China and Japan

Recently, my siblings and I cleared Mom’s apartment, as she was moving and greatly downsizing. In our effort to find homes for various pieces, I ended up giving a home to the china set.

The set, handpainted Noritake (pronounced “nor-ih-TAH-keh”) porcelain in the “Delmar” design produced in Japan, originally belonged to my great-grandparents Paul and Katharina Schneidenbach. My mother recalls that it was great-grandfather who made the decision to purchase it at an unknown point in time in the early 20th century.

When great-grandmother was near death and my mother was getting married, it was decided that she would get the set. (She died two weeks before my parents got married.)

Some pieces are missing (e.g., 12 people can have the main course, but not all of them can get dessert), a few are chipped, and the poor gravy boat has been broken and glued back together—it may or may not be gravy-tight. This is not surprising, as the pieces have been well used for so many decades. Also, mother vividly recalls, great-grandma would not hesitate to clang the dishes around, as she also did her pots and pans.

Here is the set, sitting on my also newly obtained solid cherry hutch built by grandpa Fred Wirth.

And here is great-grandmother Katharina presiding over Thanksgiving dinner served on the same set, to my grandparents, Mom, and her sisters, circa late 1940s.

The last time I visited my aunt and cousins, we were discussing the also-Japanese china set my cousin inherited, which belonged to Mom’s parents. Apparently, to show patriotism (or anti-Japanese sentiment?) during WWII, they hid the set away until after the war. Of course, no doubt the second-generation German-Americans had plenty of German home decor objects on display!

There is one piece in the set for which I was always curious about its intended use, a small round dish with a domed lid. The internet informs me that 100 years ago, before supermarkets sold butter in rectangular sticks and probably before refrigerators, people (who churned their own butter?) would mold butter in round molds, and keep it on the table covered in such a dish. I am now officially obsessed with locating some round butter for my next dinner party.

Grandma Marie Wirth’s art

Note: This post was inspired by a gentleman recently attending an auction in the Philadelphia area, seeing a beautiful tinsel painting in a group of items that inspired him to bid, and winning the bid. He then saw that on the back of the painting was inscribed in lovely cursive (such as the world will rarely see in the future—I understand kids aren’t taught cursive anymore), “Tinsel painting by Marie Wirth.” I surmise that he then employed a search engine to find out what he could about the artist’s name, whereupon he discovered this website. Various interesting correspondence ensued.

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My maternal grandmother, Marie Wirth nee Schneidenbach, daughter of German immigrants who grew up in Newark, New Jersey, born in 1903, was, in addition to a stay-at-home mom, homemaker, great cook, and garden club member, an artist.

In Newark, Marie’s parents owned and operated a restaurant and a boarding house. At times, Marie was pulled out of school to wait tables in the restaurant. I don’t know what the official board of education rules (or child labor rules) were about that, or the following, which suggests that in the early 20th century, high school was optional. At any rate, Marie was evidently not strongly encouraged academically and nudged toward college as I was!

Marie did not complete high school as we know it now in the 21st century. When I queried my mother to clarify the history, she said, “Instead of regular high school, she had taken commercial art lessons.” Through the lessons, she learned the American folk arts of tinsel painting and tole painting, among other types of artwork.

I asked Mom if my recollection was correct that before Marie married, she worked as a commercial artist designing details on women’s lingerie, such as girdles. Mom concurred, saying, “The bit about her working for designing things on women’s girdles is correct.” After she completed the commercial art lessons, said Mom, Marie “then worked at Barclays in Newark where she did the above designing.”

Recollecting her growing-up years during the Great Depression and early WWII in Brooklyn, Mom said, “Grandma didn’t do any artwork except crafts until we were in Bergenfield [New Jersey, where their family moved when mother was in high school in the 1940s] and then later when she was in Pa.” As empty nesters, Grandpa and Grandpa moved to eastern Pennsylvania in the early 1950s.

I can certainly imagine why a 1930s-1940s housewife with three children would have no time to devote to artwork, or any type of “self actualization,” as they call it. First of all the cost of materials would probably have been prohibitive. One Depression-era story handed down was that when times were hard, Marie served a supper of crackers and milk to the family. Also, time would have been a factor—think doing the weekly laundry with a wringer washer. Each summer, the family would get away from the city to a lakeside house in the New Jersey countryside, only, as Mom recollects, while the kids played, swam, and fished, Marie would be slaving over a hot stove canning produce without the benefit of modern kitchen technology. She was probably totally exhausted!

