and edited by Elma Heim Larimore, Humbolt, Nebraska, 1955

 

The Leaving

 

Mother tells this story.

Jacob Eider was a traveler, a wanderer, all his life. In the 1820's he walked several time some two hundred miles several times from the small settlement at Flowering Grove to Philadelphia to conduct business, study the latest farming methods of the day and to witness demonstrations of new farming equipment.

     Some of the younger sons had mean pieces of land in Flowering Grove at a place they called Quaker Hill.  In the Pennsylvania settlement, when an elder died the land was divided among the man's children. It was a new order as they had come from a land where property was ceded to only the eldest son. They had seen how that practice caused pain and even murder in the old country. However, in Pennsylvania, the new practice meant that the youngest sons often was apportioned land that the older sons didn't want.  The land Jacob Eider got was called bottom land, land which had few large flat places and which mostly dipped down to the river where the ledge rock was close to the surface and the topsoil thin.  He worked himself plum out to make a prospering farm on that land. Jacob was enterprising enough to establish a saw mill and when he had made some money on that bought part ownership in the local grist mill.

   It came one Spring after an especially hard winter when the frosts heaved great slabs of shale out of the ground, the first plowing that year the new plow Jacob had ordered broke on the shale rock.  He left it where it lay and walked the team back to the barn.  He told his wife Elma to pack up things.  They were going to Nebraska as soon as they could sell out.  Elma, of course, had only to obey, though Mother said she cried when she found herself alone in the house.     

      Jacob was not without means. He planned to sell the sawmill and his share of the grist mill.  It was farming he loved, and the new methods he had learned and news about virgin prairie had fired Walking Jacob to move out west.. The day his new plow broke must have been the last straw.

     He sold all of his holdings for nine thousand dollars - a princely sum in those days.  He collected five thousand in bank notes and purchased three covered wagons and teams to pull them.  He and Elma packed all of their household goods, and headed west with their two sons the long trek through Ohio where they stayed with relatives awhile.  Jacob walked back to Flowering Grove from there to collect the remaining four thousand dollars owed him for the farm which he carried in the form of bank notes in a satchel tied to a stick slung over his shoulder.  They said he stopped only to have his shoes resoled twice.

    When he returned the family continued on to Dawson Mills, Nebraska where some of the Eiders, Jacob's uncles, already owned four quarters - thousands of acres of virgin prairie land.  He was to receive a portion, an eighty they called it, on the understanding that he would pay a portion of his profits to the elder Eiders after a period of five years.              

   Against the odds, he prospered, Walking Jacob.  His prosperity lured others in Flowering Grove to try their luck.  The departure of each of these people was like a death in the community.  The old folks said it was the end of things.  What with farms being divided up among the children and getting smaller and smaller, forcing so many into the dairy business that the milk prices fell so low that hardly anybody made anything.  It was no wonder that many of them decided they had to have space.

*** 

     It was customary for the ones who left to come back to the old country in Pennsylvania from time to time to keep in touch with their roots.  When they arrived in November to spend the winter, they were treated like Prodigal Sons.  The fatted calf was killed.  The best food and entertainments to be had were offered these guests. The youngsters met their Nebraska kin for the first time.

     So it was that Grandmother Fretz had put Frederick and Carl Eider from Nebraska in the house in her best front bedroom and provided for them to their hearts' content. Other cousins stayed with other families in the valley.

     Mother used to talk about the fun the young people had. They planned dances and get-togethers for the visitors and Grove youngsters, sleigh rides, hymn sings, round robin picnics and the like. Every few days they were entertained by another family all winter long. The old folks weren't so happy to see the Nebraska people as they came with fantastic tales of the rich western lands.

     Elizabeth, Grandpa and Grandma Fretz's oldest daughter was sweet on Carl Eider, Mother said, by the time he was to go back home to Nebraska in March in time to help with the farm work.

     She asked her parents if she could go to Nebraska with her cousins to live.  It just about broke Grandma and Grandpa's  hearts for they had never denied their children anything.  This time they said no.  Elizabeth was not a healthy child.  She always seemed to have a cough.  Momma Fretz couldn't bear to let her out of her sight for very long.  She was also afraid of dying before she could see her daughter again. That and the stories of  rabies, locusts and tornadoes the Nebraska colony suffered had reached Pennsylvania. They could not imagine living out there in the wide open prairie with no doctors or professional services of any kind.

     Eliza, that's what they called her, was completely undaunted by the tales of hardship in Nebraska. She wept and cried out, "I love him something awful."  When her pleas went unheeded  she went on a hunger strike.  Things reached a crisis by August when she became so weak she couldn't leave her bed. Mother was sent to her room but she said she crouched on the upstairs landing and listened to Grandfather and Grandmother talking with the bedridden Eliza until the wee hours of the morning.

     The sisters Martha, Salome and Momma Fretz took turns crying.  Mother said she could hear Grandfather's strong, deep voice of reason between the women’s hysterics, but that in the night Mother trembled to hear Eliza's pitiful wailing in the old German tongue: "These hills, these dark hills are my prison soon to be my tomb."

     It was Grandfather who finally made the decision to let their precious Eliza go out west.  Mother said she was terrified to hear him say one evening after another long session with Eliza, whose hacking cough now interrupted her every utterance, "She'll die, Mother, if we don't let her go. Some things are just meant to be."

      When they told Eliza they were giving her permission to go to Nebraska to be with her beloved Carl.  Eliza began to eat and gather her strength after she was told.  She took long walks and ate all the good things provided to her.

    Mother, just a little girl then, was permitted to go along with her mother and Eliza to Williamsport to get her trousseau.  Momma Fretz spent a terrible sum for warm coats and underthings, good shoes and boots. She had been impressed by letters over the years describing the harsh prairie winters.

