Hooligan’S Alley: Inspired by the Compelling True Story of a Hell’S Kitchen Immigrant

By Joanna Kelly

Fueled with in-depth research and personal recollections, Hooligans Alley presents a historic novel embracing generations of early European immigrants and their amazing struggles.

In the style of a novel, author Joanna Kelly tells the true story of Wilhelmina Huebner Metting, an orphaned farm girl who uprooted her life in Germany to search for an aunt living far away in America. Her quest took her to New Yorks infamous Hells Kitchen, an area of overcrowded slums, lumberyards, slaughterhouses, factories, and immigrants troubled by poverty and violence. There, seventeen-year-old Wilhelmina started a seamstress business and kept cows on a vacant city lot.

Wilhelmina was, above all things, a passionate social reformer. She encountered American society first during the Civil War, a time of great social unrest. Her involvement with the Colored Orphan Asylum put her in the center of the New York City Draft Riots, the largest uprising in the history of the United States.

Wilhelminas story inspired Kelly, who fleshed out the few hard facts she could find with a lovingly researched fictional visit to a long-lost time and place in Americas history.

Joanna Kellydraws special strength from her Quaker faith as well as her insatiable thirst for history in writing her first novel, Hooligans Alley. She is a gifted writer who explores her love of music, wildflowers, and passion for family in weaving this remarkable series of adventures that will set your heart to racing, while stretching your own recollections and imagination. Hooligans Alley is a must-read for New Yorkers and history lovers, and everyone who cares about origins and family.

E. Barrie Kavasch best-selling author of The Medicine Wheel Garden

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781462058242

Joanna Kelly

Before serving as assistant director at Kent Memorial Library in Kent CT, Joanna Kelly was a staff reporter and historical feature writer at Citizen News, Fairfield County, CT. She is the author of Hooligan’s Alley, Tomato Pie, Written in Stone, and The Wildflowers of Sherman, Connecticut. Joanna lives in Litchfield County, CT.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1

The Road To Bremerhaven

Chapter 2

The Voyage

Chapter 3

The Golden Door

Chapter 4

The Cows On Forty-Fifth Street

Chapter 5

The Parental Famine

Chapter 6

The Massacre Of Innocents

Chapter 7

The Funeral

Chapter 8

The Box Hotel

Chapter 9

The Great Calamity

Chapter 10

The Search For Wisdom

Chapter 11

The Visit

Chapter 12

The Music And The Marriage

Chapter 13

The Thirteenth Cow

Chapter 14

The Farewells

Chapter 15

The Final Journey

Family Epilogue

Historical Epilogue

Fictionalized Characters

Endnotes

Bibliography

This book is dedicated to four Kates:

Kate (Kathleen) M. Corbett,

Kate (Kathleen) Metting Barron,

Kate (Catherine) Coll de Valera Wheelwright,

and

Kate (Kathleen) Kelly Vees.

The sale of this book benefits the Jamie Kelly Scholarship Fund

Master, thou who I know not,

Yet whom I know art.

I, a little child of earth,

Desire knowledge.1

image004.jpg

Cows grazing in a vacant lot in

Spuyten Duyvil, New York City, in the mid-nineteenth century.

Long years ago the cows coming home from the pasture trod a path over this hill. Echoes of tinkling bells linger there still, but they do not call up memories of green meadows and summer fields; they proclaim the home-coming of the rag-picker’s cart. In the memory of man the old cow-path has never been other than a vast human pig-sty… In the scores of back alleys, of stable lanes and hidden byways, of which the rent collector alone can keep track, they share such shelter as the ramshackle structures afford with every kind of abomination rifled from the dumps and ash-barrels of the city.

