Through The Years With Frederick, Katharine And Their Children
"I Was Told, I Remember;" by Clara Belle Ethel (Helle) Palmer
The daughter of Anthony, Frederick and Katharine's second son, Clara Belle Ethel was reared less than one-half mile north of the Helle Homestead built in the late 1870's. She was ten years old when Grandfather Frederick died and twenty-four years old when Grandmother Katharine died. Her memories of what she was told and observed were edited from a history which she wrote in January, 1964. Some anecdotes from letters to family members the past twenty years have also been incorporated into her story.
In addition to the business enterprises mentioned by the Prairie Rambler, early in their marriage Frederick traded one of his bakery-saloon businesses for a farm between Macomb and Bushnell, . land that today is of the best black soil, but what was then only muck for it was before the practice of tiling."
Times were hard for Katharine, a city-bred girl, as Frederick tried to make a farm wife out of her but she was so recently from the Old World culture that it never occurred to her to question his domination. She learned to till the soil where it had never know a tile. Frederick, too, had always lived in town and just had to be among people so they traded the farm for a bakery and saloon back in town again. The family always lived over these businesses.
Following the birth of Mary in Louisville, the doctor advised Frederick to take Katharine back North because her lungs were infected and it was too damp and low in Louisville or her. Since Katharine's mother had died in Germany from tuberculosis when Katharine was ten years old, the family soon returned to Illinois, settling in Bushnell. Again Frederick ran a bakery and saloon, but times were unbearably hard, what with the postwar slump, so he closed the business, sold the fixtures, and then did day work.
By now Frederick was commonly known to friends as Fred" and Katharine was usually called "Kate." However, they continued to sign legal documents "Frederick" and Katharine."
Finally, in 1869, the opportunity came whereby they could purchase eighty acres of unimproved heavily timbered land ear Spoon River four miles west of Smithfield in Cass Township. The family found shelter in a cattle shed on a bluff over looking Spoon River to the West (later part of the homestead of Fred, Jr.) and from this place walked every day to the east side of the eighty acres and erected a cabin on a hill overlooking the Laswell Branch of Put Creek to the east.
Both Frederick and Katharine worked in the woods clearing the land for the plow. They gathered nuts and berries, made and sold maple syrup and sugar and cut railroad ties and fence posts to all. Katharine's ability to balance heavy loads on her head served her well for she often carried three buckets -- one of them on her head -- of their wildlife gleanings into Smithfield or Sevill to sell. Every minute that could be spared was spent in clearing the land, burning brush and stumps and planting fields and gardens and orchards. In their eagerness they over-plowed on the thin soil along slopes until huge ditches resulted. They were very frugal in their living and truly wasted not a thing!
In the spring of 1873, while Frederick was at Spoon River where he operated a sawmill and Katharine was down on the bank of Laswell Branch sugaring off a huge black iron kettle of maple syrup, the children came running down over the hill yelling that the cabin was on fire.
Katharine hurriedly raked the coals from under the kettle and raced up to save what she could. She managed to save a few meager possessions, including her trunk and featherbed, which she had brought along from Germany. But the cabin burned down. (Another was soon built across the deep ravine to the south, with the shallow-flowing spring water between the two sites.) The next day Katharine returned to her duties with the maple syrup only to discover that some boys from beyond the immediate neighborhood had come along, apparently to watch the cabin burn, polluted the contents of the kettle, then raked the fire back under it. The contents were a charred mess; the season's only cash crop destroyed along with the hard labor. Worse, still, the kettle had been borrowed and now had to be placed in the creek and days and days spent scouring it with sand and gravel, all the while, the new cabin was being built and the family was once again bedded down in a cattle shed.
"I Was Told, I Remember;" by Clara Belle Ethel (Helle) Palmer
The daughter of Anthony, Frederick and Katharine's second son, Clara Belle Ethel was reared less than one-half mile north of the Helle Homestead built in the late 1870's. She was ten years old when Grandfather Frederick died and twenty-four years old when Grandmother Katharine died. Her memories of what she was told and observed were edited from a history which she wrote in January, 1964. Some anecdotes from letters to family members the past twenty years have also been incorporated into her story.
In addition to the business enterprises mentioned by the Prairie Rambler, early in their marriage Frederick traded one of his bakery-saloon businesses for a farm between Macomb and Bushnell, . land that today is of the best black soil, but what was then only muck for it was before the practice of tiling."
