52 – Me, Myself, and I

I don't remember when I first heard about the "Round Robin" letters but they started before I was born. I don't know the story of who named them: it probably wasn't after a corpulent bird though the envelope was always quite thick, but one that got "around" as it did among my mother and her siblings and parents. One of Merriam-Webster's definitions:

Something (such as a letter) sent in turn to the members of a group each of whom signs and forwards it sometimes after adding a comment.

Mom always looked forward to receiving the bulky envelope containing letters from maybe 6 or 7 family members as well as her previous one. Sometimes she would get impatient to receive it only to find that she had failed to send the last one on, which she would then do with copious apology. She would remove her previous letter, and add a newly written one with the latest news from our family and comments on the other letters. 

She saved all her old letters, and they are probably the best record I have of my early life. The first letter we have is dated a month before I was born; my parents had recently moved from South Carolina to Wisconsin – my father would frequently change jobs as he moved his way up the municipal engineering ladder, entailing a move to a new city:

Hello Everybody – Trust all you pregnant people are feeling strictly 1-A. I seem to be a hopeless cripple but other than that am fine. I strained my back in the packing process and can't seem to recover... We left Aiken [S.C.] on the last day of June, bag and baggage on a rented trailer.

July 1952 Round Robin letter...

All three of Mom's sisters and one sister-in-law were pregnant at the same time, and I would be the first of 5 cousins born that year, from August through December. Mom goes on for a couple pages about their trip including a purchase of a new car as theirs had a complete breakdown in Charlotte. They were accompanied by my older sister who had been born the previous August shortly after their move from Denver to Aiken, "moving homes while pregnant" being a theme which probably affected all six of us siblings.

"The Bug" is agitating for attention. She plays beautifully all by herself until I come into the room, and then she starts showing off, bothering the radio, etc. She's still a good girl though about most things...

Being the younger of the first two children has helped shape who I am, affording me a bit more leeway to experiment as I wasn't as much in the spotlight had I been first-born. The six-page letter is full of news and questions. The next letter, 4 pages, is from October, after I was born. I picture Mom with a newborn and a 1-year-old – my sister and I came 1 year and 13 days apart, in a new house and neighborhood. She didn't know it when she wrote, but the second of us 5 cousins had been born the day before.

Our picture-taking has really deteriorated lately – haven't even got one of "Joe" yet (I think he'll always be Joe to me as I just can't seem to think of him as Larry).

And so I was "Joe" from the start even though I was named after my father; there was a bit of a disagreement over my naming apparently, my father wanting to name me after himself, and my mother lobbying for "Joe" and so the solution I guess was to use my father's name but to call me "Joe." And so "Joe" I am to this very day with my siblings and other relatives, but "Larry" to my wife, friends, and colleagues. It would be just as weird to me to have my wife call me "Joe" as it would be for one of my siblings to call me "Larry." I think this is similar to growing up bilingual, though many people find it strange!

The Kenyons are driving up to spend the weekend with us so we're sitting around expecting them any minute. We entertained a couple in our bridge tournament last night so the house is cleaner than it has been in ages. 

My father and mother, with my dad's father and mother (holding me)

Two things here: first, we now lived in Wisconsin, just a couple hour drive from where my father grew up. Second, my parents would join clubs when they moved to a new town, and learned how to quickly assimilate. This was not a skill I picked up and so I suffered a bit from a couple of our moves, which probably resulted in somewhat less confidence and more introversion. 

Mom continues:

Joe slept last night from 8:00 until 6:15 a.m. Sure hope he keeps it up. I'll think my troubles are almost over then. Wish all of you had 6-week old babies instead of still being ladies-in-waiting. – What a phrase! I weighed him at 7 weeks (after he'd eaten his cereal) to discover I have quite a big boy – 11 pounds 14 ounces. Looks like he'll really be a clunker. He's so strong it amazes me. Last week he went to sleep lying on his stomach on the foot of our bed; after he'd been awake about 5 or 10 minutes, I walked in and found that he'd inched his way clear up to the pillows. Lucky I had him headed in the right direction, huh? He holds his head so erect and has a terrific grip. I think he's so different from Daphne as she was ways such a placid little thing.

Well, I really didn't turn out to be a clunker, and Daphne isn't so placid. The episode on the bed is indicative of the "free-range" style of parenting my mom practiced, as did most of the parents in that era. 