At any rate, once they were living in Bucks County in eastern Pennsylvania in middle age, Marie’s art started to flourish. They lived in a beautiful country home with multiple levels built into a hillside. In the walk-out basement level, Grandma Marie had her art studio set up against a row of windows to the backyard and lovely gardens, which I remember distinctly from my childhood.

Here she created numerous tinsel paintings and tole paintings on metal trays.

My Internet research into tinsel painting suggests that it is an American craft popular in mid-19th century New England, and taught to young ladies. Confirming the New England angle, my mother recollects that the woman who Grandma took lessons from as a young lady was a woman named Natalie who was from Vermont.

Following are a couple examples of her tinsel painting I’m lucky to have in my home.

Tinsel painting of roses

Miniature tinsel painting

A note about the oval frames Marie used for a number of her paintings that I recently learned from corresponding with my aunt: Although Grandpa Fred had a well-equipped wood shop and built furniture as well as restored antique furniture, he “drew the line about making oval frames. He always said he did not have the right equipment for making accurate and beautiful curves. Both he and Mother scoured antique shops, etc. to find them. So I doubt it is his handiwork except for refinishing them.”

I have an example of a metal tray on which she did tole painting as well. Although I now have it hanging on a wall, during my childhood when it belonged to our family, it was at one time used for serving, so has a bit of wear and tear.

Tray with tole painting

Since Grandpa Fred worked on furniture restoration, he and Marie often collaborated on projects. Grandpa restored a number of antique wooden chairs, including crafting new caned or rushed seats. Grandma would then paint such a chair, often with black paint, then stencil and paint a design on the chair back and use gold paint to add detailing around the legs and rungs.

This is one of two such chairs that I have. A relative who knows antiques believes it to be originally made around the 1850s; it was given to me from the estate of Fred’s sister Great Auntie Eleanor and it may have belonged to their grandmother (my great-great-grandmother) Maria Landmann Reutzel.

Circa 1850s chair with stenciling

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I think it was actually very exciting and intriguing for our family to learn in the last week that Marie’s artwork caught the eye of a buyer, and also that the buyer was then in turn intrigued enough to research her name and seek to learn more about her artistic career.

Landmann Family Circle Reunion of approximately 1933-196?

Perhaps from something my mother once mentioned, I thought the Landmann (pronounced 'lant mahn) Family Circle Reunion took place each Labor Day weekend, but from some documents that were passed down to me from 1958 and from 1963, which I looked at today, it apparently took place the first Saturday in August.

This was a reunion my mother attended with her family growing up, but which I/my nuclear family never made it to, as far as I know, which gathered the descendents of Jacob Landmann of Gedern, Germany (see 6c. on Wirth-Reutzel page. From what I can figure out from the documents, it took place in Castleton-on-Hudson, New York at venues including Knickerbocker Lake and the Fish and Game Club.

Although it was essentially a big picnic, the Landmann Family Circle had bylaws, motions, minutes, and dues. Each member family brought a picnic meal. Committee members provided corn, watermelon, soda [I use that term, rather than my native “pop”, to quote exactly as well as evoke the Eastern locale], water, and ice.

Documents indicate my maternal grandparents were very involved. The 1958 document indicates grandpa Fred Wirth was president and grandma Marie was on the flower committee (of course—she was famous for being active in her local garden club!). That year, the minutes spoke of planning the 25-year anniversary, from which I got the 1933 date in the subject line.

In the minutes, a historian would list births, marriages, and deaths. In the 1963 document, Margaret Wirth was historian. That year, the president was a gentleman with the last name of Fehl. It was noted that our family was moving from Illinois to Ohio. The treasurer reported a balance of $15.49 and a motion was made and carried that the dues be raised to $1.00 per family.

