Ironton Germans: Schultz (Schulz) Family History, partially transcribed booklet and family photos (1999).pdf
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West Prussia to the Tonawandas
The first portion traces the family of Gottfried and Caroline Schaar Schulz from West Prussia to the Tonawandas. It records the births, marriages, deaths and descendants of their surviving children, several of whom settled locally: Frederick ("Sandy") William, Ferdinand, Henrietta, Augustina and Herman. It also includes transcriptions of family obituaries documenting their homes, churches, occupations, fraternal organizations and burial places. Together, these records follow a large German immigrant family as it took root in North Tonawanda and Tonawanda during the height of the lumber era.Herman also records his father’s stories of a childhood marked by poverty and seasonal farm labor in West Prussia. School was largely confined to winter because children and adults hired themselves out to farmers during the growing season. In return for their labor, a family might receive a pig, potatoes and cabbage to carry it through the year, but little or no milk; Herman Sr. claimed that he had been raised on “potato water” instead. Potatoes appeared as dumplings, pancakes and even Kartoffelschnaps, or potato liquor. Boys slept in the barns, preferably beside the horses, which were considered cleaner and warmer than cows, while girls slept in the farmhouse attic. The day began at 5:30, followed by breakfast at six and a second breakfast in the fields at 9:30—ham, fresh bread and a thin coffee mixture made mostly from browned bran and chicory. Sometimes, he recalled, the girls slipped a bottle of the farmer’s potato schnapps into the breakfast basket, “and a good time was had by all.”
Herman K. Schultz's letter
The richest part of the document is a four-page letter written on Easter Sunday, March 29, 1970, by Herman K. Schultz, son of Herman Schultz Sr. and nephew of Ferdinand. (Extensive excerpt below) Addressed to the Rev. William S. Cooper, a grandson of Ferdinand, the letter mixes stories Herman K. heard from his father with his own memories of growing up among the Schultz family. It also explains that the family name was properly spelled Schulz. According to Herman, an error in Ferdinand’s immigration papers produced the spelling “Schultz,” and Herman Sr. later adopted the same spelling so that his name would agree with his brother’s.Caroline is sent for by her sons
Herman recalls his grandmother Caroline crossing the Atlantic alone in steerage after Ferdinand and Herman sent money for her passage. The voyage reportedly lasted more than 25 days, with auxiliary sails used to help the ship’s engines. Caroline later lived with Ferdinand’s family at 30 First Avenue. Herman remembered her well and described her as a midwife who “brought all the Schulz children into this world and took care of them.”Herman K. Sr.'s sons Herman and Harold move in with Ferdinand, 30 First Ave.
After their mother died in 1916, Herman K. and his brother Harold lived for a time with Ferdinand and Ernstine Schultz on First Avenue (Herman K. Sr. may have lived elsewhere). His memories give a wonderfully specific picture of life in the crowded family home. Ferdinand was strict about smoking, church attendance and the behavior of the children. On Sunday mornings, he stood on the front lawn and watched the boys walk up First Avenue toward Oliver Street and Friedens Church, making sure no one slipped away from Sunday school. During violent electrical storms, the household gathered around the dining-room table with candles while Ferdinand read from the German Bible. As the thunder grew louder, Herman remembered, his uncle read louder.The brothers also preserved older customs of food and family labor. Ferdinand and Herman Sr. sometimes went halves on a pig, sharing the butchering and smoking of sausage, bacon and sugar-cured hams. Herman remembered large slabs of meat wrapped in cheesecloth and left hanging for months. Every Friday and Saturday, Ernstine baked bread and what he called “the best cakes I ever ate.”
Ferdinand and Herman Schultz, dock wallopers
Most valuable to the history of the Tonawandas is Herman’s description of his father and Ferdinand working as lumber handlers, commonly called “dock wallopers.” They unloaded lumber from ships in gangs of approximately forty men. Twenty worked in the hold, forcing boards upward two at a time, while another twenty received the lumber on deck and shoved it over the side for yardmen to stack on the docks. The men wore leather aprons so the boards could slide across their knees. Their hands were perpetually filled with splinters and so heavily calloused, Herman wrote, that they “looked like hooks.”The workday could run from six in the morning until six at night on the hot iron deck of a ship. Herman remembered beer being brought to the gang twice each day and passed from man to man in large dippers. The men avoided water, believing that it would give them cramps or knock them out in the heat. Even after a full day unloading ships, Herman Sr. sometimes continued loading canal boats until dark. Herman called the lumber shovers “a tough breed,” but his account also makes clear the pride he took in them: “The Tonawandas were built by people working in the lumber yards.”