My mother, me (clunky?), and my nemesis

I won't go into the episodes where Daphne tried to get rid of me, or crushed my finger in a door; I don't think those episodes affected me much. But as I read through these letters from my early life, it reminds me of how our early lives reflect onto the "me, myself, and I" of our later lives.

51 – Cousins

On September 5, 2018 my wife Patti and I joined a small pre-talk reception for a book talk by Steven Pinker hosted by the Commonwealth Club at Marines' Memorial Theatre in San Francisco. We grabbed a glass of wine, and I engaged a gray-haired lady who was standing a bit off by herself; seeing her name "Fran Dependahl" on her name tag, I asked if "Dependahl" was German – oddly the first thing that came to my mind, but not surprising given my genealogy obsession. She responded in German, saying that she actually had Swiss ancestry. Taking that in stride, I responded, also in German. As I remember it, our conversation went something like this (translated from German):

Me: Where in Switzerland?

Fran: Canton Bern.

Me: Which town? 

Fran: A small town that you've probably never heard of, Koppigen. 

Me: Koppigen! I have ancestry from that town. What was their surname? 

Fran: Baumberger.

Me:  I also have Baumberger ancestry from Koppigen. Where did they settle? 

Fran: Greenville, Illinois. 

Me: Oh, the Illinois Baumbergers! 

My 4th great-grandmother Elizabeth Baumberger Affolter is the first entry in the 735-page book Colorado Families: A Territorial Heritage: 

Elizabeth Affolter was born Elizabeth Baumberger 27 Jun 1794 in Koppigen, Canton of Bern, Switzerland... [she] came to New Orleans, La in 1852; the ocean voyage took forty days. She, with her daughter, Elisabeth, son-in-law, Rudolph Greub and two granddaughter, went up the river to Illinois where her relatives, the Baumbergers, lived. From there Elizabeth and the Greubs stopped in Easton, Buchanan Co, Mo, before making one more move in 1864 to Colo to join her sons Jacob and Frederick who had arrived earlier. Once there, she kept house for them at their cabin by Haystack Mtn at what was known as Left Hand Cr. [See "Should be a Movie" for a photo of the cabin as it stands today in Old Mill Park in Longmont, and more about Elizabeth's trip.]

Elizabeth Baumberger Affolter 1794-1867, Burlington Cemetery, Longmont

Entry 4 in Colorado Families, for Elizabeth's son Frederick Affolter, mentions the relatives in Illinois again:

Frederick purchased 80 acres near the village of Burlington from Clayborne Adams 1 Dec 1865 for $1,100. He then started to Switz to learn cheese-making, but in Greenville, Ill while visiting a cousin he met his bride-to-be; they tied the knot and took the train back to Julesburg. 

I had read these paragraphs multiple times, and mentally noted that some Baumberger relatives had lived in Greenville back then, but never made the exact connection. We switched to our native English, and Fran seemed skeptical at first, but a bit more conversation persuaded her that I was in fact a relative. We exchanged emails, and she put me in touch with a couple relatives who had worked on their genealogy.

When I got back home I did figure out the exact connection, and determined we were 5th cousins, sharing 4th-great-grandparents Niklaus Baumberger, born 1770, and Elisabeth Knuchel, born 1767, who married and raised a family in Koppigen (for more on Koppigen, see "This ancestor went to market").

Relationship chart: Kenyon to Dependahl

The coincidence of running into a 5th cousin is partly due to the large families descendants of these ancient Baumbergers; Eliza Greub, halfway down the relationship chart and my great-grandmother, probably has over a thousand descendants living today. Exponentially ratcheting that estimate up for the three generations ahead of her, there may be a hundred-thousand descendants of Niklaus and Elizabeth Baumberger. Nonetheless, being able to make that connection with a random stranger in five minutes was a bit of magic.

I saw Frances one more time, at another Commonwealth Club event, before the pandemic put a hold on our trips to the Commonwealth Club. Writing this story, I wondered about this cousin again, and Googled her name. Sadly, I found an obituary for Frances Dependahl, who passed away just a few months ago in San Francisco (the San Francisco Chronicle has her name misspelled "Francis" rather than "Frances" as it is in the 1950 Census and her LinkedIn profile). She was a patron of the arts, and apparently an all around good person, but left no children or descendants herself. Rest in peace cousin.

Frances Dependahl obituary, Legacy.com

Sources

Colorado Families: A Territorial Heritage. 1981. Denver, Colorado: The Colorado Genealogical Society.

