Christian Heinrich ROEMER

                   Christian and Ernestina lived most of their married life on a 93 acre farm in the Sebewaing area. 80 acres was located in section 13 of Sebewaing Township and 13 acres in Section 18 of Brookfield Township. The farm was passed on to their son Elmer, and after his death it was sold.

"The Roemer Wildwood Farm," by Janis Mae Siddall Pardeik, 1996.

Christian Heinrich Römer was born 22 June 1880 to Heinrich and Katharina Römer (geb. Conrad) in Climbach, Germany. The Römer name was later changed to Roemer in America. Christian was the youngest of ten children, four dying in infancy. Christian went to school until he was confirmed. After confirmation he "went to work as a brick layer's helper." He received 11 cents a day. "He left for work early Monday morning by train taking cheese, black-bread and coffee for his week's food. Saturday night he came back on the train again." When Christian was 16 years old he came to America with his parents and sister, arriving in May 1897. They joined Henry and William on their farm near Sebewaing, MI. "Christian followed the example of his older brothers and also worked as a farm hand in the area. He worked for Albert Volz, Robert and Hulda Dressler in the Sebewaing area and on the Warner farm in the Owendale area. He was chosen to meet Governor Warner at the train depot in Owendale on Saturdays, when the Governor came home for weekend visits. Sometimes the Governor even gave Christian a cigar. Christian followed the custom of the age by giving all the money he earned to his parents until he was twenty-one." He was a slow grower, not reaching his full height of 5'6" until age twenty-two. [Quotations from "Roemer 1835-1978" by Christian's three daughters.]

The following stories were told by Christian's daughters, Martha (84 yrs), Florence (82 yrs), and Clara (75 yrs) on 12 Jan 1995 at Martha's home. A few more memories and research information were added to their story in 1996.

Christian (Dad) was a very hard worker. When he worked as a hired man at the Dressler farm he earned 25 cents a month in the winter time to clean the barn and care for the animals. In the summer months when there was more work to be done he earned more. He stayed there and got his room and board. About ½ mile from the Dressler farm was the August Kurzer farm where Ernestina (Mom) lived.

Ernestina Kurzer was born on 19 Aug 1881 to August and Mary (née Schubach) Kurzer on their farm near Sebewaing. She was the fourth of seven children. While Ernestina was growing up, a seamstress would come and live with them a few weeks at a time and sew all their clothing. Ernestina and her sisters learned how to sew very well.

On nice Sunday evenings Christian and Ernestina would meet at the corner of Rescue and Volz Roads. Other neighbors would come there to talk and socialize and sing songs. After Christian bought his own farm he would go courting Ernestina with  his horse and buggy and on the way home he'd let the horse find the way. Christian would say, "The horse knows the way home."

Christian purchased an 80 acre farm on 7 March 1907 from William Holland for $1 and other valuable considerations. This farm was located at 9067 Sebewaing Road in the East One-Twelfth of the NE Quarter of Section 18 in Brookfield Township (Deed: Liber 89, p. 307) Only 20 acres was cleared and the remaining land was cleared as time and strength permitted. Christian lived at the farm in a very small house. He had a dog that would stay with him in the house. When he had a cut he'd let the dog lick it and it would heal. As Christian cleared the land there were large brush piles where rabbits would hide. The dog would go hunting with him and chase the rabbits out of the brush piles. Sometimes Christian would walk to church with relatives to give the horses a day of rest.

On 27 Jan 1909 Christian filed his Declaration of Intention to become a Citizen of the United States (Vol 7, p 56). On Christian's Certificate of Naturalization, dated 23 Jan 1912, it stated he was 31 years old, 5'6" tall, color of eyes was brown, and color of hair was light brown.

Christian and Ernestine were married on 22 June 1909 by Pastor J. M. Nyce. Witnesses were August Kurzer and Martha Kurzer (marriage certificate). They set up house-keeping at Christian's farm.

Christian liked to try new things. He was the first brother to own a car in 1915, the old familiar Model T. On Sunday afternoons we'd go for a ride. The roads were full of deep ruts and sometimes we'd get a flat tire. Christian said going for a ride was more tiring than doing a day's work.

During the month of December we had a bean picker in the dining room to pick out the culls. Dad would put pennies in the beans for us kids to find and keep. That made our work more fun When we sold our cull-free beans they were #1's and worth more money.

Christian sold his Brookfield Township farm on 19 March 1919 for $11, 000 (Liber 117, p. 481). On that same day he purchased a 120 acre farm from Aunt Louise Sonntag for $12,000 (Liber 117, p. 480). Aunt Louise was our mother's sister who married Henry Sonntag in 1910. After eight years of marriage Henry died from the 1918 influenza. Aunt Louisa never remarried. Our new farm consisted of 80 acres in the North One-Twelfth of the SE Quarter of Section 12 in Sebewaing Township and 33.28 acres in the SW fractional Quarter of the NW fractional Quarter of Section 18 in Brookfield Township. On 21 Feb 1920 Dad sold 20 acres of his land in Brookfield Township to his brother, William, for $1,725 (Liber 121, p. 207).

