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  A CHILD’S BREATH

  KOPP CHRONICLES

  By Gregory Kopp

  Copyright © 2017 Gregory Kopp

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781549501197

  Printed in the United States of America

  BY GREGORY KOPP

  KOPP CHRONICLES

  AN IMMIGRANT AMERICAN (English edition)

  A TRACE OF ROYALTY (English edition)

  THE JOURNEY TO DELPHOS (English edition)

  CRÓNICAS DE KOPP

  UN INMIGRANTE AMERICANO (Spanish edition)

  UN RASTRO DE LA REALEZA (Spanish edition)

  EL VIAJE A DELPHOS (Spanish edition)

  KOPP CHRONIKEN

  EIN IMMIGRANT AMERIKANER (German edition)

  EINE SPUR VON KÖNIGSHAUS (German edition)

  DIE REISE NACH DELPHOS (German edition)

  CHRONIQUES DE KOPP

  UN IMMIGRANT AMÉRICAIN (French edition)

  UNE TRACE DE LA ROYAUTÉ (French edition)

  LE VOYAGE À DELPHOS (French edition)

  This book is dedicated to my brothers and sisters.

  Cover Images courtesy of https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Artgate Fondazione Cariplo - Irolli Vincenzo, L'angelo musicante.jpg

  AN IMMIGRANT AMERICAN

  A TRACE OF ROYALTY

  THE JOURNEY TO DELPHOS

  A CHILD’S BREATH

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Afterword

  Appendix One – Stanislaus and Karolina’s Parish Record

  Appendix Two – Harriet Beecher Stowe and Cholera

  Appendix Three – Delphos Ohio and the Miami and Erie Canal

  Appendix Four – New York City Society and the Academy of Music

  Chapter One

  April 1854 Delphos, Ohio

  It was going to be a difficult birth and Karolina realized it rather quickly. Her water had broken, and she was already beginning to feel the contractions in her abdomen. She asked Stanislaus to hurry and fetch the town doctor to help her. Stanislaus ran as fast as he could down the stairs of the hotel and across the main street of Delphos to ask Doctor Reul for help in delivering their child. Doctor Reul spotted Stanislaus immediately as he was crossing the street while staring out his front window during a break in reading, even before Stanislaus approached his front door. The doctor rose from his chair and turned to say goodbye to his wife, who was sitting in the easy chair next to him. He grabbed his coat and medical bag and met Stanislaus at his front door before Stanislaus could even knock. “Doctor, come quick. My wife is having our baby, and she needs your help!” Stanislaus exclaimed. So they both hurried back to the Traveler’s Rest Hotel to join Karolina in the tiny room, she shared with her husband and children.

  Stanislaus and Karolina and their two children had been staying at the Traveler’s Rest Hotel since they arrived in Delphos last December. Narrowly escaping the anti-Catholic rioting in Cincinnati, Ohio on Christmas day, 1853, they had traveled by wagon over a cold, frozen ground, barely even a trail, let alone a road. They were staying at the hotel while Stanislaus built a new log cabin on property he and Karolina had purchased outside of town.

  Karolina was doubled over by labor pain when they arrived and attempting to ease it by walking around the hotel room. Stanislaus sent their two young children outside to play in the hotel’s front yard while he and the doctor attended to his wife. The children cringed as they were leaving when they heard their mother moan in pain and were only too happy to comply with their father’s wishes. Karolina was trying anything she could to ease the labor pain, but it was not helping, and her moans were becoming increasingly louder. A woman from the hotel room across the hall offered her a cup of water, but Karolina shook her head and kept pacing around the room.

  Doctor Reul helped her to lie down on the small bed and then offered her a small amount of laudanum, but she refused it. Instead, she held Stanislaus’s hand tightly while he winced from her strong grip. Later, the town doctor urged her to push when he saw the baby’s head begin to crown as he examined her, so she screamed and pushed as hard as she could to deliver the baby. Finally, after what seemed an eternity to Karolina, the baby was delivered, and she could relax. A few moments later, she asked the doctor what was the baby’s sex, and he proudly proclaimed “It is a boy!” Stanislaus and the doctor laughed and Karolina wept for joy.

  Stanislaus hugged Karolina but they both soon realized their baby was not crying. Doctor Reul was leaning over the newborn baby and had a worried look on his face. The baby began to turn blue from lack of oxygen and Karolina cried out “Doctor, what is it? Why isn’t he breathing?” The town doctor ignored her and continued compressing the infant’s chest and encouraging him to breathe. “Breathe, child, breathe!” he whispered. After what seemed an eternity, the baby began to take a few shallow and irregular breaths. Soon the baby’s breathing began to become deeper, and he also began to cry. They were small cries at first, but quickly he began to cry louder. Doctor Reul straightened up and smiled at Karolina and Stanislaus with a relieved look on his face. Karolina and Stanislaus hugged each other again. The doctor finished cleaning the infant, wrapped him in a blanket, and gave him to Karolina to hold. She held him gently and began to soothe him while he slowly began to fall asleep.