50 – "You Wouldn't Believe It"

1969 news clipping from Lillian Knaus scrapbook

On the 13th of December, 1871, the Rocky Mountain News carried a short paragraph on its front page in a small section titled "Territorial News":

Mrs. Fredricka Baun of Left Hand, died suddenly on Tuesday last, under suspicious circumstances. Coroner Allen made an investigation on Wednesday. The post mortem examination showed that her death had been caused by an abortion, and the testimony given by a man named Clemens Knaus, of Left Hand, corroborated this fact. Mrs. Baun was a married woman who had separated from her husband. The testimony of Knaus, was, in fact, a confession for he admitted criminal intimacy with Mrs. Baun, and testified that he secured the services of Mrs. Dr. Solander, of Boulder, to procure the abortion. Knaus and Mrs. Solander were arrested, and held for examination before Justice Allen, of Valmont. 

Other news articles continued to cover the saga. A first trial of Dr. Solander ended in a hung jury with only one juror holding out for conviction; a retrial found her guilty, and she was sentenced to 3 years in the new prison in the Colorado territory, in Canon City. The Rocky Mountain News, January 30, 1873:

Last Monday Judge Wells sentenced Mrs. Mary Solander, the Boulder abortionist, to three years confinement in the penitentiary.

An appeal to the Colorado supreme court alleging a biased judge and jurors failed, and Dr. Solander began her sentence at the prison, the first female inmate of that institution. The March 12, 1873 Rocky Mountain News noted:

The supreme court yesterday rendered an opinion in the case of Mary Solander vs. The People, affirming the judgment of the district court. This woman had been sentenced to three years imprisonment for manslaughter in having produced an abortion.

Upon popular request, the full decision of the court was published in the same newspaper the following day. A number of Boulder County residents signed a petition asking for her release, as noted in the Denver Daily Times, July 26, 1873:

A petition signed by eight hundred citizens of Boulder county, and praying for the pardon of Mrs. Solander, who was convicted of manslaughter, by having procured an abortion for another woman; was presented to the Governor and is now under consideration.

Governor Elbert granted the pardon a couple weeks later. The Denver Daily Times mentioned the pardon in the August 9, 1873 edition:

The Governor has granted a pardon to Mrs. Mary Solander, convicted of manslaughter, in Boulder county. The petition for executive clemency was signed by over eight hundred persons, in which number were the names of the majority of the best citizens of the county mentioned.

The Colorado Miner reported on August 14, 1873 under "Local Matters":

The Governor has pardoned Mrs. Solander from the penitentiary, where she was serving out a sentence for the crime of having produced an abortion. We know that the woman’s husband had a large petition from Boulder county people asking for her pardon. Mr. S. was left with several young children in his care, and had a hard time of it. The woman has received a lesson that she perhaps will never forget, and her release now is an act of clemency that, under the circumstances, will not be condemned by any.

And so the governor pardoned Dr. Solander, thanks to the support of the Boulder County citizenry. I tracked down Mary Solander in a couple public family trees posted by  descendants of hers: aged 39 in the 1870 census, apparently living in Boulder with her carpenter husband and four sons ages seven to 16. According to the tree sources, she was born Mary Jane McIver in 1831 in Pennsylvania; married Daniel Solander in Putnam, Illinois in 1849; had one daughter who only lived a few months, and then had 4 sons, all in Illinois; was living in Boulder in 1870; in 1880 was living as a boarder in Salem, Oregon, occupation physician; moved to California by 1910 where she was living with her divorced son, granddaughter, and former husband in Inyo; and died in 1921 in Los Angeles. These trees have no mention of her Colorado past, but they do include a very nice photo of Mary in her later years:

Mary Solander circa 1890?

I haven't found anything on Fredricka Baun, except a FindAGrave.com entry showing her death on 5 December 1871, and burial in plot A62 NW in Boulder's Columbia Cemetery, owned by the city of Boulder, and which has a first burial on 16 May 1870, the year previous to Fredricka's death. 

My great-grandfather Clemens Knaus had been initially arrested and charged, but never tried, perhaps because he was a key witness for the prosecution. At that time he was an immigrant who had arrived in America just six years prior, and who had settled in the Colorado Territory a year or two before this tragedy: the 1870 census shows him employed on the farm of Nicolas and Eliza Bader. Nicholas Bader would die of appendicitis in December of 1873 and his widow Eliza would remarry in November 1874, to our Clemens Knaus. I assume she knew of Clemens' involvement in this high-profile case of the "Boulder abortionist." 

