I was surprised to discover that there is very little published on the web about the regiments of World War I. I guess that I have gotten so used to the vast amount of information that is published about the Civil War, from regiment listings, to battles that these regiments fought in, etc. Information is easy to come by, and amazingly detailed in its content.
As I prepared to archive images of William Patrick Campbell (Bill) in his World War I uniform, I decided to do a “quick” search to see if I could discover what regiment he was in, what years he served, and the important details of when did he enlist, and when was he mustered out. No such luck.
But there does seem to be a movement towards creating online content. The Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison, Wisconsin, is in the process of creating an online searchable database of our World War I veterans. Another site that is honoring the veterans of Calumet County, is the Chilton Veterans site. The site is: “…operated for the sole purpose of honoring veterans from all branches of service who honorably served the nation during their lifetimes.” In August 2014, a Veteran’s Memorial designed by James P “Jim” Suttner, was dedicated, and they will continue to add names to the memorial on a yearly basis. Something I should look into as a way to honor the Civil War veterans in my Cook family. I also found this site interesting: The Mobilization of the Wisconsin National Guard During World War I.
What I do know about William’s service, is that he filled out a draft card on June 5, 1917. [1] At the time of the draft he was 23 years old, working as a farm laborer for his brother-in-law, James Dawson.
William and Walter Campbell, Hilbert, WI
We know that William served, as he sent home an image of himself, which was taken by “Liberty Studio, Camp Mills, Hempstead, L. I” [Long Island]. The image was stamped with the Liberty Studio listing, but undated. Wikipedia [2] has this to say about Camp Mills. It was set up as a place of preparation of Army units, prior to being deployed to Europe. It opened as a temporary tent camp in September 1917, and closed in November, after preparing the 42nd and 41st Divisions. It re-opened, April 4, 1918, as a part of the New York Port of Embarkation for the
William and Walter Campbell, Hilbert, WI
troops on their way to Europe. At the end of the war in November 1918, it assisted in the reverse process, acting as a demobilization center, as thousands of troops poured back into the United States.
It would seem as though William returned home at the end of the war, as the family archive contains these two images of him with his brother, Walter, on the drive next to the farmhouse. Snow is seen in the background, and Walter appears to be bundled up. November, early December would make sense because of the snow, and the occasion of his return celebrated with a photograph.
Upon his return, he stayed in Calumet County for a few years, working as a farm hand on the family farm. By 1926, he was living and working in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a fireman. He held this position for the rest of his working days, working in the the repair shop of the engine house.
This image from the Library of Congress, celebrates the September 20, 1919 homecoming of many of the soldiers who had been off to war. Surviving Civil War veterans are standing at the left of the larger returning WWI veterans.
SOURCES:
“World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918,” database and images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 23 Aug 2004), William Patrick Campbell; Roll 1674511, Draft Board 0; Wisconsin Registration. Calumet County. Form 1 ~ 214, No. 113; Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards. First Registration, 5 Jun 1917. For men age 21, born between 6 Jun 1886 and 5 Jun 1896.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Mills; accessed 24 Jan 2016.
We are all born with Free Will. We can make choices in our life that will affect how we live, and how we relate to others. The decision is ours. These decisions are made in our work lives, and in our family lives. Many times based purely on emotion, not allowing the facts to even play a role in our decision. Jobs are lost, and families torn apart. Sometimes irreparably.
Henry Fassbender, January 17, 1906
One such family that did not allow this to happen was the Schultz/Steffen family of Ellington, Outagamie County, Wisconsin. As a young family they had experienced much tragedy. Married sometime between 1876-1877, Mathilda Lemke and Albert Schultz set up household in Ellington as a farm family. Over the next seven years they would have five children, losing one as an infant. Edward was born in 1877, the unnamed infant in 1879, Albert in 1880, Ida in 1882, and Emma in 1884. Tragically July 5, 1888, as Albert would pass away. There is no death record recorded in the Outagamie County Courthouse, but we know the date from his tombstone. He was buried in Ellington Union Cemetery, which is located in Stephensville, Ellington Township, he was just 35 years old. Two years later on June 14, 1890, thirty-year-old Mathilda married William Steffen in Ellington, their marriage overseen by a Lutheran minister. Unfortunately it has not been easy trying to identify exactly where they attended church, I know from obituaries that in later years they all attended St. Paul Lutheran Church in Stephensville.
Ida Schultz Fassbender, January 17, 1906
Just as the Fassbenders have been Roman Catholic for “as far back as can be traced,” [1] I believe that the Schultz, Lemke and Steffen families professed the Lutheran faith as far back as can be traced.
