JOHANNE AND MARY ANN MATHE
My Grandfather, Joseph Mathe loved to tell
stories, and sometimes talked about his earlier life experiences, and about his father.
His father, Johanne Mathe, lived in Austria
in a region near Vienna in central Europe.
Johanne had married Mary Ann Langbauer.
Their oldest child, a daughter named Francisca, was born in Europe.
During the first half of the 1800s Austria
was ruled by bureaucracy and police.
There was an active effort on the part of the government to eliminate
the Catholic religion. The land was in
the hands of rich landowners; the common people were kept poor. Those who were able to do so, escaped, and
migrated to other lands.
Austria, where Johanne and his family
lived, was controlled by Germany. They
spoke German, and were known as Germans, but tried to practice their Catholic
faith. I remember Grandpa saying that
they had some Bohemian blood, which Aunt Victoria, his sister, denied, saying
it was not Bohemian, but Hungarian blood traces that they had. [I have
been told that their family name, Mathe, was not a German but a French name,
spelled "Mathieu," but there was no mention or any indication that
the family had any French blood, however remote.)
When Johanne was very young his mother,
while carrying him in her arms, got caught in a snow storm during very cold
weather. Some fingers on his left hand
froze, leaving them shortened and misshaped.
(A picture of Johanne and his wife, taken after coming to Wisconsin,
shows evidence of these shortened fingers.)
Johanne Mathe learned the art of making
wooden shoes in Europe. He also raised
cattle. Once a year he would join with
some of his neighbors to gather all their marketable cattle into one large
herd, and, with all the owners as herdsmen, drive the combined herd of cattle
into Vienna where they were sold. In
other words, marketable cattle walked to the market where they were sold.
Very little is known about the details or
reason for Johanne and his family to leave Europe, or where they expected to
go. Eventually they passed up the mouth
of the Saint Lawrence River, and landed in Quebec, Canada. Two more children were born in Canada on
their way up the river, Franz (known later as "Frank") and Mary. Where and when they were born I do not
know. The family crossed Lake Michigan
by boat and landed in Kewanee sometime before their son, Joseph, my
grandfather, was born on January 20, 1858.
It was said that his mother carried him in her arms 20 miles in order to
have him baptized by a Catholic priest.
His younger sister, Victoria, was also born in Kewanee, 1860 (?).
(Years later when Grandpa wanted to vote in
Portage County, Wisconsin, he was asked where he had been born. He replied that he had been born in
Luxembourg. The poll worker, never
having heard of the town by that name in Kewanee County, thought he had been
born in the European country of that name and at first refused to let him
vote.)
Grandpa sometimes talked about his earliest memories when they lived in a log cabin with a dirt floor. The lowest logs of the cabin walls rested directly on the ground. It was a hard winter, snow was deep, game was scarce. A pack of wolves began circulating around their cabin. One wolf began digging under the bottom log on one side of the cabin. Grandpa remembered his father sitting on a chair, holding a gun on his lap, watching where the wolf was trying to dig under the log to his way inside. Johanne was so short of ammunition for his gun that he did not shoot until he saw both eyes of the wolf peering into the cabin through the hole. He then shot it between the eyes.
When I was discussing this story with my
sister, she said she remembered his telling a different version, that his
mother killed the wolf with a single chop of an ax. These may have been two different events.
Grandpa said he remembered when the family
went to dances where his father played a fiddle for dancers. This was before his father had turned
Methodist. He remembered playing on the
floor among a pile of coats and wraps, while people were dancing to the fiddle
music. Grandpa's sister, Aunt Victoria,
who was several years younger than he, vehemently denied that they ever went to
such a sinful thing as a dance.
It was hard for Johanne and Mary to
maintain their Catholic faith. There
were no Catholic churches or priests established in their vicinity. There was an itinerant priest who made a
circle providing one mass in the vicinity about every fourth Sunday. Johanne built a small building on a corner of
his land for the priest to use. It was just big enough for the priest to have
mass in it for a very few people.
