OUR FAMILY HISTORY

By Otto E. Bahr, 242 West l6th Street, Houston 8, Texas. 1959.

I

MY FATHER'S FAMILY

My father, Friederich Wilhelm Bahr, was orphaned at the age of five years. It was during the Civil War, the war between the states, that his mother, WILHELMINE SCHROEDER BAHR, passed away. He did not remember his father at all, because he died shortly after his birth. My father was born at Cypress Top, a railroad station on the Houston Texas Central Railroad in Harris County, some twenty miles to the northwest of Houston, Texas. His home on a 320 acre farm was located on both banks of Little Cypress Creek, some five miles north and west of that railroad station. The date of his birth was May 10, 1858. He had five brothers, of which I know the names of only four: August, John, Adam, and Julius. The fifth brother, whose name I did not learn, a soldier of the Confederate Army, was killed in the battle of Natchez, Mississippi. My father also had two sisters: Mrs. Jacob Zahn and Mrs. Carl Raths.

My grandfather came to America sometime during the late 1840's. The exact time of his arrival in America could not be established by me. He and my grandmother hailed from the Province of Posen in East Germany. They traveled to America together with quite a colony of Pommeranians. This colony of Low German People settled along the headwaters of Little Cypress and Spring Creek in northwestern Harris County, Texas. Although my grandfather had his farmhome on Little Cypress Creek, some 28 miles northwest of Houston, he nevertheless maintained a blacksmith and wagon shop in Houston. This shop was located on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou, just north of the present City Hall. I was told that he walked home from Houston to his family farm every Saturday night in order to spend Sunday with his wife and family, and on Sunday night he walked back again to Houston to carry on his trade. My grandmother in the meantime, together with the older children, took care of the family farm.

After grandmother Bahr's death, the orphaned Bahr children were taken in by the oldest daughter of the family, who had been married some time before to Mr. Jacob Zahn. I was told that when she married Mr. Zahn, she was not even sixteen years of age. The girls married young in those days, even as some of them do now again. So poverty stricken were the Bahr children after their mother's death, that my father owned but one shirt to his name. He told me that when his shirt was in the family wash, he had nothing else to wear and of necessity, had to either go to bed or else to play stark naked under the Jacob Zahn home. This is no reflection on the Jacob Zahn family; they also had a number of small children of their own to feed and clothe, and they were just as poverty stricken as other Texas families were after the end of the Civil War. What the Union Army had left them was later taken over by the bush-wackers and carpet-baggers of the Reconstruction days of the impoverished South.

The small colony of German People at Little Cypress, as well as those living at, what was then called Rose Hill, along the south banks of Spring Creek, did not neglect their religion. They banded themselves together and established Salem Lutheran Church at Rose Hill, a community near Tomball, Texas. They called a certain Mr. Zimmerman to be the Pastor of their congregation. It was by this pastor that my father was baptised and confirmed in the Lutheran Faith. Shortly after his confirmation, the small group of Germans who had settled along the banks of Little Cypress Creek, in the year of 1876, built their own church, which is known today as St. John's Lutheran Church.

In the group of Pommeranians which settled along the banks of Little Cypress Creek we find such family names as: Bahrs, Raths, Zahns, Juergens, Lieders, Kitzmanns, Krahns, Muellers, Quades, Teskes, etc. The Land Records of Harris County, in the Courthouse of Houston, Texas, show that Grandfather Carl Wilheln Bahr homesteaded 320 acres on Little Cypress Creek. The Patent, however, was not issued to him, but to his heirs on August 25, 1858.

There were no schools in the country at that time. My father's childhood education consisted of a six-months course of religious instruction in the Bible and the Lutheran Catechism. And this instruction was received by means of the German Language. Not long after his confirmation, he and his brother, Julius, went to Houston, where they apprenticed themselves to a Mr. Heard, who operated a blacksmith and wagon shop on the south banks of Buffalo Bayou, near the foot of South Main Street. Uncle Julius learned blacksmithing and my father became a wheel-wright. During their first year of apprenticeship, the two brothers received only board and room. During the second year they received board, room, and clothes. During the third year they were given, besides board, room and clothes, also a dollar day in wages. After three years of apprenticeship, they received the going wage, which was then $3.00 a day.