Gastown Sandy Schultz's lucky and then very unlucky day
Other stories are darker. Ferdinand and Herman's brother Frederick William Schultz, known as Fritz or “Sandy,” worked in the lumber yards and lived in Tonawanda’s Gastown neighborhood. Herman recalled that two of Fritz’s children drowned in a well. In 1910, Fritz was struck by a trolley near the Ellicott Creek bridge and died from his injuries. According to the family story, he had been hurrying to Beltz Cigar Store on Webster Street to collect an umbrella he had won. Herman ended the story with a grimly memorable sentence: “Never did get his umbrella.” After Fritz’s death, Herman Sr. helped pay the debts left behind and assisted his brother’s large family.The Irontons football club
The letter also preserves a link to North Tonawanda’s early semiprofessional football history. Herman identifies his cousins Albert and Walter Schultz by their nicknames, “Dolly” and “Sparrow,” and remembers both as accomplished players for the Irontons. He describes the Irontons as one of the leading semiprofessional football teams in Western New York and notes that he was sending Cooper a photograph of the team.Like any family account written many decades after the events it describes, the letter contains details that may have been compressed, exaggerated or confused in memory. Some statements differ from contemporary obituaries, while others await confirmation in immigration, employment and newspaper records. Its greatest value is not as an infallible genealogy, but as something rarer: an intimate family memory of immigrant homes, churches, hardships and working lives during the years when the lumber docks dominated the Tonawandas.
Extended excerpt from Herman K. Schultz (Jr.) letter
Memories of the Schultz Family and the Tonawanda Lumber Docks
Excerpt from a letter written by Herman K. Schultz to the Rev. William S. Cooper, March 29, 1970.
My grandmother Schulz came to America when she was 75 years old; my father and his brother Ferdinand sent the money for her passage (about 40 or 50 dollars). She came steerage which meant you were packed like sardines in the hold of a boat. The trip took over 25 days and they put up sails to help the engines, and I remember my grandmother saying that at several times the sails caught fire and everybody prayed like heck and they managed to come thru alright. I remember my grandmother real well and she lived on First Avenue with my uncle Ferdinand, and she brought all the Schulz children into this world and took care of them. She was known as a midwife. (She was 95 years old when she died).After my mother died my brother Harold and I lived with my uncle Ferdinand and family on 1st Ave. and many fond memories I have about the Schultz gang. My uncle was a little grumpy at times and very strict with the boys and the girls too for that matter. Your mother, Rose E. Schultz Cooper, wasn't there much because she was working for Dr. Reagan, so we stayed in her place. My uncle was very strict about smoking and woe unto anybody caught smoking in bed.
I also remember whenever there was a bad electrical storm at night, everybody got around the dining room table with a couple of candles lit, and my uncle would get out the German Bible and would read passages from it. I can remember something about der Herr Gott unt der Krech—the Lord and the thunder—where that passage is in the English Bible I don't know. The louder the thunder got, the louder he would speak.
Every Sunday morning all the boys had to line up and shine their shoes and go to Friedens Church. I still can see my uncle standing in the front lawn—watching the boys go up 1st Ave. to Oliver St. to make sure they didn't play hookey and not go to church or Sunday School—whatever it was.
My father and his brother were very close and I can remember their going 50-50 on a pig—butchering and smoking and home made sausage and big slabs of bacon and sugar-cured hams wrapped in cheesecloth and allowed to hang for 3 to four months. I am beginning to drool. Every Friday and Saturday my aunt Schultz would bake bread and the best cakes I ever ate. She was a cracker jack at baking.
My father was the youngest of eleven children (born Aug. 3, 1868), three children died in infancy. My father's father died when my father was 3 years old during a cholera epidemic and my grandmother had tough going. My grandmother used to tell about receiving mail from Stettin containing money and there was always postage due on the letters and my grandmother not having any money couldn't pay the postage and the mail man would not let her open the letters, so she could pay the postage due, so the mail had to go back. That must have been heart breaking.
The only schooling anybody got was in the wintertime because summertime meant work on the fields. Everybody—young and old—hired out for the season and the farmers had to supply food for the year. A pig maybe and potatoes and cabbage—that was all they had to live on—no milk. My father claims he was brought up on potato water instead of milk. Potato dumplings and pancakes and even katofle schnapps.
The boys slept in the barns with the cattle—mostly with the horses as they are a lot cleaner than cows, also much warmer. The girls slept with the farmer's family, usually in the attic. Everybody got up at 5:30 AM, breakfast at 6 AM, and second breakfast at 9:30 AM. My father used to say the girls would bring breakfast to them in the fields in the baskets—a good breakfast with ham and fresh baked bread—a coffee that was 70% browned bran, 30% cheap coffee and a black coloring called chickore. Sometimes the girls would sneak a bottle of the farmer's katofle schnapps (potato whiskey) and a good time was had by all.
In addition to my uncle Ferdinand Schultz, my father had a brother Frederick and two sisters living in Tonawanda. The two sisters were my aunt Augustina (called Teena) Stueber and Mrs. William Hettman.
