A Brief History

of the BRATTMILLER family

as told by the Eula May, the wife of William Brattmiller.

I received this in an E-mail from one of our Brattmiller cousins in March of 2001.  It is presented just I received it.  As is so typical of any oral family history, there are a few errors, but that does not distract from its importance to our family. At the time of our visit to the family farm in Ayrshire in July 2006, I obtained another copy of the story, which is slightly different.  I will not post that one, as it is substantially the same.  (GBS)

The Brattmiller Family History

Christian Friedrich Brattmhller was born in September 1838 near Wilhelmshaven (William's Haven) in northern Germany.  His mother worked on estates of wealthy landowners.  His father (if she was ever married) deserted them and Christian's mother managed until he was school age, eight to ten years old.  While she worked she often let Christian wait around the docks, at one point she simply failed to come back for him. Something may have happened to her or perhaps she couldn't cope.  The dockhands fixed up a place for him to sleep and shared food with him.  Christian did small jobs until he was old enough to be a dockhand himself.  He was a small, frail-looking man and so was his son, Charlie, neither of them were more than five feet six inches tall.

Christian moved out of the dock area when he married a Danish girl, Meta Marie Janssen.  She was born in June 1841.  They had four children that grew up and came to America; Friedrich W. (William or Wilhelm) born sometime between March 8, 1865 and March 5, 1866, Charles born between 1863 and 1866, Catherine Johanne, and Alma Friederike born in 1882.

Meta and Christian lived near a military training camp and they could see the recruits drilling and how they were mistreated by the men in charge.  Everyone at the age of 16 was conscripted into the German Army unless they could pay a great deal not to be.  Friedrich W. decided at an early age that the Army wasn't for him, so he walked eight miles each way every day to Wilhelmshaven and worked on the docks.  By the time he was nearing his 16^th birthday, he had enough money to purchase steerage class transportation to the U.S.

The family knew of other German immigrants who had settled in Minnesota. Some had rather large tracts of land.  Before leaving Germany, Friedrich W. (or Fritz) had gotten the name and address of a company in New York City that would give him train fare to a job that was available in Minnesota.  He emigrated to the United States in 1881.

He used to talk to me about his trip across country in the train. When he got his ticket in New York City, Friedrich W. had only about $0.25 in German money and his train ticket.  So he told me he shopped about the stores and found he could get a very large bag of crackers and some cheese.  When he boarded the train that was the only food he had for the four or five day train trip.  He knew only a few words of English, but there were quite a number of German-speaking people on the train who took an interest in him and all the way they taught him English words and gave him food from their generously packed lunchboxes.

Wherever he got off the train he had a 20-mile hike to get to the farm, a dairy I am sure, he called it the Black Aurie Ranch.  I think they raised a lot of cattle as well as farming.  During the winter months he went to the country school to learn to read and write English.  There were other boys 12 to 16 years old in the school, but he was the only one who had to read and spell

with the little children.  That winter he learned enough English to get along very well.  The following winter they were putting in a new railroad line so he helped lay tracks.  Friedrich W. was allowed to ride some distance in each direction and he investigated quite a little in Iowa and Minnesota.

When he came to Ayrshire, Iowa, he found quite a lot of swampy land south and west of Ayrshire that no one wanted.  However, he came from the low-lying lands in Germany, where like Holland, they drained all the land to farm it.  So with the money he had saved he bought his first acres, and soon he bought more to add to it.  Eventually he was able to buy the north place. Early in the 1890s Fred W. helped his parents, brother Charles, and two sisters Alma and Kate migrate to this country.  His dad and his brother Charlie each had small farms near his and were both able to clear and sell their land and retire in the 1920s to California.

Friedrich W. married Anna M. Kahley, who was born in September 1863.  Her sister Rose and family later lived in Fort Dodge, Iowa.  Fred W. and Anna's children were: Benjamin, born January 1892; Elizabeth, born in 1894 who died in 1896 from stomach trouble when they were taking her to town to the doctor; Carl, born August 1895; Walt, born in 1897; Rose, born December 1898; Fred John, born January 2, 1900; and Hillerd, who was born and died in 1901.  I think the three older children were born at the south place, but Rose and Fred John were born at the north place.  Fred John was baptized on April 22, 1900, and was later confirmed at Deer Creek near Fort Dodge.

Anna died in 1903.  Her mother came and looked after the children until Fred remarried.  Fred W. married Flora Groenow in 1904.  The wedding was totally arranged by the bride's brother, Gustav Groenow, who was a minister at Trinity Lutheran Church in Mallard, Iowa, from 1903 to 1910. Flora had lived in a small village near Stettin, Germany, where her father was burgermeister or mayor.  When her brother became a Lutheran minister and located in Mallard, she came to keep house for him.  She kept up a small parsonage and a garden.

When Gustav decided to marry, he decided to marry her to Fred William.  She saw Fred only once or twice before they were married and she never saw the children until she came to the farm to live.  It must have been a shock for all of them as she was used to children as they were on Sunday around church, cleaned up and polite.  As long as I knew her she had many allergies, and I'm sure the long hours, hard work, and coping with the first five, then seven children was an overpowering experience.  Fred W. and Flora had two children together, William born in 1907 and Anna born in 1908.

When Flora and Fred went to the World's Fair in California in 1915, they decided to stay and bought the place in Orange, California.  After Walt was in the Army, he also went to California.  Rose and Fred John went out to California, but Fred John went back to Iowa after about a year, eventually buying the farm near Ayrshire.  He married Sadie Bley from Curlew at Trinity Lutheran Church in Mallard, Iowa, in 1923.

Fred John and Sadie lived on the family farm two miles west of Ayrshire and had six children: Rolland (Rollie), Ruth, Fred Willis, Doris, William (Bill) and James (Jim).  Flora died in 1951.  In 1952, Fred Willis was in boot camp in California.  His uncle Walt picked him up and took him to see his grandfather, Fred W., who later died within the year.  Fred John rode the train out to California to attend the funeral.

Fred W.'s sister Kate had married and went to South Dakota.  She had three children: Rose, Henry, and Fritz who was crippled. His sister Alma worked for their parents, Fred and Flora.  They also had a young man named Joe Place who worked for them.  Fred W. used to laugh and tell about Joe who would always say to him, "Fred, what did you want so many kids for?  When I get married, believe me, I won't have six or seven kids around."  So Alma married him and they had 15 children.  I'm sure you remember the Places in Minnesota.

As remembered by Eula Brattmiller, wife of Fred John's half-brother William

Chula Vista, California

NOTES: 

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FIRST POSTED:  Jun 02, 2001

UPDATED: Jul 23, 2007

Research by Gary B. Speck

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