by Gregory Kopp
Meanwhile, Johannes was walking down the street outside of Anna and Frederick’s home in the cold autumn air. He hailed a carriage, got in and rode back to his drafty apartment. He poured himself a large shot glass of whiskey and drank it straight down. Johannes tossed and turned in his bed all night as he thought of Karolina and their passionate kiss together.
Across the street from his apartment, a church choir was practicing several new songs, and he could hear them through his window while he lay in his bed. He realized now he would be alone for the upcoming Christmas holidays and decided to make plans to travel south to help ex-slaves like Franz Sigel’s former carriage driver Joseph guide other runaway slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. He figured the best thing for him now was to stay as busy as possible to forget about Karolina and their stolen kiss.
Chapter Eighteen
November 1, 1854, All Saints Day
Father Bredeick was standing at the front of the one and a half story log house which served as a church, schoolhouse, and residence for himself. Large trees were used as pillars of the church building while the roof was covered with handmade oak shingles paid for by the pastor himself. The building had not yet been enclosed on all sides, and would not be for another two years while the cold wind would blow through the building but it was large enough to hold the eighty-nine families in the parish during mass.
All the parishioners in attendance were wearing thick clothing to keep out the cold as a large fire burned in the fireplace built by Stanislaus and the other stonemasons living in the community. The main altar in front of the priest was a bureau brought by Father Bredeick from the Prussian Province of Westphalia. Each of the members of the congregation had donated either time or money to the church and rushed to finish it enough to hold the first mass on All Saints Day so they could pray for the souls of those killed in the cholera epidemic.
As the mass started, many of the congregation began to sing loudly the German hymn "Lasst uns refreshen herzlich sehr" (Let us rejoice most heartily) which in turn would one day be adapted into the English hymn “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones”:
Let us most heartily rejoice.
Maria sighs and weeps no more. Alleluia! Alleluia!
Suddenly, there was a commotion in the back of the church. Many people in the congregation stopped singing and turned to look to see a beautiful woman dressed in the latest fashions from New York. They began to whisper amongst each other as she strode up the aisle looking from side to side down each pew as she walked. Stanislaus also turned to see what was happening but kept singing in his loudest voice:
All evil now must disappear.
The lovely shining sun now gleams. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
His two sons turned and one of them shouted “Mommy” and wriggled out of the pew past Stanislaus and ran to Karolina. She bent down and scooped him up in her arms and hugged him tightly as tears ran down her cheeks. Her other son also brushed past Stanislaus and ran to his mother and grabbed her by the legs. She bent down and kissed him on the head all the while holding her youngest son as tight as she could. The three of them slowly moved back to the pew where Stanislaus was standing, singing and holding his hymnal. She looked up at him with a worried look. He put down his hymnal and hugged her while she relaxed as he guided her into the seat next to him. She continued to hold his hand as the other members of the congregation looked at the family and began to sing louder:
Say, O joyful heart,
Where is now, Ah, woe and pain?
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Father Bredeick recognized Karolina when he turned around and then smiled and encouraged the congregation to continue singing. Stanislaus held Karolina hand’s tightly while she put her youngest son back on the ground next to her. Her oldest son was still holding her around the waist and had his head buried in her skirt. She patted him on the head and turned to look at Stanislaus with a loving look. He handed her a hymnal, smiled and continued singing returning his gaze back up to the priest facing the main altar.
Unbeknownst to them, Father Bredeick was smiling upon the return of Karolina. He felt her return symbolized a rebirth of this small community and hopefully, many other survivors of the cholera epidemic would return to Delphos and help build a better future for all of its people.
Chapter Nineteen
New York City, early spring, 1858
Anna was staring at Frederick as he sat dejectedly at the small table in the kitchen—if you could call it that. The kitchen was an alcove with a place for a wood-burning stove that smoked like crazy. It contained an oak table with two chairs that had been repaired with bits of wire in order to hold their occupants.
Frederick returned home at the usual time this evening, but he seemed different. He appeared more resigned than usual and not as angry as he had been over the last several months when he was forced to sweep the streets for pennies a day. Frederick had purchased a revolver that day with the money he earned sweeping the street and then had brought it home. He began twirling the revolver around on the oak table, spinning it and catching it and then spinning it again. Anna watched him and was frightened at the scene. He grabbed the liquor bottle from the top shelf, poured himself a large drink which he drank in one swift gulp and then sat back down.
Anna began pacing around the room pleading with him to listen to her. “Frederick, it will get better! Just you wait. The economy will turn around, and they will need lawyers like you again” Anna said to him nervously watching as he continued to twirl the revolver around on the table. Frederick sighed and said “Anna, I told you. What client will trust a lawyer who urged them to make bad investments? I am through and will never work in this city again. You are better off without me!” And he continued to twirl the gun.
She shook his shoulders and begged him to look at her, but he pulled away and continued staring at the revolver. Anna began to rub her hands and think of any means to get through to him. She had already made their dinner and thought by placing it on the table might get his attention. So, Anna served him the leftovers from the evening’s meal the night before, with a few new bits of meat and vegetables that had fallen from the local street vendor’s cart. Frederick grunted when he saw the dinner put down in front of him.