It was about at this time, in 1869, that Trinity Lutheran Congregation of Houston, Texas was organized. The first church was located on Louisiana Street, about two blocks west of Preston Avenue. After its organization, my father had his membership with St. Johns Church at Little Cypress transferred to Trinity Lutheran Church, of which congregation he remained a member until he left Houston for Klein, Texas in 1885.

While in Houston, my father and Uncle Julius had occasion to visit with some people they knew at Spring, Texas. Spring was a railroad station on the International and Great Northern Railroad, some twenty-five miles to the north of Houston. Their friends in Spring were William and Eli Lemm. It was through this acquaintanceship with the Lemm brothers that my father became acquainted with my mother, then Miss Caroline Klein. Her parents lived in a community some six miles to the west of Spring, Texas. This community was then known as Klein, Texas. A group of German immigrants, most of them from Swabia in south Germany, such as: the Klenks, Zwinks, Kuehnlies, Kleins, Krimmels, Bernshausens, Benignusses, Hildebrandts, etc. Sprinkled among these settlers were also some immigrants from Prusua, Saxony, and Hesse, such as the Wunderlichs, Stracks, Doerres, Franks, Theisses, Roths and many others too numerous to mention.

The post office in the community was called Klein, Texas. It was located and managed by the owner of the Will Blackshear country store, which was then about three-fourths of a mile west of Trinity Lutheran Church, on what is now known as the spring-cypress Road. When the Rural Free Delivery was instituted by the Federal Post Office Department, the Klein Post Office was closed, and the Klein community now gets its mail through the Post office at Spring, Texas. An uncle of mine, Mr. Charley Klein, became the first Rural Route Carrier of Route One in the Spring-Klein communities. He carried the mail on this route for more than thirty years.

William Lemm was a suitor of one of my mother's sisters, Miss Charlott Klein, at the time that my father and Uncle Julius had occasion to visit with the Lemm brothers. It was because of this fact that my father became acquainted with the Klein family. He fell in love with Miss Caroline and she with him. The marriage was solemnized in Trinity Lutheran Church of Klein, Texas by The Reverent August Wilder, on the 26th day of April, 1883. Witnesses at my parents' wedding were given on the aged and mutilated marriage certificate as Johan Klein, Julius Bahr, Ida Zalnn, and Sophie (Somebody), the name had been totally oblitterated on the aged document.

John Klein who was a witness to my parents' wedding later married Miss Ida Zahn of Little Cypress. She was a daughter of Jacob Zahn and therefore my father's niece, and by her marriage she became my father's sister-in-law as well. For that reason she was my cousin as well as my aunt.

After his marriage, my father lived in Houston with his young bride, for my mother was only about seventeen and a half years of age at the time of her wedding. Their home in Houston was a rented house, located in the lst ward near the Old Water Stand-Pipe just north of Buffalo Bayou. There in that home in Houston I was born on March 6 in the year of 1884. It was a little over a month later that I was baptized in Trinity Lutheran Church, which was then located on Louisiana Street. My Baptismal Certificate states that my baptism was performed on April 20, 1884, by pastor Gotthord Kuehn. The sponsors were my maternal grandparents, Adam and Friedericke Klein, and Peter and Johanna Arverson, friends and neighbors of my parents. My name on my Baptismal Certificate is recorded as, "Eduart Otto Bahr." Since my parents called me Otto, I have reversed the order, and I sign my name Otto Edward Bahr.

II

MY MOTHER'S FAMILY

My mother's father, Adam Klein, was born in south Germany, then known as Swabia, in the Kingdom of Wuertemberg. His hometown was Stutgard. My grandmother, Friedericke Klenk Klein, was also born in Stutgard. They came to the United States of America as the aftermath of a revolutionary movement in Germany which took place in the year of 1848. My grandfather was involved in this revolution. It was the same revolution in which Carl Schurtz, later the great American Statesman, had participated during his University days. When the revolution was surpressed, both Schurtz and Klein and hundreds of others had to flee Germany in order to escape arrest and imprisonment. Both Klein and Schurtz fled to America. My grandfather arrived in 1849; Carl Schurtz came over in 1852.