Clemens Knaus as a young man

Nearly a century later, a 3-page feature article concerning the Solander case appeared in the Sunday Focus section of the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper on August 10, 1969: "Lady Doctor Now History." The focus was on Mary Solander: "Whatever injustice she met with in the manslaughter case, Mrs. Solander's stay at Canon City was the very first imprisonment of a woman there." The article was published four years after my mom's mother had passed away, and as my mother later wrote in a chapter of "Knaus Family Stories,"   

If Mother had still been alive when this skeleton slipped out of the closet of the past, I'm positive the news article would never have been preserved. After Dad's death, however, it was discovered tucked away in the old family safe. From there it found its way into Mother's scrapbook. Perhaps Dad hadn't the heart to blot out history even though it portrayed his own father in a very painful light. The incident had occurred three years prior to the marriage of Clemens and Eliza.

What we want to remember our old pioneer ancestors for is their awesome courage, strength and imagination for facing the unknown dangers and trials when they left their European homes, all the while knowing that they would never be able to return or see the family members they left behind. Also, as human beings, they undoubtedly had a darker side, as we all have.

I think this is well put. And so my mom saved this history for future generations in her book of family stories.  

Sources

Kenyon, Shirley Knaus. n.d. “Clemens Knaus.” In Knaus Family Stories: A Compilation of Stories Told by the Offspring of Dan and Lillian Knaus, 166.

Gater, Pete. "Lady Doctor Now History." The Boulder Daily Camera, FOCUS section, Sunday, August 10, 1969. Private holdings, Lillian Knaus scrapbook.

Ancestry Family Trees (Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Original data: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members.), Ancestry.com, Ancestry Family Tree.

All the following from the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection:

"Territorial News," The Rocky Mountain News, Volume 12, Dec 13, 1871, page 1. "Mrs. Fredricka Baun of Left Hand, died suddenly on Tuesday...".

"Territorial Gossip." The Rocky Mountain News, Volume 14, January 30, 1873. "Last Monday Judge Wells sentenced..."

"Local Briefs." The Rocky Mountain News, Volume 14 March 12, 1873. "The supreme court yesterday rendered..."

"Pardon Solicited." Denver Daily Times, July 26, 1873: "A petition signed by eight hundred citizens..."

"Pardoned." Denver Daily Times, August 9, 1873. "The governor has granted a pardon..."

"Local Matters." The Colorado Miner (Weekly), Volume VII, Number 14, August 14, 1873. " The Governor has pardoned Mrs. Solander..."

49 – Family Recipe

Mom introduced us to and engaged us in cooking at a young age; mostly this was for desserts, but also included some simple main dishes, bread from scratch, etc. We always referred to recipes made from basic ingredients as "from scratch" versus "from a mix," which we generally avoided as being too costly and inferior.

I think Mom's go-to cookbook was a Better Homes and Garden one that came in a three-ring hard cover binder, with some sections and pages definitely more used than others. One section in the back covered "common substitutions" which always came in handy as we weren't about to travel to a grocery store for one missed ingredient.

We had standard meals and a diet which would change when visiting our paternal grandparents in Wisconsin (definitely more German-influenced) or our maternal grandparents on their farm in Colorado where food was often home-canned and milk came from the farm cows. Some of those meals were special: we simply couldn't get the German bakery rolls and strings of Johnsonville hot dogs in our Chicago suburban town. Other meals contained novelty items we shunned, such as pickled beets.

After leaving home for other parts of the country, my siblings and I would occasionally solicit Mom for a copy of a recipe we missed and wanted to make ourselves. In 2005 my youngest sister, Pat, compiled a book of recipes from siblings and other relatives, as well as some that Mom had typed or written up on index cards. This week I rediscovered that book buried among other cookbooks, and spent some time reminiscing as I leafed though its colorful pages.

Family recipes compiled by Pat Rittenhouse

Some of the recipes are new ones to our generation, found and adopted from friends, newspapers, etc., but many are labeled with the name of one of our grandmothers, aunts or great-aunts, parents, and childhood neighbors. Some have short explanations of origin, and popular alterations. The oldest one is for "Suet Pudding," passed down from a Swedish great-great-grandmother – Mom wrote, "In the beginning , the reputation for being good cooks started with your Swedish great-great-grandmothers." 

One of our childhood favorites, and perhaps the one with the best kid name is for "Apple Goodie" from a great aunt and neighbor of my Colorado grandparents, mostly comprised of apples and sugar with a little butter and oatmeal thrown in. 

