A Backwoods Cemetery and a Civil War Mystery

Several years ago, a trip to an abandoned cemetery in southeast Kentucky led me to a small project to learn more about a young man remembered on a headstone in this seemingly forgotten place.  My niece and I visited this cemetery to locate the grave of my 5th great-grandfather, Lewis Green, a Revolutionary War veteran.  His marker was easy to identify, slightly outside the cemetery's perimeter.  

                                                      Lewis Green Marker, courtesy of the author

It was high summer, hot and humid as blazes.  Anyone who has hiked in southeastern Kentucky knows how overgrown the area is.  We could not explore deeply into the cemetery.  However, our small search outside the cemetery boundaries was enough to give me a case of poison ivy.

                                                Kirby Cemetery, Bell County, Kentucky, courtesy of the author

We photographed several graves, but I did not look at the photographs until I returned home.  Eventually, I examined all of them and was excited to find one that, with further research, might have a story associated with it.  The stone was of a soldier who died during the Civil War.

                                                                    Grave of Robert Green, courtesy of the author

Private Robert Green, CO K, 64th NC INF was a Confederate soldier.  The headstone says, "BURIED AT OAKWOOD CEM. CHICAGO IL." This inscription is what piqued my interest.  Why would a Civil War soldier who died in 1864 be buried in Chicago?  A little research led me to a story from the war that I had not previously known.

Robert appeared to be a Confederate soldier or a Confederate irregular, though many of his family members became Union soldiers.  Whether Robert was part of the 64th North Carolina or whether he simply attached himself to this unit while they were attempting to hold the Cumberland Gap is unclear.  Though the battle was bloodless, over 2000 Confederate troops ultimately surrendered to the Union army between the 7th and 9th of September 1863.  Some Confederate soldiers escaped, but Union soldiers took Robert and 287 fellow soldiers to Camp Douglas, a notorious Union prisoner-of-war camp on par with the Confederate prisoner-of-war camp, Andersonville.  Officers who were captured were taken to Camp Johnson in Ohio.

       General Ambrose Burnside's Union Forces Passing Through the Cumberland Gap, September 1863, public domain

Thousands of prisoners brought to this Chicago camp never went home.  Records show that one in seven prisoners died at Camp Douglas.  When they died, they were interred in two small cemeteries on the grounds of Camp Douglas, along the shore of Lake Michigan, in what was later called the City Cemetery.  

                                          Camp Douglas, Chicago, Illinois, public Wikimedia Commons

                                                            Camp Douglas Prisoners, 1863, Wikimedia Commons

Flooding caused the removal of some of the later burials.  Eventually, workers moved all the burials to a mass grave in the Confederate Mound section of the Oak Woods Cemetery.  General John C. Underwood, regional head of the United Confederate Veterans, dedicated a monument of a Confederate soldier in this section of the cemetery on May 30th, 1895.  Ten thousand members of the public and President Grover Cleveland attended the ceremonies.  In 1911, the Commission for Marking the Graves of Confederate Dead raised the monument above ground level and added the names of the Confederate dead, including Robert Green's.  

                                 Confederate Mound, Oakwood Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois, public domain

Robert died of dysentery in the camp at age 28, one year after the date of his capture.  Robert left a wife and several children behind in the hills of Kentucky, just a few miles from where the Battle of Cumberland Gap occurred.   His wife applied for a pension in 1916.  The information collected by the Adjutant General did not show Robert on any muster rolls, nor did he find any enlistment record.  His wife, Matilda, may not have received any pension for Robert's service.  Robert is my 1st cousin, four times removed, and is the grandson of Lewis Green.

   Matilda Jackson Green's Pension Request, Family Search

Letter in Response to Pension Request, collection of Nathan Long

Thank you to Nathan Long, who corrected some errors in this blog and shared some of his extensive knowledge with me.