My grandfather had fled, first to nearby Switzerland. From there he made his way into France to the harbor city of Brest. From Brest he wrote to Miss Friedericke Klenk, to whom he was bespoken, that he intended to leave Brest some time for America on a sailing vessel and that, if she were minded to go along with him as his wife, she should meet him in Brest at a certain time.

Miss Klenk accepted his proposal and met him in Brest. She did this despite the advice she received from her parents in Stutgard, who were wealthy people. Grandfather Klein must also have been well to do, for he engaged passage for both of them on a certain sail ship, which was headed for Baltimore, Maryland. They were married by the Captain of that sailing vessel on the high sea. However, the ship did not reach its intended destination. A great hurricane blew it far off from its course and almost wrecked the ship. It was three months before land was sighted. When at last the ship's anchor was dropped and a landing was made, the passengers and crew learned that their ship had missed the mainland of America altogether. They had landed on the shores of Cuba, with most of them sufferlng from Scorbut and other diseases caused by foul water and malnutrition. In Cuba the Captain and crew somewhat repaired the damages wrought by the storm and renewed their food and water supply. After the crew and passengers of the ship had to some extent recovered their health and strength by the use of fresh vegetables and citrus fruit in their diet, the Captain made the announcement to his passengers that he would not undertake to continue his journey to Baltimore with his ship in the condition in which the storm had left it, but that he would set sail for a much nearer port, namely that of New Orleans, Louisiana, and that his passengers could choose either to continue with him to that port or else leave the ship and disembark at Cuba and there find a ship to take them to Baltimore. Grandfather Klein and his bride chose to go to New orleans with the crippled ship and try their fortunes there.

At New Orleans, grandfather was told that many Gerrlan immigrants had sailed up the Mississippi River for St. Louis, Missouri, and had settled there. It was at this time that grandmother remembered that some of her relatives, some other Klenks, that had gone to America and had located on Hermann, Missouri. As a result of this information, grandfather engaged passage for himself and his bride on a River Steamer for St. Louis, Missouri. At St. Louis they boarded another steamboat which plied the Missouri River, for Hermann, Missouri, some sixty miles to the west of St. Louis.

Hermann, Missouri was a town settled by a colony of Germans. This colony had obtained a special charter from the State of Missouri, which permitted them not only to make their own laws and regulations but also to carry on all legal business in the German language. However, when my grandparents at last arrived in Hermann, they found that the German colony there was a group of so-called Free Thinkers: Atheists, who did not believe in God. These people had, in agreement with their convictions, passed a regulation which forever forbade the establishment of a church in Hermann and clergymen were forever barred from dwelling or preaching in that town. It is understandable that this provision did not please my grandparents, for they were believing Christians and they made up their minds not to locate in Hermann permanently.

Now in 1949, the "Gold Fever" was at its height in America. Nearly every American craved to travel to Sutter's Mill in California and there dig for gold. Grandfather Klein was also infected by this fever. So he left grandmother at Hermann, where she had found employment as a maid in the home of a wealthy colonist, and going up the Missouri River to Independence, Missouri, he paid $95.00 for the privilege of joining a so-ca1led "Wagon Train" which was headed for the gold fields of California. He purchased his own riding horse and was engaged as a scout and meat-hunter. The "Wagon Train" soon after was on its way, first to St. Joe, Missouri, where the River was crossed into Kansas, and thence west through Kansas, Colorado, and other western states, to Donner Pass, and Sutters Creek, across the high Sierra Mountains between Nevada and California. After many weeks of travel, privation, hard 1abor, and skirmishings with hostile Indians, the Wagon Train at last reached its goal.

