FREDERICK CHRISTIAN BAUMAN
Page 5
After the close of the school term at Tarlton, I returned home, walking the distance in the same time in which I did going, and on 90 cents of expense on the way. The strain of fatigue was such that my mother at first sight did not know me.
During the summer I worked on the farm at home, and in harvest cradled the grain, and helped my father to stack and thresh. By that time the institution had been started at Tiffin under Rev. J. H. Good, Prof. R. Good and Miss Thayer in the college department, and the Rev. E. V. Gearhart in the theological department.
The distance from our place to Tiffin was one hundred miles. I left home walking, so as to be there in time for the opening of the fall term in 1850. My way led through Perrysburg, Miami City, and Fremont. The first sight of Tiffin made quite an impression on me. Not a single person in the city was I acquainted with. A stranger to everybody, and worse than all I had only a few dollars of money and had to begin with rigid economy. I knew the name of the pastor of the reformed church, Rev. Hiram Shaull. I found his home. He was sitting in the front yard, and Rev. Super, just graduated from the seminary at Mercerburg, was sitting with him. I introduced myself. His friendship was all that could be expected, but I needed more than friendship. I was hungry and tired and care worn to know where I might go at least for a day. I asked the question. He seemed at a loss to know where to direct me, and at last thought I had better go to a Mr. Andrew Sohn at Ft. Ball on the west side of the river (Sandusky). I found the place, introduced myself, was received with a welcome and stayed a week without expense for board. They were middle aged and had no children. Both were members of the Reformed church of which Rev. Shaull was pastor.
I rented a small room in the Schahan Block where I set up a rude bed, table and chair which I either bought or borrowed, and the straw tick, pillow case and knife and fork, and a bottle of fluid for the lamp, I was ready to report myself and the college and have my lessons assigned. German by Rev. J. H. Good. Greek and two or three lessons in Theology by Rev. E. V. Gerhart in the Seminary and one lesson to Miss Thayer. All my studies except German were new. In the study of German I got along as well as others in my class except I. H. Reiter. Among the others in my class were Klein, C. H. Reiter, Blaetgen, Speis, Eschmeier, Scheel, Limberg, Schwartz and Kendig.
My diet was baker's bread, which cost 4 cents a loaf, which made two meals, and molasses, and now and then a little butter and meat. There was a good deal of monotony in everything during the winter. I had no fire in my room. Part of my experience that winter and spring is well nigh a blank in my memory, of which I can recall very little now. At the close of the spring term I walked home to Williams County to cut my father's harvest, etc. On my way home my brother met me about fifteen miles from home with a conveyance, and from him for the first time I learned that my two youngest sisters, Hattie and Martha, had died in March previous. I was so overcome with grief that I laid down and cried bitterly. I felt so sad that no one at home had written to me about their sickness and death.
In the fall of 1851 I returned to Tiffin, John Blaetgen and I rented a room in the house of a widow lady and her brother, upstairs where we had plain but comfortable quarters with stove and fire, and in the spring and summer we had a room in the house of Dr. Bieler in Ft. Ball where we also had pleasant quarters. The family showed us kindness in cooking something we would buy and preparing our chocolate on their stove, of which from some one we received a supply by gift.
By this time the new college building was ready and students mostly occupied rooms in the building. D. M. Lefever and I had the room on the northeast of the 3rd floor next to the corner. G. L. Meckling* was my roommate part of the time. I secured the job of sweeping the three college halls and stairs for my tuition and room rent. The dust often was terrible and ruinous to clothes. Necessity was the only consideration of doing it. In the spring as usual I walked home to help on the farm. The only consideration for my labor at home was that my father would buy material for my clothing, and my sister knew something of sewing, and would make the clothing, and the result was that while the material was all right the fit was anything but what it ought to be. The design was economy but it was economy badly managed and in the end expensive.
On my return to Tiffin in the fall of 1852 I had the offer by Dr. J. U. Heckerman to have my board and bed for taking care of his horses, getting them ready for his drives to his patients in the country and taking care of them on his return. After school hours in the afternoons and on Saturdays it was my duty to haul fire wood for the family with horse and wagon from a pasture ground southeast of town about three-quarters of a mile, and cut it into stove wood at home. The only place of study was the Doctor's office or at the light of Mrs. Heckerman's room next to the office. Neither was a suitable place for study, and the office generally had callers, and the family room with but one lamp burning fluid and was occupied by Mrs. H. and her two children. The winter was bitter cold and my room was unplastered, and in cold nights with insufficient bed clothes I was unable to sleep, and often wished for the dawn of day that I might get up and make the fires.
The Doctor often showed an ill disposition toward me and at times made it exceedingly unpleasant for me. I would have left him to find another boarding place, but being without funds I put up with a good many indignities rather than leave school. On the occasion of a fire which broke out near the chimney between his roof and that of the adjoining, in which the post office was kept, his conduct was so insulting and overbearing, that I could endure it no longer, and I left and found boarding with a family by the name of Bloom for a few weeks until the spring or summer vacation.
As a consequence, I had made slow progress during the winter and especially in Greek, which was carried along by the class in the Seminary course. A month or two before the close of the Seminary term, 1853, one Sunday evening after service in the First Reformed Church, Rev. G. D. Wolf, pastor, Dr. Gerhart requested me to call at his study, as he wished to speak to me. I went with him and Rev. Wolf, and wondering on the way whether I was charged with any misdemeanor, but could think of nothing of the kind. Being seated, Dr. Gerhart told me that he had been corresponding with Daniel Cort in Dubuque County, Iowa, who represented a colony of Pennsylvania Reformed people anxiously desiring a minister, and that he wished me to go and preach to them six months and return in the fall and continue my course in the Seminary. Nothing could have been a greater surprise to me; it fairly staggered me. I made the excuse that there were others in the class who were more competent. My apologies did not prevail to change the Doctor's purpose, and I told him that I was willing to be subject entirely to his judgment in the matter, but I still felt my unfitness to undertake the task.
*Meckling (or Mechling) was the first student to graduate from the college.