Clark B. Firestone to his father, Solomon Firestone of Lisbon, Ohio, letter from Elsas of Friday, September 25, 1902

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]

Solomon J Firestone (1833-1912)

Clark B. Firestone to his father, Solomon Firestone of Lisbon, Ohio, letter from Elsas of Friday, September 25, 1902 (12 pages); viewed as typed copy, attachment to Shoup correspondence dated 1 June 1998; Clark Firestone wrote the letter while on a trip to Europe, after visiting the Firestone homelands of Berg and Thal; includes annotation on the first page.

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1 Copy of letter from Clark B. Firestone to

2 his father Solomon Firestone of Lisbon, Ohio.

3

4 Friday Evening, Sept 25, 1902

5 Elsas

6 Dear Father

7 It is nine o’clock in the evening and I am just back from

8 the pious pilgrimage I have made to the two ancestral dorfs of

9 “Berg” and “Thal.” I am seated in the large spare bedroom of

10 a village inn somewhere on the road—I have no idea where—between

11 these two villages and the railroad station of Ad^am^sweiler up

12 among the foothills of the Vosges mountains two hours by rail

13 from Strasburg. The large family album is before me, there are

14 vases of artificial flowers on the table and a mighty feather

15 bed varying in depth from 2 1⁄2 to five feet invites to repose.

16 I see I shall have an interesting night.

17 You want to know about my visit of course. Well, I shall

18 begin at the beginning,‐‐my ride this morning from Lucerne in

19 Switzerland to Strasburg. One of my traveling companions was an

20 Alstain, a Lutheran clergyman with fine black beard and dark eyes

21 and when he saw me studying the map of ElsasLothingen which Ross

22 sent me we got into conversation. I told him of my errand and

23 found that he had been in both villages and knew the pastor

24 there. He told me I should find very small communities and very

25 poor simple people. He showed me a new railroad route, opened

26 since the map was made and told me who to get to the villages

27 from a station not not more than half as far from them as Saar‐

28 Union. Then we got to talking farther. He told me there were

29 many Alstains in New York State, that they had a church congre‐

30 gation at Rochester to which he had once been invited. It

31 turned out that for five years he had been pastor of a German

32 church in Wheeling, W. Va. Then I got out my map of the United [end of page 1]

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2 States and showed him how near we were to being neighbors. He

3 said that the part of Elsass whence my ancestor came lay in the

4 lower range of the Vosges and was known as “crooked Elsass”

5 because of the curious configuration of the boundary. Its people

6 partook alike of the characteristics of the mountaineers and

7 plainmen and of Alstians and Lenainers. There were a border

8 people. The Alsatians are Protestant and the Lorrainers mostly

9 Catholic; the Alsatians are German and the Lorrainers partly

10 of French stock; the Alsatians are a large powerful‐boned people;

11 the Lorrainers slight and with long rather than round faces.

12 The Alsatians are open and frank of disposition while a proverb

13 has it that the Lorrainers “Has seven vests”; when you take off

14 all the seven vests you find still another vest between you and

15 his heart—he never reveals it to you (I had heard the same idea

16 differently expressed from a newspaper correspondent in Paris).

17 As to the Alsatian in general he said that they were “South

18 Germans”, they were expansive, and openhearted and loved to

19 sing and dance and drink, but were thrifty and very good

20 farmers, they were skin in blood to the Swiss, the Bavarians

21 and the Badens and their dialects were enough alike that they

22 could understand each other where other Germans could understand

23 them only with difficulty. All were alike he said in hating the

24 “Prussina” and loving the fatherland. With them Prussian and

25 Ruffian were synonomous, the Prussian knew it all, he was cold,

26 over‐bearing, and pig‐headed. But the Alsatians were attached

27 to Germany and would not think of changing their allegiance

28 to France. So said my traveling companion. He said also that

29 all the South Germans were descended from the Alemain tribes [end of page 2]

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2 of confederacy.

3 At Strasburg I checked my baggage and had just time to make

4 good connections for this district. It was practically a

5 mountain train. It kept climbing and climbing until I could see

6 the Black Forest on one side and the long dim line of the

7 Vosges river on the other. In the train were a number of peasant

8 woman going back to their villages from the market. All had

9 their baskets and all wore the curious Alsatian headdress—a

10 black bonnet like combination of enormously wide ribbon and the

11 headdress itself was at least three feet wide. They were a lively

12 lot and even the old women would jump down from the train like

13 crickets and they had mostly dark eyes and hair.

14 The train kept on trough a rich agricultural country,

15 passing village after village with orchard trees, and red roofs

16 and white walk. In the fields they were taking the potato crop‐‐

17 men and women digging on their hands and knees. They were haul‐

18 ing it with the aid of bullocks and heifers and once I saw two

19 hounds pulling a load. Sometimes I saw the goats harvesting on

20 their own account. It was a fine upland country with a little

21 tobacco, some clover, some hops, a good deal of sugar beets and

22 a vast amount of potatoes. It grows some grain but that had been

23 harvested.