We named our new home Wildwood Farm. We were very young when we moved to our new home at 3812 Bay Port Road: Martha, 9, Florence, 6, Elmer, 3, and Clara, 4 weeks old. Our farm was tilled and also had about 7 acres of woods where we got our own wood to burn in the stove and furnace.

Dad extended the house and remodeled the inside and put a bathroom in. The upstairs consisted of five bedrooms with a closet, one bedroom without a closet, two large halls and one large closet kept as a storage room for 100# bags of flour and sugar.

Our Wildwood Farm was self-sufficient. We raised heifers and the beef cattle were used for our family's own use. From the pigs we made sausage, ham, side-pork, liver-sausage, bratwurst, blood-sausage, potato sausage, and head cheese. We had turkeys and our chickens we raised for eggs and meat. Our field crops were corn, oats, wheat, barley, beans, alfalfa for hay, sugar-beets and one acre of mangels for the horse's treats. Our horses, Bob, Nelly, and Prince, were used for field work and hauling milk to Kilmanagh and going to town and church. We raised Prince, who was the son of Nelly.

We had 7-8 dairy cattle to be milked twice a day, by hand. For light we used lanterns in the barn. When we milked the cows the cats would wait for their milk in a dish. Sometimes we'd squirt milk in their mouths and they'd lick and lick themselves clean. We had both cats and dogs but they were never brought in the house.

We hand churned our own butter, which was made from the cream separated from the milk. We had a separator for this procedure. Sometimes when Dad did dragging in the field, he'd hand a half-gallon syrup pail filled with cream on the lever that set the drag. As he dragged the lever would agitate the pail, turning the cream into butter. This had to be done when the weather was just right.

Every year we planted a large garden with a variety of vegetables and fruits. We had a big garden by the house and a garden in the cornfield where we planted the vine plants. We grew cucumbers, grapes, tomatoes, and just about everything you can think of, plus lots of flowers. Our orchard produced bushels of apples and pears, plus Dad planted peach, apricot, and white mulberry trees for more variety. A large mulberry tree grew in the chicken yard and when the berries fell the chickens would catch them before they could hit the ground. Ha We made our own horseradish from the roots we grew in our garden. We had to grind up the roots outside because the smell was so strong it would choke us.

Most all our food came from the farm. On Saturdays we went to town to do our grocery shopping. The only food our family bought at the store was flour, spices, sugar, salt, yeast, ice cream, hot dogs and bologna. Everything else came from the farm. We made our own soap, bread, butter, beer, wine, jelly, jam, sauerkraut and we canned hundreds of quarts of home grown fruits and vegetables, pork & beans and beef. We sewed casings for the sausage from feed bags. After the summer sausage was smoked and waxed, we would keep it hung in the smoke house and granary along with our home-made hams. They kept well all summer long in the smoke house without spoiling. Our Kettle house was used for cooking beans for cattle feed, canning meat in tin cans and rendering lard. Our soap was made from the pork fat and beef tallow, which we saved all year and stored in a crock. The cool cellar kept potatoes and butter well and carrots we stored in a crock filled with sand. We wrapped the best fall apples in Sears & Roebuck catalog pages and put them in a barrel in the basement for winter use. The not-so-good apples were taken to the cider mill where apple butter was made and cider pressed. From the cider we would make our own vinegar.

In the fall when the peaches were in season, truckers bought truck loads of peaches from the growers and peddled them from door to door. They were usually $1.00 per bushel. At first the bushel basket came with the peaches but later on you had to pay ten cents for the basket.

All our baking was done in a wood fired stove which had a reservoir to hold hot water. The wood was sawed and cut from our woods during the winter months. The best wood was kept in the wood shed and used for baking and the rest we used to heat the house by furnace.

We raise our own poppy seed for baking coffee cake and bread. We collected the ripe seed heads and put them in a large barrel. Us kids had fun throwing the cut off seed heads around the kitchen. We'd get about 2# of seed for all winter. Sometimes we'd combine ground poppy seed with 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of cream and cooked it, then we'd put this over cake. Yummy

Dad kept 2 hives of bees in the orchard. They helped pollinate the crops. The bees loved our alfalfa field and we sold the alfalfa seed to other farmers. We used the honey for baking Liebling (honey) cookies every Thanksgiving.

