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| My parents were both born in the year 1810. I was born in the small city of Koenigsburg in the Dutchy of Sachse Coburg on the first day of November A.D. 1846. My parents owned and tilled a limited acreage of land for a living and by industry and frugality got along very well. I was the youngest of four children born to them. One of them, a girl, died in infancy. My brother, Christian born in 1837, took over the estate in 1860, and with it the care of our parents. My sister Carolina, went to America when she was 17 years old, in 1856. On my fathers side, I came from a family noted for piety, and from my mothers side from a patriotic Polander, who went into exile from his beloved Poland at the time when Russia, Prussia, and Austria helped themselves to its territory, across Germany as far as the Rhine. From my sixth to my thirteenth year I attended Public School, when with my comrades of the same age we were accounted prepared for Confirmation and the partaking of our first Communion. This I received in a neighboring village with but three others of that Village on Thursday prior to Easter 1860, as a privilege to two of us being billed for America on the following Eastermonday. Altho still a child, I took upon me the obligations as a Christian as sincere and intelligent as any person of ripe age, while kneeling before the altar and before my Lords Representative. Sad, sad that Eastermonday, when that thirteen year old little lad left dear parents and the dear beloved home to grow up and make his fortune in the far off country across the broad seas, where his sister had preceeded him. Oh the tears that boy shed on that long walk of seven miles to the depot. I just want to mention one little incident among the many of my bringing up. When I was about eleven years old, school was dismissed one afternoon for us boys to gather wile flowers and leaves for a school decoration. After supposing we had enough, the most boys took the flowers home to school, while a few of us, thinking we were dismissed for all afternoon, thought it a fine time to go bathing in the pond near the woods. We had a fine time bathing and picking wild strawberries, so abundant. But an ominous feeling came over us, that something was not right, we concluded to go home as quick as we could. When we got to a backway alley, a short distance from the city, what should I see but my mother with the accoustomed blacksnake in her hand. Sure I did not fly into her arms then, but took the shortest cut home. When I opened the door father smiled saying, "Did you see your mother"? I said, "I sure did", and when she came home shortly after, she proved that she didn't spare the rod and spoil the child. At the opening session of school next morning my comrades got theirs in public while mine was nicely rubbed in already and I was glad. |
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| Meet Me in the Morning! By Frederick Kess Sept 1930 |