How the Other Half Lives

Jacob Riis

Danish American social reformer, journalist and social documentary photographer,1849-1914

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a pleasure to be able to express my gratitude to the many friends and colleagues who walked Wilhelmina’s journey with me. First, I must thank all the historians, genealogists, storytellers, and immigrants who have inspired this work. My greatest appreciation goes to E. Barrie Kavasch, author of over twenty-six books in print, for her wisdom and encouragement. I want to sincerely thank my editor, Sarah Disbrow, for her guidance and remarkable understanding. I am deeply indebted to Helen Bethel for her professional foreign language translation and transcription services and for providing me with copies of German documents and letters found in an old trunk, dating back to an 1861 passage out of Bremerhaven, Germany.

Without the help of near centurion, Kathleen M. Corbett, who shared many stories about her grandmother, Wilhelmina Huebner Metting, I could not have written this book. I am very grateful to Marie Corbett Hubbard for providing family images and the only known photograph of her great-grandmother, Wilhelmina Huebner Metting.

I want to thank my neighbor, dairy farmer Chuck Reimer, for teaching me about dairy animals. Without him I never would have figured out how a dozen cows prospered in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen. And if it weren’t for Robin Simmons, production manager at Simmons Dairy in Farmington, Connecticut, who took time away from his busy low-fat yogurt business to research Devon cattle, I never would have found out what kind of cows resided in Civil War-era New York City. It would have been Devons, he told me, that produced milk and beef products for the growing metropolis, and it was most likely Devons that followed Wilhelmina home on an autumn day in 1862.

I am thankful to have spent part of a blessed June afternoon speaking with the Right Reverend Andrew St. John, rector of the Church of the Transfiguration. Celebrated as the Little Church around the Corner since 1870, it is located at One East Twenty-Ninth Street, off Fifth Avenue in New York City. I am almost certain this was the church Wilhelmina attended, and I was startled by the historical incidents that connected the church to the Draft Riots of 1863.

I want to be sure to thank my dear friends at Kent Memorial Library, especially librarian Catherine Sweet. She is a search engine with Google power. The ladies at New Milford Library were equally helpful, not only in locating materials but in obtaining out-of-print books from the far corners of the state. I am grateful to Louise Hoffman, Karen Chase, and Ilse Hirt for their editing and source information. When it came to typing the composition titles for the 1872 Rubinstein concert in chapter 12, I turned to Charles B. Emerich, music department chair at the Kent School in Kent, Connecticut. He masterfully crossed all the Ts to make sure the Steinway Hall program was written correctly. Avinash P. Tantri, MD, physician and surgeon with the Lakeville Eye Association in Connecticut, kindly took the time to educate me on retinol disorders.

Thomas Lisanti, licensing manager at the New York Public Library, was extremely helpful in providing many of the historical digital images for the book. Maggie Land Blanck’s website (http://www.maggieblanck.com) is chock full of photos, maps, and immigrant stories. I am honored and grateful for her permission to use some of the photographs in her collection. I am also grateful to the Tenement Museum, 103 Orchard Street, New York City, New York, for their resources and e-newsletter.

Sylvia Dalessandro, executive director of the Sandy Ground Historical Society and Library, enthusiastically gave me permission to place the fictional Zoel Choctaw (Wills) with her ancestors, Louisa and Moses Harris, in the farming community of Sandy Ground on Staten Island. She was exceedingly helpful in contributing historically significant events about Sandy Ground, the oldest community established by free slaves in North America.

I am deeply grateful to Seth Kasten, head of Reference and Collection Development at the Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary, New York City, for providing me with information about the school. Ruth Tonkiss Cameron, the archivist for the Burke and Union Collection, was a charming contributor who spent part of a snowy winter day telling me about Union Theological Seminary in the nineteenth century. Without their knowledge, I would not have been able to give the fictional Nevan Treadwell his clergical dream.

My own grandmother, the late Elizabeth Coll Millson, encouraged me to write when I was a young girl. It was she who first told me about her aunt, Kate Coll de Valera Wheelwright, and I am forever grateful to her for sharing Kate’s personal story.