I remember my uncle Fritz—a raw boned fellow, rather high cheek bones and very blond hair. He worked in the lumber yards and they called him Sandy. He lived in the Gastown section of Tonawanda—so did my aunt Stueber. Fritz Schultz was killed in a streetcar accident on the Delaware St. Bridge near the Elk's Bldg. He was told he had won an umbrella at Beltz Cigar Store on Webster St., they closed at 10 PM, so he made a dash for the store and dashed in front of a streetcar. He didn't get killed outright but managed to get home somehow but died several hours later. Never did get his umbrella.
Fritz Schultz had a large family, I think there were 4 boys and three girls—I didn't know them very well. I remember a girl Minnie Schultz and a John Schultz and an Otto Schultz also a Gustav Schultz.
The widow Schultz married again to a fellow named Monsky and there were several more children—I didn't know them. Monsky died and widow Schultz married again to a fellow named Centner and I remember two boys named Peter Centner and Harold Centner. One of the Centner boys was Chief of Detectives in the Town of Tonawanda Police Force, probably on pension now.
I also met a Police Captain in the Buffalo Police Dept. who said he was born in Tonawanda and his father was Frederick Schultz and his father got killed by a streetcar. His name was Capt. Charles R. Schultz. I didn't know him altho his story matches. Also I met his son, Charles R. Schultz Jr., also a Police Officer, in fact a detective working out of Police Headquarters. This Capt. Charles R. Schultz was head of the Sycamore Precinct, a tough section of Buffalo, but Capt. Schultz was a handome man, grey hair, 6 ft. tall, straight as an arrow, and pretty smooth. When I met him he looked like a banker.
My father had a lot of heartaches—but with his brother Fritz' family—2 children fell into a well and drowned, then Fritz got killed and left a lot of debts which my father helped pay off.
The Hettman family was a large one too and William Hettman was a drunk and wouldn't work much or couldn't hold a job. He too worked in the lumber yards. He would be in trouble with the police for beating his wife. I remember my aunt Hettman visiting our house with two beautiful black eyes.
I think you remember my father and his brother Ferdinand were lumber handlers (dock wallopers they were called). They unloaded lumber from the boats. They were hard as nails and they were feared by all the sailors as well as the police. They worked in gangs—each gang had a foreman. There were about 40 men to a gang; 20 men in the hold of the boat, shoving the lumber up, 2 pieces at a time; 20 men on the deck to take the lumber and shove the stuff over the sides of the boat. Then the yardmen would take it and pile it on the docks.
The dock wallopers always had leather aprons to slide the lumber across their knees. The mens hands were always full of slivers and their hands were so caloused—their hands looked like hooks. The sailors would get drunk and try to pick a fight with the dock wallopers—just no match—when they got socked with one of those lumber shovers hands they stayed down.
My father and my uncle Ferdinand were only about 5 ft. 7 to my uncle Ferdinand 5 ft. 9 but were as strong as oxen and worked like oxen from 6 AM to 6 PM in the hot sun on an iron deck of a ship. They drank plenty of beer to keep up their strength. 10 AM was beer time, 1/4 of beer for the gang—and they drank from large dippers, one dipper to each man. 2:30 PM, likewise. They wouldn't drink water as that would give them cramps or could even knock them out.
Those lumber shovers sure were a tough breed, but the pay was good. They often would make $125.00 per week—so much for a thousand feet of lumber. Many of those boats would bring over a million two hundred thousand feet of lumber. The steam boat would bring a tow barge also loaded with almost a million feet of lumber. Many times my father would knock off work at 6 PM. We would bring a lunch basket and he would load canal boats from 6 till dark. They sure were a tough breed and almost all of them lived to be old men. My father lived to be 80 years old. He died in 1948.
They all were good citizens; all built their homes in the Tonawandas; raised their children to be good people and in fact, the Tonawandas were built by people working in the lumber yards.
Getting back to the Hettman family, they had a lot of hard luck. The children were sickly, there were 5 or six of them, most of them died from T.B. I guess that came from poor living conditions. I remember my cousin Otto Hettman well. He came back from the 1st World War all shot up and also gassed. There was a Herman Hettman who worked for Wood & Brooks Co. for years and developed T.B. He used to take me fishing in a row boat on the river. Boy he could catch fish. There also was Christie who fell out of a tree and never had a doctor for his broken arm, result crippled arm.
At another time I plan to write about the Steuber family; Harold and I lived with them too. My uncle Steuber served in the Franco-Prussian War and was wounded in the seige of Paris. I can tell you a few stories about that war, because my uncle was a good story teller. Also there is a story about my cousin Hugo Steuber.
Also sending a picture of the Ironton Football team and my two cousins. Dolly Schultz was my cousin Albert and Walter Schultz was called Sparrow Schultz, why I don't know. Both were very good football players and for several years the Irontons were the top semi pro team in Western New York.
Document summary by AI