"Apple Goodie" recipe, good for treating low blood sugar

One recipe, for "Bread and Butter Pickles," is not attributed, but I'm sure it came from Colorado. My 95-year-old Aunt Gladys keeps this recipe alive in Longmont by hosting a yearly 'Pickle Day' in autumn. On this day  cousins come together to can cucumbers, some into these sweet pickles, and others into very tasty dill pickles. Some year I hope to make it to Colorado for Pickle Day.

Family recipe book, table of contents

48 – Troublemaker

During the Great Depression my uncle Harry lived with his parents and extended family which included two siblings, two cousins and aunt, and his grandparents in Fond du Lac (see the blog "38 – Adversity"). Earlier, they had all lived at the Fond du Lac Insane Asylum when his grandparents ran that health care facility. Here is a 4-generation photo of the four boy cousins, their mothers Dorothy and Marie, grandmother Ida Baker Kenyon, and great-grandmother Otillie Baker:

Don and Russell left with their mother Dorothy, Lawrence and Harry right with Marie

When Harry was 13, he wrote a short autobiography for a school paper in which he says "I am considered somewhat of a Public Enemy No. 1 by my relatives and so my word against any of my angelic cousins or my brother or sister is like a microbe's ghost fighting an elephant – I just haven't a chance." 

Harry, right, age 13, with brother Lawrence and sister Pat with dog Trixie

But an essay Harry wrote two years later paints a darker portrait of his younger cousin Russell, and Russell's fraught relationship with his mother Dorothy. Dated May 28, 1937 and titled "Calling Russell" here it is:

Speaking of child problems and the Great American Tragedy, have I ever told you about my little cousin Russell? No? Well, Russell, who's a puny, sickly child of thirteen years, is a typical spoiled child of a typical downtrodden, suffering, widowed mother. Here's how he's called to bed by his mother:

Tonight Russell has bicycled nonchalantly home with one of his cronies at 10:11. He is greeted by his mother as he enters the driveway: 

"Russell dear, you come to bed now."

"Yeah," Russell answers his mother, who, incidentally, is leaning far out of her bedroom window with an anxious look. 

When fourteen minutes later at 10:25 Russell is still conversing with his crony, his mother again entreats: 

"Russell – ?"

"Yeah!"

"You come to bed right now!"

When the next plea comes seven minutes later at 10:32, it is not any change of heart in Russell, but a compassionate weakness in his less-hardened companion, whose conscience drives him off, that forces Russell to obey. It is five minutes later, at 10:37, that Russell enters the house (the time spent teasing the dog).

Tonight Russell goes immediately to his bedroom. For some unknown reason in his pagan heart he forbears from spending anywhere from fifteen to forty-five minutes in hot argument with his other relatives in the downstairs (strange are the ways of Youth, but stranger are the ways of Russell).

So it is at 10:37 that Russell blithely enters his mother's bedroom, which he shares with her. It is three minutes later, at 10:40, that there come forth from the bedroom sounds of angry quarreling and the laying on of hands. Russell, who has found time to change to his pajamas with one hand, while fending off ineffectual but nevertheless discomfiting blows with the other, stalks from the bedroom, swearing like the little trooper that he is, at 10:42.

There is no need to tell you about the many things Russell finds to absorb his time until 11:42, when he deems it safe to enter his bedroom, where his dear mother has gone to sleep with the light on, waiting for him. Now, if this were an exaggeration I am telling you, just to amuse you, I should say that Russell says his prayers, turns out the light and goes to sleep. But, it being true, I shall only say that Russell turns out the light and goes to sleep.

P.S. (Personally, tho, I like the way Russell's grandmother calls him. She shouts: "Get in here now, you little snip, or I'll come out and you'll come in here in a hurry!" Thereupon Russell meekly enters and retires.)

The close of Harry's essay about his younger cousin

Two years later at 17 Harry entered the University of Wisconsin as a freshman, and a year later he was on his way to West Point. I know him only from these early writing assignments and the weekly letters he wrote home from college, West Point, and his military service. 

Russell was a bit of an enigma for me. According to his obituary he served in the Army Air Corps in the South Pacific in WWII, then owned and operated Kenyon Jewelers in Oshkosh, was "an early participant in Experimental Aircraft Association activities," married but had no children. I only remember meeting him once when I was a child, at his jewelry shop – he didn't seem to be very interested in family ties. Russell Austin Kenyon was born 7 December 1923; on 7 March 1997 he passed away at the age of 73, in Florida.