The Washington, Connecticut, historical society provided archival material on the Coll family and their role in Ehrick Rossiter’s life. William Bader, local historian and one of Washington’s favorite sons, had an opportunity to get to know my great-grandfather, Edward Coll (the man who took Eamon de Valera to Ireland to be raised on the family farm), and spent many hours reminiscing over lunch at the landmark GW Tavern in Washington. And I thank my daughter, Kate Kelly Vees, a cardiac nurse at Hartford Hospital and benevolent medical missionary, for her knowledge about early heart disorders.

Hooligan’s Alley is devoted to the ghostly denizens of leaky tenement cellars and hot, smoky attics, the struggling immigrants of Bottle Alley, Rag Pickers’ Row, Blind Man’s Alley, Bandit’s Roost, and our many generations with love. May we long continue to share their stories.

INTRODUCTION

I would never have known about Wilhelmina Huebner Metting had I not met her granddaughter, Kathleen M. Corbett, a near centenarian who has been relishing extraordinary New York minutes since World War I. She’s lived a life as delicious as the Big Apple itself and talks about her nine decades with candor and intelligence in the storytelling ceremony of her Irish father, John Patrick Barron. When he spoke, he taught. And he did it with wit and wisdom, always adding anecdotal remarks to customize his subject. Such commentary resulted in an interesting, well-rounded daughter who injects a collection of New York keepsakes into her own narratives.

Kathleen was taken to Madison Square Garden to see the circus, horse and dog shows, and flower shows. She has seen almost every vaudeville act, Broadway show, silent film, talkie, and singing sensation in the first half of the twentieth century. She looked at parades for US Olympic athletes, foreign dignitaries, Commander Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett after their flight over the North Pole, and Gertrude Ederle (the first woman to swim the English Channel). She attended Saint Patrick’s Day parades, observing them from a front room of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, thanks to the owner, one of her father’s friends. But no procession or motorcade was ever more exciting to her than the day New York saluted Charles Lindbergh with a tickertape parade down Broadway after his historic transatlantic flight. She remembers the confetti, the magnitude and adulation of the crowds, steam whistles, car horns, and cupping her hands over her ears to deafen the cacophony of cheers. And in her usual modesty, she told me that many years later she met Charles Lindbergh walking somberly near a wooded area not far from her home in Darien, Connecticut. She said he was fair and tall and very handsome. She also met his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, when their daughters became friends.

On a mild winter day in 1931, Kathleen and her brother, Jack, were kept out of school and taken over to Riverside Drive with their mother, Kate Metting Barron. Her father thought it was important enough to miss school to witness the first cable (twisted wire ropes a mile in length) as it was pulled from the Hudson River and raised to the towers of the George Washington Bridge, which was then the longest suspension span in the world. She remembers it came out of the water hauling a huge American flag. Her father, always well informed, then told her that the bridge had been completed eight months ahead of schedule and that twelve lives had been lost in its construction. The second day it opened, John Patrick Barron paid the quarter toll and drove his family over it.

I met Kathleen Corbett when I was employed as a staff member at Kent Memorial Library in Kent, Connecticut. She had been a voracious reader all her life with a special fondness for biographies of politicians and entertainers. A staunch devotee of fashion, she dresses impeccably and mounts slightly tilted, chic felt hats over perfectly coiffed hair—reminiscent of the twenties. Her favorite story, which usually draws an audience, is about going with a date to the Rustic Cabin, a nightclub on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. It was there that she first heard a singing waiter, a small fellow wearing a suit and a bow tie. After listening to him sing Three on a Match, she said to her date, "Now he’s really good. He’s going places." It was, of course, Frank Sinatra and she became his biggest fan. She met him many years later and told him she had been at the Rustic Cabin a few times and was there the night he was discovered by Harry James.

Kate Corbett often spoke about her New York experiences, and I thought that one day I’d write an article about her life extraordinaire. But when she told me about her grandmother, Wilhelmina Huebner Metting, I was captivated. She had never met this grandmother and only knew that she came to America on a sailing ship from Germany at age seventeen and attempted to find an aunt living in an area that was later called Hell’s Kitchen (a vivid sobriquet inspired by its reputation as one of the hardest and meanest districts in New York City). It was in this area of overcrowded slums, lumberyards, slaughterhouses, factories, and immigrants troubled by poverty and violence that young Wilhelmina started a seamstress business and kept cows on a vacant city lot.

