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CHAPTER 1
The Beginning Years: 1902 to 1920
Story 1: Opening Words About Our Father and Mother
Our Dad was born on September 28, 1902. He was born in East Fairfield, Ohio.
Was he born in a hospital? Or did this occur at home? My sister Anne thinks it was a birth at home with the use of a midwife. Also Dad was Number 8, almost in the middle of the pack of the children of Anton Meissner and Barbara Donhauser-Meissner. So there already were various children around. His oldest sibling was Mary who lived to 99 and a half years old. Was Mary in charge of the brood while Grandmom had to worry about the newest? Undoubtedly the older kids acted as helpers with the younger. So did older sister Mary have any influence over Charlie? Again this is unknown.
(See Appendix 4 for photos of Grandfather Anton Meissner and Grandmother Barbara Donhauser Meissner. This also includes materials for our annual remembrance service for past family members who have passed on to their heavenly reward.)
Eventually the family leaves the east Fairfield farm and moves to the larger family farm near Salem on the Damascus Road. Also while the family house at the Meissner Farm was fairly big, where did everyone sleep? Were there two and three kids to a bed? Did everyone eat together at the one table? Did they all have seats enough? Or did they have to eat in relays? These are silly things to wonder about.
(See Appendix 13 for diagram of the Salem Family farm and maps.)
Then there is the question: what kind of baby was our Father? Did he cry a lot? What was he like as a child? How did he get along with all the other siblings as well as with the other kids in the neighborhood? Who can answer these queries now?
There is always the "Hitler Question" which has come up again in our current presidential political races. My son Paul urged me to drop this whole topic. There is a story later in this book about how we — crazy as it may seem — may have been born and lived because of Adolf Hitler. This line of inquiry brings up this next question. If you could go back and kill Hitler as a baby, would you? Besides being an impossible question to answer, the point is that every baby, every child, is a gift from God which our human family should welcome and cherish. Was my Dad cherished? Or was he just another of this long string of pregnancies? I personally picture our grandparents as treasuring and loving every one of their children.
All of this musing also applies to our Mother. She was born in County Mayo, near Clew Bay, in Ireland. She also came from a large family of 13. She as well was down the list of births. Mom's memories of Ireland included her sneaking into the barn corner out back where she could read books in peace. But Mom also remembered the hard times and the tough work they all experienced on the farm.
In 2016 at the 100th Remembrance of the 1916 Irish Rising, my daughter, Betina, and I visited the old sturdy-stone home of the Cusack family in County Mayo. We also visited Mom's youngest sister, Aunt Tessie, who lives in a very well-maintained and furnished nursing home and she is still going strong at 95. In fact Aunt Tessie looks more vigorous and acts more alert than most of us. It must be the Irish air. What was Mom's youth like? Sadly, we know even less about Mom's young life than about Dad's.
There were happy times according to my Dad in his home.
"We kids had to work hard," he reported, "but there were occasions when we played. We would all go down to the crick at the back edge of our farmland and have a good time swimming about."
But there were sad times as well.
"We had one little baby girl [Emma]. She was less than two years old," Dad unhappily recalled. "I do not know how it happened. But there was a big bucket or container of water there. Somehow she fell in. Nobody saw it. She drowned."
Can you see poor Emma's little arms flaying about, her mouth and nose disappearing under the murderous surface and she had no way to call anyone? If only she could have toppled the bucket over and fell outside the terrifying water. Everyone in the household must have been so very sorrowful and I wonder if there were recriminations. Who was supposed to watch tiny Emma?
"Where were all of you?" "Why didn't anybody see that?" Were these accusations hurled aloud, or did they merely hang in the silent air?
But what could all of that have meant? Can our family console ourselves with the Christian thought that we all have a tiny angel that went to heaven too soon? So Emma is there above the fluffy clouds looking down on all the rest of the huge Meissner clan. But even if we are comforted with such thoughts, you still find yourself asking why did God let that happen? Why did the little baby not get a chance at life and some enjoyment? How does a drowned small child "come to know, love and serve God in this world?"
As I write this book, all of the sons and daughters of Anton and Barbara are gone. Dad was one of the last. It is too late now, but we should have recorded more from each one over the decades. Is that the lesson for all, including our readers, to cherish your elders and perhaps even record them on what they remember and what they experienced?
Robert has written: "Don't you wish Mom or Dad had left us a memo or a diary of their thoughts, hopes, ambitions ... That would be better than us guessing at these."
