Ernsthausen
By: David
Alan-Peter Witte.
The placement of the village of Ernsthausen (Ernesthaza)
was historically documented by the former larger
settlement of "Vidaegyhaz" with a famous abbey.
The settlement was destroyed by the Turks in the 1500’s.
Ernsthausen was founded and settled from 1790-1835 and each
ruling country changed the towns’ name. The
community of Ernesthaza is part of the Gross-Beckerek
district in the Torontal administrative area. Its forms a
rectangle with a single through street and three cross
streets.
After the Proceedings of the Parish council that was sent
out by Kiss-Maria with their friendly rule, (endorsement)
particularly with what of their representative was
completed, the settlement/colonization contract could be
signed in Gross-Becskerek in the 15 September 1821, and the
development of a settlement plan then began. It states
in the settlement contract that the benevolent founder of
this community, who has designated himself by name to
have to good fortune, Herr Ernest de Ellemer und Ittbe
wishes nothing more ardently than to awaken the
prosperity of this, his planting.
The settlement contract, concluded between the monorial
estate and the settlers, was based on a thirty year lease
agreement (PACHVERTRAG); the community would have eighty
complete residences, a meeting house and twenty
cottager sites. The number of cottager sites were raised to
thirty-six after signing the lease agreement. To a
completed residence was included 24 jochs (Jock/yoke is an
old land measurement) of farmland broken into 8 jochs
of winter pasture, 8 yokes of summer pasture and 8 jocks of
fallow land; in addition 6 yokes of meadow and 3 yokes
of pasture land. A tithe was to have been paid amounting to
Metzen ( a dry measure, especially for grain) and eight
Metzen of oats or Kurkuruz. The privileges of
liquor-licenses, selling of meat, fishery, mill-tax, hunting,
Ziegelschlag and other crown regalia remained an exclusive
right of the rulers .
The cottagers, in contrast, got only a half yoke of house
ground and one yoke of pasture land. Every dweller also
got a half Joch(about 1.383 acres Austria-Hungary or about
.631 acres Prussia) wine and herb garden. The
tenant of a whole session had to pay a rental of 29 Guldens
and 30 Kreuzer per year but the cottager had to
pay one Gulden per year.
Already one year after the 1822 transferred property the
meadows and pastures in the valley were exchanged for
arable land. Because e of this they were not suppose to pay
the tithe but only a rental of 70 Kruezer per session or
a total of 30 Gulden. Furthermore, because of this
additional assigned arable land they were ordered to
supply three reapers free of charge for the rulers of the
territory instead of one reaper. All the other regulations of
the settlement contract remained unchanged. According to
the contract the settlers were under obligation, after each
session and without any payment in return, to work on two
Joch of the lordly land with their own tools or animals, to
bring in the harvest and to bring the cleaned grain either
into the lordly warehouse or to transport it to the shore of
the Theiss River.
The Hungarian parliament decided to abolish the system of
cultivating land rights in Hungary in the new liberal
constitution of April 1848. In accordance with article IX,
that the cultivators of the land got the right of full property
of their homesteads and their lands. The article of law did
not apply to Kontraktualisten, to whom also the inhabitants
of Ernesthaza were belonging, because their relationship to
the rulership over land was not based on the legal order
of the Living State, that was abolished by the new
constitution, but based on agreements by contract. At the
next meeting of the Hungarian parliament, it was planned to
make a definite settlement of the affairs of the
cultivators. However, in the fall of 1848 the Hungarian
Revolution broke out and the discussion of the new
constitution was never held
The neighboring communities are Katalinfalva to the north,
Neuzina and Szarcsa to the east, Botos to the south, and
Lazarfeld to the west. The settlers of Ernesthaza were
Germans of the Roman Catholic faith. In respect regarding
and the parochial affiliation of these they belonged to the
nearest parish of Szarcsa. The parishes in Szarcsa were:
The community of Ernesthaza was founded in the year 1822.
Preparatory work was probably done as early as
autumn 1821, but the buildings were erected during the
course of the year 1822. During the construction of the
first building, several finds indicated the earlier human
occupation. When in 1823 Berhard Kleisinger built stables
on his block, he found a smithy complete with tools. In
1834, Paul Wendling found in his vineyard a copper medal
with an image of St. Nicholas and the cross of Jesus.
