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Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Here is a book that the preacher must have given Ma and Pa
on the day they were married. It is all in German and that is all
that I could make of it. That would have been in 1897 when they were
married. It really should be with the Heiden History.
(Note: The inside panel of the book reads:
Die Gebetsschule oder Die Herzen in die Hoehe! Das Gebet im
allgemeinen und das Vaterunser im besonderen erklaert durch
Gedanken, Sinnbilder und Dergleichen.
Sonntagsschulen und der Familie dargeboten.
This translates into:
“The school of prayers or High up the hearts! The prayer in general
and the Lord's prayer especially explained through thoughts, and
allegories. Presented to Sunday Schools and to the family.”)
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Can you understand German, Ralph?
Ralph Heiden - A little bit. I have been getting help on translations from
the Prodigy computer network. Let’s start through some of this stuff
that I have accumulated over the years. It was very fortunate that
in about 1971 my mother and I went over to visit Aunt Agnes (William Carl Heiden’s sister-in-law. Wife of John Heiden). I asked, “Do you
have any old papers or anything?”
Well, she went up in the closet and got this old box with these old
documents. It has August Heiden's naturalization papers when he
became a U.S. citizen. There were some old letters from Germany.
In the early 70's, I sent to the East German government requesting
information and that is where I got a good start on the Heiden’s in
Germany.
Here is a document where my great-grandfather, August, applied for
U.S. citizenship. He had to renounce all allegiance to the Emperor
of Germany.
I have maps of the tiny little towns in what was East Germany where
all our ancestors came from. They were sort of like Maybee and Ida
and Grape. Very small little places only a few miles apart.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - What about High German and Low German?
Ralph Heiden - I don’t know much about it but I think it is just different
ways of speaking the language similar to Irish English versus
British English versus American English.
 I also have some papers here from the German government that gives
August and his family permission to leave Germany. It is for August
and his wife, Rika, and three children,
Heinrich,
Ernst and a little girl,
Meta. Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Meta was the one that died on the ship on the way over.
August and his family arrived about a year before William was born
on April 1, 1874.
Jeanie & Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We always heard that she died on the boat and was
buried at sea.
Ralph Heiden - Unfortunately, the ship’s records do not show that
happening. Normally, if someone died on the ship, that would be
noted and there is nothing on the list to indicate that Meta died on
ship.
The ship’s list that I have shows August Heiden's age 34, a mason.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - A mason? Oh, you mean a
bricklayer, not a member of the
Masons.
Ralph Heiden - Yes. It also lists Rika, 31, his wife, Herman, 6 years old,
male, Ernst, 4 years old, a male, his children, and Meta, 9 months,
his baby.
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Herman? That should be Henry.
Ralph Heiden - You’re right, it is
Heinrich
(right). But there was no mention of
anyone buried at sea.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We all heard the story that a baby was buried at sea.
Ralph Heiden - That would seem logical since there doesn’t appear to be a
record of her here in Michigan. At least not that I have found so
far.
(Note:
Later research discovered that Meta made it to America but
died on June 16, 1873 only 12 days after they arrived from
Germany. She is buried at the Zion Lutheran Church cemetery
in Monroe, Michigan.)
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Ma’s grandmother,
Miller
(or Muller), died in Germany before they came
over to America. According to Ma, she was old anyway and did not
know for sure if she wanted to come over here. Of course, that’s the Rambow’s side.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - August landed in New York? How did they get to Monroe?
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Normally, they had someone over here sponsor them.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Did the Rambows come on the same ship?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - The Rambows and Milhans came over about the same time.
[Note: The Rambows came to America in 1874, one year after the Heidens.]
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - It seems that they all came over about the same time because
they knew somebody here. I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from
Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.
Ralph Heiden - When I got the ship list originally, back in 1974, I
contacted a lady in Washington D.C. who, for a fee, looked it up in
the National Archives.
Now, there are some books that list all the ship logs for the
mid-1800's that left Germany for the U.S. I contacted a person on
the computer network, Prodigy, and they looked it up for me and
found the same information that appears on the information I had. They also found at least one other Heiden that came over on the ship
but I did not recognize the name.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Did
August Heiden have any brothers?
Ralph Heiden - Not from what I could find out. He did have a half-sister,
however.
One of the other things that I got from
Aunt Agnes was a
bunch of
letters from Germany to August and Rika (Knaack) Heiden back in the 1920's.
Most of them were signed from a Maria Dohmstrich from
Rostock,
Germany. That is only about 30 or 40 miles away from the little
towns where our ancestors lived.
 On some of the letters she adds “geb. Schmidt” after her name which
means that her maiden name was Schmidt. Well, it seems that
August’s
half sister (left) married a man named Schmidt and had a daughter,
Maria. So, the letters are from August’s half-sister’s daughter. His niece.
She was born in 1866 so she would have been in her sixties at the
time the letters were written. My great-grandmother, Rika, must have sent them the occasional five
dollars. That was a huge amount back then because of the inflation
going on in Germany at the time. They really appreciated it.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I didn’t know that her grandma was a
Knaack.
Jeanie & Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Yes, she was.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - So,
Maria Heiden never married
Kannseyer?
Ralph Heiden - No, and who knows why. From what I’ve read, they were having
a population problem in Germany so they made it very difficult for
people to get married. But, people being what we are, they went
ahead and had children anyway. A very large percentage of the births
during the mid-1800's were out of wedlock.
But they never did get married. When she died in 1874, she was
still listed as Maria Heiden. Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - So, how many children did she have?
Ralph Heiden - Just the two as far as I know. August in 1838 and the
daughter,
Fredericka, in 1832. She was the mother of the one who
wrote the letters.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Helma, I didn’t know your middle name was Nettie.
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Yes, that was after Nettie Spohr. Emma was for Aunt Emma (Stock) Heiden. They both stood up for me.
Ralph Heiden - That was the way they used to do it. Often the person was
named after the people who stood up for them at baptism. If they had
four witnesses, they had four names.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - They stopped that when they got down to me.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - With your dad it should be Arthur Henry Carl
(left). Carl Rathke
stood up for him.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Also, Anita’s birth date should be December 3, 1900.
 Ralph Heiden - Do you remember much about your Grandfather,
August Heiden (left)?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Not too much, of course, he died in 1922 and Grandma died in
1926. I can just remember that he couldn’t hear well and used a
horn to hear people talk to him. We would go over there on Sunday
afternoons and he’d always want to know the text of the sermon.
Somehow, he would always seem to know just what the sermon was
about.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - That is surprising because I would have expected the Rambow
side to be religious ones. But you said that Grandpa Heiden very
religious.
Ralph Heiden - Here is a picture of
August Heiden.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Grandpa Heiden looks like a happy guy. Looks a little like Ralph.
 Ralph Heiden - Here are some other pictures of August and his children. I
have several of their marriage pictures too.
We must have got our height in the family from the Rambow side.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Uncle
Fred Rambow used to come over and play cards all the
time. Uncle Fred would say, “My luck is terrible” and get up and
throw his leg over the top of the chair. Then he would say, “Now we
will play cards!’ He was very tall.
 In
the picture, Mary (Rambow) Heiden has her back to the camera.
Her husband William Carl is to her left and brother Fred Rambow
is to her right. Across the table is Fred's wife, Emma (Westphal).
The picture is from the late 1950s.
Ralph Heiden - Here is a picture that says it is great-great-Grandma
Heiden.
[Note:
Later research determined that it was actually a picture of
August's half-sister,
Friedericka Schmidt.)
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Let’s see a picture of her. So that’s where this all got
started!