Soon after this grandfather Klein staked his own placer claim, which he worked with much success. He did not only find much gold, but also, he found a buyer for his claim who offered him such a good price that he decided to sell it, so that he might return to his young wife at Hermann, Missouri. After the deal had been consumated, he, together with other successful gold seekers, set out for home. They took their way through Olt Mexico on horseback, with their precious gold dust stored safely in their saddle bags. A11 went well until they reached Mexico City. There they stayed overnight in a hostelry. They ate their supper and soon after prepared for a good nights sleep. They spread their blankets on the floor, for there were no beds, and with their saddle bags under their heads for pillows, they soon fell asleep. So deep was their sleep that they did not awake at sunrise in the early morning. It was nearly noon when at last they awoke and found their saddle bags and gold dust gone with the wind. They surmised that someone must have doped their coffee, but to accuse someone of this they did not dare, for it would have meant shooting and killing in a strange land and city where they had no friends to help them. Luckily, grandfather had not deposited all of his wealth in his saddle bags. While in California he had purchased a broad and soft handmade money belt from a Chinaman. Into this belt he had placed the gold coins which he had received for his claim, together with a number of the larger and odly- shaped gold nuggets, which he had found while working his claim. All totaled, about six thousand dollars worth which the thieves had not discovered on him. Grandfather Klein wisely said nothing about his money belt to anyone.

My report on grandfather's further trip through Mexico is sornewhat in doubt. From my mother's account, it appears that my grandfather returned overland, hiring out to a cattle drover, who gathered herds of long-horn steers in northern Mexico and southwestern Texas, and drove them northward in the spring of the year through the vast prairies of Texas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, grazing and fattening them on the way, to sell them in the fall of the year on the hoof to the United States Governrnent for distribution to the various Indian Tribes, who since the depletion of the Buffalo Herds, were usually starving in the cold winters of the plain states and territories. After the cattle drover had disposed of his herds, he paid off his help and returned to Texas to gather more herds for the coming of the next spring. Grandfather, after he had received his wages, made his way to Kansas City, Missouri, and from thence down the Missouri River to Hermann, Missouri, where grandmother was waiting for him. After the reunion in Hermann, the young couple did not waste much time but they left for St. Louis, where they took passage on a River Steamboat for New Orleans, Louisiana. There they boarded a coast-wise sailing vessel for Galveston, Texas. In Galveston they changed to another sailboat, which brought them through Galveston Bay northward and up Buffalo Bayou to the head of tide-water, which was approxirnately at the foot of the present Main Street in Houston, Texas.

A cousin of mine, however, has told me that his father, my mother's oldest brother, had told him that Grandfather Klein had returned from Mexico city after the robbery there had taken place via Vera Cruze overland, and thence by a costal vessel to New Orleans, where he had sent and waited for grandmother's return down from Hermann, Missouri to New Orleans by river stearner. I have no way of determining which one of the two accounts is correct. However, r do know that Grandfather Klein, in some way had learned of the opportunities waiting in Texas, for people who wanted to establish a farm home of their own.

Hearsay has it that when Grandfather Klein landed at the foot of Main Street in Houston, which was then but a mudhole of a village on Buffalo Bayou, he was importuned to locate there. He had learned the weaver's trade in Germany, and the townpeople of Houston offered to set up a loom for him, on which he was to weave jeans and hickory shirting for local consumption. However, grandfather had come to Texas to establish a farm home. A farm was offered him on the edge of Houston, comprising what is now some of the highest priced property on South Main Street, for only one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre. However, he did not accept that offer either, but he went out into northern Harris County, into the poor, sandy prairie, between Big Cypress and Willow Creeks, and there, as the Harris County Land Records show, he bought 160 acres frorn a Jarnes More, on which he established his homestead. Later on he purchased an additional 640 acres of timberland north of Big Cypress Creek from the De Lesteniers Estate. He was one of the first settlers of the community, therefore that settlement was called Klein, Texas. Though the post office has long been removed frorn the comrnunity, it is even today spoken of as the Klein community; and the Fine Consolidated School, located just a little west and north of his homestead, is called after his name.

