William Blum

The Most Important Events in My Life as I Remembered Them and Had Them Recorded by My Son Herbert

Recorded by Herbert E. Blum.
Transcribed by Ellen M. Rohr from The Blum Family History written by Herbert E. Blum.

William Blum, was born August 22, 1885, on a small tract of land, twenty acres, which is now within the city limits of Mishicot, Wisconsin. The land was owned by my father William Blum Sr., one of the first settlers in the Mishicot area and a Civil War Veteran. My mother's maiden name was Dorothea (Doris) Wulf. She was the daughter of John Wulf and Margaret Maetz. My father and mother were born in Holstein in the northern part of Germany. John Wulf and his family emigrated from Germany also. Margaret Metz came from Mecklenburg section of northern Germany. My father's birthday was on October 3, 1939. My mother's birthday was July 21, 1843.

I was baptized Frederick Heinrich Wilhelm Blum on September 20, 1885, at St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church at Mishicot, Wisconsin, being the seventh child in order of birth. The others were Emma, Elizabeth, Augusta, Bertha, Lena, Ida and Alvina.

At the start of the school year in 1893, I started school in the Public School System in Mishicot, Wisconsin. It was about this time also that Heinrich Wulf, brother to my mother, and his wife, who lived several mles west of Mishicot in the Town of Gibson, being lonesome because they were unable to have any children of their own thought it would be a good idea to adopt me. They reasoned that since they had no children and were financially able to support a child, this is what they should do. They approached my parents and presented their idea. They said that since it was difficult for my parents to support their large family on their small income they could relieve them of some of the burden by raising one of their children. Now that I was going to school the cost would rise because of the extra clothing, books and etc., so they asked for me. My parents felt confident that they were capable of supporting their large family and did not want to separate them. It would have changed my life very much if I had been adopted by the Wulfs. I attended public school because there were no parochial school in town. My confirmation instructions were given by the pastor on the weekends and in the summer. I was confirmed on October 29, 1899. In my confirmation class was a pretty girl named Meta Wenholz.

At the end of eight years of schooling I started what turned out to be the first of many varied jobs in my lifetime. As a young man I had much to learn at each new job, the first of which was how to pile lumber at the August Rhode Saw Mill in Mishicot. The pay was 75 cents a day until I got the job of packing shingles for eleven cents per thousand. After that came work in a Pop Shop on May 30, 1902. My job was to wash the bottles and deliver pop to neighboring taverns. The day started at four o'clock in the morning. The early hours and the long days were hard to like.

On September 25, 1902, the next job was decided on, working on a farm for George Barthels. While this was not much different, also being a job with early hours and long days I thought I would like it better so I decided to try it. A hired man in those days learned to do many things.

I had to milk as many as eighteen cows twice a day by hand. Between milkings I had to do the other chores, cleaning the barns, plowing in the spring and the fall, planting, harvesting and threshing.

While I was familiar with handling of horses and cattle, here I had the opportunity to actually breaking a horse to harness. Usually a young unbroken horse was hitched to a wagon or sled with a steady old plug. Breaking or training was more easily accomplished in winter time than in the summer. The deep drifts helped tire the unruly and bucking animal due to the sheer physical effort of all its gyrations and unnecessary prancing. The snow also helped to cushion the fall of the inexperienced animal should it stumble or get entangled in the harness. I was a picture of rare foolishness to see the young wild horse prancing and snorting, fighting the bit, the reins, the harness and most of all the confinement of being fastened to something as unmovable as a heavily loaded wagon or sled and the old plug who calmly put up with it all with nary a fast breath or ruffled hair. It was the custom in those days for the horse traders to come to town with a large group of horses. George bought two because he needed a team but the first night the horses were in the barn one of them hung himself with the neck rope that he was tied with. It took a great deal of effort but we finally broke the other one to harness. My pay for all the farm work was eighteen dollars a month during the winter months and twenty-five dollars a month during the summer. This was the board and room and washing.

On December 29, 1903, I started working for Otto Schmidt on a dray line. Otto Schmidt was a neighboring farmers that lived about a mile and a half to the southeast of our farm. He was married to my sister Lena. The freight hauling job took me to Two Rivers to pick up a load of freight and bring it to Mishicot and then load any freight to have full loads. The Hardware Store, the Grocer, the Feed Mill operator and the general public all made purchases that needed hauling. I learned how to load the sled or wagon so it would pull the easiest and ride the best. The road between Two Rivers and Mishicot was not flat. Some parts were hilly. The horses soon learned how hard they had to pull and how far up the hill they could get before they would have to stop for a breath. Once stopped they would hold the wagon still and gradually let it settle back until the rear wheels settled against a stone. The stone then would hold the wagon and the horses could relax and catch their breath. Getting started was quite another matter. A good, heavy, matched team would pull together and move the wagon easily. An unmatched team sometimes had great difficulty getting the wagon started again, When using a sled a sharp metal piece of iron was used to hold the sled from sliding backward. This was fastened to the back end of a rear runnuner and when stopping on a hill was necessary this was tipped down in contact with the snow. As the sled moved backward this point dug into the snow and ground and held the sled from moving backward. Sometimes we had to leave the load on the sled over night. The story is told of one hauler who left a load of green lumber on a sled during a very cold night. The next day he had difficulty and left his sled parked while on a sharp turn. The green lumber shifted to adjust to the turn. During the night it froze in that position and the next day the rear runners were not pointed forward but slightly to the side. I remembered to always park a sled in a straight line or it would be necessary to repile the whole load before continuing. My employment on this job ended on June 18, 1904.