Therefore do not wait. As our Mother Norah always said, "You do not get many years in life. You always think there will be time for everything. But then there isn't. You think you will do it tomorrow or next year. But it does not work that way." (By the way, our Mom's name was really "Norah." But somewhere along the way the "h" was lost, just as it was for Mom's sister "Sarah." Anyway throughout this book we are restoring the "h" to end Mother's Irish name.)
So stop reading this book right now. Call your elders who are still alive so that you can talk with them and hug them! Record what they say and then return to these writings.
Finally in this Opening, I must stress that Dad and Mom grew up on farms. There was a daily schedule imposed on all, from milking cows at a set hour in the morning and again in the evening, to feeding the chickens, planting crops on the right day, watching over the sprouting stalks and stems, insuring they had water and proper fertilizers (did our parent families use chemical fertilizers or natural manures?), and feeding the animals a proper diet.
But farm life is far more than demanding schedules. There is a way of life, of family, of all fulfilling their tasks, and duties, of a closeness and reliance on nature.
Let me include one short quotation from the book, "The Holy Earth" that points to the wider meaning of the farm:
The real farmer, the one whom we so much delight to honor, has a strong moral regard for his land, for his animals, and his crops. These are established men, with highly developed obligations, feeling their responsibility to the farm on which they live. No nation can long persist that does not have this kind of citizenry in the background. (Page 50.)
And should not we see the decay of our society, the multiplication of all sorts of evils, and the decline of our moral strength as the number of family farms decreases both relatively and absolutely? Are we not witnesses to this?
Here is another quotation, this one from the book "The Unsettling of America," by Wendell Berry that warns us about what is occurring in rural communities:
. ... the situation is catastrophic: Farmers are losing their farms, some are killing themselves, some in the madness of despair are killing other people, and rural economy and rural life are gravely stricken.
Do we not see the same despair, the same mad behaviors, and the same spreading physical and — worse — moral decay in our cities and suburbs? Perhaps our parents were blessed by the burdens of farm life. Maybe we children of two farm families should be equally thankful for the legacy about hard work from our earliest years that our parents bestowed on us.
Story 2: "We need you in the fields! Not in school!"
Let me describe the Salem near which my Dad was born.
Salem was actually a bustling progressive city in the early 1900's. It was a proud city of historical importance with local resident artists and all sorts of events to welcome various national heroes to the City. Here is some background information from Wikipedia, the copyright free encyclopedia:
Salem was founded by a Pennsylvanian potter, John Straughan, and a New Jersey clockmaker, Zadok Street, in 1806. The name Salem was taken from "Jerusalem", which means "city of peace".
Early settlers to the city included the Religious Society of Friends ("Quakers"), which the school system's sports teams honor by referring to themselves collectively as the "Quakers."
Salem has made significant contributions to Ohio and national history.
Active in the abolitionist movement of the early-to mid-19th century, Salem acted as a hub for the American Underground Railroad, with several homes serving as "stations." Salem retains many of these homes. ...
Salem was a center for reform activity in several ways. The Anti-Slavery Bugle, an abolitionist newspaper, was published in Salem beginning in 1845. A local group of the Progressive Friends, an association of Quakers who separated from the main body partly so they could be freer to work for such causes as abolitionism and women's rights, was formed in Salem in 1849. The local school board at that time was composed entirely of abolitionists.
In April 1850, Salem hosted the first Women's Rights Convention in Ohio, the third such convention in the United States. (The first was the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848; the second was the Rochester Convention two weeks later.) The Salem Convention was the first of these conventions to be organized on a state-wide basis. All of the convention's officers were women. Men were not allowed to vote, sit on the platform or speak during the convention. The male spectators were supportive, however, and when the convention was over, they created an organization of their own and endorsed the actions of the women's convention. (Taken from copyright free Wikipedia.)
Some prominent Salem residents included Charley Beeson, Wild West saloon owner and lawman; Charles Burchfield, 20th-century painter who left a treasure of some 5,000 beautiful paintings; John Allen Campbell, First Governor of the Wyoming Territory; and Alan Freed, disc jockey, who coined the term "Rock 'n Roll." (Through him Cleveland makes its claim to glory and the right to the presence of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the shores of Lake Erie.)
My Grandfather, Anton Meissner and his wife Barbara, had come to America from Germany about 1880. Eventually they resettled to Salem.