Life on the farm was hard work and long hours. We were taught to be good workers and to always do our very best. Each of us knew what our daily jobs were and we all worked together as a family. Us kids had the jobs of cleaning the chicken-coop, cow stables and horse stable, cleaning the house, baking, etc. When we hoed the beans, Mother would cut off old cotton stockings for us to put on our arms. We pinned them to our sleeves to keep them in place. When hoeing in the bean field Dad would say, "Boys, if we get our work done today we'll go to Saginaw tomorrow." Always on the Fourth of July we would hoe out the thistles growing around the woods and by the fence. Dad would say, "If we get this job done today I'll buy you ice cream tonight." Then we'd really work hard.

Harvesting corn was a lot of work. In the fall we cut our field corn with a horse drawn binder, which put corn stalks in a bundle. We put the bundles into shocks. Through the week we would husk the corn by hand and put the cobs in piles in the field. When we husked the corn, Dad would give us 5 cents a small shock but if he found a missed corn cob while he tied the bundles, we'd have to pay him a penny for each one we missed. It was a joke and Dad never really did this. Once he found 6 corn cobs that Florence missed, so she owed Dad 6 cents, but she really never did have to pay back. Then three shocks were put together to make one big shock. On Saturdays we'd put the corn cobs on the wagon and our horses would haul it to the corn crib. Later the shocks were hauled into the barn. In the winter months we fed corn stalks to the cows and horses in the barn. For a special treat, we took some of our oats and wheat to the elevator to have it chopped for the cows to eat while we milked them by hand. Some of the corn cobs we put through a hand cranked corn sheller to feed to the pigs and chickens and they'd come running., During the winter we sorted out the best corn cobs to sell for seed corn.

We had a windmill that pumped water from the well. After milking the cows, the cans of milk were cooled in a large outdoor trough filled with cold water from the well. This water was pumped with the help of our windmill. Sometimes Dad used the power from our truck rear wheel to pump water from the well. This was done by placing a belt around the tire and around a pulley, which was on the well pump.

Our water came from two sources: rain water and well water. All our drinking and cooking water was hand pumped from the outside well. The rain water was funneled from the roof eavetroughs into a cistern in the basement. From the cistern we would pump the water to a large 200 gallon trough located upstairs on the second floor. this water gave us water pressure for the sinks and for the washing machine, through the faucets.

Washing clothes was a day's work. First we had to heat the water on the stove. The washing machine had to be agitated by hand and our clothes were hand wrung through a wringer, by hand, before they were hung outside to dry. Later Dad bought a gasoline engine for the washer to make our job easier. It could be heard ¼ mile down the road In 1927 we got our first electricity, wow

Our family was a close-knit family. On Sundays we did a lot of visiting with Aunts & Uncles & cousins. There was always lots of food, which had been prepared the day before. Martha remembers a coat her Uncle Balthaser Roemer made for her; he was a tailor in Saginaw. Florence remembers how she would exchange vegetable and flower seeds with her Uncle William, neighbors and friends. No one bought seeds from the store. Uncle William Roemer had a large vegetable and flower garden and he even had roses

Dad and his brothers worked together when harvest time came. They helped each other butcher hogs. Dad used to buy young cattle in the summer and put them on pasture at Uncle John and Aunt Martha Gaeth's farm until fall. Anyway, one time when Dad bought cattle he went to the bank to draw money and they didn't want to give it to him, but he insisted and then they did. The next morning the banks closed. The Big Depression had started. This was in the early 1930s.

Mom was a wonderful home-maker She would always say, "If you throw something out the next day you need it." Nothing was wasted. Mom used the cotton material from feed bags to make pillowcases, underwear and slips. The nicer, tighter knit material came from 100# flour bags which Mom bleached and made into dish towels. There was little time to spare In the winter months everyone would help tie off the home-made quilts, filled with the wool from Uncle Johnny's and Aunt Martha Gaeth's sheep, which Dad sheered. The wool had to be taken to Frankenmuth to be cleaned and carded and made into batts and then we made them into quilts. We also made carpet rags in the winter time. From the left over pieces of material from sewing, we cut ½" wide strips and sewed them together into long strings which we rolled into balls. We took the balls to a rug weaver in Pigeon to make rugs for us. We sewed all our clothes: pajamas, aprons, dresses and under slips but we didn't make men's clothing. At Thanksgiving time we bought feathers from our Aunt Elizabeth Bowman after they butchered their ducks. We stripped the feathers and threw away the center quill; it was a messy job. Then we made our own feather pillows.

As we continued to reminisce childhood years, I noticed that Clara picked up her Mother and Father's wedding picture. As she looked at it with great admiration I heard her say, "Wasn't she beautiful, she was so beautiful" I could sense much love in Martha's voice for her Mother.

Dad was a very ambitious and dependable person. He was a real handy-man. He l