VISIT TO HUGSWEIER

While cleaning out our mom's house in 2013, I found lots of little treasures I squirreled away in boxes and envelopes to sort out later, back home in Santa Cruz.

But you know how 'later' never quite happens?

So it wasn't until yesterday that I rediscovered this sweet little suite of pics!

They're from a trip that Phyllis (Bader) Trotter, and her daughter, Linda Trotter, took from the States (Los Angeles, CA) to Hugseweier, Germany, in June, 1969, to visit the Bader ancestral home.

Fortunately very detailed descriptions are handwritten on the back of each photo, which I will copy for this blog. Enjoy!

(Above) The highway marker for Hugsweier. On the back, it says, "About one mile east of the Freiburg-Frankfurt Autobahn."






"Hugsweier City Hall, Linda and Phyllis Trotter, June, 1969." (right)

"The 2nd and 3rd generation visit Grandfather J. R. Bader's birthplace, 42 Kirchstrasse, Hugsweier. June, 1969."

"Front view of the Carl G Bader residence in Hugsweier, birthplace of J. R. Bader." (left above)
"Second story wing, front view." (right above)

"Side view."

Add caption

"Only church in Hugsweier built before 1860, so must have been Grandpa's church."

"Black Forest countryside (about 30 miles south of Hugsweier."



Note from Lisa: I'm not sure who inscribed these photos on the back, or who they were written to. But the handwriting is very neat and clear, and the reference to "grandpa's church" suggests it might have been Carl George Bader (my grandfather, son of J. R. Bader) referring to the earlier Carl Bader, his grandfather, J. R.'s father.

OR: Phyllis might have written these notes to her uncle, Carl George, and the "grandpa" referred to is her grandfather, J. R. All idle speculation on my part. If I find out any more, I'll let you know!

BADERS in FREMONT

Ernest Frederick Bader

Big thanks to my intrepid cousins, Philip Bader and John Bader, who just returned from a fact-finding mission to Fremont, NE, in search of more Bader info! Among other things, they plundered a goldmine of info from the Fremont High School yearbooks, including these senior class photos and bits of doggerel for five of the six children of J. R. Bader.

The dispatch Philip sent to me also includes yearbook pics of the daughters of Frederick Bader (J.R.'s brother), family homes in Fremont, and headstones. I will post these soon, but this is plenty of material for one post! I'll let Philip describe it all in his own words! 


John and I returned last night from a road trip that took us, among other places, to Fremont, Nebraska. As Hugsweier in Germany is the European birthplace of the Bader family (so far as we know right now), Fremont might be called the American birthplace, or at least where the Bader brothers Jacob and Fred first put down solid roots.

At the Keene Memorial Library, we found yearbooks from Fremont High School and managed to salvage photos of most of JR Bader's children and all of Fred's children. The only one missing is the Reverend Carl Bader. The library did not have yearbooks going back to his senior year. 

Captain of the baseball team

ERNEST FREDERICK BADER

Ernest graduated from Fremont High School in 1907. According to his yearbook entry, Ernest's nickname was "Pater". He was junior and senior class president, president of the athletic association, vice-president of the literary society, a 1st Lt. and then captain of cadets (perhaps ROTC, though not sure). He also captained the baseball and basketball teams, ran track and was a member of the men's glee club.

Captain of the basketball team (front row, right)

Here is his brief bio that appears next to his picture:

"'Pater' is a jolly good fellow and all-round athlete. He is not bothered by the girls; it is the girl that bothers him. Bader has tried, with considerable success, to get a corner on offices."

The entry is accompanied by this quote from Tennyson:

"I am part of all that I have met."

Member of the Track team (front row, middle)

Eleanor Olga Bader

ELEANOR OLGA BADER


Eleanor graduated from Fremont High School in 1909. Her entry lists the nickname of "Ella". She participated in women's glee club. Her entry in the yearbook is accompanied by this poem:


"To school she does come,
Good marks she gets some
In her studies all of the while;
Is quite fond "Art",
They say lost her heart,
Not Gibson, but "Baldwin" her style."

Alma Christina Bader

ALMA CHRISTINA BADER

Alma graduated from Fremont High School in 1912. Her nickname was "Snip". Her yearbook entry includes this poem:

"Alma, sweet Alma, whence
came your fame? From
studiousness, talent or simply
from name? No matter
the answer, for whate'er it
be, your virtues are many,
that we can see."