  Doctor Reul asked the couple what the given name of the infant was in order to record it on his birth certificate. Karolina said loudly “Johannes” and Stanislaus agreed. Stanislaus then slapped the town doctor on his back and thanked him. He asked “Doctor, how can we repay you? “ The town doctor told him “No worries, Sir. Remember me next fall when you harvest your crops” and he gave him a smile. Inwardly he winced when he said that for he knew he would have to tell his wife again about another patient who could not pay his medical bill. His wife would scold him when he returned home with only a promise to pay him for his medical care with the proceeds from the next harvest. She would tell him their own cupboards were bare, and they needed money to buy food and other provisions for their own growing family. He would only say to her “Don’t worry dear, we’ll get by. Wait until next fall, when everyone pays us and then we will be able to pay all of our bills at the general store!” he would say proudly and then give his wife a hug while he continued to care for the next patient. His wife, exasperated, could only smile sweetly and try to stretch their meager savings once again.

  Stanislaus unaware of the doctor’s precarious finances shook his hand profusely and thanked him again until he pulled his hand away. Finally, Doctor Reul left the tiny hotel room, after checking the baby’s heart and his breathing one last time while he slept in his mother’s arms.

  Chapter Two

  A month or two later, Karolina was still continuing to recover her strength from the birth of her child. The childbirth had been hard on her this time, and she now lay comfortably on the small bed in their new cabin. Her husband, Stanislaus, with help from several other men from town, had finally finished their log cabin, and the family moved in during the early spring.

  The cabin contained one large room partitioned off into several smaller spaces using draperies. A stone fireplace dominated the center of the room, built almost entirely by her hu
sband, a former stonemason. He was now cutting down trees in the area surrounding their cabin to make a larger clearing for a barn and a livestock pen.

  She was nursing the infant Johannes in her bed and caressing his face. Her other two children were playing outside in the warm June sunshine. The spring rains had finally subsided, and they were able to play in the forest surrounding their cabin after being cooped up for several days. Their father was already cutting down his second tree and stacking the firewood next to the cabin door. He had cut enough trees to begin planting on their small portion of land.

  As she lay in the cabin with her infant son, Karolina began to recollect the events of the past several months. Stanislaus, Karolina, and their two children were traveling with their close friend Johannes and a black woman named Marguerite, who with her two children were rescued from slavery on a New Orleans sugar plantation by Johannes. The motley group arrived in the town of Delphos late in the evening of December 26 with no place to stay and with four children who were hungry, cold, and tired from riding in an uncomfortable wagon all day long.

  Stanislaus and Johannes knocked on several doors of the houses at the edge of town waking up the occupants and asking where they could find a place to stay for the night. The awakened residents gave them directions to the nearest lodgings, a hotel called Traveler’s Rest in the center of town. After arriving at the hotel and negotiating the night’s stay charge with the hotel proprietor, all the members of their party prepared to settle in for the evening.

  The proprietor of the Traveler’s Rest stopped them before they could go to their rooms and told them that Marguerite and her two children would need to stay in the barn behind the hotel with the guests’ horses and other livestock. Johannes became livid with anger and grabbed the hotel proprietor by the shirt collar and demanded he let them stay in a hotel room. His demands came to naught when the hotel proprietor pulled out a loaded Colt revolver from behind the front desk and pointed it at Johannes. He explained that it was hotel policy for colored men and women to stay in the barn because their presence was disturbing to the other hotel guests. Johannes slowly raised his hands over his head as he stared at the loaded pistol, but calmly insisted plenty of blankets be provided Marguerite and her two children in order to stay warm during the cold winter night. The proprietor grudgingly complied and gave Marguerite a thick goose down comforter for the makeshift bed of straw next to the horse’s stall. Johannes assured Marguerite, she and her family would only have to endure one cold night in the barn. They would leave the next day to continue on to New York City to find her husband. She nodded her head in resignation and went with her children out to the barn.

  Chapter Three

  When the group approached Delphos earlier that evening, they discovered that the Miami and Erie Canal, which provided most of the work and commerce of the town, was frozen solid. Stanislaus, unable to find any work on the canal during the dead of winter would be forced to dip into his and Karolina’s savings for any food or clothes they might need until the canal could be cleared of ice in spring. They left Cincinnati in such a hurry that they only grabbed a small bag of clothes and some provisions, similarly to their flight out of Baden one year ago. As it turned out, several of the other German immigrant families they befriended in the hotel provided them with clothing and even shared some of their food with the refugee family. Stanislaus would thank everyone who helped them and promised to help them build a log cabin and clear the trees from their land when spring finally arrived.

  Johannes had given Karolina an envelope during their flight from Cincinnati from the Dowager Duchess Stéphanie de Beauharnais, the aunt of the new French Emperor Napoleon III. She was a friend of Karolina’s mother in Baden. In the letter, the Dowager Duchess explained how she promised Karolina’s estranged mother that she would forward any remainder of her life’s savings to her daughter after she died. Karolina’s mother had died several years before and the Dowager Duchess had been looking for Karolina to no avail until she discovered recently about her journey to America. So she asked Johannes to deliver the envelope containing the bequest to Karolina for her. The Dowager Duchess secretly added a sum of her own to help Karolina and her family. Therefore, Karolina was amazed when she opened the envelope to discover a substantial letter of credit from the Banque de France.