One Family's Contribution to the Union During the Civil War

 

George W. Putman and family, circa 1914-1918, courtesy of the Wendy Allen

My great-grandfather, George W. Putman, was a Civil War veteran.  He had one sister, Mary, and two brothers, Horace and Thomas.  George and both brothers all served in the Civil War.  I can't imagine the family's anguish as their sons went off to fight in that very bloody war.  All three brothers served in the 58th Ohio Infantry, Company I. Mary's husband Samuel also served in the Civil War in a different unit.

 

The men of the 58th Ohio Infantry saw service in many bloody conflicts, including the battles at Shilo, Chickasaw Bayou, and Chickasaw Gorge.  The unit was involved in other combat, including the Siege of Vicksburg.  Many soldiers from the 58th acted as provosts for two years in Vicksburg after its fall. 

 

George and Horace mustered out at Vicksburg, Mississippi, near the war's end. Horace left Vicksburg when the unit disbanded on January 14th, 1865.  He had served three years, two months, and 23 days.  George stayed in Vicksburg, finally heading home on September 16th, 1865, a few months after the war's end.  George and Horace moved to southeastern Nebraska, both raising large families there.  

George's Headstone and GAR Marker, Find a Grave, courtesy of Vicky Wiemer

 

Thomas was not so lucky.  He was wounded at the Battle of Shilo, along with 42 of his comrades.  He survived the battle only to die on July 18th, 1863, aboard the gunboat Lindon while performing patrols along the Mississippi.  The gunboat had six twenty-four-pound howitzer guns.  As a crew member and soldier on the Linden, he participated in several missions that contributed to Vicksburg's capture.  Shortly after the fall of Vicksburg, when Thomas died, the Linden was performing convoy and reconnaissance duties along the Mississippi.  The Lindon survived various mishaps, finally hitting a snag in the Arkansas River in February 1864.  The crew could not refloat it.  After stripping the vessel of all weaponry and valuable supplies, they abandoned it later that year.

USS Linden ("Tinclad" No 10) at mooring, courtesy of Wilson's Creek National Battlefield

 

The regiment itself lost a total of 305 men.  Three officers and 85 enlisted men were killed, while two officers and 215 enlisted men died of disease.  Records indicate that Thomas was one of those men who died due to disease.

Originally published in Generations, a newsletter of the Southwest Colorado Genealogical Society.

A 19th Century American Railroading Story

"Pap Russell was a railroad man" seems like a fitting epitaph for William Hall Russell, my 2nd great-grandfather.   But it took a lifetime of work to gain that title.

                                                        Train Engineer Paps Russell, courtesy of Wendy Allen

Since the 1730s, William's ancestors lived near Brookline, New Hampshire.  His parents, Campbell Russell, and Lucretia Melvin, married in 1819 and resided near Brookline's forests.  William was born in 1835, the last of the nine children born to the couple.  His father died when he was three.  Life became very difficult for his family.  While Campbell was alive, they cut trees, made charcoal, and sent it to the forges in North Chelmsford.  They also farmed part of their land, which continued after his death.  

 

In 1848, the family moved to Nashua, New Hampshire, believing they could find factory work.  William worked in a cotton mill for a year.  He did not like working indoors, so he left, looking for a job that allowed him to be outdoors.  He spent a year as a peddler carrying his wares in trunks strapped to his back.

                                        Young Doffers in the Elk Cotton Mills, courtesy of the Jewish Museum

When William was sixteen, he made a choice that would change the course of his life.  He started work as a section man for the old Fitchburg Railroad near his home in Nashua.  When fall came, the railroad paid him to watch the engine for the winter.  Perhaps that cold, lonely winter with the train helped him decide what he wanted for his future.