In 1963, the membership listing included 53 households (individuals, couples, or families). Surnames on the list were (as far as handwriting can be deciphered and with spelling more or less correct—our family’s name was misspelled!):

• Ahrens
• Boehne (my great-uncle and aunt)
• Closson
• Cohan
• Clarry
• Crandall
• Ennis
• Fehl
• Finkle
• Flynn
• Gietz
• Gleiner
• Gordon
• Heinrich
• Hutchings
• Jackson
• Janzen (that’s us!)
• Johnson
• Jones
• Lamberson
• Landmann
• Libby
• McKnight
• Mickle
• Reutzel (7 households)
• Sauter (my aunt and uncle)
• Schaedle
• Semner
• Stöhr
• Schouten
• Thomas
• Van de Wal (4 households)
• Van Beusichen
• Wirth (my grandparents, and my as-yet-unmarried aunt)

I would love to learn more personal stories about these reunions. Did everyone more or less know each other? Did they have things in common to talk about? What drew them to feel such a strong bond to their ancestral village of Gedern? If any reader has remembrances of these reunions, please comment.

DARE word of the month: pollynose

Recently, I mentioned to my Mom, who lived her formative years (approximately age 1 to 14, 1931-1945) in Brooklyn, New York, that the two maple trees in front of my house (part of my development/township’s plan to make a tree-lined street) were producing what I called them just to be silly, whirlygigs.

Mom then told me about “pollynose.” To make a pollynose, a child splits the maple seed, then with the naturally sticky substance oozing out, one sticks one or both halves of the seed on one’s nose in silly manner. I thought that sounded like the most awesome thing ever, so, I tried and tried with my maple whirlygigs at various stages of their development, but mine wouldn’t stick, boo-hoo—maybe a different species of maple is required. They’re now about done for the season.

Anyhoo, here is the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) entry for “pollynose,” confirming that it originates with the New York City dialect:
http://dare.wisc.edu/?q=node/134

Then also, a Google images search of “pollynose” did not let me down.

I think it is in order for me to add some American regional expressions to the Family Lexicon page of this site in the future in addition to terms from the “old country.”

It all started when I received a purple cabbage…

Recently in the share of vegetables I get from local famers, I got a smallish purple cabbage. Something clicked in my brain; not a full memory of a dish or a taste, but the memory of a memory, so hard to latch onto. That is, a dish I felt sure was part of my German heritage, sweet and sour-like, made of purple cabbage, that I just had not encountered in decades.

Once again, I am so thankful for this newfangled thing called the “internet,” because upon inputting “german, purple, cabbage, sweet, sour,” or something similar in the search box, I was pointed to a recipe for “Blaukraut,” (blau = blue) a mixture of shredded purple cabbage, onion, chopped apple, sugar, vinegar, red wine and a few other ingredients.

Of course, if I was going to go that far down the German cuisine heritage lane, I might as well make Sauerbraten (beef marinated in a vinegar mixture for a week then roasted) and Kartoffelklöse (dumplings made of cooked, grated potatoes, egg, and flour, formed into balls, and boiled). Now, I have successfully made Sauerbraten multiple times; this time, I marinated it for 8 days. However, I have only successfully made Kartoffelklöese in the presence of/assisted by my Mom (successfully meaning they held together when boiled and didn’t disintegrate into thick, potatoey water, as happened the one other time I tried to make them working without a “net,” er, Mom).

Verdict after my four or so hours of prepping/cooking today: yummmmyyyyy! for all of the above. I should confess that about a third of the Kartoffels did in fact disintegrate, but enough survived this time for me to enjoy!

Kartoffelklöse awaiting boiling, each formed around a buttery crouton

German supper nirvana

Family gardening second chance: the sequel

Last August, I wrote about trying again to grow a bleeding heart that descended from one in great-grandmother Elise Reutzel Wirth’s garden. My brother dug up and divided Mom’s during the terrible Midwest heat and drought last summer (record number of days over 100), then mailed me some of the root stock (good thing, since she moved to elsewhere in her retirement village a couple weeks ago). Frankly, I was pretty skeptical that what looked like dry, brown sticks when they arrived would come to life.

Well, as of this week, we have a handful of hearts! Except for taking this shot, I’m keeping mesh bunny guard around the three baby plants that came up, to increase their chance of survival.