  In addition to the money, the envelope contained a letter from the Dowager Duchess’ daughter Princess Marie Amelie, the newly crowned Duchess of Hamilton. The Princess described her new home in Scotland and how much she missed visiting with Karolina. Karolina was sad when she read that part of the letter for she dearly missed the Princess.

  The next day after their arrival in Delphos, Johannes stood up at the breakfast table in the hotel and announced to Karolina and Stanislaus that he had to leave and take Marguerite and her family to New York City. Karolina and Stanislaus both begged him to stay, but he noted that Marguerite was anxious to find her husband. Johannes promised them he would return to Delphos someday when he reunited the black woman with her husband and their children’s father. Stanislaus told him about Franz Sigel, his old 1848 Baden revolution army commander and described many of the other ‘48ers who lived in New York City. He suggested he arrange to meet Sigel’s carriage driver, Joseph, who may know how to help Marguerite find her husband in the big city.

  Karolina gave him a long hug and Stanislaus shook his hand as he was leaving. Johannes grinned at both of them and slowly drove the wagon with Marguerite and her two children through the center of Delphos and headed east towards New York City. As the wagon went out of sight, Karolina with a few tears in her eyes, waved at them and turned to go back into the hotel. She felt the child in her kick its feet and she smiled and hurried to rejoin her husband. Stanislaus was already asking the hotel proprietor where he could find the town’s land agent in order to purchase some farmland with Karolina’s line of credit.

  Chapter Four

  The hotel proprietor directed Stanislaus to the land agent’s small office, behind the hotel, on the locks of the Miami and Erie Canal. He also shared with Stanislaus that the local priest, Father Breidick and his brother Otto owned many acres of land surrounding the town of Delphos and would be willing to sell some land to Stanislaus for a fair price.

  With the money the Dowager Duchess sent from France, Stanislaus and Karolina arranged for the purchase of 40 acres of land outside of town, from the two brothers, in an area which in the future would be known as Landeck. Stanislaus scouted the land and found a small stream running through it to use for fresh water and plenty of trees in the surrounding forest for building their log cabin. The area surrounding Delphos was known as the Great Marsh in those days. It contained a forest, deep and thick, where barely any light entered and fell to the ground. Many portions of the forest and countless tree stumps would be removed by the inhabitants of Delphos before the land could be used for planting.

  Stanislaus picked a spot for his cabin and marked it with an “X” on a large tree directly in the center of their plot of land. Other recently arrived German immigrants helped him cut down the trees used for the framework of the cabin and clear the land for farming. He was able to finish his log cabin, including his handmade door and fireplace, from the wood and stones already on his land. After several months of hard work in the cold and snow of late winter, his family was finally able to move into the cabin with their new baby boy Johannes.

  After an early scare when he was born, the infant Johannes was healthy and growing larger every day and often smiled as his proud parents looked upon him. Meanwhile, their two other boys, Charles and Albert would play with the baby. They would hover over him and try to make him laugh by making funny faces and then tickling him. The infant would reach out for their faces and grab wildly while the two boys would laugh hysterically as the infant smiled and laughed. Karolina still exhausted from the ordeal of childbirth, would push them away when it was time to nurse the baby.

  Each day, Stanislaus would leave at dawn and travel
into town to work on the Miami and Erie Canal loading and unloading canal boats. He also helped other new immigrant farmers build their own cabins and then return home to help care for his two sons, new baby, and ailing wife. He worked hard every day, but he was happier than he had ever been in his life as he appreciated his good fortune.

  Farm land prices in Delphos were beginning to rise as more and more immigrant families and other new settlers from Cincinnati, Dayton, and elsewhere were eager to buy land in the area. Karolina, pleased that she was able to help her family with the money she received from the Dowager Duchess, was content as she caressed the small child in her arms and held him tight while she fed him.

  Chapter Five

  All during this time, German immigrant families were building homes in the area close by Karolina and Stanislaus’ cabin. One such family was the Bauer’s, who had a teenage daughter named Clara, turning eighteen later that summer. She had met a boy named Peter, who lived in Delphos and helped his father run the general store. Peter was madly in love with Clara and visited her as often as he could when he was not working at the store or on the canal docks unloading his father’s cargo. He would often visit Clara at her home, and then they would have a picnic near a small pond close to her home.

  On these picnics, they would lay on the grass and watch the clouds go by in the sky and dream of their future together. Peter told her one day “I plan on opening my own store. I want to go to a big city like New York or Chicago and I want you to come with me!” Clara laughed, squeezed his hand and then gave him a kiss. Peter was overjoyed at this and skipped all the way back to his home despite anticipating his father’s angry words when he arrived “Where were you? Don’t you know we have a general store to run! Mother was worried sick”. Peter apologized and then helped his father close the store for the evening all the while dreaming of going away with Clara to the big city and starting his own store.