Ralph Heiden - A lot of the information I have came from the Mormon Church
records. They have a belief that, if you can find who your ancestors
were, they can be baptized after death into the Mormon religion.
That’s why they went all over the world microfilming old church
records. If you know what church your ancestors attended, you can
get the microfilm from Salt Lake City. The problem is that the
records are in old script writing and the microfilming is not always
readable.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Pa always said they came from Mecklenburg. Is that a county
or what? When we were in Germany we saw a sign for town called
Heidenfahrt!
Ralph Heiden - Mecklenburg is a region of Germany. The Heidens came from
tiny little towns called
Gross Wokern,
Mamerow,
Klaber and a bunch
of others.
Now, where did your grandfather, August, live here in Monroe County?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - August always lived on
South Custer where
Uncle John lived.
That’s the only place they lived as far as I know. The same with the Rambows.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I have an old family picture that has a lot of other people
who we cannot identify. Perhaps they are the Rambow branch?
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They may have lived in Dundee for a while because Ma got
confirmed in the church in Dundee, I think. But maybe the preacher
from Dundee came down here to do the confirmations.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I remember when Grandpa
(Heinrich) Rambow (left) died, they were living down
there on
South Custer Rd. Across from where
Lester lived. I was only
about 8 years old when that happened.
Jeanie & Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Remember when Uncle Herman married Aunt Reka and Pa
married Mary. Brothers married two sisters. Uncle John started going
with Aunt Minnie and Grandma Rambow said, “That’s enough of those
Heidens!”
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Perhaps Aunt Minnie would have been a different person if
she had married Uncle John.
(Note: William and
Minnie Rambow were unmarried brother and sister
who lived together on the family farm on South Custer Rd.)
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Uncle John couldn’t have got any better wife than he did
with Aunt Agnes.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - He used to make cherry pit wine.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - He would make it out of pits and some cherries too.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - It was potent stuff!
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - At one time, I had August’s “thunder mug” but I don’t have
it anymore. The ceramic was kind of checked in the bottom and it was
very well used. I often wondered how they got down to use it since
it was so low to the ground. I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from
Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Our Grandma Heiden was very quiet and I don’t really
remember much about either of them. They spoke mostly German around
the house so that we never got to know them very well.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I never got to know Grandma and Grandpa Heiden but Grandma
Rambow always spoke German.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I think she could speak some English but not much.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - She used to come and pat us on the head and give us a sugar
cookie. But that was about all.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Art used to tell that you would go to the Rambow’s house
and sit quietly on the couch all night.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We had orders before we got there to behave. Take a cookie
whether you want it or not
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - You were not to ask for anything but you would take it if
offered.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - She made the best white sugar cookies! She rolled them up
real thin and boy they were good! I often wonder what happened to
the recipe books she had.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Here is one of the funniest things I heard my dad say. We
went to church on Sunday and we were getting into the car when Norm Capaul, the funeral director, came along.
Norm said, “I’ll be seeing you Mr. Heiden.” Pa replied, “I hope I’ll
be seeing you too!”
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - It’s amazing what you can think of when you look back. I
am doing a memory book for my grandson, Jeff. You can’t always
remember what happened yesterday but you can remember things from
long ago.
I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from
Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.
Ralph Heiden - Did Grandma and Grandpa (William C. and Mary) do much with their
brothers and sisters?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel -
Uncle John and Aunt Agnes and them did a lot together. Agnes
was a big help to Ma. They would do a lot of sewing together.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - They would cut down coats the older ones so they would fit
the younger ones in the family.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel -
Uncle John Kosters would come down a lot too. They would go
to church and then come over to the house for dinner.
Ralph Heiden - Did they speak German to each other?
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Sometimes when they were saying something they did not want
the kids to hear! Then they would laugh loudly, “Ha, ha, ha!.” We
always wondered what they had said.
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - They did not go back and forth too much with
Uncle
Ernest and Aunt Annie. I don’t remember Uncle Ernest’s family coming
to church very often either.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Someone who would remember would be
Marv Koster
(right). He
remembers a lot and you need to get together with him, Ralph.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel -
Lena (Koster) was the only girl in Pa’s family.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Talking about the cherry soup. Whenever I mention that to
someone, they act like I have rocks in my head but it was very good.
Ralph Heiden - What did the family do on the farm during a typical year?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - In the fall, Pa would tell us that when we got home from
school we would have to help pick up the potatoes he would dig that
day. In the spring, we would go out and pull the wild mustard out of
the wheat fields.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - In one bedroom upstairs we had some red material, it wasn’t
carpet, on the floor that was put down with little tacks. They had a
special tool to take up all the tacks. Then you took it out in the
yard and “beat the daylight” out of it with a carpet beater. After
it aired out a bit, you took it back upstairs and tacked it down
again.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - We used to have those rugs made in strips and sow them all
together. We would take them all apart and then sow them back
together after they were cleaned.
Ralph Heiden - Who built the house at 8861 Dixon Road which became the
family homestead?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Grandpa Heiden (August) was a mason and he built on the
dining room and kitchen after Pa bought it. Before moving there,
they lived down on South Custer Road at the Abby Place and the
Albright place.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Abby’s was right on the corner where Dixon Road and South
Custer come together.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel -
Edna and
Carl and
Leo went to school down there at the King
School. They rented those houses before moving to Dixon Road.
Ralph Heiden - Did Lee and Lu live where Jesse Barnes lived?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - No I don’t think so. Carl lived there. I don’t think Mary
Lou lived there.
Ralph Heiden - What about the doctor? Did he make rounds and stop by the
farm periodically?
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I remember Dr. Kelly. You had to call him to come out. He
didn’t come to our house very often.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Pa would get those kidney stones. He would just lay over the
couch in such misery. The doctor would come and give him a shot. He
would just be sick the next day and lay around.
Ralph Heiden - Everyone always mentions the
Heiden Family Reunions. How did
they get started?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They took place as long as I can remember.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Caroline Brown might have movies about them. Bill Brown’s
wife. She was Caroline Laas.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - The
Laas’ were cousins from Toledo. She is the same age that
I am.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - They had a movie camera and always took movies at the
reunion. The one I remember best is the year after Mildred died,
they brought the movies of Mildred walking around with Sally.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I don’t remember Grandpa and Grandma Heiden coming to the
reunions.
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel & Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - The people from Toledo got the reunions started. The
Burmeisters and the
Laas’.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I asked Caroline how we are related to them. The only thing
she could figure out was that maybe our grandparents were cousins or
something.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - How come Berlins came?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - She was married to a
Laas.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Aunt Rika (Laas) Burmeister
(right) stood up for me.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - She was a
Laas.
She was a sister to
John,
Herman and
Louis Laas.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Where were you born, Mary Lou?
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - On Dixon Road at the Wakefield place.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Where Betty and Rachel lived?
I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from
Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - No, there was an old house down by the ditch that crosses
the road east of Ma and Pa’s farm. Edna and Henry (left) lived there when
they were first married.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Heinie Heiden lived there for a while too. And, the Weaver
kids, Arthur and Gilbert.
Mary Lou - That house burned down. There is a new house there on the
north side of the road now.
Ralph Heiden - What kind of farm did Grandma and Grandpa have while you
were growing up?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We raised pigs to butcher.
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Ma raised geese. She made us all a feather bed from the
down.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I got flogged by a goose once. Believe me, they could hurt
you!
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Aunts and Uncles would get together pull out the down and
put them in bags and dry them for mattresses. Feather beds.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Remember how we used to be afraid to get the eggs out from
under the old setting hens? They’d pick you on the hands if you
reached in for the eggs.