Furthermore, various and other excavations brought to the
light Roman coins and also human remains, all proof that
the people lived there and had to escape the Turks. It
could never be determined where these inhabitants came
from.. I am assuming that some of them must have
migrated to there from the first settlements in southern
Hungary but it must be noted that residents’ names such
as Heh, Kaip, Remillong, Valeri, Mayer, Degol, etc. did not
exist in those districts. The remaining settlers moved to
Ernsthausen from the surrounds districts and the
Obertoronta: from Larzafeld, Zsigmondfalva, Katalinfalva,
Stefasnfeld, Heufeld, Truebswetter, Gottob, Stamora,
Klein-Beckskerek, etc.
The written agreement for settlement of the area was
executed on the 15th of September 1821. That was shortly
before the start of the fall planting season, and since it
took time to do the planning and surveying required for a
new community, especially one as lovely as Ernesthaza would
turn out to be. I can only assume that the colonists
who were already committed to the settlement must have
initially been allotted only a few acres of farmland apiece
to plant the wheat necessary for their bread.
In late autumn the dried tobacco was sorted according to
color and size, bound into bundles, and delivered when
directed to the official in Gross-Betschkerek who
represented the tobacco monopoly. There the tobacco
was appraised, categorized (class 1 through 8), and paid
for on the spot. The quantity that had already been
diverted for the black market purposes brought nearly……..
In the year 1831 the appearance in the villages of
Ernsthausen, Sarzca, Botos, Neusin, as well as the entire
country an unknown outbreak of cholera. Many people died of
the illness: many children lost their parents, many
parents survived their children. Even entire families died
out. Ernste und letzte Seite eines Verzeichnisses,das die
namen der schuldner aus einer Versteigerung des Vermoegens
von Waisenkindern, deren Eltern 1831 an
der Cholera starben, enthaelt. Without fear for his own
safety, Pastor Gyoery administered the last sacraments.
He remained with the sick in the hour of their death.
Eventually he became infected as well and died of the
terrible illness at the age of 33. His old school friend
Andreas Dulik, the Chaplain of Neu-Besenova, came to
his deathbed. He remained, was initially appointed as
administrator and later as Pastor of the church in
Ernsthausen. As did his predecessor, Pastor Dulik labored
for the benefit of the faithful after 14 years and was buried
in the East churchyard, where Pastor Gyoery rests as well.
IN 1843 the
Cholera epidemic returned. The first case was reported on
27 August and lasted until 9 October in which 123 people
died in that time interval. The Cholera returned in 1846
1849, 1866,1873,1883 and again in 1893 with diminished
intensity.
In the Spring of 1887 the rulership of Itebes kenderes had
offered a six year lease to the municipality of
Ernsthausen over its property of the fields, meadows and
Hunttung, that was situated in the immediate surrounds. A
representative of the town accepted this offer during their
meeting, which was organized on May 16, 1887, and
leased the total property for six consecutive years for an
annual rent in Shillings of 2,500 Fl. As the cattle of the
municipality had increased very much, this lease came at a
convenient time. Also the municipal treasury had a
benefit from it, because the agricultural fields and
meadows were subleased every year and thus important
earning flew in. The town later bought a part of the leased
fields.
Presently in the late 1990s it is name is Banatski
Despotovac. In Hungarian the name is Ern ohaza. Neusin
is the German Name of the City were Mathias Furo was born
and in Yugoslavian it is spelled Neuzina, and in
Hungarian Nezseny
The mood in the village was very congenial. Neighbors very
seldom had disputes. Sometimes, the young men
became involved in fisticuffs; however, these were seldom
taken seriously since they were usually foolish acts. The
people of Ernsthausen and Sartcha were content with their
lots. As soon as the children finished school, they
had to go to work . Those who had no work at home
apprenticed to learn a profession, or went to work for
someone else. Sundays were for church; in the afternoon and
evening there were dances that the parents also
attended. The men (fathers) played cards in an adjoining
room where they also wet their whistles. The women
(mothers) sat around the dance hall and watched to see who
was dancing with whom. There was a lot of singing,
and if a good, new book appeared, it made the rounds of
many households. A lot of crafts were done-crocheting,
knitting, etc. From a certain age the girls wore long
skirts, and under these, several petticoats which were hand
embroidered. It was a lovely fashion then and looking back
at the pictures you can see that the boys were also nicely
dressed and formal.