Gandfather Klein raised a family of seven children. They were according to age, Mary, John, Charlott, Caroline, Bertha, Adam, and Charley. Grandfather prospered on his farm. He erected and operated the first grist-mill and cotton gin in the community. At first, these were driven by horse power. My mother told me that she and her sisters spent many a half day, sitting on the long boom to which the horses or mules were hitched, driving them around and around in a circle, to furnish the power for the gin, or the grist-mill. Some years later, grandfather installed a steam engine to do this work. Many an hour of my boyhood days was spent sitting in the cool shade of the gin- house, watching the giant fly-wheel of the steam engine with its great belt spinning the saws of the gin which pulled the lint from the seed of the freshly picked, snow white cotton, which the community farmers brought there. Saturdays were the Grist-Mill days. Rider after rider converged on grandfather's place on those days, with a large bag of corn tied on behind the saddle, to be ground between, the two great millstones into the most fragrant smelling white or yellow cornmeal, which in turn furnished our homes with heavenly smelling cornbread or corn fritters. The meal which was not used for bread or pancakes was cooked into a hearty evening meal of mush, which was eaten with milk in the evening, or else poured into a flat platter to be cut into long strips and fried brown on both sides for a breakfast that would really stick to a fellow's ribs. I have been told that grandfather purchased the steam engine for his cotton gin and grist-mill in New Orleans, after the Civil War had been fought and lost by the Confederacy.

During the civil war, grandfather was conscripted by the Southern Arrny to serve the cause of the South by weaving hickory shirting and jeans to supply the material for the Confederated Army Uniforms. He was provided with a loom and with the raw material for the weaving and he was given a certain quota to weave day after day, until the war at last came to an ignominious end. His pay was in Confederate paper money, which was almost worthless long before the war was lost.

Grandfather Klein, in the meantirne, kept the farm going and the home fires burning. My mother told me that they had little more to eat during the summer months than garden sass and mush and milk. The vegetables were seasoned with rank side-meat out of the family smokehouse. In the winter time, the fare was better for then a beef would be killed occasionally, and fat hogs for fresh roast, steaks and homemade sausages. Also in the fall and winter months, prairie chicken, duck, and wild geese were shot and quail were trapped for a change in diet.

How worthless the confederate paper money was at the time can be seen from an instance in grandmother's farm experience. One summer the watermelon crop turned out extra well. Needing some groceries, such as sugar and flour, she hauled a wagon load of watermelons to Houston. She received $200.00 in Confederate money for the load. Then she went to the grocer and bought a 49-pound sack of wheat flour, for which she had to pay $200.00 in Confederate currency. She had a heavy load for the horses to pull to Houston, but on the way home the load was so light that the horses could trott most of the way.

Being staunch Lutherans from south Germany, my grandparents on mother's side soon became concerned about church connections. They wanted religious instruction of their children in the Lutheran faith. The only true Lutheran church in Harris County, Texas at the time was Salem Lutheran Congregation at Rose Hill, a short distance south of Spring Creek and a little over a mile north and west of a town now known as Tomball, Texas. There was a church in Houston at the time which called itself a Lutheran Church, which was served by a certain Pastor Braun, but this church was in fact an Evangelical Reformed Congregation. The Lutheran Congregation at Rose Hill had been founded in 1852 and was affiliated with the Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other states, which had been founded by Dr. Ferdinand Walther and other orthodox Lutheran theologicans at Chicago, Illinois in l847.

Salem Lutheran Church was about nine miles to the northwest of the Klein community. There were no graded roads in Harris County at that time. The roads leading from one community to the other were little more than cow-trails, which wandered along the higher ground, through the open prairies. During the fall, winter, and spring months, these roads were often impassable to wagon travel because of the bottomless mud. Yet, grandfather and his family affiliated themselves with Salern Lutheran Congregation. They attended the services as often as the weather and the roads perrnitted them to do so. Often, when the roads were impassable for wagon travel, the family rode to church on horseback.

All the Klein children, with the exception of my mother, were baptized in Salem Lutheran Church. My mother, Caroline Klein, was not expected to live at the time of her birth and therefore had received emergency baptism at the hands of her father. (It is a strange coincidence that she, however, outlived all her sisters and brothers, who were born healthy and strong.) The older Klein children also received their religious instruction at the hands of Pastor Zimmerman of Salem Lutheran Church.

However, after a number of years, because of the distance involved, and the often times impassable roads, my grandparents, together with their neighbors, which had greatly increased in numbers during the years, went about to establish a Lutheran congregation of their own, and to build their own church. Some of these neighbors were the Wunderlichs, Theisses, Kaisers, Klenks, Zwinks, Hirdebrandts, Kuehnlies, Krimmels, Mittlesteads, Stracks, Benfers, Roths, Benignusses, Strohheckers, Kreinhops, Brills, Franks, Strehlaus, Feuses, Holzwarts, Hofiuses, and others.

