First Years in America
3
There are no known records of what Julius Kirmse did or where he went for the first six years of his residence in the United States. Once he disembarked from the Bark Kosmos at the Port of New York April, 1853 until May, 1859 when he purchased 40 acres of land in Perry County, Missouri, no records of Julius have been found. There is family lore, but no records. This chapter outlines the family lore with the hope that documents to substantiate these stories can be found in the future.
Destination – Buffalo, New York
The bark Kosmos passenger manifest says that Julius’s destination was Buffalo. (See chapter Julius Arrived in New York) This was a reasonable destination because after the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, Buffalo became the western end of the 524-mile waterway starting at New York City. By the 1840s German-Americans made up one-third of Buffalo’s population. German was spoken and there were German newspapers, churches, businesses and industries.
Horse and Buggy Caretaker
Grandmother Kirmse, said that Julius’s ship passage was paid by a doctor from New York. Julius worked off his debt by having the doctor’s horse and buggy immediately ready for any house call the doctor needed to make. Julius’s duties possibly included feeding and grooming the horse(s) as well as maintaining the harness, tack and buggy.
Store Clerk
Grandmother Kirmse said that Julius also worked in a dry goods store when he was not needed to tend the horse and buggy for the doctor. Supposedly it was here that Julius learned to speak English. Helen (Kirmse) Hacker understood from her father that Julius worked in a grocery store, possibly after he left Buffalo.
Railroad Track Layer
Family lore has it that Julius worked on the Illinois Central Railroad laying track. The Illinois Central was chartered by the Illinois General Assembly on February 10, 1851. Upon its completion in 1856, the Illinois Central main line went from Galena, Illinois in the northwest corner of the state to Cairo, Illinois, at the southern tip of the state. A branch line went to the rapidly growing city of Chicago. (See Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Central_Railroad)
Hod Carrier
Helen (Kirmse) Hacker says in a letter to Norma (Kirmse) Rauh that Amanda (Kirmse) Mehner “told me that her Dad said Grandpa Kirmse was a hot or mud carrier for brick laying”. The “hot” probably refers to a brick hod which is a three-sided box (with a long handle for carrying over the shoulder) for manually moving bricks or other building materials, often mortar. Typically the hod carrier or “hoddie” will be employed in a supporting role to skilled bricklayers. The hoddie’s duties might include fetching bricks from the delivery pallet using his hod and bringing them to scaffold so that the bricks may then be laid by the bricklayers. The mortar may also be mixed by the hod carrier and carried in the hod. The baseline rate for a bricklayer is to lay 1,000 bricks a day. So if the hod carrier is serving a team of two (and sometimes they served a team of 3 bricklayers), he must move 2,000 bricks per day. (See Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_hod)
Attended Church at Paitzdorf
Family lore has that Julius attended the Lutheran Church at Paitzdorf (now Uniontown) as early as 1855. The church had been founded in 1840 by Saxon immigrants and is considered the parent church of Salem Lutheran Church in Farrar that Julius was a founding member in 1859. There is no mention of Julius in the baptism, marriage, and burial records of the Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church (name changed in 1929). None would be expected because Julius was a bachelor at the time he supposedly attended. Possibly he is mentioned in the communicant records. Hopefully someone in the future will review these records, if they exist,.
Purchased Land
May 29,1859 Julius purchased 40 acres of land in Perry County, Missouri, The title to this land provides the first documented activity of Julius since he disembarked from the Bark Kosmos in the Port of New York six years earlier.
Future
Julius’s above activities are examined in the later chapters with goal of providing a better understanding of how Julius traveled and lived during these six years.