 

In 1852, when he was seventeen, he moved from New Hampshire to Ohio to continue his railroad work.  He laid tracks from Springfield to London, Xenia to Dayton, and Springfield to Delaware.  When he completed his work on these routes, he became a fireman on one of the trains.  Firemen tended and maintained the fire that kept the engine running and many other tasks that ensured the engine kept running efficiently.  It was a hard, dirty job.  He was allowed to fill in for a vacationing engineer.  When the engineer returned, he returned to the hard labor of shoveling coal for the engine.  But by the following year, he was again an engineer on the train.

                                            Shoveling coal into the engine's firebox, courtesy of Erik Lyngsoe

He married my second great-grandmother Sarah Elizabeth Butts in 1854.  They would have three children, including my great-grandmother Mary "Birdie." By 1856, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and found low-paying work at a railroad standstill, eventually moving to work as a railroad switch installer.  From a letter of recommendation, we know he ultimately worked as an engineer in the Nashville area for several years leading up to the Civil War.  

Control of the Louisville & Nashville railroad was essential to winning the war.  The military used the railroad for carrying supplies and sometimes troops.  Fighting happened up and down the rails.  While the war raged on, both armies destroyed and rebuilt the tracks numerous times.  After the Battle of Nashville, city leaders evacuated the city, and the railroad fell under the command of the Union.  William decided he did not want to move his family south and kept them in Nashville. 

                                                   Louisville & Nashville Rail Map, Wikimedia
 

When the federal army came into Nashville, he met an old friend from a previous job, John B. Anderson.  Mr. Anderson was now the Superintendent of the Military railroad division in the Nashville area.  Mr. Anderson gave William the job of setting up and running the first engine sent in by the government.  He ran the engine, Little Jupiter, until the Union returned the line to the company at the war's end.  He continued to work for the government after the war in railroad procurement.  He was also known as a master railroad mechanic.

                    Nashville, Tenn. railroad yard and depot with locomotives at the time of the Battle of Nashville, public domain

                                                                    Nashville, Tenn. railroad yard, public domain

Eventually, he moved to Kentucky, where he would finish off his forty-four-year career with the railroad, forty years spent as an engineer.  His wife, Sarah, died in 1888.  In 1890, he returned to New England to marry his cousin, Sarah Russell.  She would raise my great-grandmother, Birdie, in Louisville and Bowling Green, Kentucky.  William died in Kentucky in 1901.

                                                            Obituary of William Hall Russell, Newspapers.com

Both of Russell's sons became railroad men.  On the 1880 US Federal Census, his 20-year-old son, C.W. Russell, was listed as a railroad fireman.  His brother, Thomas, was listed as a train engineer on the 1900 and 1910 census.  Thomas was a 35-year member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers at his death.

 

I have found many newspaper articles about William and his work with the railroad.  One was an extensive article about his life; the others were short, descriptive vignettes.  These articles supplemented census and town records, giving a much fuller view of the life of William "Pap" Russell.

 

Two of my favorite short articles give insight into Williams's work and life.  The first describes:  

"This old veteran, who is now on the Elkton & 

Clarksville run, while on duty never sits down,

but in a standing position, ever on the lookout 

for an open switch or an obstacle on the road.  

He claims that an engineer is more apt to 

forget his duty when sitting down, and that many 

of the accidents are caused by the engineer 

sleeping while on duty."

  

The second tells a harrowing tale:

 

"Pap" Russell, one of the oldest locomotive engineers 

in the employ of the L.&N., was struck by his own 

engine in the Guthrie yards Saturday night and it 

was at first thought he had been fatally injured.  He 

had just had supper and coming out of the hotel undertook 

to cross the track in front of the engine, which was in the 

charge of his fireman.  The locomotive knocked him down 

and when picked up was unconscious condition.  He was taken

to the hotel and Dr. Marshall was immediately summoned. 

An examination showed no bones were broken, but 

the shock had paralyzed the old man and it was 

about two hours before he showed signs of relief."