Times were hard for Katharine, a city-bred girl, as Frederick tried to make a farm wife out of her but she was so recently from the Old World culture that it never occurred to her to question his domination. She learned to till the soil where it had never know a tile. Frederick, too, had always lived in town and just had to be among people so they traded the farm for a bakery and saloon back in town again. The family always lived over these businesses.
Following the birth of Mary in Louisville, the doctor advised Frederick to take Katharine back North because her lungs were infected and it was too damp and low in Louisville or her. Since Katharine's mother had died in Germany from tuberculosis when Katharine was ten years old, the family soon returned to Illinois, settling in Bushnell. Again Frederick ran a bakery and saloon, but times were unbearably hard, what with the postwar slump, so he closed the business, sold the fixtures, and then did day work.
By now Frederick was commonly known to friends as Fred" and Katharine was usually called "Kate." However, they continued to sign legal documents "Frederick" and Katharine."
Finally, in 1869, the opportunity came whereby they could purchase eighty acres of unimproved heavily timbered land ear Spoon River four miles west of Smithfield in Cass Township. The family found shelter in a cattle shed on a bluff over looking Spoon River to the West (later part of the homestead of Fred, Jr.) and from this place walked every day to the east side of the eighty acres and erected a cabin on a hill overlooking the Laswell Branch of Put Creek to the east.
Both Frederick and Katharine worked in the woods clearing the land for the plow. They gathered nuts and berries, made and sold maple syrup and sugar and cut railroad ties and fence posts to all. Katharine's ability to balance heavy loads on her head served her well for she often carried three buckets -- one of them on her head -- of their wildlife gleanings into Smithfield or Sevill to sell. Every minute that could be spared was spent in clearing the land, burning brush and stumps and planting fields and gardens and orchards. In their eagerness they over-plowed on the thin soil along slopes until huge ditches resulted. They were very frugal in their living and truly wasted not a thing!
In the spring of 1873, while Frederick was at Spoon River where he operated a sawmill and Katharine was down on the bank of Laswell Branch sugaring off a huge black iron kettle of maple syrup, the children came running down over the hill yelling that the cabin was on fire.
Katharine hurriedly raked the coals from under the kettle and raced up to save what she could. She managed to save a few meager possessions, including her trunk and featherbed, which she had brought along from Germany. But the cabin burned down. (Another was soon built across the deep ravine to the south, with the shallow-flowing spring water between the two sites.) The next day Katharine returned to her duties with the maple syrup only to discover that some boys from beyond the immediate neighborhood had come along, apparently to watch the cabin burn, polluted the contents of the kettle, then raked the fire back under it. The contents were a charred mess; the season's only cash crop destroyed along with the hard labor. Worse, still, the kettle had been borrowed and now had to be placed in the creek and days and days spent scouring it with sand and gravel, all the while, the new cabin was being built and the family was once again bedded down in a cattle shed.
The second cabin also burned (a chimney builder Frederick was not) and another was built farther west of it. After the two story house was built, this last cabin was dismantled and moved over to the new homestead and rebuilt and used as a stable. Those first cabins were just one-room affairs, with a loft and ladder where the older children slept. Their earliest recollections were of getting out of bed in the winter and shaking the sifted snow from their clothing and boots before dressing and descending the ladder. They were outside before dawn to hunt and milk the cows, carry up wood for the open hearth and fill buckets and tubs with water, after first using the maul to break the ice which had formed over night. After breakfast they carried their books and slates, along with black bread baked in honey or molasses -- always frozen in winter --and walked the woods to a one-room schoolhouse built of logs and later covered with sawed lumber when sawmills came to that part of the country -- one of the earliest being Frederick's sawmill on Spoon River near White's Ferry.
During these early days children could not run barefooted from April to November as they did after the land was cleared and more free of snakes. Many other wild varmints inhabited the land. In the winter the boys trapped mink, weasel and fox for the pelts; another means of ready cash.
Now that Frederick owned a sawmill, he could plan and build a more adequate frame house for his expanding family. However, he needed a more dependable water supply for household and livestock needs. In addition, he wanted more direct access to the sawmill. So he dickered with politicians both in Lewistown and in Springfield. By donating a roadway along his western line and persuading Oliver Miller and Joe Murphy to do likewise, and buying a strip himself to the south, he finally got the road rerouted to Buckeye along his boundary to the west. Then he bought ten acres on the west side of the road for a homesite for himself, since there was a good year round water supply there. In time, a road was built a half mile west over Goldsmith Hill and another a half mile east over Polecat Hill. The road Frederick got rerouted to Buckeye has been closed for a number of years and once again a road -- the Smithfield - Midway blacktop -- runs along the east line of what was once the family farm.
Frederick now proceeded to build his new house, buying pine only for the siding, shingles, doors and windows. A new barn of sawed timber was erected near the new roadway. A grainary, machine sheds, woodshed, chicken houses, hog barn, corn crib and cattle barn with a milking shed were added to the homestead. In the 1880's an addition was built on to the north side of the house consisting of a large kitchen with a door to the well on the north, a door on the east leading into a screened porch with a door leading outside to the cistern and the west kitchen door led to the garden, downhill to the chicken and wood houses and to the toilet. A board walk ran around the three sides and covered the well, all about three feet above the rapidly sloping ground level. A milk house was built off the northwest corner, which was down a few steps from the board walk. A water trough ran into the milk house and emptied into the large milk cooling trough. During hot weather the water was drained out twice each day and refilled with cold well water. An outside door of the milk house led into the barnyard and a watering trough for horses was placed to the east of this entrance. The board walk connecting the milk house was roofed and sided on the west and extra supplies of firewood were kept there. the northeast corner the large kitchen was a butlery with a window to the east.
There was a large attic over the kitchen addition. A heavy telephone wire ran the length of it and that is where the featherbeds, comforters, heavy underwear, etc. were stored in summer. In winter the quilts were hung there. Flour sacks of navy beans also hung in the attic in winter and were spread in black bread pans twice during the winter and placed in a slow oven to keep them free of weevils. A sack of buckwheat flour and one sack each of yellow and white cornmeal were also suspended from the rafters. Twenty-five pound bags of dried corn, apples, peaches and beef were added to the store before the cold winds of winter swept the land. Kegs and boxes of walnuts, butternuts, hickory nuts, hazel nuts and pecans were stored back under the eaves. The older children slept in this attic on their pallets of husks or straw for the five bedrooms were not sufficient for the ever-growing family.
Cane was raised and in the fall it was topped, stripped of leaves, cut and hauled to a nearby neighbor who had a sorghum mill. A barrel of sorghum molasses made from the cane stood in the cellar, along with huge 20 gallon stone jars of pickled green beans, corn, sauerkraut, pickles and apple butter. Then there were 5 gallon stone jars of peach butter, tomato butter, grape butter and green tomato pickles. Bins of apples, pears, squash, turnips and carrots were aligned along the north wall of the cellar with an extra huge bin of potatoes. Along the west wall heaps of parsnips, celery and cabbage were sand covered to preserve their crispness through the long winter months. There was no heat in the cellar as only the living area of the house was heated by a wood-burning cookstove in the kitchen and a room-heating stove in the parlor.
"I recall Grandfather making several barrels of vinegar every late summer. He had a large orchard and Uncle Will (Willie) carted apples to the press in the machine shed, then carried the cider by the bucket to the waiting barrels. The barrels were lined up on the east side of the house, near the cellar door. He and his sons, friends and sons-in-law had a high old time on hard cider until the barrels had to be rolled down to the cellar and racked up along the south side of the cellar wall. The married children came home on Sundays carrying their vinegar jugs and Grandfather filled them. None of the adult children had orchards for several years. Besides vinegar, the large orchard supplied each struggling family with apples for winter storage. Oftentimes on those Sundays Grandfather and his sons played Seven-Up and pitch and drank beer and it always ended up in harangues. Grandmother would take a broom and drive them out of the house. They scooted for they knew she was not partial to either end of the broom."
Frederick also always had a barrel of corned beef and a barrel of salt pork which he shared with his progeny. He salted the fattest of the pork and dried his share of a beef, usually killed by his son, Fred, Jr. Beef was too valuable for many to be killed.
The children all worked like serfs, girls as well as boys; indeed, as in Europe at that time and in many countries there still, girls worked in the fields like men; from before dawn with the milking of the cows until long after dark, the milking again, caring of the poultry, feeding of the huge family and assisting in the general care of the younger children. Women never sat at table with the men if there were company for the meal; they waited upon the menfolk and then ate with the children. As the years rolled on, the number became too great for even that arrangement so the men ate first with the older boys, then the women with the older girls and finally the little children last. (In later years little children came to be fed by plates of food sneaked by their mothers while the meal was still being prepared.)
Butchering time was a special occasion and several families would gather to help as with a housewarming or a quilting bee. Blood from the sticking of the hogs was collected, mixed by hands and bloody forearms with caraway seeds and other spices then, as it was congealing, it was spooned into the small lye-cent salt bags and quickly sewed shut and dropped into a wash boiler of boiling water and cooked until the contents had coagulated solidly; then it was cooled and stored for sandwich neat called Blutworst.
Frederick and Katharine were staunch Roman Catholics living 15 miles from the nearest church with nearly impassable roads, they never got to church. Fred would go on foot and then by train to Canton or Bushnell twice each year and carry back a jug of Holy water which they used in their daily devotions. The daughter, Christina, was buried alongside the first cabin with a small white marble headstone because they would not bury in any but a Catholic cemetery. this plot was fenced from cattle and deer. (Because the church supported the monarchy in Germany, as the years passed, Frederick tended to lean more and more to the Protestants in the community. A lavado containing Holy water hung just inside their bedroom door and they dipped their fingers and crossed themselves before removing their rosaries from the crucifix on the dresser to offer thanks or when they asked God for guidance in periods of distress. They ran their beads always when worried. "I've seen Grandmother many times when in stress and worry over sickness in the family, over a threatened tornado, or animal sickness, go to the ,bedroom, put her fingers in the Holy water, cross herself, then go to the dresser and take her rosary from the crucifix and run her beads."
They did eat their staple food -- pork-- on fridays. They worked hard and had to have their meat.
Katharine and Frederick both loved music. He had a pitch pipe and taught the children to sing on key. Later he purchased the first foot - pumped organ in those parts. The elder children were married by this time so only the younger children benefited. Kate was taught to play simple hymns and foIk songs, including German songs, then the rest were arrayed around the organ on Sundays and taught to sing four-part harmony: George, tenor and lead singer; Kate, soprano and accompanist; Bertha, alto; and Anthony, bass. They were in demand on programs in their litterary society, held in the Buckeye Church, county fairs, homecomings and other community events. Anthony became proficient on the mouth harp and many times he would play while the others, along with their dates and with neighboring young people, danced on the bridge over Put Creek on the way home from meetings of the Literary Society. Their social life centered in Buckeye, although they had a deep fraternal bond with the Wiley (Blyton) Community. George was a natural-born fiddler and, of course, was much in demand at dances. His two sons, Royal and Delbert, inherited this talent.
"Grandfather was all torso. Very short legs, long arms, and very short fingers on large hands. His grandson, Fred Orwig, most represented him. Even in facial features. Jack Ford told me how he and others would argue politics with Grandfather just to see him straddle a log with his bandy legs not reaching the ground and argue and argue. Grandfather was definitely Lord of his Manor. Women, like children, were to be seen but never heard."
Frederick remained a baker at heart. He would straddle a kitchen chair, his arms folded along its back, and direct every operation in the kitchen. In time this became such an irritant that, by careful strategy, baking was done while he made his ever increasing pilgrimages to Smithfield where he would argue politics with his friends. There were five saloons in Smithfield, a village of about 500 people then, and they were truly man's domain.
On Christmas morning Frederick himself always baked little kuchen boys and girls for his 54 grandchildren. These were decorated with raisin down their fronts much in the fashion of gingerbread boys and girls of today. These, with oranges --the only occasion most of his grandchildren ever saw an orange -- were always in the stocking at each place at breakfast Christmas morning and not to be touched until chores were done.
In his later years Frederick would catch the old T. P. & W. train and ride to Peoria, transfer to a streetcar and cross the river to his old haunt of Pekin where he spent the day visiting with his early-day cronies. He usually brought back a gallon jug of liquor for his and Katharine's hot toddies. Made of liquor, water, sugar and spices, hot toddies were the home remedy for threatened colds, an accepted custom among the early settlers.
Katharine longed for a little beauty in her home and would bring in house plants in winter, but Frederick always grumbled about it. She especially valued the geranium which she had grown years before from a slip which she had taken from beds around Lincoln's Tomb in Springfield. She subscribed to the Home Comfort Magazine, published each month by Gannet in Augusta, Maine, and which sold for 25 cents per year. It was the only magazine she ever saw, and she devoured its every article and item. From its pages she learned how to make sash curtains from 100 lb. sugar sacks for her kitchen windows, hemstitching them around 3 sides. She installed them when Frederick was gone on one of his pilgrimages. When he returned he tore them down and would have nothing so frivolous in his domicile and the kitchen came under that category until the day of his death.
"Grandmother made what all her grandchildren called "stink cheese." She mixed cottage cheese with garlic, caraway seeds, salt and perhaps pepper. Then she formed small cakes of it and placed them in a one gallon stone jar and covered them with cream. She covered the jar top with a cloth made from a five pound salt sack and set the jar on a shelf in the pantry. She stirred it every day and added cream until it became a yellowish stinking mess about the consistency of thick gravy. This was then eaten on the large three-inch "store" crackers. Limburger was as a rose and Roquefort as a geranium compared with this fermented mess!
"When Uncle Hi Walters was courting Aunt Carrie, at one of the regular family Sunday gatherings, her sisters and Uncle George persuaded him to eat some of the "stink cheese." He ) did and later had to shave off his thick black mustache because he could not get rid of the smell! Uncle George told everyone about it and Uncle Hiram was ridiculed for years.
"In late fall, this mixture was allowed to harden by placing it in a cheesecloth-lined tin pan. Then it was sliced off and eaten as we slice off brick cheese today. This was stored in the attic as an exterminator, I am sure, for no mouse or cockroach ever approached it. Raid must have been developed from Grandma's "stink cheese." Not one of my aunts or uncles would eat it. I think all other German families made it too. It was one item of food that one never need examine to see if it really contained mouse droppings -- all knew it was only caraway seeds. I never touch a salad today if it contains a blue cheese dressing, for I am immediately reminded of Grandma's "stink cheese" and I do not want to sit near anyone who has been eating Roquefort or limburger cheese!"
"One night in 1906 lightning struck Grandfather's horse barn setting it on fire. He called us and my dad hurried over there. We all got up and watched from our house. The barn was falling in by the time Dad arrived and he could not get Kit, Grandfather's driving horse, out so it burned up too. Grandfather never had another horse and buggy."
Frederick had quit farming before Anthony moved nearby (1904) and farmed both farms, but he ate just as of yore, chucks of boiled hog fat with carrots and parsnips. So he suffered much from rheumatic fever attacks and grippe. When he could no longer enjoy making his pilgrimages to Bushnell, Canton, Peoria and Pekin, he just "laid back his shovel and his hoe." He announced he would be gone by five o'clock and even though the clock in his view was turned back, yet he died just before five A.M. A bed had been placed in the living room for this last illness.
"Now Grandmother and Uncle Willie lived alone on the farm. In 1908 she hired Perry Ham to replace all the board walks with concrete, a much needed improvement. On summer evenings the neighbors could hear her singing the old German songs as she pumped cool fresh water into the milk trough. it was lonely for her and, after my father, Anthony, was killed in 1909, she would ask me or my brothers or sisters to spend the night with her, usually me. I listened to her recollections of the Old Country and all her trials in the new country.
"On May 29, 1911, Uncle Will died during an epileptic seizure. Grandmother had always prayed he would go first and now he had."
After Willie's death, daughter Mary and family moved in with Katharine. It was that summer that she decided the time was come for the disinterment of Christina's body so her grandson, Charlie Helle and a neighbor, Will Joachim, dug into the now very shallow grave and they recovered the few bones and bits of rusted metal and the little white tombstone. Katharine kept them lovingly in her bedroom until they could be buried beside Frederick and Willie. The small skull looked like a coconut shell with the brightest of yellow hair. Katharine said that the hair looked just like that when it had been buried 40 years before. Now she felt her labors were truly ended and she resigned herself to the wait.
After Mary and family moved out in 1913, granddaughter Dena (Orwig) Cadwallader and husband moved in with her. This time she reserved the front bedroom and lived in just the one room, using the parlor door just next to her room. After a year of this arrangement, she took her three-quarter bed and went to live among her children, renting the farm to another daughter, Caroline Walters, and husband. Katharine had always said that wherever she died that was the family which could have the bed.
She died in 1921 at the home of her eldest son, Fred, Jr., and family. This time Frederick's rosary was entwined in her hands. Her own rosary had been given to Catholic nephews in Macomb and at their death it came back into the Helle family when Phillip Krauser brought it to Dena (Helle Kuehn) in Smithfield. She in turn gave it to her nephew, Anthony Helle. The Memorial cards made up for Frederick carried the cross at the top because Katharine had to send one to his sister's family in Germany and she did not want the relatives over there to know that he had died unchurched. Her own Memorial cards did not carry this cross since all her children were now of the Protestant persuasion.
