FOREWORD
This book does not in any sense purport to be a biography. Often during Father's lifetime, on our long walks together or during long quiet evenings at home, he would tell of his early life, repeating over and over certain incidents which had impressed him deeply and so—when after he had gone we found among his papers two closely written diaries bound in calf, telling of his trip to California and the return from there—it seemed most natural to work over these diaries, to try to make out their closely penciled pages and, when that was done, with as few changes as possible, to publish these, together with a brief sketch of his early life and a few explanatory notes, for his family, friends, and any others who may be interested in these early experiences of one who came seeking the best in this country.
The construction has been left unchanged and is very suggestive of the German, while the use of words, if at times inaccurate and somewhat flowery, is remarkable when one considers that but three years before he had come to this country an immigrant boy, knowing no English whatever. He was constantly reading, both books and the daily papers (has spoken often of how, later on, he took the New York Tribune to study the editorials by Horace Greeley), and then trying to use the new words which he found—doubtless keeping his diary partly for that purpose. On the whole it would seem that he has succeeded in making his thoughts remarkably clear. Some of these are very characteristic of him as we knew him in later years—but in religious matters he had reacted from the despotism of a strong established church and of a narrow-minded bigotry without as yet knowing the deep personal religious experience which was afterwards his. As to his political views—it is hard to believe that they were written in 1852 when they might equally well have been expressed at any time since 1914.
Belle Willson Lobenstine
INTRODUCTION
Christian Lobenstine or William C. Lobenstine, as he called himself later on in this country, was born in Eisfeld, Dukedom of Meiningen, on November eighth, eighteen hundred and thirty-one. He was the youngest in his family. The others were Theodore, Caroline, Frederic, Bernard, Dorothea, Georgia, and Henry. They were the children of Johanne Andreas and of Elizabeth Lobenstein.
His father and older brothers were tanners and also farmers. Of the brothers, Theodore, the eldest, seems to have been the most lovable, always kind to his younger brothers and sisters. Father always spoke very affectionately of him. Frederic, on the other hand, the first of the boys to come to this country, was stern and rather arbitrary to the other members of the family. These, and Henry who also came to this country, together with his father and his mother, whose gentleness and care he never forgot, were the only ones of whom he ever spoke.
The earliest known incident of his life, and one to which he often referred, came when he was about seven years old. He, with other children, was playing by a stream near the tannery, and he fell in. It was early spring and the waters were swollen by melting snows so that he was carried down stream very rapidly. His friends ran along the banks with grappling hooks trying in vain to reach him. Finally, however, the stream ran under a bridge and here Theodore ran out and with one of the great hooks used in handling hides in the tanyard, caught him by the buttonhole of his vest. He was unconscious but they were able to bring him to and carried him to an uncle who had an inn near by. After a night's rest, they took him home, none the worse for his adventure.
As he grew older he became ambitious for a good education and one day while working in the fields with his father, mustered up courage to ask him to send him away to school, and won his consent. He studied three years and a half at the Real Gymnasium in Meiningen. His life was one of the simplest and hardest. He had an attic room with some townspeople and ate his midday meal with them. His breakfasts and suppers consisted of a jug of water and a big piece of the rye bread of the country with butter. Once in a while, his family would send him down a ham. He kept his cot at the window so that he might be awakened by the first rays of the rising sun and begin to study, for he always worked hard for what he got and was an earnest, faithful student rather than a brilliant one. He kept, however, on the highest bench all the way through common school and also ranked well in the gymnasium.
After leaving school, he studied for nearly a year with a country doctor, a relative of his, going about with him and assisting in many ways, but developed no liking for the profession and so gave it up and, together with his brother Henry, decided to come to America whither Frederic had already gone. This was in eighteen hundred and forty-nine, when a new spirit was abroad in Germany and when people looked to this country both as a land of freedom and also as a place where one could almost literally pick up gold and silver on the streets. At that time it was the rule in Meiningen that upon emigrating, you forfeited all rights and claims upon that Government and before leaving he went to the Castle and signed papers giving up all rights of German citizenship. He left Germany with the definite idea of settling in the United States, making it his permanent home and becoming a part of this new country. From the first, therefore, he chose to associate with Americans and to use the English language rather than keep up his German associations.