Pat (Bicking) Klass - We would throw corncobs at them to get them off the nest. Aunt Helen would say, “What’s the matter with you?” and reach in and pull
them out with her hand.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - We would take a stick and hold their head down and then
reach in to take the eggs from the nest.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They were old setting hens and they did not want to get off
the nest. There were always a few that just wouldn’t get off the
nest for you.
Pat (Bicking) Klass - We would beg Helen to let us help get the eggs. Then the next
day, she would wonder what all those corncobs were doing in the
nests.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - You always had a nasty rooster out there too that would come
after you. You’d be scared stiff.
I remember Ma would kill the chickens. She hold them down and take
the ax and cut off the heads and then dunk them in hot water. Then
she’d pick the feathers off them and we’d have to pull out those
darn pinfeathers. She’d cut them all up and soak them in some sort of saltwater over
night. The next morning, boy, that would make the best chicken! They
don’t taste like that now.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - My dad used to cut the heads off like that on Saturday.
Then he’d let them run around and us kids would laugh. Then he’d dip
them in hot water and come in and dump them on the table. That was
the end of his part. It was Mother’s job from then on.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - When we first got married, Bill noticed that William and
Helen always had chickens in the freezer. He said, “Why don’t we put
some chickens in our freezer too?”
I said, “Oh, I don’t know about that.”
William asked Bill, “You want some chickens? Come on out next week.
I’ve got some and you can have them.”
So we went out there. William started to cut off the heads and stuck
them into a sleeve thing that held them while they bled out. And the
chickens were bleeding and squirming around.
Before long, William turned around and said, “Where’s Bill?”
Bill had disappeared around the corner of the shed. We went around
to find him and he said, “My God, I’ll never eat another chicken in
my life!”
He never talked about putting chickens in the freezer after that.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - That’s the city kid in him.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That smell when you put them in the hot water was enough
to put anyone off chicken.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Talking about chickens. They have those Amish chickens every
once in a while at the store and they taste like real chickens like
we used to have on the farm.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I bet they’re corn fed. And they let them run in the
field too.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I haven’t been able to find them since. They don’t have any
chemicals and stuff fed to them.
Pat (Bicking) Klass - It’s amazing we eat anything anymore.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Ma would take the chickens in the house and light a rolled
up newspaper and singe off the remaining feathers.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We had guinea hens too.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - They were like watchdogs. They would start to “holler” and
make loud noises that would chase animals away.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - The best time was when Pa would kill a pig. We would have
fresh liver that night. Boy that was fresh and delicious! They would
slice it real thin and they would make that dark, black gravy. Wilma
never liked it but I loved that dark gravy!
I tried buying liver at Baisley’s and I brought it home but it was
nothing like what we used to have when we lived on the farm.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I would just hate it when I knew they were going to butcher
because I would come home and they would have liver for supper.
That is the only time I can remember that Ma bent her rules.
Normally, we were expected to eat whatever was put on the table.
But, I hated liver so much and almost got sick so finally she said,
“Oh, all right, I’ll fry you an egg and don’t act so foolish.”
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Art used to talk about catching the blood from the pigs as
they butchered them. They would make blood cheese and sausage.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - That was something I could never eat. I don’t remember them
making it very much.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We were talking the other day about “souse” (spelling?) and
head cheese and those things.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They also made that apple stuff with the cracklings and
things when they butchered.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - That was from frying out the lard. They mixed that with
apples.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa always made the mettwurst out in the smokehouse.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Boy, that is one thing that you cannot buy. Not that tastes
like that did. Carl was the last one who could make it taste like
that.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Remember all the wine and cider barrels in the basement?
They’d tell us to go down and siphon off some of the wine with a
hose once in a while.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I can still smell that wine down there. Remember when we
got drunk that time?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We siphoned off too much. They were playing cards and they
told us to go down and get a pitcher of wine. We would just empty
off all the glasses before refilling them. Pretty soon we were.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember how mad they got?
Ralph Heiden - Was everything you used at home mostly homemade?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Everything. I don’t ever remember buying any canned goods
back then.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - We used to have a grocery wagon come by every Monday. A guy
named Jake Myers traveled around from his store in Strasburg (Michigan).
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - He had a big truck that he would drive around the
countryside selling his goods.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Ma would go out to the road when he would come by with a
basket of eggs and trade them for groceries.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I remember peaking over the edge of the truck and looking at
the box of candies. I don’t know what you would get for a basket of
eggs. Maybe some somersausage.
Ma and Pa would go to town, to Monroe, once in a while and come home
with link balognas in buns with mustard on them.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - That would be our Saturday night supper.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Art used to say, “Give me a tase of one of them der buns.”
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Pa went to the mill with the wheat to get flour.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - He would trade bags of wheat for bags of flour.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Then he went to Heck’s Market right across the street.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I think it’s Schroeder’s now.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa would also buy peanuts. Peanuts in the shell which he
just loved.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That must be where my Dad (Leo Heiden) got his love for peanuts in the
shell too.
Ralph Heiden - How many of the 13 kids
were around the house at the same time during those early years?
  Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - When I was born, I already had nephews.
Walter (left) and
Lavern Berns (right) were born before I was.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - She was an Aunt when she was born.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden -
Bob was born in May after I was born in
April.
Lila and Ma were pregnant at the same time.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel -
Hilda,
Mildred and
Leo all got married in
1928. Jeanie was born in 1927.
Mildred - That’s
the way with Gail. She really never considered Harold as a
brother because he was married and out of the house long before
she was born.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I remember Helma and Herb’s shivery. That was impressive
to me.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They went to Indiana to get married but when they came home,
a bunch of relatives and neighbors said, “We’re coming tonight so
have some beer ready.”
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I still have the receipt from Jim Malone’s in Ida where Herb
went and got the beer. It was a dollar something a case. He got beer
and candy and pop for the kids.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember they had the old metal wash tubs that they were
banging on to make noise?
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - You always had to be careful because they would threatened
to take the bride “for a ride” in the truck.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Did they take you for a ride?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - No they didn’t!
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - You should have heard the noise.
John Eipperle put something
on his exhaust pipe that made the pipes “whistle” real loud. I
remember everyone in the house just holding their ears. They made so
much noise!
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - What year did you get married, Helma?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - 1938
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - So, I would have been 9 years old but I can remember it
very well.
Pat (Bicking) Klass - The only place I ever saw a shivery was on The Waltons on T.V.
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - They had one for
Mildred and John Eipperle too. That was ten
years before Herb and I got married though.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They had those big tubs of beer and everybody came and
drank. They just had to have a party.
Word must have passed around the neighborhood and they just showed
up at a certain time. You had to have some food and drink ready.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Did you know they were coming?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Yes. It was on the very first night back from being married.
We got back from
Hilda’s on Sunday and the shivery was on Monday
night.
All the relatives from Toledo were invited too. The house was
full. The yard was full. Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - People would make all kinds of noise banging on pots and
tubs.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Yes, and then the newlyweds would have to show themselves on
the porch.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Guess you’d say we were kind of a party family.
Pat (Bicking) Klass - At the reunions, I remember having those big horse troughs and
everyone would be in there fishing around for beer and pop in the
icy water.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - At
Lester and Lila’s shivery, I remember them passing out
drinks and fresh fried cakes.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Did
Lee and Lou have one?
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I don’t remember, I wasn’t born yet!
Ralph Heiden - Many people mentioned the Christmas Eve’s at Grandma and
Grandpa’s house. What do you remember about those parties?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - After church everybody would come over and people would be
all over the house, sitting in the bedrooms and everywhere. There
were so many people in the house all at once on that night!
 Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - I used to wonder why Grandma
(right holding Bruce Eipperle) would set quietly in the
background during those parties. Well, after I had all my children
and grandchildren home at once, I could begin to understand. It gets
so hectic.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - It got to be too much. Pa went down to the basement one time
and put an extra brace under the floor because he was afraid that so
many people being there at once would collapse the floor.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - The men used to try to play cards out in the dining room and
the kids would race around the whole house. They would tear around
that table. You could just see Pa get frustrated but he never said
anything.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I remember Helen saying that the next morning she would
find half-eaten sandwiches down beneath the furniture.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - There would be food everywhere and wrapping paper wadded all
over the place.
Christmas Day was never anything special for us. People would go to
the other side of their families for visits. We would be all by
ourselves, cleaning up the mess and returning chairs we borrowed
from the church.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I remember Grandpa got plenty of shirts, pipes and
tobacco for presents at Christmas.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Ma would sit there in the living room and unwrap her gifts.
She and Pa both got a present from everybody who came. The children
all drew names and then got a present from whoever picked their
name. Sometimes your godparent gave you a present too.
We were lucky, we got an orange and some candy from church.
Hilda
and Carl
stood up for me so they would each give me a present and
that was about it.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I had seven godchildren to buy presents for each year. Five
girls and two boys.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I remember one time Ma and Pa gave me a harmonica for
Christmas.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - When we were young, we would usually get something like a
sled or a wagon for all the brothers and sisters to use.
 Ralph Heiden - Everyone would go to the service at
St
Matthew Lutheran Church on Christmas Eve. The kids were part of a Christmas pageant
play. What do you remember about those?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Yeah, my heart was always beating like crazy before we had
to stand up in front of everyone and speak our lines. I was so
scared to do that sometimes.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I remember when they had the real candles on the tree in the
church. Carl Miller stood nearby with a fishing pole that had a wet
sponge attached to it. He was supposed to put the candles out when
they burned down close to the tree.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We used to have candles on the tree at home too but Pa would
never allow us to light them.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa was always concerned about fires in the house.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - When we lived with
Grandma and Grandpa, I can remember
having to come down to the living room whenever there was a thunder
storm.
|
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - He was always afraid that he wouldn’t be able to get us down
from upstairs if the house was ever hit by lightning. So, in the
middle of the night, if a storm came up, we had to get dressed and
come down and sit together in the living room until the storm was
over.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We had to get dressed since we were not allowed to come
downstairs in our night clothes. That’s the way us kids were raised.
When Marie got married and the first storm came along, she woke
Brick up in the middle of the night and said, “Get your pants on and
get downstairs.” He came into the living room and asked, “What’s wrong? Where are we
going?” Marie said, “Don’t be smart! We’re not going anyplace. It’s
storming.” Brick said, “Oh, for crying out loud.” and went back to bed.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - It seems like we used to have more serious storms back then
too.
 Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember the balls of lightning that would come right
through the telephone lines and into the house?
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - It did that once when we lived at Suchik’s. The lightning
came right through the phone and blew it clear across the kitchen.
It was a wonder that one of the girls wasn’t talking on the phone at
the time.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Edna used to be very concerned about electrical storms. I
used to stay up there with them sometimes.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That was probably because they didn’t have any electric
lights. They just had a kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - When Henry (Rambow)
(right) would blow that lamp out, it went pitch black in
the house. You could hear the sheep “baa” out in the barnyard in the
night. I used to lay there in the back bedroom saying to myself, “I
hope it gets to be morning soon!” That was really scary.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - How about the time while
Helen, Wilma, Marie and Helma were
all still at home. Helma and Marie went out on dates one night.
Helma and Wilma were supposed to sleep together and Helen, Marie and
I shared a bed. I always had to sleep in the middle. We were scaredy cats so we talked Wilma into sleeping with us. When
the others came home, Marie climbed in too so we ended up with four
of us packed like sardines in one bed and Helma by herself in the
other.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel -
Carl,
Leo and
Lester were working at other farms much of the
time while I was growing up.
Hilda
(Fuller) and
Mildred
(Eipperle) worked in Monroe and
stayed at Uncle Fred Rambow’s during the week. They would come home
on weekends. We all had our chores around home. I don’t ever remember Ma washing
the dishes. We all did our share of ironing too.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I had to fill the woodbox with firewood for the stove in the
kitchen.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - The boys would do the farm work. The girls never did too much
in the fields. We would help out once in a while.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Ma was always there though. She did the baking.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking -
Art worked over to Knapp’s farms.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel -
Carl worked down to Rath’s. Wherever the boy’s worked, they
stayed for room and board too.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - One thing that I hated was when Pa would let the cows out to
graze along the ditches near the road. I was supposed to watch them
and I was scared to death that they would get hit by a car on the
road.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We had to pick raspberries, peas and strawberries from the
garden.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - We used to hoe weeds out of the corn rows for 5 cents a
row. When I would accidentally slice off a stalk of corn, I would
prop it up in place praying that Grandpa wouldn’t see it.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We thought 5 cents a row was going to be a lot but the rows
ran all the way back to the woods. You got to the end and you would
say to yourself, “Ugh, there’s another 5 cents.” You would make
about 15 or 20 cents a day at that rate!
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - We used to pick raspberries down to Brossia’s for 3 cents a
quart.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - At Spewak’s we would pick beans and at Polley’s we would
pick strawberries. I don’t remember how we got to those places but
we did.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I can remember picking 80 some quarts once and I only made
two dollars and forty cents. You guys would pick over 100 quarts and
get over $3.00. Our hands would be all dirty and stained and then at noon, you had
to eat your sandwich from a bag. It was all day long in the hot sun.
Finally, Ma said, “You don’t have to do that anymore if you don’t
want to.”
Ralph Heiden - What effect did the Great Depression have on the Heiden
family?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - It didn’t seem to impact us a lot at home on the farm.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - When I started at River Raisin Paper Company in 1929 or 30,
I got 18 cents an hour.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I had to pay 25 cents a day for a ride to high school and
some weeks it was awfully tough to come up with that $1.25.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We didn’t have buses in those days. If you went to high
school, you had to find a ride with someone.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Viola Chambers used to give me a ride. Burkes across the
river used to drive too.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I had Bonnie Zorn take me to Dundee.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Art used to work for a dollar a day plus dinner during
those times.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Roy Salow worked for us for $30 a month.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - And he probably didn’t have anything to spend it on either.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Ask Ralph why he liked to work for Herb bailing hay and
straw in the summers.
Ralph Heiden - For Helma’s great meals! She would put out a wonderful
spread every day at noon when we would come in from the field.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Helma was the best cook!
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - She taught me how to clean house.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I stayed with her one summer when Larry was little. She
taught me how to cook and how to make good gravy.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Well, I learned how to cook and clean at home. I used to
help Ma a lot. Of course, when Jeanie was born, I was 17 years old
and I was practically her mother.
Ma had a heart problem by then and had to take it easier. That’s the
reason Jeanie was the only one of the thirteen kids that was born in
the hospital. She was six weeks early and Ma was weak afterwards for
a while. Jeanie was delivered by Dr. Douglas in St. Vincent’s
Hospital in Toledo.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Is that what she had, I thought it had something to do with
her kidneys.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - No, it was her heart.