In her short freshman year biography, Alma's occupation was described as a "great Botanist", her disposition was "bashful", and the reason she was liked was her "long hair".

CLARA BARTON BADER

Clara Barton Bader

Clara graduated from Fremont High School in 1916. She was a member of the women's glee club, the Zetalithian literary society, the yearbook staff, and something called Emanon. I think this was some sort of social club, though I'm not certain.

The poem accompanying her yearbook photo is as follows:

"Clara has a fuzzy head,
and her "future", it is said
shall be spent in work of Art,
for she's surely got her start."

Clara's junior year biography reads as follows:

"Our fussy, persnickety member always has the latest style in hair dressing. Is also very witty and whenever she hears a new joke she'll always Springer. Intends at some future time to go to Berlin and study art."

Jean Bader

JEAN RICHARD BADER

Jean graduated from Fremont High School in 1922. He played on the football team and the track team. He was a member of the Hi-Y club ( a precursor to the YMCA), president of the dramatic club, a member of the men's glee club and the F club, served on the yearbook staff and the student newspaper, for which he served as editor in chief as a senior. He also served two years on student council.

According to the text accompanying his senior yearbook photo, Jean had the following characteristics:

"Occupation: falling in love with a new one."
"Means of identification: Will you write this up—"
"Destination: a minister"

Jean was apparently a gifted offensive lineman for the football team. His team biography reads as follows:

"One of our few fairly heavy men. Held down his guard position like a million dollars. Those who got behind him had to get help and climb over, and a few there were who did it. And the way he ambled into the opponents line on offense always reminded us of a gay young Percheron at play. And those Jean didn't hurt, he scared to death. We hate to see Jean graduate."

Jean Bader: Member of the football team

Note from Lisa: it's funny to think this beefy "young Percheron" was the same little tyke seen riding on the moon with J. R. and Emma in this early post!

Also: click here to see a great family portrait of these Bader siblings as small children!

THE BADER/JASTRAMS

Meet another branch of the Bader Family Tree.

 Last week, I heard from Carol (Jastram) Blaha, a direct descendant of Fred Bader, younger brother of our great-grandfather, J. R. Bader.  J. R. and Fred were the "Bader Bros." who had the furniture store in Fremont, Nebraska.

Carol's grandmother was Ruth Bader, Fred's eldest daughter, born in 1896. Ruth married Mernitz Dewey Jastram, probably in Fremont. Their son, Rupert Mitchell Jastram (called 'Bud') was born in January, 1926.

This is "Grandpa" Fred and baby Bud, taken on the front steps of Fred's home in Fremont, July 6, 1926.

Carol is the eldest daughter of Bud Jastram and Ella Jane Stroud (called Jane), who married in 1950. she and her sister, Kathryn (Kate), were born and raised in Minnesota, where Carol still lives.


She's  been kind enough to share a lot of family snapshots of the Bader/Jastram clan in Fremont.

Here are Ruth Bader Jastram, her husband Mernitz Jastram, and baby Bud, April, 1926.

Fred and his wife, Laura (Cochran) Bader only had one other child, another daughter, Ruth's younger sister, Marian, born in 1902.

Here is the very lovely Marian with her new nephew, Bud, in June, 1926.
Carol writes, "I never knew my grandmother Ruth, she died before I was born or maybe just after, but I knew Marian, her sister, my great aunt.  She lived in Fremont until her death sometime in the 1970’s.

She was a lovely woman….never married and was the librarian at the high school in Fremont."

In late 1927 or early 1928, Ruth and Mernitz had a second child, Bud's younger sister, Edith (called 'Edy') Marian Jastram.

Carol writes, "This is Ruth, Dad (Bud) and Edy.  I love the look of admiration (and mischief) on Edy’s face!  Had to have been August 1930."

This is Edy and Bud, probably around March, 1931. "Love the clothes!" writes Carol.   "They were always dressed beautifully and elaborately."

Carol writes, "(This) photo album stops when Dad was about 7.  The Jastram side of the family says that Mernitz left his family about then.



"We’ve found that he lived until the early 70’s and that he’d remarried. 

 I think I remember my mother telling me that they received a telegram when I was born, so Dad and Mernitz must have stayed in touch."