Russell, about 5, with his mother Dorothy and older brother Donald

Russell with cousin Pat

Russell, a bit older...

47 – This ancestor stayed home

My mother's ancestors came from southern Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden. In each of these lands sisters were left behind, often to care for older parents who couldn't make the trip. Several letters they wrote from the "old country" survive. In Solitude I wrote about my Swedish great-aunt Valmina Wederquist who stayed behind to care for her parents in Sweden. Here I blog about the German relatives who stayed behind.

Letter from Mathilde

My great-grandfather Clemens Knaus was born in 1843, the sixth child and fourth boy born to Jakob Knaus and his wife Wilhelmina Gauggel. They lived in Harthausen auf der Scher, a small Catholic town in Hohenzollern, an island of Prussia in an area known as Swabia, now in the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg.  

Clemen's parents, Wilhelmina Gauggel and Jakob Knaus

In 1853 when Clemens was only 10, his oldest brother Jacob (named after his father), age 23, emigrated to America, settling in Syracuse, New York, where he worked as a barrel maker, a trade he had learned from his father. Eventually the other sons Johann, Alexander, and Clemens followed. Clemens emigrated in 1863 or 1865 – sources differ: they were supposedly leaving to escape conscription, so they did not leave much of a trail.

Clemen's oldest sister Johanna was 8 years older than him, and sister Mathilde was just 2 years older, and both had father-less little boys when he left, a sign that society at that time was not in great shape. Clemens lived in Syracuse and worked for his brother Jacob for a few years before traveling out west to the Colorado Territory, to an area near Boulder nearby a small town named Niwot. 

Mathilde kept in touch with Clemens as is evidenced by two envelopes and one remaining letter. In 1876 sister Johanna died, single, leaving two young boys, and in 1877 Clemen's mother Wilhelmina died. There is an envelope which probably came to Colorado with a letter carrying news of one or both deaths (Modoc was an earlier name for Niwot):

Envelope from 1877

The letter found its way to Clemens who had married Eliza Greub Bader, the widow of Nicholas Bader, in 1874, just a few years prior. Unfortunately only the envelope survives, although it's possible that the photo below accompanied it. By this time Harthausen and Hohenzollern had become part of the German Empire (1871), and in 1876 Colorado had become a state.

(Probably) Jakob Knaus with daughter Mathilde, some time after Wilhelmina's death

Clemen's father Jakob lived until 1882. Mathilde never married, and only had the single boy, Kilian, who had been just a few years old when Clemens left for America. When Kilian was 25, and his mother Mathilde was 45, another letter from Mathilde made its way to Colorado. 

1886 letter from Mathilde came in this envelope

Letter and two envelopes, now in possession of a Clemens descendant

Penned the 13th of June, 1886, it begins "Lieber Bruder" ("Dear Brother"):

I am taking up my pen to write to you for the third time. It has been three years since our father died and I never got an answer from any brother. It seems like I am not a sister anymore. I wrote to you this year on Candlemas [2 Feb]. The letter traveled 16 weeks and then came back. Kilian and I are alone now. 

Apparently Clemens and his two surviving brothers Jacob, still living in Syracuse, New York, and Alexander, living in Michigan, were not great at keeping in touch. Mathilde updates Clemens on their deceased sister Johanna's two boys Sturzis and Adolf:

Sturzis has been in the military for a year and a half and Adolf is an apprentice at a saddlery in Strassberg. I am in poor health and I have to work harder than I should. I have already been sick twice because I have to work so hard. I haven't felt well in a year. I am more tired in the morning when I get up than I am in the evening. 

Mathide goes into some detail on farming issues, exacerbated by lack of water which was always a concern in Harthausen because it is situated on limestone and rainwater drains off quickly: 

Last winter was a bad one because we had no water. The cisterns were empty and the well was low. We often had to wait 2 to 3 hours for a bucket to fill. We had to buy 45 buckets so the livestock could have water. Last summer was very dry. The fields looked pretty bad. The crops are cheap. One hundred pounds of corn cost 5 to 6 Marks, rye costs 6 Marks, barley is seven Marks. Livestock is always expensive. A pair of draught oxen cost 600 to 700 Marks, a cow 200 to 300 Marks, a heifer is 200 Marks and a calf is 80 to 100 Marks. We have two cows, a heifer and one calf. Straw and feed are always scarce. We had to buy 58 Marks worth this past winter and 68 Marks worth last year. One hundred pounds of straw costs 2.30 Marks and hay is 3 Marks. The last three years we had mediocre harvests. Last year we didn't get a lot of oats because it was too dry, and when it finally rained it was too late. 

