Footprints of Five Generations

In compiling this modest little manual, the author aimed at originality and intelligibleness rather than transposing, recasting and reproducing reading matter contained in manuals of like import. The field covered by the present volume is not entirely unoccupied. For instance, the narrations of Herman Ehrenberg, Bernhard Monken, Ludolf F. Lafrentz, Adolf Stern, F. W. Luhn, Wilhelm Herms, Fritz Schlecht and others are carefully preserved and found on every library shelf in the homes where love and esteem for the pioneer exists. Then, too, about the year 1899, W. A. Trenckmann, editor of "Das Wochenblatt," then located at Bellville, published a booklet entitled "Austin County"¹, which has been read and reread until its leaves are worn to shreds, impairing its further usefulness. About the year 1914 the imminent writer and historian, Professor Duncan of Chicago, began the compilation of one of the most comprehensive treaties on pioneer life ever published. Duncan's publications consists of five large volumes and retailed at $30.00 per set, which accounts for the sale of fewer than one hundred copies in this County.

There are yet among us men and women who braved the dangers and hardships of a frontier life in order that we may be enjoying the advantages and wealth of the present. Some of these have not great wealth and while others are drawing a small pension from the State, there are still others who are in dire poverty and never expect to ride on a concrete highway for pleasure and recreation. What they want to know more than anything else is that their lives have not been spent in vain; that we are actually building on the foundation they have laid; and that we appreciate just what they have done.

Those were strenuous times when pioneer men and women had to be brave and face the dangers that threatened home and children; the men could not always be near to protect their families and their property; but seldom do we hear or read of a woman who did not nobly and bravely stand between her loved ones and danger, whether from dangerous wild animals, marauding redskins or from a devastating prairie fire that often swept the settlement, leaving nothing but a black streak of ashes in its wake. It is hard indeed fer us to realize as we sit beside our peaceful firesides, the hardships and perils those brave men and women had to endure when this country was an untamed wilderness. Therefore, we dedicate this manual to their memory.

C.W. Schmidt