(Note: I’ve had my compact point-and-shoot Canon Powershot camera for three years now, but still have a very difficult time getting it to focus on tiny targets like the hearts in this picture vs. the leaves or background.)

Archival treasure

I recently returned from spending two-plus weeks with my mother. In a closet in Mom’s guest room were five plastic tubs of historical “stuff.” While I was there helping Mom during and post-glaucoma surgery, she asked me to open, inventory, and evaluate the contents of these tubs.

Some items were clearly destined for the landfill, such as Dad’s daily planners from the ’80s and ’90s, in his trademark undecipherable handwriting. Posterity does not need to know Dad’s meetings.

However, there were multiple treasures found! It was really something to look at them all.

Some treasures, pertaining to Mom’s side of the family, after being enjoyed by Mom and I, were repacked back in a tub for her to keep, such as letters us three children wrote to grandpa and grandma Wirth as children in the ’60s to thank them for gifts and such, in the form of both text and crayon art, the scrapbook/picture book great-grandmother Elise Reutzel Wirth compiled for Mom when she was a child, which I pored over again and again as a little girl, etched forever into my consciousness–containing a mixture of tributes to one’s mother, vivid color pictures of vegetable plants, sweet pictures of cats and dogs, 1930s ads, etc., etc.

Other treasures, pertaining to Dad’s side of the family, Mom felt like she did not know what to do with; with those, she hinted she might get ruthless and dispose of them, should she move from her present duplex in her “continuous care facility” to an apartment in the main building.

I know I inherit both a strong O/C, or neat-freak, gene from both my parents, but also a strong family history cherishing socialization. Thus it is that I can both identify with Mom’s wish to clean out her closet in case she decides to downsize from her duplex and Dad’s earlier wish to keep all family-related archives. So, I sorted all the tubs, and ended up mailing myself two cartons of archival material to myself, which I received yesterday.

These range from extremely valuable family treasures, such as archives that Dad, in a similar fashion to me, must have preserved from his own parents’ archives–photos from the “old country” in the Ukraine plus very old letters, to semi-valuable folders of material, such as all of Dad’s letters submitted to the cousin letter, a.k.a. Rundbrief, starting in the ’80s, to Oma Mary’s original handwritten manuscripts of several of her books and reports, to material somewhere in the grey area of dear and “interesting.”

Then also, this month, my aunt from Washington state mailed a photo album to my brother with “Ontario, California” on the front, presumably put together by Oma Mary Janzen, with dear, touching photos of Dad and his siblings as toddlers and children. My brother’s and my mission, should we choose to accept it, is to scan the best of these photos, identify who is in them, and share them with the extended family.

Anyhoo, it looks like I don’t need to go through the post-major-project despondence I feared might happen once I completed the latest edition of Oma Mary’s book, which I did at the end of November. There looks to be enough family material to categorize/scan/share/file to get me through another long central PA winter!

Great aunt

As of 6 p.m. today, I learned I am a great aunt for the first time! I’m no longer just a run-of-the-mill, everyday aunt; I’m great! This is the closest I’ll come to being a grandparent, as I have no (non-feline) children.

I am now mentally transported back in time to the spring of 1981, my freshman year in college. Picture if you will the state of (tele)communications at that time. Forget social media, even the existence of the web, even phone jacks in each dorm room. Then, at Bethel College’s one women’s freshman/sophomore dorm, there was one pay phone booth at the end of each hall. An incoming call for a dorm resident was routed through the front desk staffed by a student; when you got a call, the front desk person would transfer it to your hall’s pay phone, then “buzz” your room—when you heard the number of buzzes that signified your room, say, 5 buzzes, you would hurry down the hall to pick up your call.

Thus it transpired that in the first week of May 1981, my room was buzzed. I believe it was fairly early in the morning. I went to the hall phone to get my call, learned I was an aunt for the first time, then ran back to my hall cohorts shouting, “I’m an auntie, I’m an auntie!”

Today, that same nephew born in 1981 has become the new father of a baby daughter, thus I am a great-aunt!