She then adds news about a man Clemens would have known, and more news about Sturzis, Johanna's oldest son who would have been a baby when Clemens left; she also talks about her own son Kilian, who apparently is following in the family trade of barrel-making: 

Franziskus Vetter has died. I am sending a picture of Sturzis. He is stationed in Rustat. The first year he was stationed in Muhlhausen. He had it bad there. They treated him bad because he is hard of hearing and had a strict Captain. Now that he is in Rustat he is much better. He has to make shoes and work in the store. He has enough to eat but he dislikes being a soldier. Kilian works in the cooperage and always has enough work. It has been raining for 8 days now, and we can't get our work done. It's time to hoe the potatoes. The rye is mediocre and the oats are good.

(Probably) Photo of Sturzis that Mathilde included in the letter

Mathilde ends with an ask for money to enable her to visit a Catholic shrine a couple hundred kilometers south of Harthausen in Switzerland: 

Dear Brother, I have to ask a favor of you. I would like to go to Einsideln this summer, and since money is always scarce I would like to ask if you can't spare me a few dollars. If you can't spare any, I don't expect you to give me any. I am closing this letter and hope it finds you in best health. Send my love to all, your wife and children. From your loving sister, Mathilde Knaus 

Mathilde lived another 22 years, and died October 7, 1908. There is no other evidence of communication between the German and American Knaus families. Clemens and his brothers never made it back to Germany, and saw neither sisters nor parents after they emigrated. 

The brothers: Clemens, Jacob, and Alexander Knaus (Johann died on the way to California)

In 2009 I discovered in a church book that Kilian Knaus had married and had 8 sons. A German genealogy travel guide helped find some of Kilian's descendants still living in Harthausen, and a great-granddaughter of Alexander Knaus and I made it to Germany in 2010 for a reunion with some of those descendants, and for the first time in well over a century communication between Mathilde's line and those of her brothers was reestablished.

Knaus-Gauggel descendants gather in Harthausen, August 2010

46 – This ancestor went to market

 When I was first working on my Swiss ancestry, I asked a genealogist how my G2 grandparents might have met, as they had lived in towns almost 18 km apart; he suggested that they may have met at a market. It's likely something I'll never know, but that doesn't keep me from wondering; now that I've researched this Swiss line in more detail, I think there are many ways in which my ancestral pairs found each other.

A centuries-old home in Koppigen today

My great-grandmother Eliza Greub was born in Burgdorf, Switzerland, Canton Bern; her "citizenship" was in Lotzwil however, the town her father Rudolf was from. Eliza's mother, Elizabeth Affolter, was from Koppigen, and when we first visited Switzerland and drove between the towns, they seemed pretty far apart for two people to meet in those days.

Koppigen to Lotzwil, 17.6 kilometers by foot

My Swiss seemed a bit different from my other ancestors, who typically lived in the same town for generations, marrying others in those same towns. The Greubs and Affolters had lived in Lotzwil and Koppigen for centuries, as far back as the church books go, but this was just the paternal lines; the women often came from other towns where their paternal lines also went far back, and as I traced my Swiss ancestry back, the map expanded to take in more and more distant towns. Here is a list of ancestors, back to G6 grandparents, grouped by town of birth:

Burgdorf: G1 Eliza Greub (citizenship in Lotzwil)

Lotzwil: G2 Rudolf Greub  b 1824; G3 Johannes Greub b 1788; G4 Johannes Greub b 1766; G4 Maria Greub b 1759; G5 Johannes Greub b 1746; G6 Hans Jakob Greub b 1712; G6 Anna Catharina Hofer b 1714; G6 Ullrich Greub b 1679

Koppigen: G2 Elizabeth Affolter; G3 Jakob Affolter b 1793; G3 Elizabeth Baumberger b 1794; G4 Jakob Affolter b 1767; G4 Niclaus Baumberger b 1770; G5 Samuel Affolter b 1739; G5 Peter Baumberger b 1736; G6 Niklaus Affolter b 1694; G6 Niclaus Baumberger b 1702

Bern: G3 Suzanne Pfister b 1786; G4 Johannes Pfister b 1756; G4 Susanna Kolb b abt. 1754

