Tintype Treasures

I was in downtown Milwaukee today with my mom and cousins, Teri and Jim. All of us love old houses, antiques, and history.
We decided to stop at this little antique shop on Washington and Water St. It was a very nicely set up store with some pretty unique things.
They had tons of old portrait style pictures. I always feel bad for the homeless pictures. I can't help wondering we're their families are and why they aren't in some box in the attic instead.
I was contemplating the purchase of one such homeless portrait when I stumbled on a small pile of tintypes. At least I was pretty sure they were tintypes. To be honest, I'd never seen one before.
So of course I had to find out how this whole process worked.
The tintype was also known as a melainotype or ferrotype. It was made by producing a direct positive onto a thin sheet of iron that was then blacked by paint, lacquer, or enamel.
These photos were pretty resilient. They could be produced in a few minutes and took virtually no drying time. Makes me think of Polaroids actually. My sister and I had one of those cameras when we were kids.
They came from France and we're patented in 1856 in the US. Of course, they were most popular during the Civil War (1861- 1865). Photographers used to travel around and work outside carnivals and fairs.
The iron plates were cut in different sizes. The gem size was about 1"X1". These ones that I have are known as "Bonton" size. Its a 1/6 cut plate (about 2 3/8"X3 1/2"). The cuts aren't straight either as they were cut by hand.
The little girl's name is Jenni. Its written lightly on the back. I almost missed it. Looking at each of them, I can put together a story in my mind.  I just have a feeling they're all from the same family. Of course that also meant I couldn't bear to split them up.
They're very unique. I've decided to adopt them as part my own family and look for something to display them in. I absolutely love them and hope to find more.

NaNoWriMo and Nana

 This is my grandma, Rose. I call her Nana, and since I am the oldest grandchild, everyone else calls her Nana too. We just celebrated her 80th birthday! I spent a lot of time at Nana and Papa's house when I was growing up. And I remember a lot of different things, but one of my strongest memories would have to be listening to her stories.

We used to sit on the rocking chair and she would make up all kinds of stories. Usually they were about a little girl named Katie. And somewhere along the way, there would be sugar cookies in the story (and in real life). Nana's sugar cookies are the best!

I really believe that any writing ability I have must have been passed on through her. No one in my family likes to write stories as much as I do, except for Nana. Which brings me to NaNoWriMo.

Weird name, don't you think? It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Tens of thousands of novelists get together every year and try their best to write a novel in one month. And when I say novel, I mean 50,000 words.

Uh huh.

Fifty Thousand Words (that's about 250 pages)!

 And anyone can join. Whole elementary, middle, and high school classes join, as well as professional and amateur writers.

I wonder if she ever told stories to her younger brothers.

I've been writing stories for as long as I can remember. Seriously, I remember sitting with Nana at the kitchen table and illustrating a Bible story on pieces of paper. I'm pretty sure it was Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus. We stapled it together and TA DA! a book was created.

But I've never tried something like this before. Sure, I've written more. I have a few stories that are more than 700 pages. It's the space of 30 days that's intimidating.

So here are a few things I've learned that will hopefully help me attain my goal...

1. Keep it simple. My plot could literally be a Hallmark movie. That's what I was trying for and I'm really excited to start it.

2. Plan. Plan. Plan. Makes me think of teaching. You can never plan too much. The more you know ahead of time, the more the ideas will flow from your brain to your fingers.

3. Type fast. Lock up your inner-editor and get the words out. Edit later.

4. Dedicate some time every day until you reach your goal. I type about 2,000 words in an hour (give or take). If I do that each day, I can have 50,000 by November 25.

5. Try doing a marathon on a Saturday. Sit for 2, 5, 10, 15 hours...whatever you can sit for and just keep writing.

6. Have an awesome person in your corner rooting for you. I've got Nana. I told her all about it the other night and she's excited to read it when it's finished.

So if you're inspired to try out NaNoWriMo, please check it out at www.nanowrimo.org It starts November 1st, which means you've still got 9 days to plan. Happy writing!

Blazer: The Other Son

My grandpa, Merrill Hunt Jr, loved pets. He especially loved dogs. He went hunting from the time he was a kid which usually meant he had at least one hunting dog. The proof is in the pictures. But there was one dog in particular that was more than just a dog. 

His name of Blazer. I remember him well. I was...maybe 5 when he died, but I've always formed attachments with animals easily. And since I was over at Nana and Papa's house so often, that wasn't hard to do with Blazer. He was a good dog. Completely spoiled rotten, but I loved him. 

I remember the day he died pretty vividly. Papa was heartbroken. He stood in the bathroom and cried for what seemed like hours. Not even my stuffed dog, Dozo, could cheer him up. That memory of Blazer is actually the strongest for me. But everyone in my family has their own stories of him. My mom's is by far the funniest. 