Although I had few facts on which to build Wilhelmina’s life, there were enough to inspire this book. Many of the people with whom she was associated are not known, and I have resorted to fictitious characters to illustrate her story. Wilhelmina was passionate and triumphant in her undertakings, especially in the area of social reform. She arrived during the Civil War, a time of great racial unrest in New York City. Her involvement with the Colored Orphan Asylum put her in the center of the New York City Draft Riots, the largest uprising in the history of the United States.

It wasn’t easy to figure out Wilhelmina’s personal journey. She struggled with spiritual growth for many years, trying to understand what it meant when she reflected upon the Lord’s Prayer. How was she to define the will of God when she couldn’t comprehend it? It was all so vague to her. In order to sort out her life’s spiritual journey, I asked for help from my own master, and within hours I put my hands on a 1906 copy of Connecticut Magazine in which the papers of the Reverend Amos Chase were reprinted. I knew immediately I had crossed the bridge and was ready for Wilhelmina’s odyssey.

One day Kate Corbett told me that her mother had been born in 1882 and that her grandmother, Wilhelmina Huebner Metting, had most likely given birth in Nursery and Child’s Hospital, which stood on Fifty-Second Street—the present site of the Chrysler Building. I gasped and told her that my great-aunt, Kate Coll de Valera Wheelwright, was admitted to that hospital the same year and gave birth to a boy. Wouldn’t it have been a coincidence if they had met and become friends?

Both women crossed the ocean alone, one from a dairy farm in Ireland, the other a dairy farm in Germany, and debarked at Castle Garden, the first examining and processing depot for immigrants entering New York. Their losses and sorrows and their hunger for spiritual contentment was a commonality that might have made them great friends. It is my personal privilege to introduce these remarkable women, if only on these pages.

The 1863 New York City Draft Riots have been widely chronicled, often with conflicting reports. I have relied upon the written statements of Anna Shotwell, a founder of the Colored Orphan Asylum, and Barnet Schecter’s The Devil’s Own Work, as well as the PBS documentary film New York.

I have also depended on The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years’ Work Among Them by Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children’s Aid Society and instigator of the Orphan Train Movement, the precursor to modern foster care. Being an orphan herself, Wilhelmina was drawn to the work Brace did in rounding up thousands of the city’s homeless and often delinquent children and relocating them to country homesteads in the Western states. She was stunned by the vagarious existence of children—a staggering thirty thousand living and begging on the streets of New York City in 1862. In her lifelong quest to walk the earth well, Wilhelmina donated the only thing she could to Brace’s efforts: she volunteered as a sewing instructor in one of his industrial schools and brought countless boys to his newsboys’ houses.

Although there has been considerable mystery concerning Eamon de Valera’s paternal ancestry, Kate Coll de Valera Wheelwright’s personal story has been well documented. As the mother of Eamon de Valera, a leader in the struggle for Irish independence and a dominant political figure of the twentieth century, she has been written about in most de Valera biographies. Because of her place in American and Irish history, no names have been used or added for embellishment. I have relied on family stories, letters, papers, and speeches as well as Mary C. Bromage’s biography, de Valera and the March of a Nation, to illustrate the fictional friendship between two very real women.

Joanna Kelly

Litchfield County, Connecticut

"Almost one hundred years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, several mothers of the current undergraduates of Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, met to provide assistance to the widow of another fallen president. Because several Kennedy daughters and one daughter-in-law had attended the school, it seemed fitting that former first lady, Jackie Kennedy, would look to the nun-taught facility for help after the assassination of her husband, John F. Kennedy. In late 1963 and well into 1964, as I remember, Jackie received thousands of condolences from around the world. It was her wish that each and every letter be acknowledged.