Bätterkinden: G4 Maria Mühlimann b 1770; G4 Elisabeth Knuchel b 1767; G5 Bendicht Mühlimann b 1740; G5 Barbara Minder b 1745; G5 Bendicht Knuchel b 1736; G5 Elisabeth Schneider b 1735; G6 Abraham Mühlimann b 1703; G6 Susanna Buchser b 1704; G6 Jacob Minder b 1717; G6 Elisabeth Schneider b 1722; G6 David Knuchel b 1694; G6 Jacob Schneider b 1704

Kleinholz: G5 Anna Barbara Spreng b 1747

Schangnau: G5 Christen Pfister b. 1730; G6 Ullrich Pfister b. 1708; G6 Barbara Schlüchter b 1702

Eggiwil: G5 Christina Neuenschwander b 1729; G6 Nicklaus Neuenschwander  b 1676; G6 Barbara Bärtschli b 1677

Seengen, Aargau: G5 Barbara Fischer b 1727

Thunstetten: G5 Barbara Brugger b 1742; G6 Johannes Brugger b 1714; G6 Catharina Steiner b 1716

Mülchi: G6 Barbara Müller b 1705

Ferenbaum: G6 Anna Eichelberger b 1712

Kirchberg: G6 Anna Margreth Leeman b 1708

Putting this data on a map, the majority of ancestors are in the Bätterkinden-Koppigen-Lotzwil area, and start to leak outward from this as we go back by generation. The towns with G5 and G6 ancestors typically go back to G7 and G8 before records run out. All except for my G5 Barbara Fischer (from Aargau, see upper right on the map) were born in Canton Bern.

Ancestral towns (Note: G6 designates that one G6 grandparent was born there, etc.)

How they may have met

With ancestry going back to the 16th century, my ancestral lines from Lotzwil and Koppigen had plenty of time to intersect, even if they were 11 miles apart. Koppigen is somewhat on the way to the city of Bern if you start in Lotzwil, and sometimes there were reasons to travel to the cantonal capital. On my great-grandmother Eliza Greub's paternal side, we see Rudolf Greub's father Johannes, a weaver of some kind in Lotzwil, marrying Susanna Pfister who was a midwife from Bern. Now Bern was the capital of the canton, and also had a large cathedral where many people in the canton would visit, and often marry. Perhaps Johannes met Susanna on a trip to the city of Bern.

Bätterkinden was next to Koppigen, and so it is no surprise that two of my G4 grandfathers in Koppigen married women from that town. It is certainly possible that they met in a local market, or town festival.

Another possibility is via the trades; the Affolters were saddle makers (saddlers) and leather workers, and the Baumbergers were wagon makers (wagners), trades that would interact. My G4 Maria Mühlimann  was daughter of a wagon maker in Bätterkinden and married Jakob Affolter, a saddler in Koppigen. 

People would certainly meet at family celebrations and marriages. On the Baumberger-Affolter line I have to go back to the G7 level to see a first case of pedigree collapse, but on the Greub line this happens sooner: G4 Johannes Greub b 1766 and G4 Maria Greub b 1759 were 1st cousins, 1x removed. They most likely met at some family gathering. 

Rudolf Greub and Elizabeth Affolter

And so this brings us back to my G2 grandparents, the ones that the genealogist had suggested may have met at a market. Their marriage is recorded in the church books of 4 towns: Lotzwil (where Rudolf was born and lived), Koppigen (where Elizabeth was born), Langenthal (where Elizabeth was living), and Wynigen (where they married, just south of Koppigen). The Koppigen record gives all this data as well as confirmation dates, in flowing script:

Koppigen church book entry for the marriage of Rudolf and Elizabeth

Now Langenthal was just north of Lotzwil, and one of Elizabeth's relatives had a brewery there. A couple Colorado history sources note that Rudolph was a druggist, one that Elizabeth "was an opera singer", another that "Elizabeth had a talent for singing," and so I think that opens up a lot more possibilities than that they met at a market, though that is also possible, especially since Elizabeth was living in Langenthal and not Koppigen at the time. Four months after they married their first child was born and died at 19 days old. They would eventually have 7 children in total, 2 dying shortly after birth (the second on their trip to Colorado), with 5 surviving to have families. 

The church in Wynigen where Rudolf and Elizabeth married

Sources

Search.ch. 

"They Came to Stay: Longmont Colorado 1858-1920", St. Vrain Valley Historical Association, Longmont Printing Co., 1971

Colorado Families: A Territorial Heritage. 1981. Denver, Colorado: The Colorado Genealogical Society.