Blazer wasn't even Papa's dog at first. My Uncle Merrill had bought him for a hunting dog. He was part beagle and part coon hound. He was stubborn and he had crazy eyes. My mom will tell you it wasn't just the eyes. The whole dog was crazy and this is why...

My grandparents had gone on a trip to Hawaii. My mom was working the night shift at the hospital. My uncle was away at college and Blazer (who Papa had adopted as a second son by this time) was home. Everything started out just fine. My mom would go to work at night and come home to sleep during the day. Nothing strange there.

But not too long after Nana and Papa had left, Blazer started to get lonely. Any pet can get lonely without their human, especially dogs. Even my cats get lonely if I'm gone too long. Some dogs howl or bark. Some get into cupboards or find a shoe to destroy. 

Blazer took it to the extreme.

And here's the thing. He wasn't really alone. My mom was there during the day. 

Apparently that didn't matter...at least not to the dog. 

It started when she came home one day. He had started by tearing things up around the house. He had gotten into the cupboards and rolled canned food everywhere. Anything from the lower cupboards had been pulled out and scattered around the kitchen. And he had gotten into a huge bag of onions and chewed them up and spit them all over. 

It wouldn't have been too big of a deal, except that my mom really needed to get some sleep during the day if she was going to be able to function at night as a nurse. Cleaning up was going to be annoying more than anything. 

But it got worse. Walking from the kitchen into the living room, she saw that he had destroyed the drapes too. When she went to pick up the phone, it had no dial tone cause he had chewed up all the chords there too. 

My mom cleaned up and called her brother to come and get the dog. He didn't want to, but knowing she needed sleep, she convinced him to drive down and get him. He brought him back the next day with horror stories of him eating the apartment there.

My Great Aunt Mary agreed to take him. After all, how bad could one lonely dog be? But remember those crazy eyes? Poor Blazer had snapped. He was desperately lonely for Papa. Even Aunt Mary and Uncle Dale couldn't take him more than a day or two. 

The next best thing they could think of was to get him tranquilizers from the vet. They needed something to calm him down until Nana and Papa got back. He would have destroyed the entire place. He very nearly had already. So, my mom gave him the tranquilizers. Wouldn't you know, even that didn't knock him out completely. 

He would nod off for a few minutes, then wake up with a growl and attack the blanket he was lying on, making sure to rip out a good sized chunk. Then he'd fall asleep again for a few moments more before waking up again to attack the blanket again. 

I don't know how my mom managed it, but she made it through. When my grandparents came home, mom told them everything that happened. And Papa, defending the dog said, "How could you medicate him? He was just lonely." 

That was my Papa.

This is your life Etta Ida (part 1)

 Etta Ida Meinhardt was my great grandmother. For her 80th birthday party, some of the family got together and wrote out part of her life's story. They called it "This is your life Etta Ida". I've read it dozens of times. It's hysterical. I should really type it out again (once I find it). Well, in the same tradition, I'm going to write about Etta. Though she passed away just after I was a year old, I recognize a kindred spirit in the stories I've been told.

What I've learned most is that she had a personality that was larger than life. This is going to take a few posts.

Etta Ida Luebben was born April 6, 1897 to Fredericka (nee Messing) and Johann Elits Luebben. She was the youngest of six with three brothers (Peter, Frank, and Lewis) and two sisters (Lena and Louise). She grew up in Toledo, Ohio.

Some of the oldest pictures we have of her have been damaged by tape. I've done my best to restore them on my own. If there was a moral to this story, it would be NEVER EVER use tape on pictures. It eats the photo. Still, I've decided I might as well share them here. Wasn't she adorable? And I can imagine quite mischievous.

Her father passed away when she was eight. When she was a teenager, she and her mother moved in with her recently married sister, Louise, her husband, and their new baby. Grandma was working at a glove factory when she met Ernest Meinhardt through mutual friends. He lived on a farm in MI but not farm from Toledo. Back then there were commuter trains that ran.

The story goes that he used to drive the wagon to the stop and catch a train going into Toledo. Meanwhile, Etta would sneak out of work and meet up with him. They'd go to matinees or just run around Toledo. If Ernest was late getting back, the horse would head home without him and he'd have to walk.

It gets better though. When Etta was 19 and Ernest 20, he got it into his head to adopt her. His reasoning was so that he could get her out of that house with her "awful sister". Poor Louise has been painted the villain when in reality she was probably just a stressed out new mother with a younger sister who ran a little wild. I know for a fact that they had a good relationship, at least later in life. If they hadn't, there wouldn't be so many pictures of them together.

Anyway, Ernest (who was only a year older) took Etta off to the courthouse in Monroe, MI. They met Judge Frank in his offices and Ernest explained what his plans were. Judge Frank had a little more wisdom and asked Ernest "Are you planning on marrying her?"

