Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life - No 2: Ancestry

I have never been into family genealogy. While there are, of course, family records I recall only a few isolated stories handed down from generations past and present.

There is the story of my maternal great-grandfather. He left Germany for Texas in 1847 with his wife and two daughters-, ne of them a newborn. While making the long journey across the oceans his wife died. When he arrived in Texas with his six year old and an infant the German Consul General “adopted” and raised his infant. He remarried and one of those children was my Grandmother Lena Doering.

Grandma Doering was a strong woman who raised 11 children, with her husband dying when the youngest was only 9 years old. The death of her husband came within one year of two big fires; one destroyed their barn and the other their large beautiful family home.

I’ll never forget I came home from school and Grandma was in the kitchen pealing apples for her famous apple pies. She very calmly told me of an incident that had happened just shortly before I had come home. A bullet had torn through the window in front of her and flew by her head into the wall behind her. She seemed completely unfazed and told me “I think it came from a .22 rifle. I guess there’s a hunter out there who should be more careful with where he aims”.

My great grandmother on my father’s side has a slightly different Texas legend. She lived “way out in the country” in Lee County and noticed that her chicken flock seemed to be diminishing faster than she figured it should. She decided that there might well be a nighttime raider of her chicken house. So that evening instead of going to bed she armed herself with a big flashlight and a hunting rifle.

Sure enough in the middle of the night the would-be thief arrived. She even recognized him as probably being one g of the poor recently freed from slavery farm hands who lived on their place. She confronted him, shone the light directly into his face and face-to-face. Quick to respond, the intruder stammered, “Oh I am lost. Can you direct me to the nearest road to Giddings (a town near-by)?”  She kept the light on his face and shouted “You (expletive deleted)! You know the way to Giddings as well as I do. Now get out of here and never return or I will use something stronger than this old flashlight on you!” Her chickens stopped disappearing.

I loved to visit my Grandmother Kieschnick-even though I knew I was expected to spend some time hoeing and weeding her very large garden which had a lot of many-thistled berry bushes. It was worth it because we would always leave with large bags of beans, radishes, peas, carrots, and onions. And at mealtime there was always a freshly baked berry pie.

She seems to always be at that wood-burning cook stove. I especially remember how she served dinner (always at noon.) Grandpa and us would all sit at the dining rooms table (or once in awhile at the kitchen table) and we would be served first. Then she would take food out to the porch where she served “the hired help”-which was always black. They sat at their own table and ate their own food –which while good was not quite up to what we were eating.  Yes, it was racism, paternalistic racism, but clearly blatant racism.

Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life No. 1: Birth

I entered this world from my mother/s womb on a cold night in the teacherage (home for parochial school teachers) outside of Walburg Texas on December 10,1927. Dr. Wiedemeyer was there with his black bag and my Aunt Mattie Kurio was there to assist. The delivery took place in the dining room of the house. That is because it was cold and that was the only room in the house which had a heater, a venerable wood-burning stove that had served for decades.

I was the first-born son and third child of Oscar and Lena Kieschnick. Oscar was known throughout the community as Teacher Kieschnick as he served as teacher for grades 4 through 8 and principal of Zion Lutheran School. Ancestry was not much talked about in my early years and what I know about my family heritage is limited. I know that my great-grandfather John Kieschnick was born in Malschwitz, Germany and came to American in 1854. He settled on a farm in New Ulm near Brenham, Texas. It was there that my father (one of ten children) was born in 1899. My grandmother Marie Friedrich was born in Kleinbautzen, Germany in 1868 and came to America in 1882. John and Marie settled in Lee County, worked very hard as successful farmers and had seven children.

My maternal grandfather, Henry Doering was born in Walburg, Hesse, Germany in1855. He came to the United States in 1880 and settled in Berry Creek in central Texas. He suffered a severe sun-stroke, gave up farming, opened the general store, post office and bank and is recognized as the founder of Walburg, Texas

My maternal grandmother is Lena Braun who was born in Fayette County Texas. She and Henry were married in 1882.My mother Lena was born in Walburg, one of eleven children

My father was born in 1899 and my mother in 1902. They were married in Walburg in 1923.

As was the custom I was baptized soon at the age of 8 days at Zion Lutheran Church by Pastor John Sieck, with an aunt, an uncle, a cousin and a Lutheran schoolteacher as sponsors. The notes my Mother recorded in my “baby book” are sparse but contain the note that I first said “papa, mama” when at ten months I heard my father deliver a sermon at church. One other note explains why I never really learned to swim and to this day am somewhat afraid of water. Mom wrote, “ He always enjoyed his baths till he was eight months old. Then we took him to the Gulf of Mexico at Galveston. From then on he never liked his bath-or running water.”