The people of Ernsthausen and the local villages never
ventured far from their homes. The town’s people were
happy and satisfied in their town, but on occasion, on
holidays, they would visit relatives in neighboring villages.
Everyone looked forward to Sundays - the women and children
went to church, and the men walked with them;
however more often then not, they ended up drinking beer or
local drinks at a pub where they bowled or played
Hungarian or German Card Games. Then in the afternoons
during Sunday. Dances were held. It was not
proper during this time for a boy and girl to do any type
of dating or visiting each other unless they were at the dance
dancing with each other. Let me back up for a second. The
weekly dance (Tanz gehen) was held at the
Wirthause in Ernsthausen. The girls would be chaperoned by
their mothers and could then talk among the girls but
once the dancing begin then the boys could pick out a girl
and talk to her while they were dancing. During this time
the boys also would be talking to their friends The houses of Ernsthausen, Neusin, Klek,
Sartcha,
Johanisfeld, and Sigmundfeld and other towns in Banat were
generally built in a square checkerboard pattern with
the Catholic Church and surrounding square in the center of
town. Each village, however, had slightly different
designs for the decorative finishes on the buildings, and
the differences are still visible on the buildings that are left
standing in the area villages.
The houses were built perpendicular to the street, and
consisted of a series of adjoining rooms, with a sitting
room or parlor at the end of the building closest to the
street, and small out building at the rear of the home for
their sheep, goats, horses. In the rear area of the
property the backyards might have contained pigs, chickens,
ducks, and geese, cows and Mathias Furo also had horses.
Each backyard also had a small vegetable garden
that would grow the needed produce for Spring, Summer, and
Early autumn meals. In the Winter months the family
would eat the canned vegetable and fruits that the women of
the house had canned during late summer and early
fall. The ground was packed down very tightly from the road
to the cobblestone sidewalks, so that not even a
blade or grass or weed could grow. My grand Aunt Mary Furo
Berg, remembered that the women on the street took
turns weekly scrubbing down the sidewalks in front of each
home to make them clean and sparkle. Many of the
homes had long covered porches that extended the full
length of the house. The Swabians/Hungarians were
known for keeping their houses and gardens clean and
maintained.
A fence surrounded each houseplot and the courtyard within
the fence contained grapevines, fruit trees and the
household garden. Every year a whitewash compound was placed
on the building using everyone in the family to
help . According to the Banat newsgroup the term for this
process was geweisselt. The streets in the village were
wide, and were used as pathways for the community
activities such as a baptism, wedding and funeral
processions. Cattle were also led down the street to the
common pasture in the surrounding area of the village.
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Year Rom. Cath Orth Protes
Reform Jewish
_____________________________________________________
1822 783
1833 1142 21
1843 1282 32
1853 1224
29 5 1 2
1863 1580
0 9
1873 1488 27
1889 1583 59
1900 1763
1922 2132 17 1
Mathias Furo came into this world on 15 April 1860 in
Neuzina, Torontal Country-Austria-Hungary. He stayed
and worked in Neuzina working in the fields along the side
of his father and mother until they died in 1878. At a time
of no work in Neuzina and no other family he left to gain
an apprentice job and to travel throughout the area looking
for a job and a home. He traveled to Zagreb for a short
time and worked on the National railroad that was being
built from Subjoitic to Zagred.
After a few years of traveling Mathias Furo went to a
village 7 km to the northwest name of Ernsthausen
(German) to be a peasant worker in the fields. While new in
this town he started to court a young girl Margaret HEH.
Her brothers tried to stop this interest of Mathias with
their sister because he had no money or land to be exchanged
for the girl. Margaret father was no longer living so
Mathias went to her Margaret’s mother- Mrs.
HEH-Krutsch, to ask permission for the marriage of her
daughter. According to stories, The second widowed
HEH-Krutsch said that Margaret’s brothers had no influence
on which their sister was going to marry.