After Katharine's death her grandson, Charlie Helle, bought the farm and the Helle homestead was back to its original tract after the last purchase made by Frederick and Katharine in 1883.
"I Remember" by Frederick Grey (1905-), son of Joseph and Mary (Helle) Grayl
"Some of the memories of my Smithfield days;"
Some of them are fond memories and some not so. Some funny and some not so funny. But they all go toward living. For awhile I still wish I could live them all over. How wonderful it would be if we could all have the second chance to live our lives over.
"I can remember going out to Grandpa and Grandma Helle's when I was a small tyke and sitting on Grandpa's knee and talking to him. After he passed away someone had to go stay with Grandma so Mom and Dad were the ones chosen.
Grandma had a lot of guinea hens along with the chickens. Back of the barn was a deep gully so I used to chase these guineas and make them fly over this gully to the other side which they could do easily. I thought the chickens should be able to do the same, so I would take a buggy whip and try to make them fly with the guineas but they couldn't make it. One time I wrapped the buggy whip around the neck of one of the chickens. I received a severe whipping and we had stewed chicken for supper!
"The house sat back from the road quite a distance with a lane leading to it from the road. Across the road to the east another lane went back past the orchard to a hill which went down to a pasture where we kept the cows. Each morning we would have to take them back to the pasture and go get them at night for milking. That was generally my job. One time they had gotten through the fence into some green corn. Now I used to take ahold of one of the cow's tail and let her pull me up the hill. That is one time when I should not have done so. I was a mess when I got back to the house and the worst part as that they all laughed at me. Bad enough to be covered with juicy green corn manure without being laughed at!
"The orchard was a large one with every kind of apple you could think of, so we always had plenty of apples in the winter me. There was a cellar under almost the whole house, hard dirt floor, no light, always cool, with big bins all around it with fruits and vegetables in them. Boy, what delicious odors came from that cellar. The back porch had a well and from the ump was a trough that ran down to the milkhouse which sat lower than the house and porch. In this milkhouse was a long trough where they kept the butter, cream and other things. It was on the north side and was always cool. In summertime we 'would have to keep replacing the water in the trough with the cooler water from the well to keep the food cool.
"My Aunt and Uncle (Anthony and Sarah Huffman Helle) and their kids lived about one-half mile from us and they used to come over in the evening and we would make ice cream on the back porch; such nice quiet companionship that is a thing of the past. The kitchen was a place of heavenly bliss: always something cooking, canning, making preserves. Each year we would butcher a hog, make sausage, cold pack the meat, make head cheese, smoke hams and bacon -- WOW!
"One year when I graduated from one grade to the next, grandma Helle gave me a Bible with a page of writing in it. It as years later before I could find anyone who could translate for me. Finally a woman who worked at the Ledger, when it was on East Elm, was able to translate it, but she had a hard me as it was a different German than she knew. I forget what she called it. I wish I knew what happened to it. Somewhere long the way it got lost. So did I, I think. Still am yet . .
'I Remember
Martha Jane (Orwig) Moore (1897-1985), daughter of John and "Lizzie" (Helle) Orwig
I got to go to Grandpa and Grandma Helle's with Clara and Bessie Helle. Grandma gave us china plates to eat from, something which I had never gotten to do before because we children in our own home had only tin plates and cups. The plates did not match but I did not mind. However, Bessie, being used to such gracious treatment, complained because her plate was different. This prompted Grandpa to tell a story bout a poor girl who used to come into his bakery in Louisville. She would always choose the smallest loaf of bread because she had so little money. One day Grandpa placed a dime x one of the smaller loaves of bread before he baked it and saw to it that the little girl got that loaf of bread. The next day, he returned the dime explaining that she had found it in the loaf of bread purchased the previous day. He told this story as n example of honesty and to be happy with your lot in life."
'I Remember..
Henry David Orwig (1903-1985), son of John and "Lizzie" Helle) Orwig
"The Helle home place was close enough to the Spoon river Bottom that snakes were an ever present hazard and the apple orchard seemed to attract them. One summer afternoon when I was visiting Grandma, a snake chased me out of the orchard. Killing snakes was something for which I had a
Knack, so the next day I returned with a couple of cousins for support and we must have killed close to 100 snakes in that apple orchard, most of them rattlesnakes."