Ernest replied with a yes, to which Judge Frank said "Well, why not just marry her now?" So they got married instead.

That part has me in stitches every time! When I was younger, I always thought he was so much older than her, but they were only a year apart. What in the world they had been thinking, I have no idea.  The story continues that they went dancing somewhere, but Louise and the rest of the family descended on the Meinhardt family farm demanding his head.

Etta in 6th grade (4th from the left)

One of their friends crawled along the porch and heard the whole thing so he ran off to warn them not to come home until it was safe. Obviously they came home eventually and it seems the family got over the apparent injustice of Ernest stealing Etta away.

With Frank and Lewis (on the far left)

When I think of a "happily ever after" couple, I actually don't think princes and princesses and fairy tales. I think of couples like them. Grandma never remarried after Grandpa passed away. She always said that no one would ever measure up to her Ernie. They were truly a pair of soul mates.

They lived in Toledo for a time. Ernest drove a milk wagon and they lived in an apartment complex with a few other young couples. They didn't have much money to go out and this was the early 1900's. Television was not a thing even if radio was. So, when they had nothing to do, they would play hide and seek with the other couples.

Hide and seek? Really? Yup, I'm completely serious. It sounds crazy, but I can imagine it. They would have found it as fun as rolling up the rugs and dancing.

Their first son, Melvin Ernest was born in 1917. Laura Irma followed in 1920. They had ten children altogether, but that's for another time. I'll leave you here for now, but stay tuned for more stories. I'll be writing about her again.

An Ocean Away...

 

 I was hesitant to work on this particular post for a few different reasons. One reason, being that these are my grandparents. That's close when you're considering generations. Another was simply that I knew their basic story, but I was worried about getting something wrong. I've decided to just go with it and I'll make changes later if needed.

Another reason, could possibly be that for the life of me, I always spell the names wrong. Of course, since I've been working on a family tree to hang in my parents' house, I have things written down.

So, that being said, these are my father's parents. Liselotte Brauninger and Sigmund Koch. This picture was taken shortly before they left for America.

Yup, you heard that correctly. My grandparents were the immigrants. I am a second generation American on my father's side. It's really pretty cool when you think about it. Most people, even those looking for their ancestors, don't have such close connections to the countries their families came from. I still have cousins and aunts and uncles in Germany. I've been to see some of them twice. Some of them have come to visit us in the States.

Here's some of the things I know. Sigmund was born August 8, 1914. He was the youngest of three sons and from what I understand, he was the youngest by quite a few years. The Koch family owned both a farm and a saw mill near Bad Waldsee, Germany.

Liselotte was born February 23, 1927. She grew up in a town nearby and worked at the Koch farm. She was the second oldest of 10 children. The area that they grew up in is located in the southwestern part of the country, a region known as Swabia. It's one of the prettiest parts of the country and what I always think of when I think of Germany.

According to the history that I've learned, we consider the start of World War II as September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. By the 3rd, Britain and France had declared war. This changed things for many people, including my grandparents. My grandpa served as a soldier in the German Army. I have always been told that his job was to act as a guard in the town and guard prisoners of war sent to work on their farm.

My grandmother told lots of stories. I've never been able to keep them all straight. She did however mention working in a factory and burning her arm on purpose so that she didn't have to work there anymore. This story came up most often, so I remember it best. What hits me the hardest is the fact that Sigmund was only 25 in 1939. Liselotte was only 12. I have no doubt that growing up in this time and place had some bearing on the choices they made, including coming to live in a country, an ocean away from their family, and with a language they didn't even know.

May 3, 1945 Germany signed an unconditional surrender. The war, at least officially, was over. I'm not sure exactly what went on between 1945 and 1951 for my grandparents. I'm sure there are some people still living that might be able to tell me, but the most important thing to know is that they were married and made the decision to immigrate to America.

They packed their things in trunks that my grandpa had made with wood from the saw mill. They left their home and traveled to Rotterdam. They left there July 31, 1951 on a Holland-America ship and were admitted to the US in New York on August 8. This picture was taken on the ship and below is a part of their passport.

They settled in Erie, MI and later moved to a small farm in Ida. They had six children, my dad being the oldest. He looks the most like my grandpa. And he speaks Schwabisch (the dialect my grandparents spoke in their region) better than the others. It helps that that's all they spoke at home until he went to school. It might take him a few minutes, but it always comes back. He might not realize it but I've traveled with him over there and I've watched him slide into it so naturally that he forgets he's speaking it when he turns to talk to me.

Sigmund passed away in June of 1971, eleven years before I was born. I'm sad that I never knew him, but I've heard lots of stories and that helps. I'll save those for another time. Meanwhile, I'll continue to keep in touch with as many of the relatives that still live in Germany. I've met so many others through social media like Facebook and have gotten to know more about their lives through the things they share there.