"Once a week, twenty or so women, many with special language skills, gathered at the college to hand-address the printed thank-you notes. I was one of those women. We met faithfully until every last letter had been answered. Week after week, month after month, with lunch provided by the nuns, we dug into boxes of letters, responding to as many as two hundred at each session.

"I drove in from Darien, Connecticut, every week to help with the project. Forty-five minutes north of New York City, Manhattanville was a comfortable half-hour ride, and I enjoyed working with the group. One day while sitting around the table, there was interesting commentary about the incidents surrounding the Lincoln/Kennedy murders. I told the women that my grandmother, Wilhelmina Huebner Metting, immigrated to America during the Civil War and settled in New York City. Three years later in 1865, she stood among the thousands who lined up to see the remains of President Lincoln as the glass coffin was rolled down Broadway.

"It was this grandmother who started a little dairy in the middle of Manhattan, in Hell’s Kitchen really, and it was this same grandmother who tried unsuccessfully to convince her husband to purchase several building lots where the Plaza Hotel now stands. I never met my grandmother; she died just before I was born, but I thought of her during that critical time in the 1960s; and although separated by a century of events, I felt connected by those two terrible assassinations and the coincidences associated with them. Lincoln was elected to the presidency in 1860 and Kennedy in 1960, you know. Both lost a child while living in the White House. Lincoln and Kennedy were deeply involved with Civil Rights, as I recall. They were both shot in the back of the head in the presence of their wives.

"I went on to tell the ladies that my grandmother, called Millie by friends and family, had been present at Lincoln’s funeral procession in New York; and my daughter, Marie Corbett Hubbard, Wilhelmina’s great-granddaughter, went to Washington with classmates from Manhattanville to attend Kennedy’s funeral.

Wilhelmina Huebner was orphaned and at seventeen left Germany for a new life in America, believing, as many had at the time, that the streets were paved in gold. They weren’t, of course, but Wilhelmina found even greater riches on the unlikely streets of New York.

Kathleen M. Corbett

Spring 2010

image006.JPG

Leaving home. From a painting by F. Holl.

Harper’s Weekly

October 25, 1873

Courtesy of Maggie Land Blanck, http://www.maggieblanck.com

Look for the clear light of truth. Look for unknown, new roads. Even when man’s sight is keener far than now, divine wonder will never fail him. Every age has its own dreams. Leave, then, the dreams of yesterday. Youth, take the torch of knowledge and build the palace of the future.

Marie Curie, Polish physicist and chemist,

1867-1934

CHAPTER 1

THE ROAD TO BREMERHAVEN

The Lord said to Abram: Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.

Genesis 12:1

She never once looked back. She put her traveling bags on the floor of the rickety milk wagon and sat down beside them, stretching out her long legs and molding her spine into a folded blanket she had wedged against the backboard. She was sure she had thought of everything but knew immediately she should have brought another blanket to sit on, for stones and dirt were scattered about, promising dust and grit on the bumpy ride.

Why don’t you have one last good-bye, Millie? suggested her neighbor, Hans Studer. Maybe you should walk up the hill to the graves. We have some time left.

Thank you, Herr Studer, but I have said my farewells for the last time. I will never forget my beautiful home and will go to America with a picture of it stored in my heart, she answered without turning around. This picture will decorate my memory until I someday die.

Wilhelmina had slept alone in the old farmhouse many nights during the past three years and wanted to close her eyes there one more time. On that final night, she dozed off in her own bed with her own pillow and bedclothes. She tucked in things she had known and loved since she could remember: the stuffed brown cow given to her by grandmother Huebner, the picture book of old fairytales, and of all things, a tiny, copper cow bell that had belonged to her brother. She even brought into the bed her faded baby blanket. It would all be left behind. The new owner had purchased the farm part and parcel and would take possession before the first of November.