These strong ties to both the Roman Catholic and Lutheran faith must have been a big topic of conversation between Henry Fassbender and Ida Schultz as they met, began dating, and ultimately decided to get married. What was that conversation like, when Henry and Ida sat down with Ida’s mother and step-father to inform them first, that they were getting married, and second, that Ida was going to convert to Catholicism?
Ida studied her newly professed Catholic faith at St. Joseph’s parish in Appleton, and “converted her preferred faith” on January 4, 1906. Her sponsor was Agnes Fassbender. I don’t have an Agnes Fassbender in my database! This mystery continues. Is it Henry’s older sister Anna? Or could it be Hubert’s wife, Anna? Or is it Elizabeth Ellenbecker who would be Ida’s witness when she married Henry at St. Joseph’s, on January 17, 1906. Following their marriage they set up housekeeping in Hollandtown, Brown County, Wisconsin, where just two months earlier Henry had purchased the White Clover Co-op.
The fact that Ida made the decision to convert to Catholicism had to have been difficult for the Schultz/Steffen family to comprehend. In some families this would have torn the family in two, the couple to move on, and not be a part of the family from that point forward. But this did not happen. Over the next decades, the Appleton and Kaukauna newspapers were full of society tidbits telling of the visiting habits of the two families. Not a month went by where one side or the other was traveling, and staying weeks at a time, to visit. When Mathilda died in 1929, her grandsons, Harold, Norbert and Bernard Fassbender were pallbearers. A family united until the end.
We should all aspire to understand, to listen, and to learn. Emotion should not play a “forever” role in our relationships with others, especially with family.
SOURCES:
Commemorative Biographical Record of the Fox River Valley Counties of Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago. (Chicago, Illinois: J. H. Beers. 1895), 571.
When Peter Fassbender at age 62 moved to Appleton in 1901 to “take life easy,” [1] he did anything but that. After the sudden death of his son-in-law, Peter Ellenbecker later that year, he welcomed his daughter Elizabeth, and her son Wilbert into his home. A few months later, he welcomed a new grandson, Arthur, as Elizabeth was pregnant with her second child at the time of her husband’s death. In addition to the hustle and bustle of a young family, his eldest daughter, Anna, was taking in sewing, and her clients were coming and going on a regular basis.
By 1921, as he reached 82 years of age, I imagine that he did slow down a bit, and “take life easy.” Daily Schafkopf/Schafskopf (today more commonly known as Sheephead/Sheepshead, and no, I don’t know how to play) sessions were now part of his routine. He stated in an interview in 1930, that he played daily “at the service building on the fair grounds, where he meets a number of his old cronies and shows them how to play that grand old game.” [2]
While he was playing this “grand old game” at the fair grounds in 1930, in August of 1921, the daily matches were held at Fire Station No. 2, which was located on the corner of State and Eighth Street, a block north of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, and a few blocks from Peter’s home further north on State Street. That is, until the common council made the decision to close No. 2, and join it with the mainstation “uptown,” testing the plan of a centralized station. The headline and subheading clearly states how the men felt about this decision: “Closing Of Third Ward Engine Station Robbed Pionneers [sic] Of ‘Clubroom.’ Aged Men of Third Ward Resent Loss of Forum for Discussion of Public Questions Over Friendly Games of Skat and Schafkopf.” [3]
This “band of disconsolate old men” were “cherishing a bitterness” over the loss of this space, where they had gathered for nearly half a century, to “heatedly discuss” “questions of national importance” based on “information obtained from assiduous newspaper reading, backed up by well developed imaginations and ripe experience.” [4]
The article interviewed several of the men who were regulars at the station house, and they all mourned the loss of this place where a game of cards could be started at any hour, where the latest news was heard and given, and “profanity and vulgar talk” was never heard.
One of the men interviewed was Gottfried (Fred) Siegert, the father of Anna Siegert, who was the wife of Peter’s eldest son, John. It gives a wonderful look into his life.
“Gottfried Siegert, 444 Cherry-st., another veteran of the civil war, was a frequent afternoon visitor, his favorite game being Schafkopf. Mr. Siegert is 85 years old, and is as active and erect as a man of 60. He lost one eye in military service and has only partial use of the other, but even with this handicap of sight and age he holds his own in a game of ‘sheephead.’ Mr. Siegert came to Outagamie-co. in 1858 and lived the greater part of his life on a farm a short distance from Appleton which he cleared. He said he missed the engine house and his old associates.” [5]
Gottfried died March 28, 1925, and is buried next to his wife Mathilda in the Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Cemetery in King, Waupaca Co., Wisconsin.
SOURCES:
“Old Timers,” (Appleton) Appleton Review, 10 Oct 1930, p. 2, col. 1-2. Cit. Date: 23 Oct 1998.
ibid.