Ralph Heiden - What did Grandpa Heiden do for a living? Didn’t he work as a
carpenter in addition to farming?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - He worked for
Henry Milhan as a carpenter sometimes. I know
he helped build a couple of houses over on Lewis Avenue as you go
into Ida. The Sheid house and one for the Feinauers, I think. He
also worked on
Ed Miller’s place too.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I remember them building that front porch on the house. They
laid the blocks and built it form the ground up.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa didn’t get a lot of schooling but he was very good with
math.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - He only went through the sixth grade at Bridge School. But,
if he were going to put barley in the bin, he could sit down and
figure out how many bushels there were to go in. He could figure out
most anything.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - When we had math problems from school, he could always help
us out. People were intelligent without necessarily having to go to
school for a long time.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I only went to the Bridge School for seven years. When I
started there, Harrison Dentel was the teacher. All the classes were
together in the same room. I was the only one in the first grade so
he moved me up with the second graders. So, when it came to the end
of the year, he passed me on to the third grade. So I kept going and
graduated from the eighth grade when I was thirteen.
Ralph Heiden - The Heidens overall seem like a pretty sharp bunch of
people. I haven’t found too many who are down and out.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Wilma was third in her high school class.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Jeanie was Salutatorian of hers.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Yeah, I had to work real hard to beat Wilma. Then, when I
had to give the speech at graduation, I was wishing I had been
third.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Professor Ayris said he thought I should have gotten
Salutatorian because the girl who got it had transferred in from
another school. He said that the records from that school said that
she had gotten all A’s and there was nothing he could do about. He
wanted to make me class Historian so I could give a speech too but I
said, “No thank you!”
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - When Wilma was in the fourth grade, she won the county
spelling bee against everyone, even the eighth graders and won all
those medals.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I remember the day of an assembly in Monroe High School
auditorium when they asked, “Is Wilma Heiden in the audience?” I
stood up and they started clapping but the announcer said, “Where is
she? I can’t see her.” Finally, I had to get up on my chair and
everybody started cheering.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Harrison Dentel wanted me to get into the spelling bee
because Wilma had won it but I was too bashful for that stuff.
Ralph Heiden - A lot of the Heidens went to Bridge School. It went from
kindergarten to eighth grade. How many students would there be at
the school in the average year?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Oh, about fifty or sixty. Harrison Dental would be the only
teacher.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We were all in the same room together. Everybody would be
sitting at their desks and he would call up one class at a time to
work on their lessons.
That used to help the younger ones, I think. We would sit back there
and, when we were in the second grade, we would get done with our
work and then listen to the third grade go through their lesson. By
the time you got there the next year, you pretty well knew most of
it already.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - By the time we got to the seventh or eighth grade, we
would be allowed to help with the first graders and teach them.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I can still remember that old Regulator clock on the wall.
It made a loud “Tick! Tick! Tick” sound!
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - The teacher had a length of rubber hose in his desk. And,
boy, he would use it too!
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - He would be teaching another class up front in the room but,
if you turned around to talk to someone, he would spot you. All of a
sudden, “Whop!”, he would snap you behind the head with the hose.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - He wore those big, black high top shoes and he would walk on
the balls of his feet.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - He always tiptoed around.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We always called him, “Tippy toes!”
Ralph Heiden - What kind of activities did they have at Bridge School. Did
they have plays or recitals?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I was in a play one time. I got up and said, “We will now
sing Fiddely Dee for YOU!” During practices, the teacher would
always tell me to emphasize the “you” at the end.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking & Norma "Jeanie" Heiden -
Fiddley Dee
Fiddley Dee
The fly has married the bumble bee.
The fly to the bee
Will you marry me?
And live with me,
Sweet bumble bee.
Fiddley Dee
Fiddley Dee
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Boy, you’re memory is still good to remember all that stuff!
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - And then we’d sing The Old Grandfather’s Clock.
(Everyone singing together) -
“And it stopped short,
Never to go again.
When the old man died.”
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - We had parent-teachers meetings way back then too. I
remember I was in the second grade and we all had to get up and say
a nursery rhyme. I played the part of Jack Sprat in the rhyme about
Jack Sprat could eat no fat.
That is when Leo gave me the nickname, Jack. He had a nickname for
everyone.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - So that’s where that came from, I remember him calling
you Jack.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We always had music at school. Harrison Dentel played the
piano and we had the old Golden Song Books.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I still have a copy that we bought at a yard sale. We used
to sing out of that every morning at Bridge School.
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I have the 100th Anniversary Book for Bridge School if you
would like to see it sometime, Ralph.
Ralph Heiden - When you reached the end of the eighth grade, then what?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - People back then always thought that 8th grade was enough
schooling for anyone.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - You didn’t have to go on to high school in those days. I was
the first one in our family to go.
Harrison Dentel came to the house when I finished the 8th grade. He
said, “She’s only twelve years old. What is she going to do here at
home? She should go on to high school.”
Pa didn’t like the idea at all.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Art wanted to go on to high school so bad too. But when he
was in 8th grade, they wouldn’t even let him go to Ida to take the
entrance exam.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They thought going to high school was foolishness. But
finally, Harrison Dental talked and talked to them about Wilma and
they gave in.
Then, when my time came several years later, I had to beg and beg.
Pa said, “All Wilma learned up there was foolishness. Going to
parties and such foolishness.” But, they finally gave in and I got
to go.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I was in the class play my junior and senior years.
Elizabeth Johnson lived across the river and she would come to pick
me up to take me to practice. When it was time for the play, they
asked if my mother and dad were coming. I had to say, “No.” I
wouldn’t have thought about asking them. Pa would have thought that
it was really a lot of nonsense.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Back when I would have gone, you would have had to pay
tuition to go to high school. The pastor’s kids were going to go and
I could have gone with them but I would have had to walk to the
parsonage to catch the ride every day.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Our road was mud at that time and we often had to walk to
the corner to get a ride somewhere. You could usually get down to
where Henry and Edna lived.
When I started working at River Raisin Paper, I rode with John
Beaudrie and I had to meet him down at the corner at 6:30 every
morning.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I remember one Christmas Eve, everybody who came over for
the party got stuck on the road. They had to get the tractor out and
pull everybody out of the mud.
Ralph Heiden - Did you get snowed in very often back then?
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Oh, I can remember walking down the ditches that were
full of snow.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We would still walk to the
Bridge School no matter how deep
the snow was then. It used to get a crust on top and it would be up
as high as the fence posts. We would walk across that and have a lot
of fun. There were always a bunch of us on the way to and from school each
day. There would be
Walter
(left) and
Lavern Berns,
(right) Lloyd Rath, Junior
Barnaby and Harry Karney. There would be a whole gang of us. I
remember hitting Junior Barnaby over the head with my lunch
bucket. He fell down and I thought I really hurt him but he was
O.K.
Ralph Heiden - Was the house nice and warm in the winters?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Ho, ho, ho! Upstairs where we slept, if you left a glass of
water out overnight, it would be frozen in the morning!
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That’s why we often slept three to a bed.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Those ceilings would slope down near the bed. You could
reach up some nights and scratch the frost off the inside surface.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We had a big furnace in the basement that burned coal.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Then there was one little register or actually just a hole
in the floor where the heat was supposed to come up through from
below.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - You didn’t fool around getting dressed in the morning.
Sometimes we would run downstairs by the radiator and get dressed
there.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I remember sitting on that old pot and it would be ice
cold.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - You didn’t know if you could go or not!
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Those were the good old days.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - But we didn’t know any different. Everybody we knew lived
the same way so it was all right.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I went to the dentist one time recently and I asked him what
kind of toothpaste he would recommend? He asked, “What did you use
when you were young?” I said we used backing soda or salt. I told
him we lived on a farm and that’s what we had.
 Ralph Heiden -
There is an old story about the Heiden farmstead being located
on an “Indian burial ground.”
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Back where the old hickory
tree was near the lane was supposed to be an Indian burial
ground according to Pa. It was before you got to the ditch. They
used to find a lot of arrowheads and things there all the time.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I wonder why nobody ever
keeps that stuff.