 

 

"Locomotive Blasts" The Bee (Earlington, Kentucky), 23 November 1893, p. 3, col.  4;  digital images Newspapers (https://www.newspapers.com/image/145526788/?terms=Paps%20Russell&match=1 : accessed 2 August 2021)

 

"Struck by His Own Engine." Hopkinsville Kentuckian (Hopkinsville, Kentucky), 19 June 1895,  p. 1, col.  3; digital images Newspapers (https://www.newspapers.com/image/68182254/?terms=Paps%20Russell&match=1 : Accessed 2 August 2021)

 

 

 

A Visit to the Prague Jewish Ghetto

 

                                                       Pinkas Synagogue, Wikimedia Commons

In 2013, a friend and I did an extended tour of Eastern Europe.  I found the Pinkas Synagogue and the Old Jewish Cemetery in the Prague Ghetto one of the most impactful places I visited.  The Jewish Museum of Prague administers the synagogue and cemetery.

                                           Detail of the Pinkas Synagogue, courtesy of the author

The Pinkas Synagogue, founded in 1535 by the Horowitz family, was built in a late Gothic Style and is the second oldest building in the Prague Ghetto.  There was originally a house of prayer on the site when Aaron Meshulam Horowitz rebuilt the property.  Builders remodeling the synagogue added Renaissance features, a women's section, and a women's gallery in the mid-seventeenth century.  Floods have damaged several areas in the synagogue, including the names on the walls.  Workers repainted every lost or damaged name.

                                               Interior of Pinkas Synagogue, courtesy of the author

When I visited here on a late summer day, I was mesmerized by the 80,00 names painted onto the walls of this house of prayer.  These were the names of victims of the Holocaust from Bohemia and Moravia.  The enormity of the crimes committed against humanity was self-evident in this quiet, prayerful place.  I stood in silence, unable to fathom the cruelty of one group of human beings against another. 

                                            Names of Holocaust victims, courtesy of the author

Another synagogue room contained the art of children held prisoner at the Terezin Concentration Camp.  The combination of horror and hope expressed by these dear children brought me to tears.  Terezin was a concentration camp 30 miles from Prague.  The Nazis sent over 150,00 Jews to the camp, including 15,00 children. Terezin was not a death camp, but more than 33,00 people died from disease, lack of medical care, and starvation.  The Gestapo transported many prisoners to extermination camps such as Treblinka and Auschwitz.  Only 17,247 people survived their time at Terezin or the other camps they were sent to.  Ultimately, less than 150 children survived.

                                                        Children's art, Pinkas Synagogue, courtesy of the author

 

The art of the children of Terezin was part of a secret art program organized by the artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis.  Friedl was a prisoner at the camp.  She used art to help the children express themselves, a way for them to develop imagination and emotion.  The Nazis sent Friedl and many children to Auschwitz, but she hid two suitcases filled with 4500 children's drawings before she was sent to the death camp.  After the war, some of the drawings were recovered and sent to the Jewish Museum in Prague.  Many of the drawings are still contained at Terezin.  

                                                            Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Wikimedia Commons

 

Visitors can only access the Old Jewish Cemetery, one of the world's oldest surviving Jewish burial grounds, through the synagogue.  The first burials were interred in the early 1400s.  The last burial was in 1787.  Land for Jewish graves was scarce.  People were buried on top of each other here, with small amounts of dirt between them.  In some places, people were buried ten deep.  There are 12,000 highly personalized headstones in this resting place for many of the original Jewish families of Prague.  People have left pebbles on some stones, which is no longer permissible.  They are often left to keep the soul where it belongs or to indicate the deceased's memory continues to live.

                                                           Old Jewish Cemetery, courtesy of the author

                                                           Old Jewish Cemetery, courtesy of the author

Thank you to Frank Fristensky for communications on children's art at Terezin.