It seemed fitting that the last thing Wilhelmina ever saw was the hillside overlooking the fertile farmland that sprouted the gravestones of her Germanic ancestors. Inside the gate sat a simple little cemetery with generations of family markers that revealed delicately lettered inscriptions on recessed panels. The round-shouldered headstones, ranging in size from twenty to forty inches high and three inches thick, were enshrined with a variety of hearts and vegetal forms carved into a central tympanum. The newest graves, distinguished by traditional motifs and the stonecutter’s deep-set engravings, marked the resting place of her brother and both her parents. It was from that tranquil, tree-shaded corner closest to the farmhouse that she chiseled the Huebner legacy into her soul. Early that morning, she looked up at the manicured graveyard and whispered one more good-bye; she waved as if someone were standing there. After that, she never looked back.

Are you sure you have all your papers? You packed the letter from your Aunt Helene? Hans asked, concerned that some of the passage documents would be left behind. And the money is pinned to your undergarment?

Wilhelmina ran the side of her hand down her skirt and ironed the gray folds as if pressing it with a flatiron that had been heated over hot coals. She paused at the hidden pocket she had sewn inside her petticoat for her money and reached almost to her heels before sliding her hand over the parcels as if to check once more. She nodded affirmatively. Everything seems to be here, she replied to the kind gentleman who had been like a father to her for over three years.

Well then, we’ll be going, Hans said as he climbed into the driver’s seat. He pulled his worn brown hat to the middle of his wide, furrowed forehead and picked up the reins. I’ll stop in front of my house so Ilse and Ruth can say good-bye.

There was a slight jolt as Milchreis, the fidgety milk-colored pony, pulled forward, and then came the steady trot that carried her from the homestead that had been in her family for over a century. Already touched by the hectic colors of autumn, the trees hung over the barn and threw shadows on the north side of the old brick house. The large dairy barn, with its sun-dried granaries, melted into the hillside and would be just a dot now had she glanced backward. The simple one-and-a-half story house had already disappeared, camouflaged by a row of ash trees her grandfather had planted in Napoleonic times.

That morning, fresh-cut hay, enameled in quiet hues of yellow and amber, lay prostrate on acres of Huebner land. Wilhelmina breathed in the familiar scent of the pungent herbage and closed her eyes, wishing she could store it deep inside to take out now and again just for the aroma. The field and weather conditions had been good, making for a late, dry crop. In years past, hay had been grown for livestock, and the forage yield and quality were paramount to the workings of the farm. Dairy animals would no longer reside on the old homestead, Hans had told her. The land would be put to wheat and barley. It pierced a sharp sadness in Wilhelmina, knowing cows would never graze and hay would never be grown on that land again.

It’s only property, Hans had said when the farm was finally sold. There are two kinds of property: real and personal. I’d like to have you think of the farm not so much as real property but as personal property—one that you can remember with understanding and respect. That’s really the only kind of property worth possessing.

It could never be hers anyway. The inheritance laws that restricted women from controlling property were still in effect in Germany. Through primogeniture the eldest son was the only one to whom family land could pass. Wilhelmina had one sibling, an older brother who had suffered from heart disease most of his life. He died with his parents in a tragic rail accident in 1859 which left her with no right of succession. To make matters worse, increased taxation imposed by the state, subdivision of land holdings, and population growth would probably have resulted in dispossession. The only sensible thing for her to do was to join the multitudes seeking new opportunities an ocean away.

In the early to mid-1800s, Germans were leaving rural villages in increasing numbers. By 1862, when Wilhelmina sailed for America, the emigration movement had already reached its peak. Most emigrants didn’t have to deal with being orphaned at thirteen as she had, but poverty, political unrest, and a failed revolution led to socioeconomic disruption, stimulating a widespread exodus.

Wilhelmina had begun the emigration process in the summer of 1861. In order to leave Germany, she needed to apply for permission to emigrate. With the help of Hans Studer, she obtained verification from her pastor and the tax and district officers. Once the paper was completed, she posted a notice in her town announcing her departure and confirming all her debts were paid.

