Minnesota's Greatest Generation Oral
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Otto E. Schmaltz Narrator Douglas Bekke Interviewer Cottage Grove, Minnesota September 20, 2007 DB: This is an interview for the Minnesota Historical Society Greatest Generation Project. I am interviewing Otto Schmaltz in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. Mr. Schmaltz, can you please say your full name? OS: My name is Otto Emil Schmaltz. II DB: And your birth date? GenerationPart OS: My birth date is December 23, 1922. DB: And your birthplace? Society OS: I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. Project: DB: Were you born in your homeGreatest or in a hospital? OS: I was born at home. Historical DB: And did you have a doctor or a midwife attending? History OS: There was a midwife. DB: And your ethnic background. Minnesota'sOral OS: I’m of German descent. Minnesota DB: Both sides of your family? OS: Both sides of the family. Yes. DB: Do you know anything about your great-grandparents? OS: No. I don’t know an awful lot about any of them. DB: What about your grandparents? 17 OS: My grandparents were immigrants from Germany. They settled down near Redwood Falls, Minnesota - about ten miles west of Redwood Falls. DB: This is on both sides of your family? OS: No. Just the one. That was my mother’s side. DB: So her parents came over. And was she born here? OS: She was born here. DB: And what did your grandparents do around Redwood Falls? Were they farmers? OS: They ran a farm there. They had a two hundred and forty acre farm that they ran. They raised crops and animals and things of that sort. II DB: Does the family still have the farm? OS: No. The farm was sold by their sons about twentyGeneration or thirtyPart years ago. DB: It’s still a farm though? Society OS: It’s a still a farm to this day. Yes. DB: Did you ever hear any stories about yourProject: grandparents? Any of their experiences, their immigrant experiences? Greatest OS: No. Historical DB: Did you know them? History OS: Not really. I knew them and I spent a summer out there when I was about five years old or six years old. I spent the whole summer there. But there was just casual talk. Immigrants didn’t do much talking about their heritage or where they came from or the hard timesMinnesota's that theyOral had or anything of that nature. DB: Do you have any particularMinnesota memories of the summer you spent out there as a five or six year old? OS: Only that I was with grandpa and grandma, and I loved every day of it and I ate good. Farmers always ate good. They might have something like a big platter of eggs for supper. They had a lot of sauerkraut and a lot of pork, and they butchered their own beef. So life was good for the farming people. DB: And it was a big adventure for a five or six year old boy from St. Paul. 18 OS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. DB: On your father’s side, did you know your grandparents on that side of the family? OS: I knew nobody on that side of the family at all. DB: Was your father the immigrant? OS: My father was an immigrant. Yes. DB: Did he talk to you about where he came from in the old country? OS: He said that they came from a small village about seventeen kilometers south- southwest of Warsaw. He called it “Washaw.” DB: He used the German pronunciation of it. II OS: Yes. He was the youngest of seventeen, and at that time, this would be right after World War I, they had a person, one of his uncles there,Generation who wantedPart to send any of the children that wanted to go to the United States. He would pay their way and see that they got here. And my father and his cousin, a person by the name of Schultz, decided to take him up on it. The two of them left home and arrived in New York, andSociety from New York they—like most of the immigrants did—got passage and proceeded to go to central Canada. Project: DB: You said they came into NewGreatest York. They went through Ellis Island? OS: That’s right. Historical DB: And then went to Canada. History OS: Then went to Canada. I don’t know . they never talked about the process of how they got there, but they wound up in working for farmers in the wheat fields in Saskatchewan and Manitoba and out that way. Then when winter came on they left and movedMinnesota's across the borderOral at the little town of Sell, North Dakota. That was the border crossing in those days. That’s where he came into this country from. I don’t know anything about it. He neverMinnesota mentioned what papers they had or what they needed. I imagine he had a passport. But outside of that, he never talked about it. DB: Now your father grew up on a farm seventeen kilometers southwest of Warsaw. OS: Yes. DB: But he was a German, ethnic German. OS: He was German. Yes, right. 19 DB: And you said he came over here after the First World War? OS: After the First World War. Yes. DB: During the First World War, Warsaw was part of Russia. Did he talk about that at all, or any experiences in the First World War? OS: He never talked about it. Never talked about any of it. DB: He never mentioned if he was in the military during the First World War? OS: Never mentioned a bit about it. I would have to say that maybe . the First World War ended in 1918 . that being the youngest of the family he evidently was too young for any military service. DB: They took them at sixteen in the German army, but in that situation heII could have gone either way. He could have gone in the Russian army, or he could have been in the German army. GenerationPart OS: That’s right. Yes. DB: How did your parents meet? Society OS: I understand that he came to work in the area. In the area or at the farm where my mother was living. Project: Greatest DB: So that’s how they met. They never talked about it much. OS: It was never a big deal. Historical DB: After your parents marriedHistory . they met on the farm in southern Minnesota . how did they get up to St. Paul? OS: It was just like today, when a lot of the farm people, the farm boys and girls, are leavingMinnesota's the farm becauseOral there’s no way that a farm can support five or six people. So generally one or two stayed home and the rest of them migrated to the city and took jobs in the city. EmploymentMinnesota was fairly plentiful at that time, until the Depression hit. DB: Did he have a trade or a profession from the old country? OS: No. No, he did not. DB: And what kind of an education had he received? OS: I have no idea. 20 DB: What about your mother? OS: My mother just went to grade school at the rural country school near Redwood Falls, Minnesota. DB: And was your mother a housewife? OS: She was. Yes. DB: Did the influenza epidemic of 1918-19, did that affect your family? OS: No. Not that I know of. DB: Do you have siblings? Do you have brothers and sisters? OS: Yes. I had one brother who passed away when he was seven years old,II and then I had two other brothers and one sister. DB: You’re the oldest? GenerationPart OS: I’m the oldest. Yes. Society DB: And do you remember what the circumstance was of your brother who passed away? Just a childhood illness or . .? Project: OS: At that time the doctors didn’tGreatest know . I think it was a time when they didn’t know an awful lot about some illnesses. That would be around seventy years ago. We had doctors there for him, but when I look back at it, he had a disease or illness where he couldn’t move his head or his arms or his legs.Historical We had to push him around in a wagon. DB: A type of paralysis. History OS: Sort of a paralysis. So we don’t know if he had some sort of a stroke or attack, and the doctors didn’t know anything either. Minnesota'sOral DB: Do you remember what kind of a funeral there was for your brother? Minnesota OS: It was a good rendition for a funeral. We were quite poor at the time and we had already moved to the East Side of St. Paul, up on North Street, which is near the First Lutheran Church on East Seventh and Maria. The local mortician, Mueller Mortuary, was just two blocks away from our home and they embalmed him and it was a very small coffin. He was laid out at home in the living room, and I’d say the coffin was maybe half the size, or three-fourths the size, of a regular coffin. Then he was buried at Elmhurst Cemetery, and that’s where he is today. 21 DB: Was it a German community that you lived in? Did they have the ceremony in German? Was it a German funeral? OS: No. It was English. We went to St. John’s Lutheran Church.