DNA, Oral History, and Genealogy in Abiquiú Pueblo: One Family’s Story

 

                                Santo Tómas, Abiquiu, New Mexico, photograph of the author

Dr. Charles M. Carrillo is an author, santero, and historical archeologist.  Dr. Carrillo describes the term genízaro as used by colonial authorities "to describe an ethnic class as well as a social status of detribalized, Hispanicized, Catholic native peoples."  Abiquiú has long been identified as a genízaro pueblo.  Historical Spanish documents, maps, and more contemporary books describe this group of people in the Abiquiú area.

                                                                            Map of Northern New Mexico

The 2019 results of a study conducted at Abiquiú Pueblo indicate that the subjects involved in their research carried approximately 40% New World or Native American DNA.  According to Miguel A. Torrez and others, the project "offers insight into the historical and contemporary context of the genízaro."  The project examined three kinds of DNA, Y, mtDNA, and autosomal.  It also completed oral histories, ethnographic studies, and a pedigree chart for each subject.  Ten male and ten female community members were the study's focus. These people identified themselves as genízaro or descendants of genízaro, many participants reporting specific tribal heritage.  

 

Tewa people from New Mexico originally migrated to Hopi, living in the First Mesa area after the Pueblo Revolt in 1680.  During the 1730s, some Tewa became dissatisfied and returned to New Mexico.  This group included some pure Tewa and some mixed Hopi-Tewa people.  They moved between ancestral pueblos, including San Juan and Santa Clara, for a few years.  Ultimately, the Spanish awarded a land grant in Abiquiú to a small group of twenty-four returnees.

Hopi Tewa, First Mesa, John K. Hillers, photographer, Wikimedia Commons

 

Settlers constructed modern Abiquiú on the site of an ancient pueblo. Ancestral Puebloans occupied the area from about 1050 until its abandonment in 1200 AD.  In 1754, as a way of protecting frontier New Mexico settlements from marauding groups of natives, Mexico established genízaro communities in several areas, including Santa Cruz de la Cañada, Las Trampas, Belen, Abiquiú, and several of the pueblos. 

                 Detail of part of the original wall at Santa Rosa de Lima Church, Abiquiú, photograph of the author

 

The Spanish established two separate villages in the Abiquiú area.  The first was Santa Rosa de Lima de Abiquiú in 1734.   The original twenty-four Hopi Tewa may have lived in this village or nearby.  By 1754, Governor Tómas Vélez Capauchin, through proclamation, officially established Santo Tómas Apóstol de los Genízaros, the present day genízaro village of Abiquiú.  The Spanish then moved thirty-four more genízaro families there, possibly as Dr. Carrillo suggests, to the upper Moqui Plaza area. 

                                        House detail, Moki Plaza, Abiquiú, courtesy of Charles M. Carrillo

 

At least one Spanish slave trader lived in the lower village on the Plaza de Santo Tómas.  Others may have lived in the area as well.  These villagers, as well as outside slave traders, brought many more native people into Abiquiú over the next 100 years or so.  The enslaved native people often mentioned in historical documents included Kiowa, Pawnee, Comanche, Ute, Piutes, Tewa, Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, Laguna, Sandia, and Isleta.  The records referred to these native people as genízaro. They were considered the lowest in the Spanish caste system.  Spanish documents did not mention Zuni, Tesuque, or Ácoma enslaved people. 

                                            Plaza de Santo Tòmas, taken from Moki Plaza, public domain

                                                   Modern view of Santo Tómas, photograph of the author

 After the New Spain period, census recorders and church officials most often referred to enslaved people as cautivo or captive or, more rarely, Indio.  Later, some census records referred to these people as domestics.  Some Spanish settlers show in sacramental records as baptismal sponsors of the captives.  The settlers held some of them captive while they freed others.  Freed Native people often continued to work in their original homes. 