I was told that Grandfather Klein corresponded with Pastor Kilian of the Wendisch Lutheran Congregation of Serbin, in Lee County, Texas, as well as with Dr. Ferdinand C. Walther in St. Louis, Missouri, in matters pertaining to the constitution of the congregation, as well as for a suitable list of candidates, together with their qualifications, from which list the congregation about to be organized was to choose and call a pastor of its own. The end result of all this correspondence of grandfather and his Lutheran neighbors was the establishrnent of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church of Klein, Texas. The organization took place in the year 1874. The first called pastor of the congregation was The Reverend J. M. Maisch. His term of office was very short. His successor was Pastor August Wilder. Under his able leadership the young congregation flourished.

Soon after, the mernbers of Trinity Church also established a Lutheran Day School. A call was sent to Synods Board of Distributions, and it assigned a young graduate of Concordia Teachers College at Addison, Illinois to the congregation. He was a Mr. Daenzer. He also did not remain in Klein for many years. He was called away by Holy Cross Congregation of Warda, in Lee County, Texas. Teacher Daenzer, though I do not remember his given name, was my teacher for one term. Teacher Daenzer was succeeded by another graduate of our Teachers College at Addison, a Mr. Rudolph Lorenz, under whose tutelage I completed my grade school education. However, grade school is a misnomer, for at the time I went to school, there were no grades. There was the Primer Class for beginners, then the First Reader Class, the second Reader, the Third Reader, the Fourth Reader, the Fifth Reader classes, but no eight grades as we have them today.

The language used was not English, but German. We had no English instruction at all, until in the third school year, when English reading was added during the afternoon period, I got no further than the Third Reader in English. I learned to read well enough but had no idea of the meaning of the English words. In fact, I was unable to speak any English at all until I was about eleven years old. The 1itt1e English I was able to speak, I had picked up from the Negro farmhands which my parents employed from time to time, and their English was not any too good.

Just to give you an idea of what a handicap it was for us German children to do business with English people, let me give you this example. My rnother was putting up "Senf Gurken," mustard pickles one day and in doing so, she ran out of ground mustard. She sent me on horseback to Blackshear's store some two and a half miles away to get her a new supply. When I got to the store and Mr. Blackshear asked me what I wanted, I could not translate the German "Senf" into English. However, I saw the jars of ground mustard neatly stacked on his store shelves and printed on the jars in bold letters I read the trade name, which was "Coleburns Mustard." Reading the first word and remembering that mustard belonged to the cabbage family and that the ground seed burned on the tongue, I jumped to the conclusion that the German word "Senf" meant Coleburns in English, for cabbage in German is ca1led Kohl. And so I answered the storekeeper on his question, "What is it that you want?" "I want a bottle of Coleburns." "What is that?" asked Mr. Blackshear. I was stumped for a minute, then I went behind the counter and with my finger pointed at the jar of ground mustard. "O," said Mr. Blackshear, "it is a jar of ground mustard that you want," and he smiled to himself as he said it. But, I am digressing.

To continue about my account of what I was taught in the grade school, let me add that the only other subjects that were taught me in Trinity Lutheran School by means of the English language was a half hour, once a week, in writing English. Usually we were told to write a paragraph or two from the lesson we had in reading that day. And one half hour on Friday afternoon was devoted to the study of geography. I suppose they could not get geographies in the Gerrnan language, otherwise we would have been taught that also by the medium of the German language. All our thinking and speaking, even our arithrnetic and the multiplication table, and all our religious instructions in Bible and Catechism, were given us in the German tongue.

To this day I am a poor speller, because in the German language the words are spelled as they sound and words of a short sound have the consonants doubled. This is not always done in English. What helped me a lot in the learning of the language of our country was this, that my father joined with other German neighbors of ours in engaging public school teachers to teach summer school for two or three months for us German boys and girls. The public school in the Klein Community was located in the Piney Woods to the south and a little east of the Ernest Kaiser farmhome. At that time the school was open only six months a year. The teachers were usually local young women: the Blackshear daughters, Edna and Alma, and Polly McDouggl. They were only too glad to earn a little something extra through the summer months. They were willing to teach summer school if some thirty pupils could be found who were willing and able to pay a dollar a month in tuition.

