52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 42
My paternal great-great-grandmother, Frances (Werkmeister) Steinbruecker was born March 11, 1853, on a farm outside Sheboygan, Wisconsin. By the time she turned 80, the city had grown almost to her doorstep. She had spent most of those eight decades on the same piece of land, but the world around her had changed dramatically.
Sheboygan Press Tue, Mar 14, 1933
Her childhood certainly looked nothing like mine.
Before Frances was even ten years old, she was expected to work hard alongside the adults. She drove a team of oxen into town with a load of wood. Looking back at her childhood in 1933, Frances observed, “No child of that age would do anything like that nowadays.”
I suspect she would have been even more appalled by my childhood. I never once drove a team of oxen anywhere, but I did ride my bicycle all over the same town where she once drove those oxen.
In September 1862, when Frances was nine, word spread that an Indian raid was approaching. Her mother was ill and her baby sister was only two weeks old, so Frances helped load the family's belongings behind the oxen before they fled to town for safety. The warning turned out to be a false alarm, and a few days later they returned home.
Wildlife was another part of everyday life. Bears and foxes roamed the nearby woods, and Frances learned how to load a gun. Indigenous people sometimes came to the family's door asking for money.
My childhood adventures were considerably less dramatic.
Frances went on to become the mother of eleven children. I raised three, which kept me plenty busy. Trying to imagine my life with eight more children—without modern appliances, disposable diapers, or an SUV—makes driving the oxen sound almost relaxing.
Top Row, L to R: Henry, Joseph, Emma, Peter. Center: Fred Jr, Frances, John, Fred Sr, Frances. Bottom: Lizzie, Theresa, Annie Clara was not born yet. Original photo shared by Lynn Bartz and is badly deteriorated. This copy has been Ai repaired.
Perhaps the biggest difference between Frances's life and mine, though, is the size of our worlds. Frances lived nearly her entire life on the farm where she was born. At 80, she told the reporter that she had rarely been away from home for more than a week—and that there was “no nicer place than her farm.”
My world has been much larger. I've lived in California, Wisconsin, Texas, Oklahoma, and even England. I can travel hundreds of miles in a few hours, talk instantly with someone on the other side of the world, and sit at my computer in Oklahoma reading a newspaper article published in Wisconsin nearly a century ago.
Frances thought the world had changed enormously between her childhood in the 1860s and her 80th birthday in 1933.
I can only imagine what she would think of it now.
And while our lives could hardly be more different, I'm glad that all these years later I have the opportunity to learn a little about hers—and to call this tough little oxen-driving Wisconsin girl my great-great-grandmother.