Ralph Heiden - Carol said she used to have a bunch of
arrowheads and things but she has lost track of where they are
now.
 Ralph Heiden - There are trees planted in even spacing
along the river bank, didn’t Grandpa plant those?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa planted those but I don’t
know when.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - You say they bought the
house in 1909? I thought Great Grandpa built the house.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa bought the place from
Meyers.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Stella Graf’s grandma and
grandma built that house.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I forget what Pa said they
had to pay for the farm. I think it was about $75 per acre or
something. It was 140 acres.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - It is 141 acres. They always
had to go down to Stella’s folks, the Langs, to pay the mortgage
payments.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They must have bought it on
land contract then or they wouldn’t have had to pay the Langs.
Afterwards, they got a loan from Monroe County Bank. I was still
in high school when they finally paid it off. That would have
been in the early 1940's, maybe 1941 or so.
Sometimes they would have to
borrow money to pay the taxes. Fortunately, Gilbert Oyer at the
bank knew all those farmers and he knew they were good for it.
He’d loan them the money for the taxes but then they would not
be getting any of the principal down on the loan that year.
Ralph Heiden - I have some
old property tax receipts that my great grandfather,
August Heiden, paid from the late 1800's to about 1911.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Where did they live
then?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Over on South Custer where
Uncle John and Aunt
Agnes
(Brockman) Heiden
lived.
Ralph Heiden - The property tax form says that
August Heiden's
property on South Custer Road was bordered on the north by Jacob
Mathis, on the east by George Rath and William D. Miller, and on
the west by Ernst "Ernest" Heiden. In some of the older
receipts, it says they were bordered on the north by W. Stock,
on east by C. Rath and on the west by K. Opfermann.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - K. Opfermann?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Killian Opfermann would be
Frank’s dad.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Did William F. and Helen
ever have a survey done on the home farm?
Ralph Heiden - Yes, they wrote in their letter that
they have a copy of the title search.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - That’s what I do for a
living. I’ve been doing it since April 3, 1946 and worked until
April 30, 1989. Now I work part-time at it.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We’ll have to have a big
party next year to celebrate Jeanie working 50 years.
Ralph Heiden - There are a bunch of old receipts in the material
Aunt Agnes
gave me back in the early 70's. One is from a Dr. Francis Alter, an
eye doctor from Toledo. It is for 1923 for
Mrs. August Heiden. She
had an eye examination for 5 dollars, lenses 12 dollars and eye
treatment 3 dollars.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I can’t imagine the Heidens going all the way to Toledo for
an eye doctor back then. They must have had some money. I always
thought the Heidens were poor.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - There weren’t too many eye doctors around then.
 Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - See where we inherited our bad eyes from?
Now, where did you get those papers and receipts?
Ralph Heiden - From Aunt Agnes twenty some years ago.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Are you going to put all that stuff in the book?
Ralph Heiden - No, but I will pick out some of the more important items and
put them in. For the German documents, I will put the German version
on one side and then the English translation on the opposite page so
people can see what they said.
What I would like to have in this is everything people want to share
so people in the future can find out these things. Like you were
saying earlier, we often look back and think, “Boy, I wish I had
asked them about this. But, now, it is too late.” Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I always had short legs and I could always remember Ma would
get Pa pants that would fit his waist but they would always be too
long. She would say to him, “You don’t have any legs!”
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I always had short legs and I could always remember Ma would
get Pa pants that would fit his waist but they would always be too
long. She would say to him, “You don’t have any legs!”
Ralph Heiden (right) - That must be where I get my proportions. I am 6 foot three
and I only wear a 31 inch inseam which is pretty short for someone
my height.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - You’ve got all your height above your waist.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - You’ve got your dad’s proportions.
Pat (Bicking) Klass - I’m long waisted too and I have a heck of a time with clothes
sometimes. An empire waist on me was nothing.
Ralph Heiden - My generation has some memories of our grandparents but,
like I said in the letter, Grandpa was 74 when I was born so there
is a lot of his life I do not remember.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - He was 52 and Ma was 49 when I was born! I don’t remember Ma
and Pa without grey hair.
Pat (Bicking) Klass - I remember Grandpa more than Grandma. We were up to their
house to play more than anything.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - The kids weren’t up there to talk with their grandparents.
 Ralph Heiden - What illnesses did Grandma have toward the end of her life?
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I think it was mostly her heart.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Her death certificate calls it arteriosclerosis. Hardening
of the arteries.
Ralph Heiden - I vaguely remember something about a lung problems.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Yes, she had bronchitis.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Her one lung was almost completely calcified.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Seems like she would get pneumonia about every year.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - They had to put a tube in her lung once to draw out fluids.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I took her to Ann Arbor one time and they came out and said,
“Your mother has one lung completely calcified and the other one is
starting to go. I would say your mother has about 6 months to live.”
Ralph Heiden - When was that?
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - It was about 15 years before she died!
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I took her to a Toledo heart clinic. When he got done
examining her, he called me in the office. He showed me an EKG and
it had a real thin little line. He said, “Now that string, if that
breaks, she is gone. So don’t let her do much work.”
After that, she would lie on the davenport a lot and avoid the heavy
work.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - She would get awfully tired so easy.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Sometimes she would want to bake cookies but she would get
them started and then be too tired to finish them. But that was 15
or 20 years before she died.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - She evidently had pleurisy or something and every year she
would get a cold. And it seemed like her lungs never cleared up.
That calcified in there.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Remember they tapped her side and put a tube in to drain off
that excess.
Ralph Heiden - I had a similar problem when I was 18. My lung collapsed and
I had to have a tube inserted to drain off the excess fluids.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I can remember that Dr. Marin would come over when she had
the colds. He would start her off on sulfa drugs. Then a brown spot
she had on her face would turn a bright red. Then he would switch to
something else. Then he would switch to terramycin and finally clear
it up.
I asked him why he always started with something else before
switching to terramycin which always worked. Why not start right out
with terramycin?
He said, “Well, I always start with the weaker stuff before moving
up to the more powerful drugs.”
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Whatever happened to the woods that were on the back side of
the farm?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - As far as I know they’re still there.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Pa used to go back there and get morel mushrooms and
blackberries.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Those mushrooms were great! He used to get only 7 or 8 of
them so each of us would get half of one fried up in butter.
Ralph Heiden - People always mention that Grandpa liked to fish with a cane
pole back on the river. What did he catch?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Carp! Rock bass, pike and suckers.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - He tried to smoke some carp one time but it didn’t work out
very well. Bill Cominess told him if you catch a carp, you should
dig a hole in the yard to plant a tree and then bury the carp with
it. Then, eat the horse manure you were going to use for fertilizer
instead. You’d be better off in the long run!
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I got some pictures of Bill and Pa playing cards together.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember old Charley Cominess when he had that small
house trailer he lived in?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Yes, that was how we got fleas one time! Pa went over there
and gave him a hair cut with our clippers. Then he came home and
gave some of us a trimming and boy what a time we had getting rid of
those things in our hair!
Ralph Heiden - We were talking earlier about the
I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from
Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.
Laas ’ and Mary Lou has a
picture of some of them. Mary and
William Carl Heiden,
Aunt
Libbie Laas,
Aunt Emma
I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from
Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.
Laas formerly
Ullrich.
 Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Who are they? I don’t understand what relation they are
to us.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They’re Pa’s cousins. That’s where
Alice (Laas) Berlin
(left) comes in.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We always called them “Aunt and Uncle.” Uncle Will
I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from
Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.
Laas was
from Texas. He was the “rich” one in the family. Who were the
Paulsens?