The four people on the left in this last photo are Jastram family members. But the dark haired young woman is grown-up Edy Jastram and her mother, Ruth Bader Jastram. Carol dates this photo around 1949, give or take.

Thanks for all the info, Carol. Welcome to the Team!

A BADER CHRISTMAS

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On Christmas Day, 1947, five of the six Bader siblings reunited with parents, Rev. Carl George Sr. and Edna (Maudie), at their home in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Rev. Bader had been assigned to the Methodist church in Lincoln in 1944.)

By this time, Bobby, Ernie, Barbara, and Carl George Jr. were all married. Only 16-year-old Philip still lived at home. Jeannie flew in from California. 

Barabara was the only one of the Bader 8 who missed this reunion. Her husband, Art Jensen, was still in the Navy and they had started a family. In December, 1947, they might still have been on Midway Island in the Pacific, or they might have relocated to Long Beach, CA.

But the rest of the Baders were on deck on what looks like a bright, sunny Christmas Day in Lincoln! 

Decorating the front porch, above, from the left, are Philip and Jeannie, Carl Jr. (behind Jeannie), Bobby, and Ernie. With—of course—Doc, the dog, smack in the middle!

In this other group shot, we have Philip and Ernie in back, with Jeannie, Maudie, Norma (Bohlken) Bader (she and Bobby married in 1942), Nadine (Goyer) Bader (she and Carl Jr. married in 1946), and Carl Jr.

In 1946 or '47, Ernie married Charlotte (Carlie) Prather. 

She's not in the Christmas pics, but three days later, she and Ernie and some of his gathered sibs took a tour of the University of Nebraska campus in Lincoln. 

This is Carlie and Ernie (and, yes, he was that tall, at 6' 8").

Here are Bobby, Jeannie, Carlie and Ernie at UN. My guess is Carl Jr. who was also on this excursion, took the photo.

And finally, the car they all rode in on! I don't know whose car this was, but it looks like Ernie driving (or possibly Carl). 

That's definitely Jeannie putting on her lipstick in the front seat!

And who's the photographer casting his shadow on the car? My guess is Carl Jr.

NEW BADER PAGES

J. R. Bader in America

After a long, long hiatus, I'm finally back on the Team Bader blog!

Please notice the two new Pages I just added to this site (see tabs, above). "Baders from 1645" is an incredible chronology of Baders from 1645 in Hugsweier, Germany, to the generation that emigrated to America in the late 19th Century.

All of the information comes from our cousin Daniel Bader in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He sent me a long, detailed pdf document months ago, the result of ten years of research he and his wife, Manuela, have done in Germany, which I have (finally!) found the time to copy out and post, so everyone else can read it too.

The other new Page is "Baders in US" which begins with the generation of Baders that founded our branch of the family in America, and lists their families and descendants. I got most of this information from the 10-page Bader Family History that my Mom (Barbara Bader Jensen) wrote out in longhand a few years ago, based on the handwritten family history she inherited from her father (Carl George Sr). Mom also kept excellent records of everyone's birth dates through the early 1990s in her ancient Birthday Book, which I've plundered extensively for this list!

However, this document is woefully incomplete regarding recent and current generations of Baders. I've filled in where I could (with many thanks to our cousins Catherine Doyle Sullivan and Linda Trotter-Heger for sending me updated info on their branches of the clan). But there are still plenty of embarrassing gaps in my limited knowledge, so if anyone has anything to add or correct, please let me know and I'll fix it.

Also, remember, these are just chronologies of names and dates. There are still lots more stories to tell!

MAUDIE

1915

Happy Mother's Day to all!

This seems like a good day to publish some more of the letter/memoir "My Mother," that Barbara wrote somewhere around 1988, but left behind in her things with a note to pass it on to me. It's a loving tribute from a daughter to her mother—our clan matriarch, Edna Alice McAfee Bader (beloved to her children as "Maudie").

"My mother was gently reared in a middle-class family in New England. Born in 1893, she was the 2nd of 4 children born to George McAfee and Frances Cowell, both of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and wed in 1887 at Worcester, Mass.

"Mother did all the things young girls of that era engaged in. There were picnics, boating and ice-skating parties, sleigh rides, and church activities. Among Mother's swains was a young man she nearly married who went on to become the Fire Chief of the Worcester Fire Dept.