 

Through time, intermarriage blurred the lines of identity and altered many of the traditions.  Families expressed their identities in many ways that differed from the original settlers, while vestiges of some old ways remained.  Residents and people who trace their backgrounds to Abiquiú and other Hispano communities have, over time, changed the terms they use to describe themselves.  Names have included Spanish, Mexican, Mestizo, Chicano, Indo-Hispano, Hispano, Indio, Coyote, and now for many Genízaro.  Some community members have stories going back generations describing their family heritage.  DNA is now proving deep Native American ancestry as well.

 

One such family is Debbie's.  She did not participate in the study, but some of her family did.  Her story follows a similar route to the study's subjects.  Her mother's roots have a deep history in Abiquiú.  Her grandmother built Debbie's current home many years ago on or near the site of the ancient pueblo abandoned in 1200.  Another house where her great-grandmother lived had a small room attached to the back of it. That room contained three metates built into the floor and three manos of varying grit. These were identical in form and setting to those used for grinding corn and other grains in ancient and modern pueblos.  Dr. Carrillo identified her 3rd great-grandmother as having been a genízaro.  In addition, Dr. Carrillo documented 3 or 4 large cooking stones in village homes resembling traditional ones the Hopis used to cook piki bread. Debbie's family does not currently have any of the stones.

                                                Hopi women grinding corn, Edwards Curtis, public domain.

 

As in many of the genízaro communities, Abiquiú has dances that resemble those held in Native American communities.  Many attribute the dances to their community's mixed heritage.   The dances usually take place the last weekend in November for the feast day of Santo Tómas. Debbie's family has a long history of being associated with the dances.  Her uncle Floyd was the drummer for many years.  His son Dexter is currently the dance leader and drummer.  Generations of women in the family have danced, including Debbie's grandmother, mother, Debbie, her daughter, and her granddaughter. 

                                                    Dances at Abiquiu, courtesy of Charles M. Carrillo

 

In Abiquiú, one Indita or child's dance is called the dance of Na-ni-ell or Nanillé.  This dance is suspected to have Navajo roots.  Another dance, called El Cautivo, may point to a genízaro origin.  A child from the audience, perhaps the child of a guest or a relative from out of town, is chosen by a dancer.   The captor captures a child from the audience, calling, "Who claims this creature?" After being ransomed by the parent or godparent, the captor will call, "Now you are a child of the pueblo." Dr. Carrillo sees this as perhaps ritualizing captivity and redemption. Dancers attend church at Santo Tómas in dance regalia on the feast day of Santo Tómas.

                                                        Interior of Santo Tómas, photograph of the author

Dr. Carrillo has traced Debbie's family history through sacramental records.  

He has followed one line to an original Hopi Tewa settler of Abiquiú.  The baptismal, marriage, and death records of Abiquiú have been located and transcribed.  The Genealogical Library of Albuquerque, the University of New Mexico, the Pueblo de Abiquiú Library and Cultural Center, and the State Records and Archives Center in Santa Fe have copies of these transcriptions.  Henrietta Martinez Christmas facilitated the donation of an extensive collection of publications, including the sacramental records of Abiquiú, to the Center for Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College.

 

Debbie has had her 78-year-old mother's and her autosomal DNA done by Ancestry. Her mother has a DNA estimate of 37% Native American ancestry, and Debbie has 33%.  Remembering that her grandmother would say cautiously in Spanish, "Soy India de pueblo," she can now confirm the reality of this statement.

Miguel A. Tórrez, Moises Gonzales, Isabel W. Trujillo, El Pueblo to Abiquiú and its Genízaro Identity, New Mexico Genealogist (March 2019):  8-17.

Letters From Home, a World War II Story

Peter Christian Adolph Cramer, my first cousin three times removed, arrived from Denmark in the early 1890s.  Anna Clara Lowe, another first cousin three times removed, arrived from Germany about the same time, becoming a member of the LDS Church.  It was likely they met after coming to the United States.  They probably met in Utah within a few years of their arrival.   They married in Salt Lake City in 1895.  