However a (rumor? scandal? calumny?) was
circulated about the priest and an unmarried mother who refused to name her
child's father. The real truth seems to
be unknown, but many Catholics no longer associated with the priest. At the same time an active Methodist
evangelization developed in the area and endeavored to satisfy a spiritual
hunger. The Mathe family became
Methodists. The small chapel that had
been built for the Catholic priest was used later as housing for pigs.
Years later when my daughter and I visited
the historical society in Kewaunee, we discovered a mid-1800s atlas map showing
where Johanne Mathe owned land. It
showed a two-branched creek running through his land, as well as a road which
passed it. By comparing this map with a
modern road map we looked for the property and found it, a wooded tract with
the two-branched stream flowing through it.
I was surprised to learn that, with so much good farm-land available for
settling at that time, that my great grandfather had opted for a tract adjacent
to unclaimed "swamp land." Not
until afterwards did I realize that it was swamp land on which grew tamarack
trees--wood which naturally resisted rotting from water dampness or contact
with barn yard manure; the best wood for making long-lasting wooden shoes such
as those which Johanne made.
Johanne also used tamarack for making long
lasting shingles, a product more in demand by settlers than the wooden shoes he
made. There were plenty of trees growing
in the area to use for making log cabins, but logs were heavy and awkward to
make water shedding roofs for the cabins.
Grandpa remembered the bread his mother
baked in an outside oven. The oven was
built of stones and covered with dirt. A
fire was built inside the oven to heat the stone. When it had burned down, the ashes were
brushed out, the bottom of the oven sprinkled with seeds, and the dough, as one
big glob, was thrown on top of the seeds.
The oven was then closed, and banked with dirt until the next day, when
it was opened and the bread taken out as one big round loaf. In his old age Grandpa claimed that that was
the best bread he had ever eaten.
Grandpa spent only two days in a country
school. The school had been built in a
wooded area, where trees had been cut down to clear the school ground. Grandpa climbed up and stood high on top of a
stump that had been left near the school.
As small children will do when standing high, he boasted about his
position. Another boy came and knocked
him off the stump. Grandpa's older
brother Franz (Frank) knocked that boy down in retaliation. That boy went home and told his father. That father came to Grandpa's father. The end result was that Johanne declare that
if all they did at school was fight, there was no reason for them to go
school. Their schooling days were
over. Grandpa did not learn to read until
after his second marriage when his wife taught him how to read.
When Grandpa became old enough he became
indentured to a wagon maker. His master
had a large two-sectioned shop. One side
was a full service blacksmith shop where wagon irons were made and horses shod;
the other side produced the wooden parts of the wagons and assembled them. Another fellow was apprenticed to the
blacksmith section; Grandpa was assigned to the wagon-assembling side.
One fourth of July the other apprentice
wanted to celebrate. He took an anvil
outside in front of the shop and laid it on the ground. He filled the hollow with gun powder and laid
a second anvil upside down over the first one.
He then lit fire to the gun powder.
With an enormous explosion the anvil flew straight up in the air, came
down and struck the fellow. He remained
a cripple the rest of his life.
One day Grandpa was told to deliver a new
wagon to a farm a little farther distant from the shop than usual. He turned the wagon over to the farmer and
was about to leave when the farmer's daughter came out to see the new wagon. Of course Grandpa had to tell her about all
the good points of the wagon he had delivered!
Before he knew it she invited him to stay for dinner. Protesting that he had to get back to the
shop by noon, she informed him that dinner was all ready to be served, he could
just sit down and eat right away.
As Grandpa told it, the next thing he knew
she invited him to supper. Protesting
that he had to get back to the shop, she said supper was all ready to be
served, he could just sit down and eat right away.
The next thing he knew her father told him
that it was ten o'clock already, and didn't he think he ought to go home? He left in a hurry then.
He managed to stay away for about four
weeks before he went to see her on a Sunday, and spent another full day with
her. Two weeks later he went back,
taking with him a preacher who married them.
She was Mary Ernestine Liebach, the daughter of Herman Liebach. The marriage took place near Eden, Brown
County, on March 9, 1880.
