The following story is written by and courtesy of George Beckmann, The Villages, Florida:
Who were Uncle Charley, Tante Frieda (Aunt Frieda) and Charley Jr.?
Uncle Charley was one of my fathers best friends. He was also my fathers cousin. He was born and raised in a log cabin near Paulding, Ohio in 1887. Charley's father Henry and my father's father (my grandfather) Barthold were brothers and were born in Lamstedt, Germany. Uncle Charley's father came to America at a young age of 17 or 18, on a sailing ship. He landed in New York City about 1868.
He started a grocery store and restaurant business on the lower east side, with another younger brother John, about the time the Brooklyn Bridge was being built. Basically Henry loved farming. After saving some money he decided to go to Ohio where he could pioneer farm. He bought 50 acres of swamp land that had to be drained for $200 from the US Government. After draining the land was rich and fertile.
Uncle Charley was one of 8 children born to Henry Beckman the pioneer farmer. Two children were born in New York City and 6 were born in Ohio. Life was not easy in Ohio, the country was new and wild. As a child he was kept inside the log cabin with the other children because of poisonous snakes and insects which roamed about the property. His mother was often overworked with 7 children at home, she suffered from nervous exhaustion and periodically had to be hospitalized. From time to time, Henry had to send for his sister Catherine of Gerritson Beach, Brooklyn to assist him with his growing family. She would come out from NY to help him.
Charley learned how to farm at an early age, especially with horses, becoming a very proficient farmer able to run almost any kind of farm enterprise, grain or cattle. When he was about 20 or so he married a lady of Dutch heritage, I believe her first name was Myrtle. Uncle Charley acquired a farm near Coldwater, Michigan. His father Henry, saw to it, that his sons each had a decent farm to build a life on. Uncle Charley fathered 4 children with his 1st wife, Lucille b:1912, Leo b:1914, Vern b:1916 and Dean b:1920.
Uncle Charley would often rent out himself and a team of horses to construct roads by pulling a road grader, so about 1925 he was away from home quite a bit. The Model "T" Ford car was a popular vehicle and roads were needed, everyone seemed to be driving one.
Because of his home absence, his wife became involved with a neighbor and the marriage came to an end around 1927. Sad moment in anybody's life when a marriage ends, four young children ages 5 to 15. Their father would soon be out of their life forever.
Tough times ahead the Depression of 1929 was coming. Charley tended to become a problem drinker, drinking mostly hard cider since alcohol was outlawed by Prohibition. Henry, his father wasn't happy with Charley's behavior, gave him some money, told him to go to New York State and try to straighten out his life. It was now the height of the Depression, work situations were not very good.
Charley found himself in the lower Hudson Valley employed on the Harriman estate. The Harriman's were wealthy railroad magnates, multi millionaires. The town of Harriman was named after them, I believe their large estate still exists near Central Valley below Newburgh.
Charley wasn't able to support his family back in Michigan, as in most cases of that sort that family grew up very poor and having a tough struggle.
On the Harriman estate things were going OK for Charley, at least he had a job, one day while driving a Fordson tractor, the steering mechanism came uncoupled and Charley escaped injury by jumping off, the tractor quickly turned over in the ditch along side the road. Early Fordson tractors had a reputation of being dangerous for upsetting, many a farmer came to their lives end on one.
In the next years Charley moved up to southern Dutchess where he met Frieda Lauble in a Chelsea dance hall near Wappinger Falls. She was a recent immigrant, living with her sister and brother-in-law, Hermina and Emil Von Koenig, who were all immigrants from the "Black Forest" area of Germany. The two sisters came from either Villingen or Saint Georgian. Emil, I found out later, came from the Rhineland Pfalz.
Charley and Frieda married, most likely in 1928 or 29. Charles as a small boy had attended German school in Ohio and had a working knowledge of that language. English does not come as easy to south Germans as it does to north Germans. Frieda and her sister and brother-in-law Emil always spoke with a rather heavy accent.
Speaking German, was helpful in Charley's marriage to Frieda, in June 1930 their son Charley Jr. was born. Charley and Frieda worked as tenant farmers in farms around Dutchess county. In the years they worked the various farms they became acquainted with my father and my father's older brother Henry somehow, I do not know how exactly. I know in the 1930 national census, they are listed as living in East Fishkill and we visited them there.
I recall as a small boy riding in my fathers 1936 Chevy up the Taconic Parkway to Milton Alley's farm on Todd Hill road, to buy peaches, afterward we would visit Uncle Charley and Tante Frieda, sometimes staying overnight. At that time they were living on a farm which is now Dutchess County Airport. The farm was owned by Murry Wigsten, who was instrumental in electrifying Dutchess county farms in the 1930's.
The son of Murry Wigsten, Warren Wigsten, lives now in Pleasant Valley, New York. Through the years, we spent many weekends in the country. We had some very good times. I remember the nice Easter baskets Tante Frieda made for us and the Christmas gift she always gave us. Charley Jr. and my brother Harry were about the same age, so they enjoyed being together and also fishing and hunting. Charley Jr. was very bright in school, which I have since come to realize was a gift from his mother's side of the family.
Along about 1940, Uncle Charley was working on the Fred Dose farm on Meyers Corners road. Fred Dose was a Dodge car dealer in NYC. My father may have bought a new 1939 Dodge from him. Fred sold a 1938 Dodge to Uncle Charley on convenient terms. Uncle Charley had that Dodge a dozen years, to him it was the greatest car on the road.