“Closing of Third Ward Engine Station Robeed Pionneers Of ‘Clubroom,'” Appleton Post-Crescent, 9 Aug 1921, Tuesday, p. Three, col. 2-3; digital images, NewspaperARCHIVE (www.newspaperarchive.com : accessed 6 Apr 2013.
This post was first written and published on 8 Jan 2016. I have learned so much more since that time and rather than write a new post, I have decided to revise the existing one.
In late 1898 60-year-old Peter Fassbender returned to Oedekoven, Germany for a visit, traveling with his friend and neighbor, Joseph Tennie. We know his approximate time of departure as it was reported in the newspaper upon his return that “Mr. Fassbender, who has been visiting relatives in Germany since the first of Jan…”1 It must have been hard for Elisabeth to see him go, although she had only been six years old when her family left Oedekoven for America in 1846.
This was his first visit home since emigrating in 1856. It had been 43 years since he had stepped foot in his native land, had much had changed. A fire in 1864 had changed the appearance of his former home, Tempelhof, as the farmyard was gone, and the damaged chapel and been decommissioned. [Blog Post: The Chapel on the Hill]. I wonder if one of his first stops was to the Oedekoven Chapel, St. Mary’s Marriage, to look at the altar and statue of Mary that had once been sheltered in the Tempelhof Chapel?
All that we do know about this trip is that Peter was gone for two months. He traveled from Oedekoven to Bremen to board the Kaiser Wilhelm der Große on February 28, 1899.2 The top-heavy ship known as “Rolling Billy” by her regular passengers could hold 332 First Class passengers, 343 Second Class passengers, and 1.074 in Steerage.
The return trip home started in Bremen, Germany. I believe that Peter and Joseph were traveling 2nd class, as they were not manifested with the 3rd or steerage class passengers who needed to be cleared by a physician who stated that he had “…made a personal examination of each of the passengers named,” before they were allowed to board. The passenger list does not designate the classes, and it appears to me that the even-numbered pages are missing. What would they have paid for this ticket? All I know is that shortly after their return it was announced that the minimum rates for steamships bound for Southampton and Bremen had been reduced by $10.00 to $25.00. First-class cabin rates were reduced $25.00 to $75.00 from April 2 to May 9th, and between Jun 6 to July 7th, the rate was set at $100.00.3 Which is $3,676.01 in today’s [2023] money.4
Traveling from Bremen they stopped on March 1st in Southampton, England, picking up 2 passengers, before heading to Cherbourg, France, and then to New York. I do believe that there are missing pages to this passenger list, which makes me realize how lucky we are that we do have a record of Peter and Joseph’s return trip. The Chicago Daily reported on March 8th on the return of J. P. Morgan “from London on the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse,”5 yet his name does not appear on the passenger list, and he most likely boarded in Southampton.
The trip was made in record time, the Baltimore Sun reported that they had made “the run of 3,148 knots to Sandy Hook light ship [Sandy Hook, New Jersey Lighthouse] in 5 days 21 hours and 8 minutes, at an average speed of 22.33 knots per hour, lowering her best previous record from Cherbourg by 1 hour and 12 minutes. The trip is remarkable from the fact that it was made in the month of March, in winter weather…”6
I wonder what Peter thought as he sailed into New York Harbor on March 7th. Much had changed since that day 43 years before when, after a trip of one month, two days the Ship Chimborazo entered the harbor. The skyline of New York City was different, much larger. This time the Statue of Liberty was there to greet him, having been dedicated just 12 years earlier. Beyond the statue stood Ellis Island, open for just seven years, he would not be passing through Castle Garden on this trip. And certainly, there was a sense of comfort in knowing that, unlike the passengers who were newly immigrating, he could freely walk off the ship, enter the city, and travel home to his family in Wisconsin.
The passenger list was manifested at Ellis Island. For the manifest Peter states that he is a naturalized citizen, he had been in the U.S. for 43 years, he was in possession of a ticket all the way back to Appleton, Wisconsin, he had paid for his own passage, and that he was currently in possession of more than $30.00.7 The passenger list goes on to ask the following questions: Ever in Prison or Almshouse or supported by Charity: No, Whether a Polygamist: No, Condition of Health, Mental and Physical: Good, Deformed or Crippled, Nature and Cause: No. While I believe his statement of “No” to all of these questions was a true answer, would anyone actually answer these questions with a “Yes?” Well, other than if there was an obvious deformity, that could not be hidden.
His exact date of arrival home to the farm in the Town of Ellington is not known. A notice in the Appleton Evening Crescent dated Tuesday, March 21st stated that he had “returned a week ago…” So, it is safe to say he arrived home sometime before March 14th.
