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In the year 1858 John and Mary Dablow with their family, all but Frederick emigrated from Prussia Germany to the United States and settled on land near Chicago Ill. Just why they made that place their destination I dont know. I have heard father speak of Chicago as a scattered little town in a swamp.

The only occupation I ever heard him speak of having while living there was herding sheep and killing rattlesnakes. He made his home with his parents on a small farm until Lincolns call for volunteers for the civil war.

He and his brother George enlisted in the 42 Ill infantry and served until the close of the war. Father was wounded three times, one a very serious head wound, during the battle of Chicamauga. The bullet entering just below his right temple. It remained in his head and was an open draining sore from the original wound for a number of years. Then it closed, the bullet working down toward his ear. Then the sore opened and drained through his ear for many year. Again it stopped draining for several months and father was distracted with the pain in his head, again the wound opened behind his ear and after draining a few weeks the bullet emerged. After poor father carried it in his head for 28 years and only two years before he died. It didn't look like a bullet. It looked like a small dark and light gray streaked pebble. I asked him to let me have it he said No, this has caused me so much misery that Ill get rid of it where no one will ever see it again. We never saw it again or knew what he did with it.

He was also wounded in his right foot, loosing his little toe and crippling the next one, which caused him trouble fitting shoes. This happened in the Atlanta campaign. He also had a flesh wound through his thigh that he didn't consider worth speaking of.

Uncle George was never wounded but he was taken prisoner twice. The name of one prison was Andersonville, the other I dont remember but I do remember him telling of the misery and despair of the poor prisoners. During the time the brothers were in the war their parents and brother John and family moved to Minnesota where they settled on a homestead of 160 acres and built a fine farm house and where they only remaining one of the family John Dablow, still lives.

While father was in the war he met a soldier by the name of John Bohmbach and found that his family lived on a homestead near the Dablow homestead, so when he came home he went to visit his old friend and there he met the daughter Anna. The romance must have been sudden, sure and short. He came home the spring of 1865 and they were married Oct. 13, 1866.

The first winter they lived in a little up-stairs appartment in Red Wing. In the spring they rented grandpa Bohmbachs farm and moved out there and grandpa Bohmbachs family moved to Red Wing where he went into the saloon business for a number of years. Then he had a grocery store for some years and from there moved to the country again where he had bought a flour mill.

Then bad luck seemed to follow them, first the mill, their home and other buildings were badly damaged by a cyclone and a few years later the mill burned. There was trouble about the insurance part of which he failed to get. So they moved back to Red Wing apparently destitute. They rented a house and grandma kept boarders while grandpa had pick-up jobs, anything he could get. Things were not pleasant for them or between themselves, so they appealed to Mother for help. She with fathers consent had them come up here to live with us on the farm, while father had a little three room cottage built for them on the homestead just accross the road from our house. They lived there three years but they were not satisfied or happy. So they left their nice little house and moved to Morris where they bought thier little home. What they bought it with, I dont know, I think grandma had a little money saved since her boarding house days and grandpa had his pension. The little brown cottage father built for them burned one night. No one to this day knows how or why.

And now we will go back to the C.C. Dablows. The house they moved into on the farm they had rented from grandpa Bohmbach was a two room log house with a little low room upstairs, a cellar and a shed over the only outside door. They always had quite a large herd of cattle, so there was a big barn built of boards right between the hill and the creek and always a big straw stack near the barn, this was some distance from the house. Nearer the house was a log stable big enough for four horses. There was also a small granary of boards and a smoke house of logs. This was over run with grape vines, hop vines and elder berry bushes and when there was no meat smoking done this was a favorite place for us children to play.

All the buildings were on a gentle slope at the foot of a high steep hill just behind our house. On the north side of our house was a plot of ground reserved for a garden. This had a fence around it. The other side of the fence was all woods, big trees of oak, white birch, elm and hazel brush. We always had all the hazel nuts we wanted. These woods were part of the pasture. There were cowpaths every where under the trees that we followed and where we played in the dense cool shade in the summer time. I shall never forget the many kinds of birds that lived in these woods and came to perch on our garden fence. And how we sat on our back porch in the evening and listened to the whippoor-will. As I write this it brings back the picture so clearly a longing comes over me for the joyous days of my childhood so long ago.

The upper part of the garden was Mothers flower garden in which she always had many different kinds of flowers. There were also a numer of apple trees, currents and gooseberry bushes, a strawberry bed and several small patches of parsley, thyme, dill, caraway, asparagus, sage, in those days they couldnt buy those things in the store. They had to raise their own. The lower part of the garden was vegetables, there were also some plum trees and some pieplant. It was an interesting productive plot of ground.

