Climbing the Mountain page 3 Reminiscences of Margaret Wuerflein Klammer (1891-1985) Written in 1976, her 85th year Go to Beginning Go to Ending Return to Home page

Let's go back again and talk about the family. We were six children, four boys and two girls. My sister was the oldest and was 20 years older than I. My youngest brother was seven years old when I was born. I mentioned before I was not expected nor welcomed. I don't remember the oldest ones in Germany very much, as they were already away from home working, but learned to know them better in later years in this country. Germany being a military state, all fit young men had to go in the army for two or more years of training in case of war, which came, and which my father had predicted. He had been in the war of 1870-71 and he knew the signs. So many of the young men who saw no future in Germany emigrated to America, where it was said everybody had a chance. And so it came to pass that first my oldest brother John left in 1896 with a number of others and landed in the southern part of Minnesota, in the vicinity of Albert Lea, finding work on a farm. Farming was different from the way it was done in Germany and so he had to learn. He was a hard man, and I am told he once whipped a horse to death. A year later my sister Regina and brother Henry, who was only 16 years old left and settled near my oldest brother, who, they said, was pretty rough on them. My second oldest brother George was in the army and when he was finished there, he learned the blacksmith trade and later also left for America, where he worked his trade. The next one to leave was the young- est brother Hans, just getting out before he had to go into the army. In the meantime, my oldest brother came back to get his girlfriend for a wife, but I guess he hadn't written much and so she got tired of waiting and had married another man, which, of course, made him furious. He finally persuaded our cousin, her mother and sister to go back with him, after marrying the older cousin. They settled in Oklahoma, which had lately been opened, and was cheap land to homesteaders, He acquired 12 sections of land, a section being 320 acres, hoping to find oil, but never did. They raised wheat which was as good as oil. They had 12 children and they all settled there, but are spreading out by the grandchildren. Those are the Wuerfleins in Oklahoma. My sister and other brothers settled in southern Minnesota, except Hans, the youngest, who had the wanderlust and got as far west as northern Montana, where also my sister and family moved. So now I was the only one left at home. The year I was eleven, the family persuaded my father to sell out and emi- grate to America. When we were just about ready to leave, one evening friends and neighbors came to our house and talked my father out of it, so now, having sold our house and property, we had to move. There was no house available in our village so we moved across the hill from our old home in Moratneustetten to Wern[s]back. I had three years of school left but was hired out to a farmer as a baby sitter, also going to school at the same