                                 Region of Germany where the Lowes lived

Anna Clara's family came from a mountainous area of Sachsen, Germany, close to the Czechoslovakian border.  This region of Germany was heavily mined for silver and tin, but most mining had ceased by the late 19th century.  Life was not always easy for many of those who lived there.  As things often were during those times, one child came to the United States, and one stayed at home in Germany.  Anna Clara came to Utah, where her uncle lived, while her brother Emil remained in Germany.  

                    Early Silver Mining in Saxony's Ore Mountains, public domain

Emil and Anna Clara wrote letters back and forth, but only a few of Emil's letters remain for us to examine.  Little did they know, as they corresponded, that their letters would hint at the unimaginable things that would transpire in the world ten years later.  Letters between December 1934 and 1945 highlight a shift in mood exhibited by some Germans pre and post-war.

 

Apologizing for not being able to send financial assistance to his sister Anna Clara, Emil states, "We may not send money out of the country as all is wanted to build up our new empire and pay our debt…  We have been brought down by misgovernment of a gang of international jobbers, robbers, thieves and traitors, who for fourteen years filled their pockets out of our work and savings. "

 

Emil goes on to thank his sister for her words regarding his leader.  In December 1934, he described the leader as the most honest, straightforward man, a hard fighter for the truth and righteousness amongst the nations.  "I showed the letter to some friends and officials, who were so pleased with it, I had to copy it for circulation in all offices, clubs, schools and party organisations.  I decided to send the original to the Fuhrer and received, after 3 days the following reply:" (in translation)

 

"Reichskauzlei:  Dear Mr. E. Lowe

By order of the Fuhrer and Chancellor, I thank you for notice heartily.  The letter of your sister has been taken notice of with great interest as the contents prove, your sister must be an especially brave and religious woman.  To such people the work of the fuhrer cannot but make impression.  The leader requires you to send greetings & best wishes when you write to your sister again.  Heil Hitler!  Dr. Thomson Government Councellor."

 

In 1935 Emil described working conditions at the Wanderer Works factory where a relative worked.   Christmas bonuses and paid days off are given to every man for special occasions such as christenings and weddings, and employers encourage employees to talk about their grievances.  He tells his sister that the factory, which initially employed 2000 workers, now has 5200.  Emil assures his sister that he doesn't understand the concern over the Jews as "not a hair on their heads has been disturbed."

 

Later, in a letter from 1939, Emil reminds his sister of how difficult life had been in this part of Germany only 10 years before, with unemployment, foreign debt, strikes, and too many political parties.  He feels that by 1939, all who can 

work are working and that conditions are vastly improved. The single-party control of the government, in his view as played a part in this improvement.  He states, "I wish I could write a book about the lovely wonderful time we experienced since our great leader has taken over the government."  

 

In an undated letter after the end of  World War II to other family members in the United States, Emil describes the results of the war.  "We have gone through a terrible war.  Most of our cities are smashed and burned down to a great extent. At the boundery of our place the soldiers made the last hopeless stand for 3 weeks.  During the air raid I had my hip damaged and was laid up for 6 weeks."

 

Few could have foreseen the changes the post-war world would see with the horrors of the extermination of the Jews, the defeat of German armies, the trials at Nuremberg, and the Marshall Plan.  In letter after letter, we see the world tumbling inextricably towards the abyss of war, though Emil did not let on or see this was happening. For many of those who lived then, some things were just unimaginable. From our historical perspective, we can see what had been unfolding.

      Peter Cramer and Anna Clara Lowe and Family, courtesy of the author

Emil died in 1955, and Anna died in 1940 before America joined the war.  Emil continued to communicate with family in the United States through the 1950s.

                                 Obituary for Anna Clara Lowe, Newspaper Archives

 

Emil Lowe Letters, Cramer Connections, The Cramer Family Newsletter, Editor David B. Oswald, Layton, Utah.

Originally published in Generations, a newsletter of the Southwest Colorado Genealogical Society.