As far as my own relationship with my great-aunts, well, I was probably closest to my maternal grandfather Fred Wirth’s sister, Eleanor, whom all the extended family simply dubbed “Auntie.” Auntie always remembered everyone’s birthday and sent me a card every year. After I’d already moved to Pennsylvania in my 30s, when I spent Thanksgivings with eastern PA relatives, we always called Auntie and wished her a happy holiday. Auntie died in 2002—I regret not making the trip to Saratoga Springs, New York to see her before she died.

I was also emotionally attached to my great-aunt “Tanta” Susa (Janzen) Scheffler and her late husband, Onkel Hugo. They and their daughters were such a loving, dear family. The last time I believe I got to see Tanta Susa was when our 1984 Bethel College choir tour took us through Ritzville, Washington.

I was additionally privileged to briefly meet grandmother Mary Dirks Janzen’s sisters Tanta Katje and Tanta Agatha at a sisterly reunion at Katje’s home in Philadelphia when I was approximately 10-12 (early 1970s).

Evidently, it is the norm in my extended clan for the women to outlive the men. With the exception of dear Onkel Hugo, I have no recollection of getting to know Great Uncles. Of course, grandfather Peter Janzen’s brothers met their early demise during the Stalinist regime.

Anyone else have any recollections to share about great-aunties/tantas?

I’ve been granted a “family” gardening second chance

I think some strong horticulture genes come down from both sides of my family.

Let’s just say that I suspect as we go back in time (depending on which of my family lines) two to four generations past the educated professionals, clergy people, factory workers, restaurant managers, stone masons, store buyers, and train station attendants, you will find at least a part-time farmer.

To put it succinctly: no coats of arms on any of my tree branches; think peasants/serfs.

Ha, I’m no farmer; not even close–that’s why for all but a few “hobby” veggies/herbs, I hire out to a local farming couple for a seasonal farm share. I never even acquired my current non-rented “estate” ( a vast 1/8-acre), until I was in my mid-30s, so lacked experience of growing plants before then.

Nevertheless, I’ve had a lot of successes since my debut as a horticulture greenhorn in ’98, more in the realm of perennial flowers and shrubs than in that of veggies. I think the successes have to do with growing plants that are native to and adapted to the region–particularly perennials.

So, before my aunt in a town just north of Philadelphia sold her house and moved to a retirement complex, she had some bleeding heart plants that had spawned a few baby plants. Her plants were descended from some in my grandparents Fred and Marie Wirth’s garden on Swamp Road. Theirs were descended from the garden of grandpa Fred’s mother, Elise Reutzel Wirth, in upstate New York.

After I moved to my current abode, my aunt gave me one of the shade-loving bleeding heart offshoots. I planted it in the semi-shade of baby lilacs and it flourished for several years. Well, FYI, lilacs grow big quickly! Several springs later, the lilacs were huge and the bleeding heart, once lush, barely sent up any shoots. I decided to dig it up in the fall and replant it.

It never came up the next spring in its new locale. I was then and have since then been devastated. This plant meant so much to me, as a symbol of the continuing family line–part of that identity of being a nurturer of plants.

So it was with great surprise and excitement today when I heard from my brother that he had dug up and separated the roots of another “granddaughter” of Elise’s plant, presumably from that in front of Mom’s house, separated the clump, and mailed me the root stock to plant and try again!

I hope, I hope that I plant it in an auspicious location and nurture it properly until next spring! It will mean a lot to my heart.

Meeting of the long-lost cousins

Today, after about eight years of e-mail correspondence and exchange of family history info and photos, including a quarterly newsletter that she issues, I met fellow family history buff/third cousin Sue on the Wirth side and her husband from upstate New York. We first “met” because a search of hers turned up this family site.

This face-to-face meeting followed on the heels of my hosting a reunion of Mom (Wirth) and one of two of her sisters and five of their progeny, including me.

Conversing about how the surname “Wirth” translated from German as “innkeeper” or “tavern keeper,” we speculated about how inns may have been in the middle ages and that perhaps all guests slept on the floor in one large room.

I challenged her to trace back to the original innkeeping Wirth if I could trace back to my original “Jan” as in “Janzen,” ha-ha.

Sue was also still asking about an unanswered question I posed here on my site close to a year ago about my mother’s great-grandfather Wirth, so I’ll reprise it by linking to my original post: Seeking info on where Grandpa’s grandfather lived and died after immigrating.