Hermann Statue, Detmold Germany

Carl Ehlers could not support his young family on the undeveloped prairie so he found work as a hired hand which took him away from home for weeks at a time. When Emma was only eleven years old she had to act as substitute mother and head of the household for her three younger sisters. She prepared the food, tended the garden and carried water from the creek some distance away. Bill’s mother, who told me this story, said that Emma was a very short, stout woman whose shoulders were permanently rounded as a result of regularly carrying a yoke suspending two heavy buckets of water when she was just a child. She was able to quickly kill the poisonous snakes that occasionally dropped out of the sod roof or walls onto the floor. At times their lonely homestead was visited by wandering Indians; Emma’s father had told her to give them some food and then send them on their way. They evidently weren’t hostile although Emma must have been apprehensive about their consumption of her limited food supply. With no opportunity for formal schooling Emma never learned to read and write in English but that was not a handicap in that German-speaking community. As a result of her heavy responsibilities at such an early age Emma became a very capable adult much in demand in the area as a practical nurse and midwife.
 
When Emma was about fifteen her father married again and started a second family. Perhaps Emma found it difficult living with her new stepmother who was only six years her senior, especially since new babies began to arrive immediately. At any rate by the time she was seventeen years old Emma had married Fredrick Hermann, ten years older than she, and they had started developing the farm near Staplehurst where they raised a family of their own. Fred’s Father, Valentine Hermann, and his wife Johannetta were born in Germany but moved with their family first to Iowa and then to Seward County Nebraska. Emma and Fred’s first son, Julius, arrived in April, 1880 and by the end of 1893 when Emma was thirty, they had five boys and two girls to complete their family. One son, Edward, moved to Chicago as an adult, and the youngest, Martin, settled in Canada, but most of the family remained in Nebraska in the close-knit German community centered around the Lutheran Church at Marysville.

William Hermann SR.

Bill's maternal grandmother was another strong-willed, capable woman although she was very different in appearance from Grandma Hermann. Jane Francis Radford Graham was a tall, slender woman whose parents came from the British Isles. Her father, John Francis, was born in Lincolnshire, England in 1822 and her mother, Ann Roberts, was born four years later in Caernarvonshire, Wales. They met and were married in Geneseo, New York in 1855 and immediately moved to Manhattan in Will County, Illinois where their first child, Jane, was born June 26, 1856. When Jane was twelve the family moved to Watseka in Iroquois County, Illinois. Ten years later, on February 25, 1878, Jane Francis married James Radford who, like Jane, was twenty-two years old. Migrating westward in a covered wagon like so many young people seeking their fortune, the Radfords settled on railroad land in eastern Nebraska in Seward County near the town of Ulysses. On July 27, 1880 they welcomed a son, Osborn, to their household. Life must have looked very promising for the young couple. But five months later tragedy struck: on December 15, 1880 James Radford suddenly died, leaving Jane and the baby alone on the undeveloped homestead. For the next twelve years this valiant pioneer woman managed the farm alone, raising her son and validating the ownership of the land for her family and descendants. On January 12, 1892 in Seward, Nebraska Jane married William Henry Graham, a widower six years her junior with a young daughter. Graham was born May 31,1862 in New York state to William Graham (b.March 20, 1835, d. Nov. 28, 1910 ) and Martha Ewing Graham (b.Dec.25, 1842 in West Chester County, N.Y., d. Aug.16, 1915) both of whom are buried in the Ulysses cemetery.

Dora Graham Hermann

Bill's mother told me that her grandmother, Martha Ewing Graham, was disinherited by her family because she insisted on marrying William Graham, a poor man. The elder Grahams exhibited the nineteenth century American penchant for frequent moves; the grass was always greener somewhere else, usually farther west. William and Martha Graham moved their family from New York to a farm near Joliet, Illinois and then on to Nebraska . Next they tried living in Indian territory in Oklahoma but soon moved back to Nebraska where they rented a farm near Staplehurst in Seward County. There the elder William Graham died in 1910 but Martha lived there for another five years. Both are buried in the Ulysses cemetery.

William Henry Graham had grown to manhood in Illinois where in 1887 he married Rose Watkins (b. Jan.7, 1859, d.1889). They migrated to Nebraska, settling near Ulysses. On January 8, 1888 a daughter, Jennie, was born and the family moved to Perkins County, Nebraska. The next year Rose died and William Graham moved back to Seward County with his infant daughter. On January 12, 1892 William H. Graham who had a three year old daughter and Jane Francis Radford who had a twelve-year-old son were married. They lived on Jane=s farm two miles north and four and a half miles west of Staplehurst in Seward County, Nebraska. There on December 17, 1894 their daughter, Dora Graham, (Bill=s mother) was born. Sons Howard (b. 1897) and Edward (b. 1900 when Jane was forty-four years old) completed their family. The Grahams continued to live in their large white house and cultivate the prosperous farm until 1922 when they retired to a house in Ulysses. From then on Howard and his family continued to work the farm while Edward became a barber first in Staplehurst and then in Seward.

The valiant Jane was not destined to have a peaceful death. On New Years Day, 1933 as she and her husband, Grandpa Graham, were returning home from a visit to their daughter, Dora Hermann and family, their car collided with a neighbor=s car at the intersection of two farm roads which saw very little traffic. The neighbor=s car turned over several times but the Graham vehicle only turned on its side in a ditch. Jane Graham and her husband walked away from the accident and neighbors righted the cars. The Grahams discovered that the oil had leaked out of their car and when they stopped at a neighboring farm Jane said she felt ill. The neighbors called a doctor who suggested that she be put to bed although she suffered very little pain. The next morning she seemed unwell and was taken to the hospital in Lincoln. There she died half an hour after her arrival apparently as a result of internal injuries and shock.
But some 18 years before this sad accident the Graham and Hermann families had been united by the marriage of Dora and Bill. Such a union must have been unusual at that time because the Hermanns were staunch members of the German community surrounding the Lutheran Church in Marysville. All their children attended the church school there and the services were conducted in German, the native language of most of the parishioners. The Graham family, in contrast, were very active in the Methodist Church in Ulysses and their social life was primarily among neighbors who were first or second generation migrants from the British Isles.
 
These groups tended to remain separate except for the young people. Bill=s mother said that she and her future husband both loved to dance. They attended local dances given by either group which sought for larger attendance and so advertised upcoming events widely. William Hermann was only slightly acquainted with Dora Graham when he married a member of the German community, Florence Gehlbach, in December, 1913. Tragically she died in childbirth the next August, 1914. Dora evidently expressed sympathy when Bill resumed attending dances. She had been attracted to him before and soon he shared her interest. In what may have seemed to the critical members of each ethnic group as unseemly haste Bill and Dora were married March 31, 1915 in Seward County. They lived on the Hermann farm four and a half miles west of Staplehurst where the first of their eight children arrived in October, 1917 - but that is another story. Now we have covered all that I know about the ancestors on both sides of both of our families. So much for our heritage.

"Grandma Hermann"