The following is a legendary story about their coming, which like all such accounts is probably more myth than truth. We had heard their German departure was far from a normal tale of tears and goodbyes by their family and local villagers to the young brave travelers. Anton and Barbara allegedly lived an exciting story that was better than the Romeo and Juliet of Shakespeare as well as other literary lovers.
Let one of the others relate this story. Our Grandfather and Grandmother eloped. Yes, eloped. How? Actually, it is said that at night they climbed down a ladder at the back window. Then the two of them were off across the fields. Why did they not stay there in Germany? Why did they not continue growing up, get married in the "Vaterland," and have their fourteen children on a farm located on the rich lands of Bavaria?
My sister Anne has collected the following details:
"Anton and Barbara were young lovers. He was 22 and she was 17, which meant she was under age. The only one who didn't know about the lovers was her father. He would not have approved of a lower class Anton marrying into his upper class family. And there always was his prosperous farm which Barbara most probably would inherit. Dad did not want Anton getting his hands on the farm.
"So Anton and Barbara made their plans. They required somebody who could help. Perhaps they needed some money. Or maybe they wanted assistance obtaining real-looking documents to cover over Barbara's young age. Anyway in the town was a woman who had three children. This will become more relevant as the tale unfolds. She was very helpful toward the young couple, getting them everything they needed for the upcoming escape, including some money.
"There were no cars or buses in those days. There was the one train which the couple would have to catch and then head for the port of Hamburg and an Atlantic steamer. But while the couple is carrying out their escape, doesn't Dad learn the truth. The story is that he then headed in his one horse carriage chasing down the road, trying to catch up with the train. That proved futile and father had lost his daughter to Anton, the upstart.
"Oh, you want to know about the woman with the three children?" Anne continues her delightful saga. "Well, she eventually marries Barbara's Dad. She and her three children later inherit the farm. Do you think that was the woman's scheme all along? That could not have been."
It might have been unfortunate in some ways, however, if the couple had remained there in Bismarck's paradise. Ahead were World War I and the Nazi era. All of this is now just history, the dead past, mere pages in books. But if Grandfather Anton and Grandmother Barbara had not eloped, what might have happened?
Here is alternative history.
I never knew the following until many years later when I learned it at one of our Annual Meissner Family Reunions in the 1990's. Anton had five other brothers and sisters who grew up in Germany. Two brothers were drafted into the Kaiser's Army for World War I and served on the Western Front. These were my two Grand Uncles. They fought on the German side with the Central Powers against the British and French as well as the Americans.
My two young uncles were killed in fighting in the trenches on the Western Front. Suppose Grandfather Anton had stayed in Germany and somehow been drafted into the army and fought in the trenches of the "War to End Wars." Would we ever have been? Suppose Anton, like his brothers, had been killed. Consider the chances and possibilities and parallel universes and maybe we are running along paths beside other tracks where we never did exist.
But we are here and we may even have Hitler to thank for that. But that is for later in the book. I do admit that after I learned the tragic fate of my Grand Uncles, World War I no longer was just a pile of dry historical facts.
Let us continue the Salem story. Anton and Barbara bought a farm on the Damascas Road heading into Salem. Some say they paid the entire purchase price in cash. They grew corn and wheat while also operating a dairy farm. This was not an easy career but required work from before dawn until after dusk, seven days a week.
Our Dad was only in the second grade of the local one room school house. I often imagined such school houses as ramshackle buildings with gaping holes in the roofs and sporting mud floors surrounded by side boards falling from the wall posts. Not much learning, I surmised, occurred in such squalid surroundings. But then I had a chance to visit the Salem school house in 2015 with its solid red brick walls, sturdy roof, and two stories. The floors are of firm wood. Children's desks with their metal supports are arranged in neat rows, and two walls display large black boards with white chalks in the trays. There were also lots of wall-hung photographs of different classes, students arrayed in their Sunday best, and half-smiling teachers at the row ends in neat fitted quality dresses. My earlier ignorant dismal expectations about these rural schools are another example of our historical blindness.
Let me continue with this story about Dad which happened about 1909 or so.
One bright sunny morning, Grandfather Anton took my youthful Dad out to the fields of the family farm. The dialogue went something like this. "Son, you have had enough schooling. We need you in the fields to help. So you don't need to go to school all the time."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "We Celebrate Our Mother and Father"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Joseph Patrick Kevin Meissner.
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