In this summer school we were taught, not only reading and writing but also arithmetic, geography, spelling, elementary grammar, and even a little physiology. We just loved our summer school, and since also some English people sent their children to this summer school, it was but natural that our English speaking also improved to quite an extent.

In the Lutheran school, we children were kept under a very strict discipline. Boys and girls were ruled under the rod. Fighting, cursing, lying, and other disrespectful behavior was treated always, though not always cured, by the application of the switch or the pig-skin riding whip. Some of the boys received their licking without missing a day. In consequence thereof, we had no juvenile delinquency in those days. Outside of swiping a watermelon now and then from the neighbor's patch, or of smoking grapevine, or cornhusk cigarettes behind the barn, there was little that was reprehensible among us teenagers. We were of course by no means in the angel class. At heart we were as corrupt as any, but by good discipline both at home and in school, we were kept from the coarse outbursts of wickedness, which is at the present time so much in evidence. In my life and experience the biblical addage of "Spare the rod and spoil the child" has been well proven.

Trinity Lutheran Church and School, from a humble beginning, have by the grace of our Heavenly Father, grown to wonderful proportions. The congregation at the present tirne (1958) numbers more than 500 communicants and more tlnan 700 baptized members. This, in spite of the fact that about half of the young people leave the farm of their parents and seek employment in Houston. The services, which at the beginning were conducted entirely in the German language, are now held altogether in the English tongue. The same is true of the school: all teaching is done in English. The congregation is worshipping today in its third church building. After using its first church building for school purposes as well, the congregation has since that time built two new schools. Both the present church, as well as the school, are of brick veneer construction. Also the third parsonage, constructed last year, is modern in every respect. The congregation employs two male and one lady teacher in the school. The Sunday School is being taught by 19 trained teachers and has an enrolknent of 370 pupils. The Adult Bible class numbers 191 pupils. The property value of the congregation is listed at $175,000.00. The annual budget for church and school is in excess of $35,000.00.

I consider it a great personal loss that Grandfather Klein died so early in his life. He passed away suddenly while planting cotton, about a quarter of a mile to the east of his horne. It was in the week before Easter that he died, on March 31, 1891. Easter was the time for the Klein children to gather at grandfather's home for the annual family reunion. And so it came about, that on the very day all of his children, with the exception of his son Adam who was then attending Concordia Seminary at St. Louis, Missouri, were gathered at his home. Uncle Charley Klein, the youngest of the family, was helping grandfather in the field and so was a Negro hired hand, and these two witnessed grandfather's collapse. The Negro believed that the mule, hitched to the one row cotton planting machine, had kicked grandfather. However, there was no mark on grandfather's body.

While Uncle Charley stayed with grandfather's body in the field, the hired hand ran to the house to get more help. I remember the incident as plainly as though it had happened today. A number of us children were playing in the yard when he made his report to Aunt Lottie Lemm and Aunt Bertha Wunderlich. These two had come home by train to Cypress Top, the Railroad Station on the Houston Texas Central Railroad. Aunt Lottie from Brenham, Texas, where her husband William Lemm was a weigh-master for the Cotton Seed Oil Company, and Aunt Bertha had come home on the same railway line frorn Perry, Texas, in Falls County, where her husband Fred Wunderlich was pastor of a Lutheran congregation. My mother and children had driven over and so had Aunt Mary Doerre and most of her children, to help grandmother Klein with her baking and other preparations for Easter.

After the hired hand had made his report, he ran to grandfather's gin and got a long ladder and carried it into the field. He was accompanied by my mother and aunts, who carried quilts and blankets. By that time Uncle John arrived from his home just a little ways to the north of grandfather's homestead. They bedded grandfather on the ladder and then with his daughters walking at his side, they carried him home.

