|
 My Grandpa
Rambow died two months before I was born. My parents and
Nellie went down on the train for the funeral. Lewis was
there visiting with cousins at the time. My mother told
me everyone was shocked when she came because they
didn't know she was pregnant until then.
 My Grandma
Rambow lived with my Aunt Minnie and Uncle Willie, her
son and daughter who never married. They lived on a farm
in a very big brick house with two big porches. Their
house, as well as many others in the area, had been
built by my Grandpa Heiden who was a brick mason. There
were two stairways with one that went up from the living
room and the other went up from the other side. The boys
went up one side to their rooms and the girls went up on
the other side.
 My mother told me about a time that she
and her sisters were supposed to be cleaning the
upstairs while Grandma was out in her garden. Instead of
cleaning, they were riding the broom down the stairs. My
mother was the unlucky one who arrived at the bottom of
the stairs just as Grandma came back in. Grandma grabbed
her and gave her a "lickin''.
I stayed in a beautiful
upstairs bedroom. Her beautiful garden looked like the
pictures you see of gardens in Germany. The flowers and
vegetables were all lined up in short neat rows with
paths between them. The path to the outhouse had flowers
on each side. The boards in the outhouse were white and
clean because lye was used.
 The garden was not far from
the back porch. Grandma Rambow was always working in it.
She wore long gray dresses with long sleeves and a large
sun bonnet.
The Rambows came to the USA from the same
area of Germany as the Heidens but a year later. Grandma
Rambow learned to speak English.
The breakfast table was
always set the night before going to bed. The cups were
turned upside down. Then in the morning, we all sat
around the table and bad to be quiet. Grandma would read
in German from the Bible before we had breakfast.
 Aunt
Minnie was always strict with us cousins. We sat on a
couch that was in the dining room. The pillows were not
to be moved and everything was to be kept neat while the
grownups were talking in the living room. Then there was
the parlor that was used only for weddings, funerals,
and
when the preacher came to call. The parlor had a
chair, a platform rocker, and a setee with pretty red
figured upholstery that matched. A big fern sat on the
stand in front of the window. There might have been a
library table. I don't remember for sure because the
doors to the parlor were closed most of the time. After
Uncle Willie died, I got the English family Bible. I
wanted the German Bible but no one knew where it was.
 My mother
told me about when my Grandma Rambow was a girl in
Germany. She was a goose girl and had to take care of
the geese. She would drive them along the river to eat
the grass and then back to their pen. Once a mean gander
got her down and almost killed her. They had lots of
geese to care for. The feathers and down were used for
beds to sleep on, covers, and for pillows. You made them
yourself with heavy material. When I was a girl, I had a
feather bed. Even though there was no heat in the
upstairs bedrooms, I stayed warm even during the cold
winter.
 Grandpa
Rambow had to do his duty as a German soldier before
they could come to America. Grandma Rambow was said to
know more about farming than her husband did. When they
were making plans to come, Grandma's father died. So her
mother, sister and brothers were coming too. Then her
mother became sick and died and was buried next to her
husband. In that village there were no family plots.
People were buried in the order they died so it was
unusual to be buried next to another family member. So
Grandma and Grandpa Rambow brought her sister and
brothers (last name was
Milhan) with them on the ship to
America as well as their own children. |
On November 30, 1922, one of the most pleasant events occurred at
our mother, Mrs. Wilhelmine Rambow’s, place, it being her 75th
birthday anniversary. The occasion was a joyous one as all of her
sons and daughters and their wives and husbands were there except
Fredaricke and