In the weeks that followed, Wilhelmina made many voyages without ever leaving her room. She pictured the ship and saw blue skies and miles of sea with beautiful white caps. She dreamed of arriving in America in her new traveling clothes and finding opportunities beyond anything she dared to expect. Her imagination took her to New York City where there was magic on every street. Once the wagon started rolling, she felt the excitement of it all and knew she had set her compass in the right direction.

Soon Huebner pastures blended into Studer farmland, and she could see her little friend waiting at the gate. The wagon had barely come to a stop when Ilse ran into the road. Millie. Millie, what have you done? You look so different. Where did you get that cloak? And, Millie, she cried, what have you done with your hair?

I’m a journeywoman now, said Wilhelmina as she laughed. I’ll braid my hair again one day, I promise.

But I’ll never see it, Ilse returned sadly, looking down at the road.

You can keep an image of me in your heart just as I will of you. You will be in here forever, I assure you, said Wilhelmina, drawing an X across her chest.

"Mutter, come see Millie. She looks all grown up for her trip, exclaimed Ilse as her mother approached with packages for Wilhelmina. She put her hair up and has a full skirt. I braided my hair today to look like Millie and now she changed hers. I’m going to remember her with braids."

Ilse Studer was three years younger than Wilhelmina Huebner, but circumstances had made them as close as sisters. They had walked to and from school every day and brought in the cows before sun up since they were little girls. Ruth Studer had looked after Wilhelmina as she did Ilse, teaching her to cook and, more importantly, teaching her to sew, embroider, and knit. By the time she had reached her sixteenth birthday, Wilhelmina had become an accomplished seamstress; this would enable her to be a dressmaker in New York. They had heard dressmaking was a good trade in America. There was talk that a skilled seamstress could charge as much as eight dollars to make a new dress and four to do over an old one. Ruth had found a velvet-covered box and made a little portmanteau containing a tape measure, chalk, pins and needles, thimbles, a tracing wheel, thread, and scissors; she presented it to Wilhelmina as a parting gift.

It was Ruth who showed Wilhelmina what to pack and how to dress for the journey. Generally speaking, traveling clothes should be simple but well chosen. A neutral-colored or gray skirt and mantle is a pleasant sight to strangers. Wilhelmina had made her skirt from a bolt of cloth she brought down from the attic (fabric her mother had saved, no doubt, for church or a special occasion). She rolled out yards of material, and following a ready-made pattern, she made knife pleats of various widths and folded them into the design for a smooth line at the waist. Once it was pinned together, she made the adjustments and stitched it by hand. It had only taken two fittings until the buttons closed perfectly around her tiny waist. The bodice and other garments had belonged to her mother, down to the chemise, starched petticoat, and soft cotton stockings. She found comfort wearing those clothes this particular day.

Now, Millie, here is something I want you to have. You must take this gold pin that belonged to your mother, said Ruth, handing her a gold-top brooch with flower centers holding pasted stones set with claws. I found it when we went through her things. It will give elegance and add a little color to your costume for a special occasion, maybe your wedding day. And Hans saved these because he wants you to take them with you to America as a reminder of your homeland, she said, putting a box in the wagon that contained four beer steins that had been in the Huebner family for generations. We drank from these many times. As did your ancestors, she added, saying the last four words in English. Ruth had little schooling but knew some English and had taught the girl to understand and even read some of the language.

"Don’t forget the bread, Mutter, Ilse reminded her mother. It’s from Studer wheat and I helped to make it, she said, looking anxiously at Wilhelmina. Oh, I hope you like it. I put raisins and walnuts in because I know how much you love them."

Ruth placed the bag in Wilhelmina’s lap. This is for you so you will have something to eat later today, she said, smiling. You look beautiful, Millie. May God bless you. Please give our best to your aunt Helene.

Millie, before you go, just one thing, said Ilse in a low, secretive voice. Do you really think the roads are made of gold over there?

I can’t be sure, but that’s what I’ve been told and I believe it, she answered.