The farm Fred owned was a dairy farm, which Charley Sr. managed. I remember in the early summer mornings, the cows would gather at the barn and their cow bells would ding and ring, as pleasant a sound as I ever heard.
One day in 1940, a young man showed up at Charley Sr's door, it turned out to be his youngest son, Dean from Coldwater, Michigan. He had decided to visit his father in Wappinger Falls so he took a train east, he was 20 years old.
Young Charley Jr. was very happy to see his new found brother. Dean was a fine son, he made toys for his little half brother, airplanes with propellers that would turn in the wind. They had a great time getting to know each other. Dean and Charley bonded.
I don't know how long the visit lasted perhaps several weeks or a couple of months. Finally it came time for Dean to leave. Sadly, they bade him good-bye and put him on a train.
Within the next 24 hours they received news that Dean had reached the station in Ohio and had gotten off the train. He was picked up by anacquaintance, who said he would drive Dean home to Coldwater, Michigan. As so often the case the young driver may have been drinking and was driving too fast, he headed north from Ohio to Michigan, within a couple of miles of the RR station, there was a slight bend in the road to the right, the driver lost control and Dean lost his life, he came home to be buried in the Coldwater Cemetery.
Young Charley Jr. was shocked by all this, his father had to return to Michigan to attend his son's funeral. Some said, WWII was st arting up and young Dean most likely would have been killed in that conflict, who knows? It was a tragic loss for a little boy and his family.
Uncle Charley's son Vern came to visit also, he was slightly handicapped, having an under developed arm. He was an auto mechanic and helped us start up a non running Willys Whippit. We drove it around the yard a few times, it never was put on the road.
Uncle Charley's daughter Lucille came to visit a few times through the years. Uncle Charley's oldest son Leo never came to visit his father. Both Vern and Lucille were multi married and divorced through the years. The children of Charley's first marriage lived out their lives in and around Hillsdale and Coldwater, Michigan.
Life goes on, Charley Sr. and Frieda moved a half dozen times to other farms in Dutchess county. Frieda was always quick to set up a comfortable home. Charley Sr. was a good farmer and a hard worker, he knew his farming very well.
He did have some drawbacks, he was quick to anger and sometimes quick to use his fists. On several occasions he came to blows with different individuals, which to me seems to be immature for a grown individual. Other than that, he was a good husband to Frieda and a good father to his son.
He never seemed to want to become wealthy or to own his own home. All of his brothers and sisters back in the mid-west were successful farmers or farm families. He had a rather nice farm back in Michigan, but all that seemed to be behind him in his subsequent marriage.
The Depression may have had a bad effect on him, because from time to time I believe my parents gave him some financial help during those dark days in the 1930's.
1945 came, and my parents boght the 75 acre Grant Nelson farm in the town of Clinton. I'm sure my mother figured ahead of time that Charley Sr. would fit into her plan as the farm manager. It became a reality and the farm ran for about 5 years.
I can still remember when Uncle Charley would begin the milking chores. Part of the ritual would be for him to take a big bite of chewing tobacco and stuff it behind his lip. With his lumpy jaw he would proceed to wash the cows udders with disinfectant and connect the milking machine to the cow. The milking process took about an hour and a half. The milk was placed in large milk cans and then in a cooler and once a day it would be wheeled out to the road and picked up by a Dairylea truck and taken to Poughkeepsie.
There were other major chores to be done on the farm, making hay, growing corn and grain, also growing a vegetable garden for home use. Tending horses, chickens and ducks were all part of it.
Charley Jr. graduated from Roosevelt High School, with several math prizes. His aunt and uncle, Emil and Hermina Von Koenig wanted to send him to college, he wasn't encouraged but discouraged from doing so, by Charles Sr.. Charley pursued a career in home sales. His children reaped the harvest of his good intelligence.
Divorce hit Charles Jr. too, and scattered his children to the corners of the nation. Dixie Lee to Hollywood, James to the Army, as an Officer and finally as an anesthesiologist in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Billy as a wildlife controller in Oregon, Charles the 3rd pursuing a career in the Hudson Valley. Joseph Tung, Charley Jr's grandson, by Dixie Lee, a Naval Cadet at Annapolis.
In 1951-52 Uncle Charley was involved in another tractor accident, his F-20 tractor while climbing an icy hill, on the Gardiner Farm in Stanfordville, slid backwards. Uncle Charley jumped off breaking his pelvis, at age 65, it took him about a year to recover, but he did.
Uncle Charley and Tanta Frieda lived on, in Dutchess county working on various estates, around 1960 Tante Frieda began to have heart problems and she passed away suddenly in 1961, Charles Sr. lived on for 19 years, living many years with Mrs. Keller in North Red Hook on Kerley Corners road, and finally passing away in Northern Dutchess Hospital in 1980.
My father often visited him and as I mentioned previously he was my fathers best friend in life. Some of his last words to my father were, it's time for me to go. I've been here long enough. Thus he passed away at the grand old age of 93.
He was a good farmer and a colorful person, he taught his descendants to hunt, fish and trap.
He loved the land, hunting it's wildlife and telling the many stories of his life in the farm lands of Ohio, Michigan and New York. Uncle Charley lived to go deer hunting every fall, so did his son Charles Jr., it was a big part of their life. Uncle Charley shot his last deer when over the age of 90, it was near Woodstock, New York.
Tant Frieda in her time with Charley made her home a very special place, on Sunday afternoons there was always delicious coffee, cake and pleasant conversations. It's all a memory of over 50 years ago.
George Beckmann 07/24/07
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