What I find most fascinating about this trip, is the ship that he chose to return home on, the Kaiser Wilhelm der Große. The ship was built for Norddeutscher Lloyd by AG Vulcan Shipyards. The ship, named for his grandfather, was launched by Kaiser Wilhelm I, on May 4, 1897. It was the first ship to have a four-funnel design, representing size and safety for the next decade. It consumed 560 tons of coal per day.
In 1898, traveling at 22.5 knots, it was the fastest merchant ship in the world, carrying 24% of the First Class passenger revenue on the North Atlantic to New York.
In 1913 the ship was rebuilt to carry only 3rd class passengers, and when the First World War broke out, she was requisitioned and turned into an armed cruiser. The Kaiser was sunk on August 26, 1914, off of Rio de Oro, Africa.
SOURCES:
“Bungert and Wittlin,” Appleton Evening Crescent, 17 Mar 1899, Friday, p. 4, col. 5; digital images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 2 Sep 2018).
National Archives, “New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957,” database and images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. 2010, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed October 2002). Microfilm serial: T715, 1899, Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, p. 9, line 15, Peter Fassbender; citing The National Archives at Washington, D.C.
“North German Lloyd’s Cut,” Naugatuck Daily News, 7 Mar 1899, Tuesday, p. 1, col. 4; digital images, NewspaperARCHIVE.com, (www.newspaperarchive.com : accessed 1 Jan 2007).
“Coal Interests in Great Pool,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 8 Mar 1899, Wednesday, p. 1, col. 1; digital images Newspapers.com, (www.newspapers.com : accessed 7 Sep 2018).
“Topics in New York,” The Baltimore Sun, 8 Mar 1899, Wednesday Morning, p. 2, col. 7; digital images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 8 Sep 2018).
National Archives. ancestry.com, Microfilm serial; T715, 1899, Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, p. 9, Line: 15, Peter Fassbender.
The filing continues. This time I am working through an electronic folder of “paper” from Ripley County, Indiana, and my Francisco and Gray families. When I was putting together one of my “Day in the Life” series in 2014, I remember coming across this newspaper item from January 2, 1890, and laughed out loud. Anyone who has done census research will certainly be able to relate.
The item reads: “It won’t be a great while now until the girls will be hiding the family Bible and dodging the census taker again. How time flies, and how provoking some things are.”
Now if only we could actually LOOK at the 1890 census.
So what was happening in the Francisco family on this day in 1890?
“John A. Francisco is suffering heart trouble at his home. He has been confined to his room several days, and as he is 77 years old, it is quite hard on him, but we hope to see him out soon.” [1]
Sadly, he passed away June 14th of that year. His wife and “life companion,” Sarah Ann Ellison Francisco, had passed away on September 9th the year before, and according to his obituary he had not been the same since that time. He was laid to rest next to her in Perseverance Cemetery as “Hand in hand they lived; side by side they rest in death.” [2]
SOURCES:
The Ripley Journal, 2 Jan 1890, col. 2; digital images, Find My Past (www.findmypast.com : accessed 5 Sep 2014), Historical Newspapers.
“Sleep Comrade. Sleep,” The Ripley Journal, 19 Jun 1890, col. 4; digital images, Find My Past (www.findmypast.com : accessed 5 Sep 2014), Historical Newspapers.
At the turn of the century, (yikes!) I spent a lot of time in the Kaukauna Public Library snooping on the lives of the Fassbenders living a century ago. As I moved through the years scanning the Kaukauna Times, a weekly newspaper, I not only followed the lives of my Hollandtown ancestors, but would often print items that were about Outagamie County that interested me. It’s always about the background information to flesh out the two dimensional look at the people I am researching.
Kaukauna Times, 20 Apr 1917
This past weekend I spent some time filing. Paper filing, electronic filing, it all needs to be done. While going through a file of paper, I found this item. The paper was dated April 20, 1917. What caught my eye, then, and now, was the headline: “No More Mail to Germany. Letters From United States to Germany Have Been Stopped.” No letters would be received or delivered until this “unpleasantness is over.” I can only imagine the fear, sadness, even heartbreak over this news. Although my Germany ancestors had been in this country for many decades by this time, they still had family and friends back in their homeland. Letters brought news of births, deaths, moves, and even the occasional plea for financial help. The sense of loss, and being cut off had to be acute. There was no longer any way to learn how family was faring during this awful war. How long would it be before the “president and the kaiser are again in a mood to shake hands?”
Germany formally surrendered on November 11, 1918, and the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the war, was not signed until June 28, 1919. Over two years would go by with no news from home, or any way to get news to family. I wonder if the letters put into the “dead letter office” were ever delivered.
We live in such an age of instant news through 24 hour television, the internet, and telephones, both land line and cell, that allow us to keep in touch, with each other, and with what is going on in the world. Imagine waiting over two years for news from home.
