1880- THE BEGINNING

1877-1881, Rutherford B. Hayes 19th U. S. President

"How it began ... I can't begin to tell you"-

These are the lyrics from an early 1970's tune by Elvis Presley, with revisions by many artists including Neil Diamond, and entitled "Sweet Caroline". The ballad is a popular rendition with music-lovers, even today!

While I can't tell you the exact place or date of the meeting between my great grandparents, Hilda Elizabeth Kretschmer and John W. Tietz, it is known that they were teenage immigrants to America, (through Ellis Island), from Germany. They arrived in the fall of 1880 with their parents, Ernest and Pauline (Kusche) Kretschmer and G. W. and Augusta (Gutz) Tietz. The Kretschmer's settled in Oshkosh and the Tietz's in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

While there is no known historical chronology to substantiate the exact location of our ancestor's homes in Germany, our cousin, Donald Tietz, has had connections with a Tietz family in Frankfort, Germany, (through e-mail to his son, J. P. Tietz). This contact identified the Tietz name with a chain of department stores in the area of Rhineland, Germany. Through research, a historical volume was found that points to the fact that the first German immigrants to settle in Wisconsin began arriving in the 1830's and continued over many decades, involving various source areas at different times, each with its own specific economic, religious and political circumstances. This is especially true for the agricultural side of the migration experience. The chapters of the resource material were primarily concerned with one type of German immigrant connection with Wisconsin. That migration and settlement of immigrants came in search of land-opportunities. The volume focuses on immigrants from the Rhineland who settled in the midsection of Wisconsin. The chapters provide an in-depth picture of experiences ranging from the circumstances that initially drove people to immigrate based on their profound sense of community, culture and accomplishments that eventually came to characterize the Wisconsin settlements they founded. The Rhineland immigrants who figure so prominently in this manuscript, hailed from areas that were agricultural in nature. The systems of land-tenure and farming practice were traditionally small and land-holdings highly fragmented. Crops were cultivated according to a highly regimented government system attuned to the changing seasons and time-honed practices. Scarcity of land, due to population growth and a system of inheritance meant that many areas were plagued by limited economic opportunity. Crop failure brought the local agricultural economy, which at best operated just above a subsistence level, to the margins of disaster. At that time German authorities also regulated economic life through a system of local laws and taxes that kept tight control over the local population. Though most people who migrated from Germany to Wisconsin came for socioeconomic reasons, this manuscript indicates that some left their homeland for religious or political reasons. A group of Lutherans settled in villages north and northwest of Milwaukee. Although historians first thought that the immigrants were the poorest-of-the-poor, the passing years demonstrated that the majority of immigrants were German middle-class landowners. Either they or their sons would no longer be able to support themselves because of the ever increasing fragmentation caused by, ("gravel kind"), the German custom of dividing ones land among all male heirs. Chain migration played a major role for German migrants who came to Wisconsin following their family, friends and acquaintances based on letters and published information received along with brochures, sent from the Wisconsin state offices of immigration. For Wisconsin, immigration was a matter of great economic urgency in the 1800's.

Published pamphlets contained positive and intriguing details about Wisconsin's climate, geography, geology, agriculture, industry, crop potential, economic opportunities, wages and infrastructure. State Commissioners greeted incoming ships from Europe and provided assistance to migrants, their elderly and their children and acted as financial intermediaries. They even found the best and cheapest ways for the newcomers to travel to Wisconsin. Once in Wisconsin, most of the immigrant farmers and others, whose interests were not limited to agriculture, purchased land and settled here in "the land of milk and honey"!

The Tietz's, of Milwaukee, had one son, John W. Tietz, who later relocated to Sugar Bush, Wisconsin where he joined his uncles who had settled in that location upon their own immigration from Germany. The Kretschmer family consisted of eight children; Julius, Hilda, Gustav, Amanda, Pauline, Cora, Olga and Arthur. During this historic period in America, there was an outbreak of a dreaded childhood disease called Diphtheria. This was a disease of the upper respiratory system- a disease that claimed the lives of five out of the eight Kretschmer children, shortly after their arrival in America, in the year 1881. Family children surviving the epidemic were, Hilda, Julius and Gustav Kretschmer. Sometime a little later the three siblings found work in the area of Big Falls, WI. They moved there together, with Hilda handling the housekeeping and homemaking duties for her brothers, Jule and Gust. Being an independent and entrepreneurial sole, Hilda also acted as a mid-wife to families throughout the area. A story is told with regard to a gentleman suitor who asked Hilda to row him from bank-to-bank of the Little Wolf River because he had no transportation. One day, as she was rowing him to or from, Hilda decided she'd had enough of him and dumped him from the boat and into the river. That brought the one-sided relationship to an abrupt halt!

Hilda met John Winfred Tietz, sometime in 1884. That meeting was most probably at a neighborhood dance or church gathering, where families were known to congregate for various reasons, during those early years. John, then a somewhat shy lad of 22 years, was a good-looking, businessman and a Distributor for Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. PBR, a Milwaukee–based Brewing Company established in 1882, promoted their primary product as "Best Select" and their famous brown bottle was identified with a satin Blue Ribbon tied around the bottles' neck. John delivered the golden-brew, over the unpaved and sometimes mud, snow and ice-laden roads, in both pleasant and inclement weather, to the cities of Bear Creek, Clintonville, Marion, Tigerton, Caroline, Big Falls, Manawa, Northport, New London, and Hortonville. His muscular matched-team of russet-brown "Bays" were carriage-hitched to a logo-bearing, hardwood-painted, Pabst Blue Ribbon Delivery Wagon. bearing, hardwood-painted, Pabst Blue Ribbon Delivery Wagon.

1887-THE MARRIAGE

1885-1889, Grover Cleveland 22nd U.S. President

In 1887 Hilda and John were married in Clintonville, WI in a simple ceremony, before their small group of friends and family members.

They began their married lives as Homesteaders in the County of Waupaca, Township of Lebanon, at Sugar Bush, Wisconsin. Their Federal Land encompassed 83 acres with a small stand of timber, a 2-story home, barn, silo and several small out-buildings. One of the buildings was an outdoor-privee, which, (through the years of...