Mr. Schoor, a graduate barber from Germany, who also had received a course of training in first aid in the Old Country, had been called in the meantime. He examined grandfather, first by holding a piece of Harts-horn to his nose. This had the action of strong amonia and when applied to the nose caused violent sneezing in a living person. But grandfather did not sneeze. Next he used a rnirror, which he applied to grandfather's nose, but it did not cloud over, which was proof that grandfather had ceased to breathe.

I can still see him in my mind's eye, looking up from his examination with tears in his eyes saying to the Klein children: "Euer Vater ist hinueber," in Eng1ish, "Your father has gone beyond." O what a sad homecoming that was for the Klein children. They buried him in the Trinity Lutheran Cemetery just across the road from the very field in which he had been planting his cotton at the time of his death.

Grandfather's talents and capabilities had indeed been many and varied. He was a German Patriot, who together with others had tried, though failed, to reform his Fatherland. He was an adventurer who dared to come to America with his young bride, when America was little more than a vast wilderness. He was in turn a gold miner, an enterprising farmer, a weaver of cloth, a cotton grower and pioneer cotton ginner, a beloved husband and father, above all a hurnble child of God, concerned about his own eternal salvation and that of his children after him. God's blessing did not fail him and his children.

In his family and in the families of his children, we find Lutheran pastors and teachers galore. His own son, Adam Klein, for ten years a Lutheran pastor in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was sent in 1902 to be one of the first Missionaries of the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church in Brazil, South America. His last years were spent as President of Concordia Seminary at Springfield, Illinois.

Among his grandchildren we find not only Lutheran pastors and teachers, but also professors at our Lutheran colleges, an LL. D. at the Deaf and Dumb Institute of our church at Detroit, Michigan. Other grand and great grandchildren are lawyers, medical doctors, dentists, merchants, market masters, farmers, undertakers, florists, mayors, justices of the peace. Indeed, the memory of grandfather and grandmother Klein is all in all honorable, and it will live in Harris County, Texas, history for years to come.

Grandmother Klein outlived her husband by some twenty-one years. She died on December 14, 1912. She also was buried in Trinity Lutheran Cemetery. Grandmother was 84 years of age when she passed away. I recall at this point that grandfather had the first bought coffin in the community at his burial and also the first marble shaft to mark his grave. Grandmother does not lie beside her husband. Family lots were not used in the graveyard at that time. But at present, even Trinity Lutheran burial place provides family plots for such as want to be buried in family groups.

The children of grandfather and grandmother Klein all outlived their parents. Uncle John Klein was married to Miss Ida Zahn of Little Cypress, not long after my parents had been married. Aunt Mary, the oldest Klein daughter, was married to a Mr. Klenk, and some time after his death she was re-married to a Mr. Edward Doerre. Aunt Charlott married William Lemm of Spring, Texas. Miss Caroline was married to my father, Mr. Fred Bahr of Houston. Aunt Bertha married Pastor Fred Wunderlich of Perry, in Falls County, Texas, now known as Riesel. Uncle Adam Klein, a Lutheran pastor, married Miss Hermine Schoor of Klein, Texas. And Uncle Charley Klein, the youngest of the Klein children, married Miss Mary Mueller of Klein, Texas.

My grandmother, after grandfather's death, lived for a number of years on the homestead. Uncle Charley helped her in running the farm. This arrangement was kept up until Uncle Charley was married. Grandmother stayed on, even after his marriage; but with two women in the household things did. not work out so well, so grandmother wisely retired. After that, she lived with her oldest daughter in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Eduart Doerre. With the exception of frequent visits in the homes of her other children, she spent the remainder of her life in the Doerre home. She was almost totally blind for six years before she died. She had cataracts on both of her eyes.

I do not know what she did with her share in the Klein Homestead. I do know, however, that Uncle Charley owned it in the end. He wasn't much of a farmer. In the end he had to sell the Klein Homestead. The last I know of its history is that it was farmed and owned by a brother-in-law of my Uncle Charley, Anton Mueller by name. The six hundred odd acres of timberland were given to the children by grandfather before he died. All but 100 acres of it which grandmother, during the depression years of the Eighteen Nineties, sold to my father for $5.00 an acre. It is this tract of timberland that my dad divided and deeded to his sons in 1937.