Tampico is still tiny. The census puts its population at under 1,000. It is in the Western part of Illinois in Whiteside County, and is notable for one thing: the birthplace of Ronald Reagan. Often reported in these postings is the absolute truth that my mother's oldest brother, Howard Cook, went to the same one room school house as The Great Communicator. There are photos to that effect.
In the 1950s I remember a trip with my mother to see Illinois relatives. We went through Tampico and I remember the visit with my mother's uncle Chris, a bachelor who was the caretaker of the American Legion's arsenal in a room I think above the firehouse.
I remember a room where there were tens of rifles standing upright on their butts, seemingly ready to be grabbed in case of invasion, or need to arm a posse to catch a bank robber. Later, the scene from the movie 'Jaws' when the men in town started grabbing weapons to kill the shark. I thought of them lining up outside the room where my great-uncle guarded the weapons.
Chris was a veteran of WW I and my cousin Heather sent me some family photos the other day, many of which I already had seen from ones my mother had. There is a studio shot of Chris in his doughboy uniform.
Tampico was a small town then, and has remained one. It now reminds me of what Willie Nelson said of his birthplace, Abbott, Texas, whose population he claims has always remained the same: as soon as a baby is born, a man leaves town.
Heather's cache of photos and now some scanned documents has greatly enhanced what I know of my mother's family. There was one photo I had never seen, that of a sturdy looking woman, Elizabeth Hill Kirst.
Turns out she's my great-grandmother, as well as Heather's. Heather is my third cousin, our mothers being first cousins who grew up together in Tampico and who were quite close, sort of like sisters.
Great-grandmother Elizabeth emigrated from Germany in 1879, having been born in 1862 in Trier, Germany, hard by the Luxembourg border in the Rhineland-Palatinate state. She married Philip Kirst, who was born in England.
Great-grandmother Elizabeth had five surviving children, Chris, Barbara, Elizabeth, John and Michael. Barbara was my mother's mother, my grandmother, who I always knew to have passed away when my mother was quite young. Turns out she was 39 and passed away from vascular heart disease, helping to explain the heart disease that runs through my mother's side of the family and came to give me problems on June 6th of this year. Medical family history means a lot.
Elizabeth married Herbert Messinger and had two children, Kenneth and Heather's mother Barbara, my mother's first cousin. Elizabeth was my mother's aunt and someone I remember staying with in her home in Aurora, Illinois where part of the family had moved. Aurora was where my mother went to nursing school before she entered the Army during WW II.
My cousin Heather tells me her grandmother Elizabeth, my mother's aunt, could speak fluent German, which I imagine would have been shown off when she visited New York in the '50s with her husband Herbert. My father took them to Joe King's famous rathskeller on Third Avenue and 17-18th Street, NYC on the same block as my father's family flower shop.
I have one of those glossy black and white restaurant photos showing them at their table. The rathskeller was part of Scheffel Hall that housed the German-American Club, NYC at the time holding a significant German population. Joe King's is long gone, but the building it was in is still there, 190 Third Avenue, NYC and is a NYC landmark.
Joe King was a drinking buddy of Mayor Walker. When Joe passed away, the rathskeller was run by his brother Howard (Buddy) King who my father knew very well and who I remember as well. When I think of those black and white glossy photos now I think of how did they develop the film before you left? In those old movies you see the wandering photographer who cruised the floor taking photos, chiefly of any celebrities, but really of anyone who would pay for one.
I shared the scanned documents with my wife, who immediately recognized the Department of Justice Registration Card of Alien Female card that was issued to my great-great grandmother. The card is from July 12, 1918 and was required to be in her possession. My wife's mother came from Liverpool and had such a card until she became a citizen. My great-great grandmother became a citizen in the '30s.
I shared with Heather my posting about my grandfather on my father's side who was from Greece and who became a citizen, having first to apply to naturalization and foreswear anarchy and...polygamy!
This led Heather to rebound with more research she had done when she described finding the oath her grandfather's family, the Messingers, had to take when they came to Pennsylvania in 1732, the year of George Washington's birth.
You have to remember that in 1732 there is no United States, but rather what is a British colony. As such, the new arrivals had to swear to the following Oath of Allegiance upon their arrival at the port of Philadelphia.
"We subscribers, natives and late inhabitants of the Palatine upon the Rhine and places adjacent, having transported ourselves and families into the Province of Pennsylvania, a colony subject to the crown of Great Britain, in hopes and expectation of finding a retreat and a peaceable settlement therein, do solemnly promise and engage that we will be faithful and bear true allegiance to his present majesty, King George the Second and his successors, kings of Great Britain, and will be faithful to the proprietor of this province; and that we will demean ourselves peaceably to all his said majesty's subjects, and strictly observe and conform to the laws of England and this province, to the utmost of our power and best of our understanding."
That was 1732. By 1776, there were those who changed their minds.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment