TX BIOS:  Mrs. Ernestine Weiss Faudie
   Selected and converted.American Memory, Library of Congress.
   
   Washington, 1994.
   
   Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.
   
   This transcription intended to be 99.95% accurate.
   
   For more information about this text and this American Memory
   collection, refer to accompanying matter.
   
   U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project (Folklore
   Project, Life Histories, 1936-39); Manuscript Division, Library of
   Congress.Copyright status not determined.
   
   00011
   
   Life History
   
   FOLKLORE:
   
   Miss Effie Cowan, P. W.
   
   McLennan County, Texas,
   
   District No. 8.
   
   No. of words: 1600
   
   File No. 240.
   
   Page No. 1.
   
   Reference:
   
   Interview with Mrs. Ernestine Weiss Faudie, Riesel, Texas.
   
   (White pioneer)
   
   "I was born in Dembaw Province, Possen, Germany. My father was named
   Frederich Weiss, and followed his ancestor Louis Weiss, who came with
   the colony that settled at Fredericksburg, Texas. My father settled
   near Brenham, Texas, in the year 1853. The year that I was born, as I
   was a five month old infant when they left Germany.
   
   "There were farms and ranches where they settled and over at the
   colony of Fredericksburg there was quite a little town, I have the
   list of names of the men who were in business, among them was Louis
   Weiss who was a tinner, the records show that thirty eight men
   operated ten different types of industrial business in the town: This
   town and New Braunfels were the main German settlements when my father
   came to Texas in 1853, The Germans around Brenham had drifted from
   these places to other settlements.
   
   "To the colony at Brenhum my father came and this is where I was
   raised; we had the ordinary little schools and the teachers were
   mostly the one teacher schools. They were paid very little but then it
   was something to even have a school. So it is not surprising that the
   young people married early and raised their families in large numbers,
   to what they do now.
   
   "I was seventeen when I married William Hamburg. We came to the little
   settlement called Sandy Creek where the town of Riesel is today, but
   it that time there was nothing but ranches and the farms over near the
   Brazos river.
   
     NOTE: [??]
     
   00022We lived there for a few years and the grasshoppers came and ate
   up our crops, so we moved back to Brenham and lived there for twelve
   years. Then in 1890 we came back to this part of the country and lived
   at the Perry settlement until late years.
   
   "I reared nine children by my first husband, they are; Mrs. John
   Scharlach who has lived by the Methodist Church in the Myers
   settlement on the Mart-Waco road, for the past forty years; Mrs. Fred
   Witting of Perry, deceased; and Mrs. Louis Bohmfalk, whose husband was
   a Methodist minister, now deceased; Mrs. Arthur [Grebe?] of Mart and
   William Hamburg and Albert, of Dallas; Mrs. Ida Busse and another son
   Fred of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
   
   "My first husband died in 1900 and in 1905 I married Judge J. Faudie
   who is living with me now. My father had two brothers to come with him
   from Germany and were in the Confederate army. Their names were August
   and Fritz Weiss. They were sent back home from the war on a furlough
   but had to return and August was captured by the Yankees and taken
   prisioner and made to walk all the way to the prison. He was later
   exchanged and came home. The other brother Fritz, came home after the
   war was over and took tubercolosis and died from this which he
   contracted in the army.
   
   "When any of the soldiers on either side came thro our place they took
   anything they could find, the rebels felt that they had a right to it
   for they were fighting for us. They took our horses and killed our
   hogs and cows to eat, and took our corn. When the blockade was on and
   we could not get coffee we made it out of sweet potatoes. We cut them
   up and dried them and boiled them and drank this for coffee.
   00033"There was a grist mill close by our place and they ground the
   meal real fine and crushed it and called it flour; anyway we made our
   light bread out of this ground and crushed corn. We cooked over a fire
   place with a big dutch oven. We spun and wove the cotton thread to
   make our clothes. And speaking of the soldiers I remember an incident
   that is amusing now but at the time, to the neighbor it was anything
   but amusing. When a group of soldiers passed this neighbors, she tied
   a hog to the bed post so they would not see it, but they stopped for a
   drink of water and heard the hog grunting and so came into the room
   and took the hog and barbecued it, out in the year and ate it before
   the neighbor's very eyes.
   
   "When we first came to this country we lived in a log cabin, but we
   had it made good and comfortable and we did not mind that; we were so
   happy to have all the land that we could cultivate and the stock which
   was so plentiful, so different from where we lived in Germany. When
   the war, which they called the Civil War, came I remember that my
   brother-in-law, Henry Hamburg, did not want to fight, as he did not
   believe in war and so he went to Mexico and then up to the North where
   he stayed until the war was over.
   
   "My family came to the Perry settlement in 1890 and there was a big
   ranch called the Stone Ranch, they had lots of cattle and horses and
   the cowboys would round up the cattle twice a year and take them to
   the markets. I think they took them to Houston or Galveston and
   shipped them by way of the Gulf to New York and the foreign markets.
   We lived in the Schlimbech settlement; the community was thinly
   00044settled but we were a settlement of people from the old country
   and we kept up our interest, thro the papers in the old country, and
   our way of living, also our mother tongue and so we did not feel so
   isolated from Germany altho we became maturalized American citizens
   soon after coming to this country.
   
   "I will tell you the story of the Indianola flood that came in 1875.
   My brother-in-law who did not go to the war, Henry Hamburg, came back
   when it was over and became a Methodist minister, (most of the
   churches were either Lutheran or Methodist then). He was in charge of
   the Methodist church at this place when the big storm came, he and his
   wife both were drowned and most of the inhabitants. At that time and
   during the Civil War, Indianola was an important port of Texas and it
   meant to Texas, what Galveston does to us now.
   
   "There were just a few of the buildings left when the storm was over.
   A few feet of the outside wall was all that remained of the once big
   department store of Lichtenstein's and Alexander's. After the flood
   Mrs. Lichenstein moved to Corpus Christi and went into business. The
   court house, which in those days was at least fifty or sixty feet from
   the bay, has later been washed almost entirely away by the water of
   Matagorda Bay. It is said that the walls of these two buildings and is
   few crumbling cement cisterns and a few old safes that were in the
   store is all that is left as a reminder of the once second most
   important port of Texas.
   
   "The story of Indianola reads like a story book for children. They
   claim that La Salle was the first to make a camp there while he was
   trying to find the mouth of the Mississippi River. However, it was
   made 00055the County seat of Calhoun County in 1846. Many of the
   buildings and underground cisterns were made of concrets so this is
   why those the storm left stood. It was said that the stage left twice
   a week for California and the prairie schooners carried the overland
   freight and the [Morgan?] Line steamers were used for passengers and
   freight by water.
   
   "Another story is that gold and silver bullion was brought from
   Chihuahua, Mexico, for shipment to the mint at New Orleans. Instead of
   the horses and carriages the ox-wagons were familiar sights on the
   streets of this little coast town. It is said that hides and tallow
   were among the more important commodities. After the cattle were
   killed and [skinner?] the carcases were ahuled beyond the city limits
   and dumped, and the fresh beef was used for fattening hogs and the
   people in the town were welcome to all the meat they wanted at the
   slaughter house.
   
   "Natural ice from New England was shipped by steamer from Boston, army
   goods were shipped from Baltimore thro Indianola to the forts at El
   Paso and San Antonio. The number of people in the town in 1875 were
   close to 3,500 and town lots sold for a good price. So the town was
   one of the best in Texas until Sept, 16, 1875 when the tropical storm
   came. The citizens hurried to the business buildings and private
   houses that were known to be the stoutest, but only a few escaped with
   their lives.
   
   "It was said that many were forced out of the second stories when the
   water rose in them and had to seek safety in hastily constructed rafts
   which they made from the sections of the floors and walls of the
   houses they were in. Some of them were thoughtful enough to have ropes
   00066and they were lashed to the rafts by them, but many were drowned
   when the buildings they were in collapsed and the people were crushed
   or drowned.
   
   "There were many stories of heroism that were told by those who were
   saved. They told about the two prisoners named William Taylor and Joe
   Blackburn, who were both up for first degree murder. They had been
   placed in the court house and during the height of the storm both
   frequently swam thro the court house windows to rescue some drowning
   person. After the storm was over desolation met the eye everywhere. My
   brother-in-law, his family, and his home had dissappeared and were
   never seen again, altho my husband hoped for months to hear of him.
   
   "Capital was timid about investing again and most of those who lived
   thro this storm moved away to escape another like fate. And so when
   the second hurricane come in 1886 and was said to be even greater
   intensity the few people who were left read the signs in time to
   evacuate the town and the havoc was not as destructive to the lives of
   the inhabitants.
   
   "After the storm of 1886 the old port of Indianola was abandoned. I
   have told you this true story of the coastal storms to show you what
   the old pioneers had to contend with, not only the pests of the
   insects on their crops, or the hardships of the lack of the comforts
   of life, but the very elements of nature, the drouths, the floods, and
   the unsettled condition of the country, even to desperadoes and
   murderers but never for an instant did we lose our faith in the future
   00077which was always before us, to look into when the time should
   come when we could lie down to our sleep and not feel that any
   calamity would befall us.
   
   "And now in my old age I look back over the past from the time that I
   can remember and think of the many friends and kinsman who came over
   here from the old country, and who have passed on to the far away land
   and I say in my heart to them all:
   
   "Auf-weider-se-hen."
   
   (Till we meet again!).

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