"My father was an impecunious but extremely well-educated young minister just up from Boston Univ. Divinity School on one of his first charges as assistant pastor to the Methodist Church in Worcester. He came from a well-to-do family in Fremont, Nebraska.

"Mother and Father courted and wed in Worcester, Mass. He was 27 and she 22 at the time of their wedding in July, 1915.

"Their 1st son [Bobby] was born in Worcester and their 2nd son [Ernie] in Boston. When their 2nd son was a few weeks old, they moved to Clay Center, Nebr.—a tiny village and a totally new environment for my mother.

"She pitched in as a loving and loyal pastor's wife, learned to cook, keep house, and attend her husband and young family, and partake in church activities.

Maudie on vacation, ca 1927

"Their 3rd child and first daughter [Barbara] was born while they lived in Clay Center, but delivered in the Methodist Hospital in Omaha, Nebr. My mother was to have a second daughter [Jeannie] and 3rd son [Carl George Jr.] before returning to visit her family in New England. It had been 12 years then since she'd seen her family and her native heath.

"My mother was strong of spirit, but frail physically. Finally, after a serious stomach operation the church parishioners raised funds—and presented my mother with a lovely wristwatch, and an even more lovely round-trip ticket to New England. I was 8 at the time and spent the period of her trip with my paternal grandparents [J. R. and Emma Elsner Bader] in Fremont, Nebr, along with my sister and younger brother. My 2 older brothers went to summer camp.

Clan Bader, 1946

"The hot and dry Nebraska summers, along with the harsh, bitter cold winters must have been totally foreign and forbidding to Mother. Nonetheless, she loved her husband and children and did all she could to make a good life for them all.

"Mother took us on long walks of a Sunday afternoon so Father could nap in peace. We would return to pop corn and make fudge before evening service. On Valentine's Day, Mother made little boats and baskets by folding paper. She filled them with candy hearts, popcorn, and gum drops. On May Day, she made paper baskets, filling them with candy corn, popcorn, and flowers, and hanging them on the front door for us to discover.


"Meanwhile, she sang in the church choir, acted in church plays, taught Sunday School, entertained at endless Ladies Aid socials and church suppers. She even "preached" once or twice, when Father was ill. In those days, the Methodist Church moved their pastors every 3 or 4 years, so she became acquainted with a great part of the state of Nebraska.

"Mother took care of the needs of us all. Not once through ups and downs were we ever deprived of her unswerving love and interest and devotion."

Barbara concludes, "I will never forget my mother or cease to miss her every day. I hope she knows how much she is loved and missed."

I know just how she feels! This post is for Maudie and Barbara, and all the mothers and daughters in our clan.



(Bottom photo, in back: Carl George Jr, Bobby, Philip, baby Mike, Art Jensen, Ernie. Middle: Barbara and Jeannie. Front: Maudie and Carl George Sr. 1946.)

SIBLINGS

Here's a great shot of five Bader siblings: Ernie (with Doc, the dog), Bobby, Carl George Jr., Jeannie, and Philip. The only one missing is Barbara.

I think this was taken in 1941, so that might have been the year she was in nurse's training at Mass General in Boston. If she had already moved out to California with Jeannie at this time, she would have come back with Jeannie for this family reunion.

My guess is the occasion was Bobby getting engaged to Norma Bohlken. Another snapshot in this group is dated Nov. 1941 (everybody is wearing the same clothes), and Bob & Norma married in May, 1942.


Here's another shot from this group. That's Bob and Norma in the middle, flanked by Philip and Jeannie. (I love those stylin' open-toed pumps Jeannie is wearing! Some day soon I'll do a post just on Jeannie's outfits; she was such a fashion plate!)

All these pictures appear to be taken on the grounds of the Methodist Church in Holdredge, NE., where The Rev and Maudie and the youngest Baders lived from 1940-1944.


Here are some undated photos of Philip and his mom (Maudie) from about  that same time. This is also their home adjoining the Methodist Church. (This porch figures in many, many Bader family photos.)

I don't know why they're both grimacing in the right-hand pic (maybe they were squinting into the sun?), but everyone looks more relaxed in the other one!


Um, I'm not exactly sure what's going on in this photo, but that's Philip again, fooling around!

Some wag (probably big brother Ernie) has scribbled this caption on the back:

"Latest thing in potted plants."

Or—

"What did you put in that last one, Mike?"