I am extremely happy to have begun this project and to be meeting relatives I have not previously known. Collecting stories, photos and other documentation is gratifying and publishing it to my website for the family to see is a special joy I can not explain but accept as what I need to do.
I am grateful to dad, Daphne, Bob, Burt, Ann, Pat and Therese for their support. I did not record oral histories because we were enjoying great conversation. I intend to see each of them again for the purpose of recording oral family histories which will more completely tell our family's story.
 |
| Dad, Therese, Daphne, Pat, Burt, Bob and Ann |
Again I enjoyed reading about all the news and especially Theresa Staeheli Jaeger's account about their departure and arrival in the "New World" made me laugh and wondering! In our documents her father's profession is mentioned as "draineur", since in Switzerland French words are also used - sometimes sligthly changed - in the Swiss-German-speaking parts. When Theresa mentions a "tramirer", I think it might be a "Drainierer", which means the same as "Draineur".
ReplyDeleteWith kind regards from St.Gallen, Switzerland
Marcel Muller
I have noticed that some of the swissgerman in theresa's letter seems to be colored by their mother's tyrolean dialect. "Schmalz" is what a tyrolean calls butter, not so common in Switzerland. I have not yet discovered what she meant by "blacca". that would be tarp or cloth. Possible is a typo from the original letter (t's instead of c's), or another tyrolean derivitive meaning butter board or butter dish. The nearest we can decipher, Julia commented that they were "rich", they had a barn (china = scheune= schiine in dialect). This might have caused a good bit of mirth amongst town people and would have been remembered. Franz's advice is as close as we can decipher...Buy your religious relics from a heavy set woman, none from the devil. (Meaning a thin, scrawny cheater). And the poor boy who fell into the cesspit had his sunday trousers on! A real disaster if you have ever tried to get gooey green slurry out of anything...and that all by hand! Most likely the trousers were ruined, which would have been a disaster in the days when you only had two sets of clothes..workday and sunday. I agree with Marcel that Great Grandpa Caspar Albert Staeheli) worked as a drainer. I have a book about the Gubsersee that describes him as a wellbuilder, which would be reconcilable with draining, or working with earth as is on several of the children's birth certificates. Theresa had not spoken dialect in many years, and I think that it is possible that she had a few hiccups in her swiss. Or it is possible that she wrote the n or n's so that they looked like an m. With kind regards,Tienne Staeheli, Grafenort, Switzerland (Louie's Granddaughter)
ReplyDelete