24 At last I came to Adamsweiler a little hillside station.

25 It was three thirty P.M. and I had had nothing to eat since 6

26 o’clock in the morning in Switzerland. So I went to an inn

27 standing near and asked for “ham and eggs”. The inn was kept

28 by a nice looking woman and an up‐to‐date comely looking girl.

29 While waiting for my meal to come on and indulging in hungry [end of page 3]

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2 anticipations I talked with them. They said they thought I

3 was French “because I spoke such good German”, ‐‐not so much of

4 a joke as it counds, for the foreigner always speaks a purer

5 tongue then the peasant. When my meal came on it consisted

6 of cold slices of ham, cold eggs and good coffee. I supposed

7 the eggs had been hardboiled that morning and courageously put

8 a knife through one of them. It was raw. I wonder if they such

9 eggs in the Alsac. But I was hungry enough to enjoy it and then

10 I ordered three more boiled and they were good. Then I set forth

11 for an hour’s walk to the house of my fathers. I passed through

12 three villages before I came to Berg and Thal. It was a beauty‐

13 ful country finely farmed, with a roll to it lide the valley about

14 Franklin Square. It reminded me thoroughly of the best land that

15 runs along the northern tier of Columbiana County and that you

16 see from Georgetown to Salem. To make a last comparison, it

17 was most of all like the land on either side of the road to

18 Jase Kings after you turn at Alexandria and come down past the old

19 homestead to Aunt Harriet. The Firestones in America had

20 chosen an environment very very like that of the Firestones

21 in Elsass, except a trifle more rolling and is even richer.

22 It comes at from $120 to $200 an acre—and right here I might men‐

23 tion that the Firestones have at least their share of it.

24 It is all finely farmed and among it lie the little villages

25 with their churches, there were four villages in sight at one

26 time on my walk.

27 But I am coming to Berg and Thal. On the way I passed

28 more large fine strapping peasant women than a few, there was

29 one face that looked like Annie Bartges, who has a good deal

30 of the Firestone in her and there were several girls who in

31 size would simply have eclipsed her altogether. [end of page 4]

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2 I saw one girl that reminded me of Alice Firestone. Men and

3 women, young and old, gave me a pleasant “Guten Abend” as I

4 passed them in the fields and all the time I kept wondering

5 if these were my cousins. At last I halted on the edge of a

6 slope and asked a lad who was digging potatoes if if [sic] I was

7 near Berg and Thal. He pointed to a rich valley at the foot of

8 the slope. “There” he said “is Berg and that other village is Thal.”

9 At last I looked on the ancestral dorfs! They are always

10 mentioned together because one minister attends to both.

11 But from each arose a church spire and despite their names

12 each of them lay in a valley and on the wooded hill behind

13 them was another church which I learned had been standing for five

14 centuries. With their well built, redtiled cream cottages

15 and their orchards the villages looked fair enough in the level

16 light of the late afternoon and their inhabitants grinned a‐

17 micably at me from the fields in the foreground. From a xxx

18 pleasant spoken man and his wife who were descending the road

19 I inquired where the minister lived. He said he was way on a

20 visit. Then I asked if he knew if there were any Feuersteins

21 in either village. He said “yes” there were, in both, and

22 asked with heightened interest if I was related. I said I was

23 and with a certain village curiosity and kindness he said he

24 would show me where the principal Firestone of Berg lived.

25 The village was so long that although it has only five hundred

26 people the house of this Firestone was nearly a mile off.

27 My guide had himself a relative in America who had just written

28 him a letter and that was one reason he was good to me.

29 So we walked through the village together. It was north [end of page 5]

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2 Georgetown again but with better houses, better roads, a cleaner

3 brighter looking village. Droves of geese came out and hissed

4 at me, and dogs barked knowing I was a stranger. Everyone stared

5 and the little children followed me. On the way we stopped

6 at the house of Frossvater Firestone, 78 years old. We did not

7 see him, but we saw his daughter, a superior peasant woman of

8 middle age who was surprised and apparantly quite pleased. I

9 stood chatting with her a few minutes in front of her cottage

10 and went on. My new found guide pointed out one cottage after

11 another which a Firestone had built, or from which he had married

12 a wife. At last we came to our destination. He is a rich

13 Bauer my guide said that meant “A rich peasant farmer”. When

14 we got there he added in an aside “He’s the richest farmer in

15 this dorf”. We found his daughter washing some clothes out

16 side of his house, a two story plaster house of good appearance.