     She also bought lengths of fancy fabric to sew dresses so different from the plain  grey or dark blue serge worn in Flowering Grove.  Momma Fretz knew that the Nebraska people had given up much of the ways of the plain life they had lived in Flowering Grove. It pained her something terrible, but she bought those fancy fabrics. They brought the things back from the city in the wagon drawn by the team they used to go to market.

     Mother remembers that evening after supper Eliza came down with one of the new dresses on.  The dress had ruffles, of all things,  at the bottom of the skirt. The bodice was fitted at the breast and waist. She kept her head down as she approached Grandfather.  The utter daring of that dress took the breath away.  It would have been considered sacrilege by Grandfather a short time ago.  But now they were losing their child and all of that didn't seem of the greatest of importance. 

     Grandfather stood with his hands clasped behind his back and stared silently at his fair haired daughter.

     Eliza, Mother saw, had been trying to suppress a giggle at the wonderment of being allowed to wear such a beautiful garment.  At the sight of Grandfather's stern face she blushed scarlet and tripped a bit on the edge of the carpet.

     Grandfather reached out to steady her then clasped her hard to him and kissed her flaxen hair. Mother was terrified to see Grandfather weep for the first time.

     He held his daughter away, drew a velvet box from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, and handed it to Eliza.  Eliza stood transfixed like the rest of use to see the tears coursing down her father's face.  She took the box, opened it and lifted out a gold watch on a long gold chain with a pearl studded slide.  Grandfather's gift to the new bride to be was the most wondrous precious thing any of them had ever seen. 

     Momma Fretz handed Eliza another gift.  Her mother had chosen a set of silver and ivory brushes and combs.  Mother said she hadn't seen anything that rich in her life.  Momma Fretz must have spent all her strawberry money she saved in the old tin coffee box.

     They packed for almost a month and cooked and baked and canned juices for Elizabeth's long train ride to Nebraska during which she would have to make several tranfers by stagecoach as the railroad systems had yet to be completely standardized.  She would make the difficult trip alone.  Carl had written that trouble on the farm meant that he couldn't make the trip back out east to accompany his young bride to be.  That news, of course, caused more pain and trepidation to Grandpa and Grandma. But Elizabeth was adamant that she would make the journey alone.  She, a girl who had never traveled farther than to Williamsport twenty miles away from home.

     Before Eliza left there was a most touching scene.  She asked the family, Uncle Daniel, my mother Salome, Uncle Sam, Uncle Chet, Uncle Harry and Grandpa and Grandma to take her out to Flowering Grove cemetery near the old Meeting House so that she could say her goodbyes to family members who had passed away. Later Grandma Sarah said that she thought Mother Fretz would die soon.                

   Eliza stood at the foot of the family plot, living loved ones all around her.  They joined hands while Eliza sang EIN' FESTE BURG. A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.  She promised her Momma Fretz that she would always love her and her family and never lose them. 

    Momma Fretz, exhausted from the preparations for Eliza's journey, took to her bed for what was to be the last time.

    On August 24 they loaded the wagon with five great trunks.  Momma Fretz called her daughter to her room.  She insisted that Eliza dress plain in black, with black shoes and stockings for her trip. She placed the traditional white mesh cap on her daughter's head and tied it under her chin  herself.

    Grandfather drove Eliza in the spring wagon to the Williamsport depot. The boys followed with the market wagon loaded with Eliza's trousseau.  They started out in the middle of the night and arrived in the early afternoon and purchased a ticket to Nebraska for twenty-eight dollars and fifty cents. The family lunched together in the Railhead Cafe.  Grandfather prayed before and after the meal.

    The train, a terrifying machine belching coal smoke, shook the ground as it roared into the station. Eliza clutched a box she hadn't let out of her sight since leaving the Grove and boarded the train at 3:30 in the afternoon.  The family lined up on the platform to wave goodbye and call out their love in German to their sister, the light of all of their lives.

   Mother tells that the train pulled slowly out of the station and through their tears they saw Eliza untie her plain white cap and remove it from her head.  They saw her take the pins out of the neat bun at the nape of her neck.  Her hair which had never been cut fell around her shoulders in all of its brilliant golden glory.

     They all just had time to see her place something else on her head.  Later they couldn't agree.  Harry insisted he saw something red.

    They knew what it was for sure when the first letters arrived weeks later in Flowering Grove from Nebraska telling them that their daughter and sister had arrived safe and sound wearing the most stylish straw hat they had ever in their lives seen, complete with an enormous red satin bow."

     Reading the letters and weeping, Grandfather said by way of benediction: "Gott ist groß" and began singing Ein König voller Pracht
Ein König voller Pracht,
voll Weisheit und voll Macht.
Die Schöpfung betet an.
Die Schöpfung betet an.
Er kleidet sich in Licht.
Das Dunkel hält ihn nicht
und flieht, sobald er spricht,
und flieht, sobald er spricht.
So groß ist der Herr, singt mit mir.
So groß ist der Herr, ihn preisen wir.
So groß, so groß ist der Herr.
Von Anbeginn der Zeit
bis in die Ewigkeit
bleibt er derselbe Gott,
bleibt er derselbe Gott
als Vater, Sohn und Geist,
den alle Schöpfung preist,
als Löwe und als Lamm,
als Löwe und als Lamm.
So groß ist der Herr, singt mit mir.
So groß ist der Herr, ihn preisen wir.
So groß, so groß ist der Herr.
Sein Name sei erhöht, Amen
denn er verdient das Lob.
Wir singen laut:
So groß ist der Herr!

Amen