In one respect, School Hill was just like the old land, there was school. Also, on Sundays, he would have dressed in his best and gone with his family to St. Fidelis Catholic Church services that were first held in a log building in Spring Valley. This primitive log building was a stark contrast to the well-built, refined church building of Eil, Prussia. Going to church provided a break from farm work and another opportunity to meet up withhis young friends.
At age fifteen, Christian witnessed his sister, Elizabeth “Lizzie”, marry Franz Herr. She was the first of his siblings to marry. Christian was to marry Franz’s niece, Maria Magdalena Herr, eleven years later, on June 15, 1871. They would be married at St. Fidelis Catholic Church, Spring Valley, Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Christian and Maria lived with Christian’s parents, for another seventeen years, when in 1888 both Katharina and Heinrich Scharenbroch died. Christian inherited the farm even though he was not the oldest son. His oldest brother, Gerhard, who had fought in the Civil War, lived nearby with his wife, Ada Steudt, in Town Meeme, Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Gerhard died ten years before their father, Heinrich. Brother John owned his own farm in Town Meeme. John married Catherine Forster. Brother Heinrich married first Franciska Forster. Then after her death, he married her sister, Theresa Forster. He had moved to St. Could, Stearns, Minnesota where he had homesteaded land. Brother Paul married Amelia Gutman and moved 24 miles away, to Brillon, Calumet, Wisconsin.
Christian had learned carpentry from his father and helped build Holy Trinity Catholic Church in School Hill, which was only one mile from their farm. Once this new church was finished, the family attended church here instead of St. Fidelis Catholic Church in Spring Valley. The Catholic Faith was an integral part of Christian and his family’s life, as it had been for his parents, grandparents, and more than likely many generations before back to the introduction of Catholicism in Germany about 300 CE. Over the next nineteen years following their marriage, Christian and Maria had eight children, four girls and four boys. Together, they not only raised a fine family, but continued to operate the dairy farm, and to sell their milk to the Coop Cheese Factory a mile away in School Hill. They were to see their daughter, Mary, age 41, die before them in 1922. Another daughter, Margaretha, died in 1930 at age 57, only two years after her mother, 74-year-old Maria, had died.
Life would not have been only hard work and no play. The Scharenbrochs lived in a community with a large number of Germans, and there would have been community dances and potlucks along with social activities sponsored by the church. Often, a wedding celebration would be held in the family’s barn that had been scrubbed clean. As children grew and established their own families, they would have visited one another and celebrated family gatherings with food, singing, and dancing. The women may have learned the American folk art of quilting, which would have been another way of gathering for socialization as well as productivity. In 1888, both Katharina and Heinrich Scharenbroch died. Christian inherited the farm even though he was not the oldest son. There is some logic as to why Christian inherited the farm and not his other brothers. His oldest brother, John, already owned his own farm close by in Meeme. Gerhard had died before his father’s death. Fifteen years earlier, Heinrich had homesteaded land in Minnesota. And Paul was younger than Christian. It would please Christian to know that the homestead, that he loved and helped his father establish, is still in the family. Although five generations of Scharenbrochs have lived in this home, the original house has been remodeled, but the basic structure still stands as it has stood for more than 150 years.
Seventy-four years had elapsed from the time the seven-year-old boy climbed aboard the ship, August, in Antwerp, Belgium. Undoubtedly, that trip across the Atlantic Ocean to a new country had been the most exciting adventure that Christian (Scharrenbroich) Scharenbroch had encountered in his eighty-one years of life. Trying to imagine if he had ventured far from School Hill, one may wonder if he had traveled to Chicago, Illinois, which was about 150 miles away; more than likely he had not. Did he travel to St. Cloud, Minnesota, to visit his brother, Heinrich “Henry”? The distance was 400 miles making this trip even less likely than a trip to Chicago. Time for travel and adventures would have been very unlikely as Christian not only had a wife and eight children to provide for, but he had a dairy farm to operate; there are no holidays for dairy owners. His other brothers and sisters lived close by and visiting them would have been the closest thing to a vacation that he would have experienced. An occasional trip to Sheboygan, twenty miles away, or to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, seventeen miles away, would have been made for supplies not available locally. Christian’s father, Heinrich, had made a wise decision by coming to America. The move had afforded Christian a good life exemplified by his owning land, successfully continuing the family’s dairy business, and not being threatened with mandatory twenty-five years of military service that he undoubtedly would have had to serve in Germany. Christian, along with so many other immigrants, was one of the strong threads that had been woven into the beautiful fabric of America.
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