17 She was one of the homeliest girls I ever saw, very short and

18 very fat. She called her mother and my prepossessions when up

19 again at once. The mother came in with her potato hoe on her

20 shoulder and her dress pinned up and a kerchief about her hair.

21 She was a spare but pleasant looking woman of intelligence and

22 kindliness who reminded me in away and appearance of Mrs. Von

23 Octinger. She invited me in and sent for her husband who was

24 in the fields , her best room had no carpet on the floor, on

25 the walls were photographs of some nice looking young people

26 who bore the family name. Three or four were soldiers ; one

27 was a girl who looked like Hattie Bartges. By and by the “rich‐

28 est man in the dorf” appeared , a man of medium height and power‐

29 ful build with head set a little forward. xxx He wore no mus‐

30 tache and the grizzle showed on his face, in his hair. [end of page 6]

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2 A peaked hat was on his head and his face and head alike were

3 square and determined. If he was glad to see me he kept it to

4 himself. He did not offer to shake hands. I took the initia‐

5 tive there. I had risen when he entered. He did not ask me

6 to sit down nor did hi sit down himself. He stood there near

7 the door with the marks of the potato field on his clothes.

8 I made some general remarks about farming matters which did not

9 alter the dogged and half incredulous look on his face. He

10 finally said that a “Henrich Firestone” had gone to Cincinnati,

11 in 1850. If he knew of any other Firestone had gone to America

12 before that he kept it to himself. I should say here that the

13 dialect that these people spoke and that is spoken everywhere

14 in Elsass is very much chipped and corrupted. It is hard to

15 understand and so neither side got all the other said. I did

16 not stay more than five minutes and then I made a graceful

17 escape by saying that I must get to the other village before

18 dark.

19 As I walked down the road I noticed in front o me a wagon

20 drawn by three mighty horses and in it three hulking young men

21 who kept looking back at me. In front of them was a drove of

22 pigs and about a half a dozen goats among them. Soon I found

23 my former guide in the road waiting for me. “You didn’t stay

24 long” he said and perhaps I imagined that he said it with a

25 certain significance. But I did not let on to the guide. My

26 guide said that the big horses, the sheep and the goats belonged

27 to the man I had been talking to and that the young men were his

28 sons. He had nine children and “much land”. From another Fire‐

29 stone in another village I learned that the old fellow has

30 86 acres of land and the way land is held I should not be sur‐[end of page 7]

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2 prised if he was worth $15,000 and with the German scale of living

3 that goes a long ways.

4 When my guide left me at the foot of the road leading to

5 the other village he turned me over to another Firestone who was

6 going there and whom I liked better. The rich one was all

7 right in his way I suppose, but either he was suspicious of me

8 or else I represented a fact beyond his mental horizon. His

9 figure rises before me now, sturdy, squarechinned, cold‐eyed, a

10 masterful peasant who knew his game and held his hand high

11 against every man. He had succeeded in what he set out to do‐‐

12 getting land and money.

13 The man I walked with was perhaps forty five years old, a

14 spare sunburned man with fair face and brown mustache. He was

15 walking behind a load of potatoes. It was drawn by three horses

16 or rather two horses and a jersey cow. His wife was with him,

17 a dark eyed rather nice looking woman and his daughter, a fresh‐

18 faced yellow haired girl of 17 was driving the team. This

19 second Firestone was perceptibly more genial than the first and

20 would pass for what might be called an intelligent farmer. He

21 evinced no curiosity about his American cousins and I drew him

22 out on potatoes which he said this year were only a middling

23 crop. When we came into Thal, he turned into his own barn and

24 sent me with a neighbor girl of thirteen to guide me to the

25 Thal Firestone I had particularly asked for.—the man whom my

26 first guide had said was the “Burgomeister” of the village.

27 The second Firestone like the first had a satisfactory house

28 and a good wide stone or plaster barn. [end of page 8]

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2 The Burgmeister I must say lived up to the best traditions

3 of the family and surpassed all my expectations, none of which

4 had been high. I found a wiry spry man of scarcely middle

5 height not looking his years (he had two married daughters)

6 but with a face seamed with wrinkles and a kindly expression.

7 He was a peasant’s cap, the king you see in the cartoons of the

8 German peasant life. But his greeting was hospitable and cordial

9 he seized me warmly by the hand and did not let go until he had

10 me in his house and seated by the light. By this time it was

11 twilight. I paused a th the threshold to clean the mud from my

12 shoes and he handed me a little hand broom made of switches.