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - They were relations to Aunt Emma
I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from
Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.
Laas, I think. They were
some of the leaders when it came to starting the annual Heiden
reunion.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Lucille [Lehmkuhl] was a
Burmeister wasn’t she?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Louie and Aunt Rikie
Burmeister, she was a
I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from
Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.
Laas too. Lucille
had a sister, Mildred, who died of infantile paralysis. No, Lucille
was the one on crutches.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Her sister, Florence
Burmeister, was the Paulsen. She
married a Paulsen. They used to come out from Toledo and they were
the ones who made the lemonade at the reunion.
Ralph Heiden - I always wondered why
Grape existed. By the time I was
around, there was only a general store there any more.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Oh, that’s were they used to have “Grape juice!” It was the
first electric generating plant there on the river. It’s were we got
our electricity from at first.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - There was a quarry there too. The Seitz’s had something to
do with that and then they had a big trucking company. They went to
the Bridge School and were sort of “big shots” there in organizing
the 100th Anniversary celebration
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Walter Berns has a book all about
Grape and the area
around there.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - The family that lived in
Grape were called the “Sourwines”
but it’s spelled Saurweins. That’s the truth!.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Was our Grandma Heiden (Mrs.
August Heiden ) a very “jolly”
type person, Helma?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - She was very quite. Most of the people back then were that
way, I think.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - And they seemed to be very old when they reached fifty or
sixty back then.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Norma Miller remembered that Grandma Rambow was a crabby
old lady.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - She was very strict evidently. We used to get instruction
before we went there that we were to sit quietly and not ask for
anything.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I remember going to Aunt Minnie Rambow’s and she would be
sitting there reading the Bible. You didn’t dare say a word until
she was done with her scripture.
(Note: Uncle Will and Aunt Minne Rambow were Mary (Rambow) Heiden’s brother
and sister. They lived together through their adult lives at the
family farm on South Custer Rd.)
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - One time Lou and I were wall papering at their house.
Uncle Will Rambow came out of the kitchen and stood in the doorway
because he had dinner ready.
Lou said to me, “We might as well go home now because he won’t let
her eat until we leave.”
So, although we had only one strip of paper to hang to finish the
room, we left for the day and came back the next day so they could
eat their dinner.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That was the quietest house I was ever in, I remember.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I used to have to stay there all summer. That was torture.
That’s why I am such a quiet person. (Laughter)
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Tick Tok, Tick Tok, that old clock they had was so loud
in the quiet of the room.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - At ten minutes to nine every night, Uncle Will would get the
Bible and hand it to Aunt Minnie. She would then read to him in
German until 9 o’clock. And I’d set there real still, never saying a
word.
When she was done, he would take the Bible and put it back on the
shelf. Without saying a word, he would go upstairs to bed. There
wasn’t any talking going on at all in the house.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - There wasn’t anything for them to do. They didn’t have a
radio or anything. After Grandma Rambow died, Herb and I used to go
down there to visit. Uncle Willie just loved to play cards. We would
have a real good time.
Edna and Henry used to go there and have a good time too. The two of
them were so used to just sitting there in the quiet by themselves.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - After Aunt Minnie died, Uncle Will finally got a
television.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - He had a dog that he used to fry two eggs for each day.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I would think that the Rambows and the Heidens came over
from Germany about the same time. They had some of the same type of
furniture. Remember that settee that you had, Helma? Grandpa and
Grandma Rambow had a similar piece of furniture in their house.
Maybe the two families knew each other before they came over from
Germany.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Well the Milhans all went to Bridge School way back then
too.
(Note: Mary (Rambow) Heiden’s mother was a Milhan.)
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Were the Rambows on the ship list that you got, Ralph?
Ralph Heiden - No but I don’t have the complete list. I only have a copy of
the first page with the details about the ship and then the page
that lists August
Heiden and his family. They were passengers number
304 through 308 so there were probably 400 or more people on the
boat. I will check it out.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - It is funny that they lost that baby, Meta and didn’t name
some other children after her later on.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Helma, is your middle name, Meta?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - No, its Nettie. That was Nettie Spohr, they were a neighbor
and she stood up for me. She and Aunt Emmie and Uncle Heinrich "Henry" Heiden
were my Godparents.
Ralph Heiden - Did
Sally Eipperle live at Grandpa’s house for a while? I
guess I never knew that.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Yes, she lived there about 7 years. John and her moved in
after her mother, Mildred’s, death. He used to listen to the radio
show, The Inner Sanctum, on Sunday nights and I would be so scared.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Everybody liked John.
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - John and Jeanie tte were always good to the folks too. They
would take them places in John’s car.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Ma and Pa never got to go anywhere so John took them up
north one time. He took them up to Cedarville. There was
Uncle Fred,
Aunt Emmie, Ma and Pa and Sally and me.
We had three flat tires on the way. We stayed in a tourist home just
over the straits. I don’t think there were any motels then. I slept
on the floor.
 Aunt Emmie brought a big can of Crisco oil to fry the fish in. They
all went fishing and we all ate our fill of fish that night.
On the way up, we stopped in Cheboygan and we had dinner in a
restaurant. I don’t remember Ma and Pa eating out very much around
home. Ma order ham and she was shocked at the size of the portion
they served her.
This would have been about 1940 or so. With all the people in the
car, no wonder we had so many flat tires.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember how fast John used to drive? I can remember John
and Mildred, and my Mother and Dad and I went down to Elkhart,
Indiana. Mother kept telling him to slow down!
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - The more she would holler, the faster he would go, too!
 Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - He took us up north one time and, by gosh, nobody was
going to get ahead of him! Jeanie tte was sitting in the back telling
him to slow down. I think I had the floor board nearly pushed
through trying to hold on.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember, Jeanie, when John took us down onto the river
ice pulling us on a sled behind his car?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - The river had to be frozen at least a foot thick before Pa
would let us skate on it. One Sunday while Ma and Pa were at
Grandma Rambow’s, John let us hook the sled behind his car. He would head
down the river and then he would slam on the breaks and yell, “Hang
on back there!”
The snow was flying in our faces and we were just airborne. We could
have been killed but it was a lot of fun!
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - He was something else!
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - We used to stay over to John and
Mildred’s when they
lived on
Dunbar Road and she would help us make popcorn and Kool Aid
or lemonade to sell out by the road.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - That was always a highlight when they would come over to
play cards. I would be sitting there and Mildred would tell me to
ask if I could go over to their place for a few days.
They took me to Woodland Beach which was a big deal in those days.
They had a week’s vacation and they used to stay down there at some
relative’s cottage. There was this girl about my age there and she said, “Let’s take a
walk around the lake.” I looked at the lake and thought I couldn’t
walk that far. So about half way around, I started back and I got
lost and I was praying and everything because I didn’t know where I
was. Finally, I got back and Mildred said, “Where have you been?” I just said, “Oh, out walking.” I was so darned scared but I didn’t
dare let on. We went out on a raft in
the lake and John asked if I could swim. I said, “No.” So, he
threw me in the water. He pulled me out quickly but I don’t like
the water ever since.
 Ralph Heiden - What did Mildred (Heiden) Eipperle die from?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - It was complications from pregnancy. She was only a couple
of months along and she got kidney poisoning.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - If they would have had the antibiotics they had now, she
would probably not have died.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I still remember her funeral. They had her for
visitations right in their house and I can still picture in my mind,
every chair in that room even though it happened in 1939.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Me too. They wanted me to go in there and touch her. I
remember Sally walking in and looking for her mother but she
couldn’t grasp what was going on. She was only two years old at the
time.