On June 19, 1904, I started a new job with Henry Redeker. He was married to my sister Bertha. He had a farm at Mishicot. I helped with the farm work and also with the butchering. He bought and sold cattle and butchered some of the calves and pigs. I worked here until August 23, 1904.

During the time I worked at these different jobs I kept thinking about and looking for a job that I thought I would like better. About that time news of the start of the Rural Free Delivery Mail Service reached my ears and I decided to try for the job. It was a government job delivering the mail from Mishicot out in the country to the farmers on the route. Several of us went to Two Rivers to take the exam. The exam was written on August 13, 1904. We had no idea what the test would be like so it was a pleasure to learn that all the head scratching and worry resulted in a mark of 81.50. It was also very gratifying to hear later that the job was available to me if I wanted to take it, I did. I was appointed on August 24, 1904, after being notified of my mark on the 23rd. On September 1, 1904, I became an employee of the Federal Government at a salary of $720.00 per year. We were required to supply the horse and to keep it fed and housed. I covered a twenty-eight mile route, Route No. 2, each day servicing one hundred and one customers. The work was interesting and not too hard except when the roads were impassable in spring. When conditions made roads impassable for the horse, the mail still had to go through. In the winter it was deep snow. When the horse could no longer wade through I walked the route deliving the mail until I could again drive through. The roads were not surfaced too well in 1905 and when the spring thaw came it left on long twenty-eight mile ribbon of mud. Here again I sometimes had to walk. William Samz had Route No. 1, twenty-one miles long and Robert Stelzer had Route No. 3. We joined the mail carriers association which was being organized and I was the first president. I was elected again the second year. We had our annual picnic in the woods on my farm at Mishicot. The woods was near where the Northwestern Processing Plant now stands. It was a brewery then. I worked at the job for seven years and decided to leave it to go farming on a larger scale.

While on this job I courted a farm girl from Saxonburg, Meta Wenholz. We were married on January 1, 1907 bu Reverend Miller. Rev. Zell was the pastor at our church but for some reason he was not able to come when we wanted him to. He arrived too late to officiate. In the wedding part were Mr. and Mrs. Herman Becker a sister of the bride and Alvina Blum my sister and her fiance Henry Thielbar. We were married in the home of her parents in Saxonburg. Our honeymoon on January second consisted of a trip to her former home at Saxonburg where we picked up her belongings. We started out for Mishicot with a big wagon, pulled by two horses. All of her things were on the wagon. A cow was tied to the rear of the wagon. We went to my farm at Mishicot where we made our home until May 10, 1911, when I traded the farm for the eighty acre farm in Saxonburg which my wife called her home since birth. This short honeymoon was one of the few trips we took together. Our family and financial conditions prevented this. We never took a trip together except once we went to Canada with Edna and Ray. Once we went to the State Fair at Milwaukee with Dorothy and Alvin. Ma went to Nebraska to Dorothy and Alvins when Evelyn was born and again when Marvin was born.

My father died November 25, 1906. When we considered farming in Saxonburg the concern for my mother was uppermost in my mind so when we exchanged farms with the Wenholz family a clause was included in the deed which permitted my mother to livin the house where she had raised her family until her death. Then the house would become the property of the Wenholz family. This arrangement was successfully carried out. Mother died on April 16, 1932.

The farm on Saxonburg was difficult to work being a soil with complex problems. It was slightly hummocky. It had a high water table so that the humps were dry but the low lying soil was poorly drained. It took some laboring to learn how to handle the soil. The Mishicot farm was all well drained so I did not have this problem there. To add to my problems I discovered that I had to build up the fertility of the soil. It has been farmed too many years without the proper care. I hauled all the manure out to the fields that I could find on the farm. I started with a stockpile of old manure that was piled by the barn. This should have been on the field a year ago but it wasn't hauled out. As the years went by the land improved and grew better crops but not enough to make one happy. The poor drainage still was still a problem. After four years of effort I had another set back. It was discovered that I had a growth on the bottom eyelid of my left eye. I went to Milwaukee to a doctor to get X-ray treatments to try to cure it but the growth persisted. I went ten times with no change so I had to go to Dr. Farrel at Two Rivers . He said the growth had to come off right away. He took me to the Manitowoc Hospital and I had the growth removed. After it healed I started having trouble with the eye because without the bottom eyelid which was removed I couldn't close my eye completely. As a result dust and dirt lodged against my eye and gave me a lot of trouble especially on a windy day or when I worked in a dusty place. I intended to some day have an eyelid replaced so my eye would be normal but I never found the money to do so. There always was a place that seemed more urgent for money I earned. All the problems seemed to be more than I could bear so I decided to quit farming.

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