Both of them had lost a considerable amount of weight over the past year and Anna had turned prematurely gray due to the lack of appropriate nutrition from dinners such as the one now in front of Frederick. Anna and Frederick were living in an apartment within a five story tenement in the lower east side of the city. It was a far cry from their spacious home uptown where they used to live with the wealthy and other well-to-do middle class. Little air or sunlight reached their apartment, positioned as it was in between the other tenement buildings crammed into the same block on the street. The temperature in the dingy apartment was barely above freezing, and Frederick had to scavenge for wood for the kitchen stove on the streets of New York City all winter long to keep warm.
They shared the tenement building with many newly arrived immigrants who hardly spoke any English. The immigrants would knock on their door all day long to ask them to help read a notice from their landlord either telling them to leave or be evicted if they did not pay their rent. Anna would read the notice to them and the women would begin to cry while their husbands would turn in a huff, return to their apartments and slam the front door loudly enough to be heard throughout the entire building.
Meanwhile, Frederick looked again at his meager dinner and grew even more depressed at his and Anna’s circumstances. He lifted up the revolver and cocked the hammer. Anna shrieked and ran from the room into their living room and threw herself onto the sofa, crying hysterically. Their child woke up and also began crying loudly in the next room. At that moment, she heard a knock at her front door and rushed to answer it, hoping it was someone who could help her. As Anna opened the door, she heard a gunshot!
Read the next volume of the Kopp Chronicles and share in the continuing eve
nts of Stanislaus, Karolina, and their friends while the turbulence of a Civil War threatens to engulf their adopted country.
Afterword
While completing research for A Child’s Breath, I discovered that my great-great-grandparents suffered the painful loss of their first child born in America, most likely from cholera. Today, cholera is still killing thousands of children in undeveloped countries worldwide but, with the advent of modern drinking water treatment and sanitation practices, cholera epidemics are exceedingly rare in our own country.
The town of Delphos, Ohio suffered a huge blow in the mid-19th century with the combination of a cholera epidemic and the diminished use of the Miami and Erie Canal due to competition from the railroads, according to the historians of the Delphos Canal Commission Museum. The city not only survived these setbacks but ultimately thrived as it transformed from a transportation center into a manufacturing hub. By 1879 over a hundred factories in Delphos produced goods for the world markets and today it continues to enjoy a reputation as a manufacturing center in Ohio.
This book continues the saga of the Kopp Chronicles in which Stanislaus, Karolina, and their friends endured personal hardships, but achieved even greater triumphs while they struggled to build a new home in their adopted country.
Appendix One – Stanislaus and Karolina’s Parish Record
Congregation family register of St. John the Evangelist church in Delphos, Ohio 1864-1866
Source: "Ohio, Diocese of Toledo, Catholic Parish Records, 1796-2004," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-266-11131-36197-4?cc=1494476 : 21 May 2014), Allen > Delphos > St. John the Evangelist > 1864-1866 Register of Families of the Congregation > image 99 of 115; Bowling Green State University, Center for Archival Collections, Bowling Green.
Appendix Two – Harriet Beecher Stowe and Cholera
Portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe by Francis Holl in 1853. The pain and suffering she endured from the death of her son in a cholera epidemic prompted her to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was published in 1852. Stowe’s book became a best-seller in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and was translated into over 60 languages.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harriet_Beecher_Stowe_by_Francis_Holl.JPG
Example of a poster used in New York City during the nineteenth-century cholera epidemic in 1865.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cholera_Epidemic_poster_New_York_City.jpg
Appendix Three – Delphos Ohio and the Miami and Erie Canal
Major ports on the Miami and Erie Canal in Ohio.
Source: https://www.libraries.wright.edu/special/ddn_archive/2013/03/04/miami-erie-canal/ddn_canals_miami-erie_01/
An undated photo depicting a canal boat in Delphos, Ohio.
Source:http://www.toledoblade.com/frontpage/2004/08/29/Delphos-eyes-restoration-of-old-waterway.html
Delphos, Ohio in 1879, 25 years after the events in A Child’s Breath.
Source:http://www.cityofdelphos.com/government/history
An undated photo of a log cabin similar to Stanislaus and Karolina’s in 19th century Ohio.
Source: http://www.delphos-ohio.com/Holdgreve/VanWertCo..htm
Appendix Four – New York City Society and the Academy of Music
Mrs. William Astor (Caroline Webster Schermerhorn), one of the most prominent American socialite’s of the late 19th century.
Source:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caroline_Schermerhorn_Astor.jpg
William Backhouse Astor Jr. was a businessman, racehorse breeder and owner, yachtsman and a prominent abolitionist.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Backhouse_Astor_Jr.jpg
James Roosevelt Sr. in 1895. Father of President Franklin Roosevelt.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Roosevelt,_Sr.jpg
U.S. Senator Hamilton Fish 1855-1865.
Source:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Senator_Hamilton_Fish_Brady-Handy.jpg
Homer Ramsdell, former President of the Erie Railroad in 1899.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homer_Ramsdell.jpg
Academy of Music (New York City) built in 1854 and designed by Alexander Saeltzer.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Academy_of_Music_(New_York_City)_crop.jpg
An article in the New York Daily Tribune on October 4, 1854, describing the grand opening of the Academy of Music.
Source: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030213/1854-10-04/ed-1/seq-7/
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About the Author
Gregory Kopp is a graduate of Northwestern University and a Principal Consultant for Kopp Company, a privately held firm specializing in Human Capital, Enterprise Performance and Media & Entertainment Consulting. Gregory is also a Talent Ambassador for The Walt Disney Company.
Read more at Gregory Kopp’s site.