Below the garden and extending to the north line of our land was a narrow valley where father had a field of perhaps 10 acres where he alternated with wheat corn, oats, buckwheat and potatoes. The slope on the other side of the valley terminated in another high steep hill. On both of these hills was a small clearing under cultivation. All around both of the hillsides and a good portion of meadow land that had part of the creek running through it was fenced in for pasture. Wells Creek was a big clear stream fed by springs from the hills. It wound in and out in many curves and flowed, perhaps 100 feet from our house. The water was clear and soft, the only water we had to use for every thing, When we wanted a good cold drink in the summer time we got it from a spring that flowed from the hill, perhaps a fourth of a mile back of our house, father always kept it deep and clean so we could dip it up with a small pail. The stream had many fresh water fish especiallyred speckled trout. It came into our land in the southwest corner and flowed through about the middle of the farm and out on the east side. There were many big willow trees along its banks and all the meadow land except the pasture on both sides was hayland. On the south line was another piece of land, the larges under cultivation. I think this will give you a fairly good picture of what the farm was like where our parents spent the first twelve years of their married life and where we first four children were born in the little two room log house.

They lived seven years on the farm, renting it. Then a law was passed that all Civil War soldiers that were wounded were to have a pension. And off course father came in that. It seems to me at first the pension was $18. per month, so they decided to make a change. They bought the farm from grandpa Bohmbach and proceeded to build a new house just back of the old one. It was a seven room house with a good two room stone foundation. One of the basement rooms was for vegetables, and how full that was in the fall! The other room was for milk and butter and other storage, and that was usually full too. There were three large rooms, a small bedroom, closet and pantry on the first floor and a porch on both sides of the house. Upstairs were three large bedrooms and a attic over the kitchen. It was painted white, yes it was all lovely and substancial. The house is still there after sixty five years. If it takes "Years of living in a house to make a home", that house must surely be a home fot it has been abundantly lived in.

About the second year in the new house Gieseke came along looking for work. Father hired him and he stayed and stayed. And the end is not yet. At first he worked for wages in the summer and worked for his board in the winter, and went to school with the kids for two years. Every where we went he went too. He followed us from Goodhue Co. to Stevens Co. and stayed and stayed.

After we lived in the new house it seems things went contrary to expectations and they found it difficult to meet requirements. They had all the useual adversities that people have now. There were crop failures, farm animals died, sickness,,death and relatives in distress. Fathers brother came from Germany. Frederick came with a sick wife and seven children and no place to go. Father built them a little one room house with a little shed over the door near the eastern line and near the creek on our land. There the wife died. In a few years Uncle Fritz managed to acquire a farm of his own. Then the little house was torn down. We were still living in the old log house when Uncle Fritz lived on our land and we were living in the log house when we four children had diptheria in the fall of the year 1872 when little brother Edward died at the age of 3 years 6 months.

Father was part owner with Uncle John and Uncle George in a threshing machine, they did threshing for others and were out a long time in the fall. They all stacked their grain in those days and threshing was late in the fall. So Mother was alone most of the time with us sick children and chores, far from neighbors, but good neighbors. Mothers best friend and helper in time of need was Mrs. Lane 'Earl Isherwoods grandmother' whose farm joined ours to the east. Mrs Lane and Mother helped each other through many difficult circumstances in both families. I believe Mother never had another friend as near and dear to her as Mrs Lane and I know quite well that mother missed her more that she did her own mother after we came up here.

There was one farm between our farm and Uncle John's. Uncle George's farm was just across the road from Uncle John. Grandpa Dablow made his home with Uncle John. They were very good to him he had a nice little warm room for himself with his own things in it. We children loved to be in grandpa's room, it always seemed so comfortable and he was so kind to us. He was a nice looking old man with thick gray hair combed pompadour. I remember him only as a little bent over grandpa altho in his youth he must have been quite tall. Not as tall as father, he was six foot one inch. Uncle John and Uncle Fritz were about five foot ten inches. Uncle Fritz was the only one that looked like grandpa both in looks and size. Grandma, we were told was a small woman. Both Uncle George and Aunt Mary were not over five foot four or five inches. Grandma died while father and uncle George were in the war. She was burried in a little plot of ground on a hillside selected for a cemetery but was afterward abandoned and a few graves including grandma's were lost. But Longfellow says "Dust thou art to dust returneth was not spoken of the soul". So I like to think that her soul is with grandpa's who is burried in a big cemetery in Hay Creek, Minn.

The four brothers and sister lived so near each other that they were much together sharing both their joys and sorrows, worktogether and for each other and celebrating together. The Dablows were a peaceful people, I cant remember that there ever was dissension among them. Father and Uncle John looked most alike and were most alike in character and ability and therefore were most together Altho all five lived within a radius of about three miles. During the winter months they did much visiting among each other on week days and evenings but in the summer time it was only Sundays and holidays. After working all day in the summer they were to tired... [the rest is lost]

courtesy of Edmund Dablow

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Katherine (Dablow) Drovedahl, 1867-1955 and buried in Morris, was the daughter of Charles Dablow (1838-1898) and Anna Bohmbach (1850-1931). Her paternal grandparents were John Dablow and Mary Heitman. John is buried at Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in Hay Creek Twp, Goodhue Co, MN, while Mary is buried in a lost cemetery in Belvidere Twp. Her maternal grandparents were John Bohmbach (1827-1913) and Catherina Burfeindt (1830-1908), who are buried in Summit Cemetery, Morris, MN.

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