Grandpa broke his apprenticeship. His parents gave him a wagon and a team of
horses for a wedding present. He rented
a farm on shares, which meant he didn't have to pay any direct money as rent,
but instead had to give a percentage of the crops he raised to the land
owner. He borrowed money to buy seed to
sow. Then he and Mary Ernestine went
farming together.
By the time my grandparents married, there
had developed in Kewaunee a group of German immigrants who wanted to move on to
less settled land. In July of 1878 some
of them went to look over the area around Almond in Portage County. What they looked for was available land and a
good German Methodist Church, a church which they did not have in Kewaunee but
did find in Almond. The 1880 census of
the town of Almond shows that almost half the population were German
immigrants. They included some Mathe,
Tess, Karnopp, Langbauer, Kehl and Popp families. Many of these people came from the Kewaunee
area. Grandpa's brother Frank (Franz)
had married Bertha Karnopp on October 11, 1871, in Kawaunee County. He was one of those who came to inspect
property in Almond, and in October, 1878, bought 160 acres in the northwest
quarter of Sec. 23. Grandpa's sister
Franscisca married August Popp. The
Popps remained on a farm near Kewaunee, But Grandpa, his brother Frank, and his
sisters, Mary and Victoria, with their husbands, wives and children settled in
or near Almond.
In the 1880s, after Joseph and Mary
Ernestine had been married a few years, they decided that they would join their
relatives and friends who had left Kewaunee for Almond.
Grandpa was a hard worker, a shrewd man and
a practical manager. He acquired a farm
about three miles northeast of Almond, on the north side of the present County
Trunk A. This "home farm," the
first of many farms he eventually owned, however briefly, was in Sec. 14, T 21
N, R 9 E. His brother, Frank Mathe,
owned the farm on the south side of the road.
Isadore Mathe, a cousin, lived on the farm abutting Grandpa's property
on the east. The crossroad corner between
these farms became known at that time as "Mathe Corner." After Frank and Bertha moved away, Carl Dopp
acquired his farm. In my youth the
corner was called "Dopp's Corner."
Originally there was a log cabin on the
"home farm," the first farm that Grandpa acquired. There he built a large farm house and a
sturdy barn. He wanted a large family,
so the house he built had two bedrooms on the first floor and three on the
second floor. His son, my uncle, Edward
Joseph Mathe, was born in 1883. His
daughter, my mother, Louise Mathe, was born in 1885. Emma Mathe, their sister, was born in
1887. As Emma reached her seventh
birthday, she became ill, cause unknown.
She was listless, her lips became blue, and she passed away on July 5,
1894. She was buried in the East German
Cemetery near Almond.
Grandpa's sister, Aunt Victoria, also came
to the Almond vicinity; she married Carl Rath.
Their daughters, Rose and Lydia, had also been born sometime before
1890. When Carl Rath passed away in
1890, Aunt Victoria was widowed with two daughters to raise; Grandpa took her
in. He enlarged the upper story of the
house on the "home farm," adding a large living room, a small kitchen
and a small bedroom for them to live in.
An outside stairway was built for their private use. Garden space was given her to raise her own
vegetables.
In time Johanne and Mary Mathe aged. While their son, Grandpa, was living on the
"home farm" he took them in and Johanne brought along his bench used
for making wooden shoes. When I was a
child, (probably in my earliest school days), I saw and examined the bench
Johanne (my great grandfather) had used.
It was discarded, lying on the dirt underneath the willow tree where
Yvonne had once had a "play house."
I don't remember being told about it, but I seemed to know how it fit
together and worked. I had probably
listened to the older people talking about it.
It was from this memory that I made a drawing of it.
It was not at the time that I saw the bench
on the ground that I saw the augers Johanne used. They had been stored in the attic in our
house in Almond, where I had examined them.
I have never seen them being used, but like the bench I had knowledge of
their use without ever remember being told about them.
When and where Mary Ann and Johanne Mathe
died and were buried I do not know.
There was a disagreement among the relatives as to their ages, but all
agreed that Mary Ann lived to be over 100 years old before she died.
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