How I wish I could go too. Imagine being rich. Is that why they call it the land of the free? Because of all the free gold? Ilse asked innocently.

Wilhelmina reached over and took the girl’s hand in hers and whispered, If it’s so, I will be wealthy and send for you.

I’ll be stopping at the first barn to load the sacks for the mill, said Hans to his wife. Then we’ll be on our way. I’ll bring Millie to Bremen and then go on to Lahde with the wheat.

For centuries farmers from far and wide had taken their grain for grinding to the peaceful and friendly little village of Lahde. Here countrymen loitered and socialized while waiting for their grist. It would make a pleasant diversion on a day such as this.

Wilhelmina cupped both hands over her mouth, made a kiss, flung out her arms to Frau Studer and her daughter, and never looked back. She wanted to remember them just as they were. Thank you for everything, she cried as they pulled away.

Hans brought the cart to a stop in front of his barn and loaded the shafts before beginning again. He flapped his hands to scatter some chickens and turned to Wilhelmina. Notice the birds in the sky, flying freely and singing as they go. See how they soar with a happy purpose? Then notice the chickens, always looking down, just pecking away and taking for themselves. It is a lesson for us. Go with a bird song in your heart and keep your head held high, he said, imparting a little barnyard wisdom.

It is a good lesson. I will remember, Wilhelmina said, pushing back her shoulders and stretching her neck.

Wilhelmina occupied herself by smoothing out her grown-up skirt and observing fields of nameless flowers. She loved flowers, especially the ones growing wild on the roadside. Her mother had told her that there was a use for practically everything that grew—teas for colds and bad throats, barks for fever, and herbs for healing. If you study their shapes, you can figure out what they heal, her mother once said. Bladderwort resembles a bladder and lungwort looks like a lung, for instance. Wilhelmina wished she had paid more attention before it had been too late to ask.

Wilhelmina could see the Weser River first as they approached the port city of Bremen. Surrounded by the Wallgraben (the former moats of the medieval walls) on the northeast, the river was broad and somewhat shallow in that part of the city. Edged in a fine quay planted with ornamental trees, the river welcomed them like relatives opening a decorated door at holiday time. Traveling with the river, the old white mare navigated through narrow lanes studded with tiny medieval houses. This eventually gave way to wider, well-built streets with elegant villas of all sizes and shapes.

This is a very old merchant area. Some of these building go back to the Middle Ages when the town became an important center of trade, said Hans, directing the reins into the marktplatz (market place) and toward the four-story Town Hall. Wilhelmina pulled the folded square of blanket out from behind her and put it inside her traveling case as the horse trotted past mansions and churches bordered by well-tended gardens. Finally they approached the front of the station house. Bremen was the first city she had ever seen, and she was stunned by its beauty and cleanliness.

Hans put her luggage and packages on the walkway before helping Wilhelmina down from the wagon. Ordinarily she would have jumped right over the side, but today she was dressed as a lady and moved slowly and gracefully. There’s the agent, Millie, he said, pointing with his eyes as they entered the station. He will watch to see that you aren’t robbed or cheated. I feel secure leaving you here. Many years ago authorities made laws to protect emigrants leaving from Bremen, he said, confident he was delivering her to a safe harbor. You must go to the information bureau to ask about places of lodging for tonight and find out the ship’s departure time. He can tell you also about the train to Bremerhaven.

The train to Bremerhaven! All at once she was overcome with trepidation and began to feel trapped. She couldn’t go home now; there was no home to go to. Besides, after all the preparation, she’d feel foolish to return. On the other hand, once Wilhelmina gave over her papers she had no choice but to go ahead. Suddenly she froze in the middle of two worlds and couldn’t seem to move in either direction. She had never traveled more than a few kilometers from home much less going from Bremen to Bremerhaven and then crossing an ocean. Oh, but wasn’t it her father who had said, If you can’t seem to go forward in one way or another, force yourself to put one foot in front of the other, even if it’s only baby steps. She