John came right home from the burial service and went into his room
and didn’t come out for a long time.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - We drove him home from the hospital after she had died.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - That was before sulfa drugs and penicillin. They told her to
drink lots of water to try to clear up her kidney problem. That was
about all they could do then.
 Ralph Heiden - Did any of you get to go to the dentist when you were young?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - We went to Dr. Benham in Dundee.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Boy, did we! He would be working on you and the farther
you would slouch down in the seat, the harder he’d come after you!
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I don’t ever remember going to the dentist when I was young.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - No, we didn’t go for the regular check ups or cleaning like
they do now. We went if you had a toothache and needed a tooth
pulled.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Ronnie is now going to Benham’s grandson who is a dentist
too over in Petersburg.
Ralph Heiden - One of the things a lot of people have mentioned is
Grandma’s cooking.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - At least three times a week, she would bake bread.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - She made the best sugar cookies!
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - One time Art went over to their house and he came back and
said, “Ma’s making bread today. Don’t you think you should go and
help her?”
I knew that he just wanted me to go and learn how to make bread like
she did. So, I said, “With all the experience she’s had, I don’t
think she needs my help!”
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - She would make donuts too. The ones I liked best where when
she would make those long stick, long-johns and frost them.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - A lot of the relatives from Toledo like the I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from
Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.
Laas’ and
Berlin’s would come on Sunday night just in time for dinner.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Always!
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They would come about 4 or 5 p.m. Ma would send us down in
the basement to get some more jars of preserved beef. Boy, that made
the best gravy! Or, she would make some pork sausages and fried
potatoes.
Ralph Heiden - You wonder now about how people make such a big deal out of
eating a pat of butter or having an occasional egg for breakfast
when back then, they ate the fattest meats and sausages.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Ma would save the grease from bacon. Then when you fried
potatoes you would use that grease.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Sometimes they would put that old lard directly onto bread
and eat it like a sandwich! And we worry about eating a little bit
of butter.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Art always talked about taking lard sandwiches to school.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I can remember coming home from school and taking a piece of
fresh bread and putting the bacon grease on it for a snack.
Pa used to eat mettwurst and eggs and spicanse for breakfast.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I can remember him cutting the fat off pork and eating
it. It would make us kids almost sick.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - On Easter Sunday, he would eat six boiled eggs for
breakfast. That was his traditional meal.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - During Lent, we could never go to a dance or to the movies
back then.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - You never got married during Lent either. There were a lot
of February weddings because you had to get married before or after
Lent.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Unless it was a shotgun wedding!
Ralph Heiden - Did the preachers used to come over to the house often?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - That one preacher we had liked to play horseshoes.
Bidlesbocker was his name. He was the one who baptized me.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pastor Thomas used to come over after Ma had died. He would
sit there while we were playing cards and he’d say, “I thought you’d
have a Budweiser out by now.” So, we would go and get him one and
he’d have it with us.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Every so often, you were expected to have the preacher over
for a meal because they didn’t get much pay.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - If you dug potatoes or had vegetables, you would drop some
off at the parsonage to help them out too.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - The parsonage was there on Ida-Maybee Road across from
Seibarth’s. We used to go there for Catechism lessons before we were
confirmed.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - We had to sit in the living room and take the lessons. It
was another “quiet” house.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Every Saturday, Pa would drop us off while he was on his way
to Ida to get a haircut. He would usually stop off at the beer
garden for a beer and Ma would smell his breath when he got home. He would say, “I only had one.”
Ma would sometime say, “Your eyes look like you had more than one.”
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - One time we were in the dining room and Pa had gone to Ida.
He was late, supper was ready and he wasn’t home. Ma was kind of
walking the floor and looking out the window down the road.
Finally, we saw the car coming down Dixon Road but instead of
turning into the driveway, he pulled into the lane by the field. I
guess that was a day when he had more than one in Ida.
He caught it from Ma that day!
 Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Grandpa had that big old three seated car. It was a
Hudson, I think. There were pull down seats in the middle of the car
and nice velvety upholstery. That was really something!
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - It was a nine passenger car. I could never understand how Pa
could afford that big old car. He had that since I was in grade
school because all the kids would say, “Here comes the bus.”
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - In 1941, we bought a new Plymouth for $800. We drove that
car through the entire war years. That was the “big old black
Plymouth.”
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I used to drive it too. I worked as an extra all the time
and I would get called in when they needed me. Pa let me drive it to
work as long as I paid for the gas.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Here is one of the funniest
things I heard my dad say. We went to church on Sunday and we
were getting into the car when Norm Capaul, the funeral
director, came along.
Norm said, “I’ll be seeing you Mr. Heiden.” Pa replied, “I hope
I’ll be seeing you too!”
The
picture is not the actual car owned by Wm Carl Heiden but
is a 1940 Hudson.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa was pretty lenient about that kind of thing. Ma wasn’t so
easy going. When she said, “No.” she meant it and there would be no
arguing with her. You never asked, “Why not?”
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I did once. Joe Long called and asked if I could go to the
show with him. He was older than I was and I was about 15 or 16 at
the time. I was on the phone with him and turned around to ask Ma if
I could go to the show that night.
She said, “Who with?”
I said, “Joe Long.”
She said, “No.”
I told him I couldn’t go and put down the phone. Then I turned
around and said to Ma, “Why can’t I go?”
She said, “He’s too old for you.”
I shot back, “Well, I’m not going to marry him! I’m just going to go
to the show.”
Man, she gave me a whack and I never asked again!
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Tell them about the time you got kicked out of school and
she had to go up and get you back in.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - A bunch of us including Mary Lou went driving all over
instead of going to school one day. We got back just in time to get
our ride home. Well, somebody saw us leave in the morning and
tattled to the principal. So, in the meantime, before we got home,
they had called to tell Ma.
When we got home, she was at the front door and said, “How come your
face is so red?”
I said, “It was hot.”
She replied, “Hot where? In school? You weren’t in school! Professor
Ayris called.”
I said, “Well, everybody skips once in a while.”
The teacher said we couldn’t come back to school unless our parents
came with us. So, Ma and Lou came up with us.
Well I had skipped before one time to go to Tecumseh so I had to
tell her, “Remember that other time when I was sick and didn’t go to
school?”
Those two days I skipped were the only two days I missed in four
years of high school.
Mary Lou, your mother brought this up at a birthday party one time.
She said, “Yes, I remember that. I told Mary Lou that if she ever
did that again, she wasn’t going back to school! She could do
housework.”
In the end, they let us back in and we didn’t even have to make up
our tests or anything. We got our same A’s so it didn’t mean
anything in the end.
It’s funny that you don’t remember all the days you went to school,
but you do remember the days you skipped.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We went to Cleary College one day with our class. There were
about 5 or 6 of us in our car. When the rest of them went back to
Dundee to school, well, we didn’t follow.
We just rode around all day. We stopped and had some pop and stuff
and just had a big time. Just like you, we got back just in time to
catch our ride home.
Next morning, we got called down to the office. The principal told
us to all to meet down by the huge French doors in the front of the
school.
When we got there, they had glass cleaner and rags for us. We spent
the next several hours washing those windows. I never washed so many
windows in my life!
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We would have gladly washed windows in exchange for not
telling our parents.
I thought Pa would have a fit and make me stay home from school when
he heard about it. All he did was start calling me, “Skippy!”
|
It would have been wonderful to be able to sit down again with
Grandpa and Grandma Heiden (
Unfortunately, such a conversation is impossible, but, the next
best thing would be to talk to those people who grew up with
them and knew them better than anyone else, their children. On
two separate afternoons, I met with the remaining children of
On Sunday, May 28, 1995 several family members gathered at the home
of 