13 We sat talking, he and his wife and I for perhaps a half an hour.

14 She too was superior looking and very kindly woman. All the

15 Firestones seem to have married well. I could not help think‐

16 ing of Uncle Dan while taking to my host. He had the same kind‐

17 ly genial manner and the same determination to be interested in

18 his guest. There were several lads hanging about the doorway

19 while I was talking and before I left the father brought them

20 into the circle of light and introduced. They were Emil,

21 George, John and Nicholas, varying in age from perhaps fourteen

22 to twenty, of course they were shy and showed it. But they were

23 pleasant faced, nice looking boys, of whom no American farmer

24 would be ashamed. In showing me over the lower part of the

25 house the father took me across the hall into the cowbarn and there

26 I found another child of his, a well made, round faced, two‐

27 haired young woman milking with the light from the latern on the

28 floor, thrown up into her face. She rose from the milking stool

29 to acknowledge her father’s introduction and laughed and blushed. [end of page 9]

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2 That was Caroline the only unmarried daughter. The two married

3 daughters whom I did not see were named Catherine and Sophia.

4 My host had seven jersey cows and there was one horse in the

5 stable.

6 I said I must be getting back to Adamsweiler near the rail‐

7 road where I intended to pas the night and get a daybreak train

8 back to Strasburg. The Burgomeister said he would set me right

9 on the way a I might lose it by night. So we started out to‐

10 gether under the moonless but starlit sky and we had a very plea‐

11 sant walk and talk. He went with me for over a mile. I told

12 him I must not take him from his evening work. He said “Die

13 Bube” would take care of that. I asked him how many morgens

14 he owned (a morgen is about an acre). He said 68. So I cal‐

15 culated he must be worth from $10,000 to $12,000. I asked him

16 what the Burgomeister of a village did and he said he collected

17 taxes. He said he got a yearly salary of $22. He had been

18 Burgomeister for nine years—the term is six. I said that a

19 Firestone was Burgomeister there when Uncle John visited the

20 place twenty years ago. He said that was another man and pointed

21 out his house. On the way we met another son of his, a strapping

22 big young fellow whom he halted and introduced. He said he was

23 to be a soldier. Finally we said good night and my kindly cousin

24 wished me “a happy journey.” I told him if he ever came across

25 to America he must look us up and I gave him father’s address,

26 we parted very cordially. He was what the English call a “good

27 sort”, and I quite liked him.

28 When I got to the brow of the hill I turned back an looked [end of page 10]

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2 for some minutes down on the little slumbering villages with just

3 a light twinkling here and there and I pondered over the family

4 vicissitudes that had brought me back there after a hundred and

5 fifty years. And as I walked over the hills under the stars

6 I tried to picture to myself my peasant ancestors striding home

7 at night in their quaint and primitive garb, their caps pulled

8 down over their eyes, their feet shod in heavy wooden shoes, a

9 stout stick in their hands and a stout heart in their bosoms.

10 There was good blood in them and it pretty nearly reached its

11 climax in that big family of girls and boys my grandfather brought

12 into the world near North Georgetown, so I thought.

13 I took a new road and steered by the stars and by and by

14 I came to this house where I concluded to stop for the night,

15 as the village looked so quiet and has such fresh cowyard odor.

16 I found a modest landlord. He looked me over and said he

17 thought he had nothing good enough for me. But I took issue with

18 him. I had a big pitcher of milk and that was my supper.

19 The dialect spoken in Berg and Thal I want to say a word

20 more about. It was curiously confused with words in it that

21 sounded like English. Thus they boil eggs “heird” and have “bake

22 ovens.” To give an idea of what they do to German, they call

23 “neuen” (9) “neen”, they say “ish” instead of “ist” for our

24 “is” and when the Burgomeister spoke of his three girls (“drei

25 maedchen”) he called them “dree mada”.

26 Finis.

27 As you have probably guessed this letter was not finished

28 in that tavern. I left there the next morning and my bill for

29 the best bedroom and supper was 37 cents. Since [end of page 11]

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2 Then I have seen many places and I have added a line to this in

3 hotels and on trains. I am finishing it now on the storied

4 Rhine on which I am nearing Coblenze by boat. I made this account

5 full because you folks seemed to want to know all about your

6 German cousins. Maybe their simple lives will disappoint you.

7 As for me I was agreeably disappointed. I found more intelligent,

8 resolute and prosperous people than I had expected.

9 Now I have a request to make. C. D. Firestone of Columbus

10 once wrote to you asking what the family crest was. He is the

11 man who kept me waiting in his outer office for more than an hour.

12 The next time you see him tell him you have found it out. It

13 is a potato hoe. Tell him that the young man who once called

14 at his office in Columbus, Ohio, made that discovery.

15 I hope this letter finds you all well. I promise seldom

16 to write at such length again. With love to all,

17 Clark

18 P.S. There is a Firestone in Elsass who is a celebrated

19 artist.

20 P. S. I stopped at Mannheim but that will be shot story.

21 P. S. The Burgomeister’s father and mother are still living

22 each nearly ninety.