MARRIAGE:
Margaret HEH was born in ERSTHAUSEN - Austria-Hungary on 25
November 1861 and was married
to Mathias Furo in 1884. Mathias and Margaret had seven
Children and three of them later moved to the United States before 1915. The
children were: Elizabeth, Peter, Frank, Mary, Kate, Eva and Nicholas.
---PETER
born 10 MAY 1887 he went to school until age 9, then started to work in the
fields and
neighboring towns. Peter learned how to speak Hungarian and
German while growing up in Ernsthausen.
Peter was very shy and quite in the old country and never
mixed well with the girls in the village since he was working from sunrise to
sunset at any early age. He moved to
the United States after fleeing the mandatory conscription into the Hungarian
army in the fall of 1906/1907 and fled to the United States following his
cousins.
---Elizabeth-born
1885 worked for a priest in his rectory and church. Cleaning and straightening
and
cooking for him and on the way out of the fields one-day
she was struck by lightning and died in 1904.
---Frank
-born 7 July 1889 died 16 August 1962-Chicago, IL married Elisabeth Merle in
Sartcha. Elizabeth was born in 1898
---Mary-born
2 FEB. 1891 Married Joseph Berg in Chicago . They had two children-Anna was
born October 17, 1913 and Mary Ann who was born in May 1921. According to the
fourteenth Census of the United States in 1920 the Bergs.-Joseph and Mary and
Anna were living in Crestline, Ohio. Joseph Berg was 32 years of age and had
arrived in the United States in 1905 in Pennsylvania.. The Census indicated
that he was from Hungary just like his wife Mary was. Anna was born in Illinois
not Crestline, Ohio. . Joseph Berg worked in Crestline in a Pump factory and
Mary stayed home with the child. The Bergs on Crestview Street one street to
the West of the Heh’s. Anna married Curt Parsons and they had one son: Richard
Parson who was born on June 5, 1942 and then Mary Ann and Warren Gale had two
children. Wayne born on June 5,1946 and Lorraine born on September 8,1952 and
the Parsons and the Gales reside in California. Mary live in Chicago on Bryn
Mauw Place until she needed care from her children and then she moved to
California where she died and then was buried in Chicago, Ill next to her
husband who proceeded her .
---Kate-born
15 SEPT. 1893. Married Mathias Tessling and had one children Frank in 1921 who
died during WWII as a solider either for the Germany military or the
Yugoslavian military. Kate died in the Rudolfsgnad Lager 1944-1945 along with
35,000 other people from the surrounding area. Mathias died of being fed poison
at Kathreinfeld in 1944. See picture of Katharina Furo Tessling, her husband
and son taken in 1938. Mathias
came
from a Family in Ernsthausen, which had lived in the village for over 75 years.
Mathias was one of six children: Barbara, Katharina, Maria, Michael, And Franz
---EVA-born 1895 and died in 1905 from a seizure that
caused convulsion which died
---Nickolas
died at birth due to blood poisoning. The midwife cut the cord to short with a
unclean knife. Nicholas lived by three days.
Family Lineage Line for the Heh Family including Sub
category provided by Marilyn Heh.
Caspar Heh married Zina Frank in 1854
Zina Frank Heh later marries Theodor Krutsch
Children: Margaret Heh born 1861
Peter Heh born 1858
Nickolaus born 1856
Maria
Margaret Heh marries Mathias Furo in 1886
Children: Elizabeth 1885
Peter 1887
Frank 1889
Maria 1891
Katharina 1893
Eva 1895
Nicolas 1897
Peter Furo married Katharina Dekold
Children: Magdalena 1915
Catharine Matilda 1919
Rosemary Catherine 1929
House Description: The house that the family lived in had
only three rooms. In the back of the house there was a
bedroom, then a kitchen (which was also the living quarters
and the dinning room was in the middle of the
house and the front room also contained two beds. The house
had 5 beds. When Peter was born the house was
not quite finished yet. The roof of the house was not on
but soon after the house roof was raised in July. Margaret
was staying at her grandmother’s house while the roof was
being placed onto the house.
The house like most houses in the viallage was built of sod
(mud) had was painted or whitewashed each autumn
when the Kirchweihfest was held. The ceiling in the house
was also built from sod. With a strong ceiling, wheat, corn,
barley were also stored in the attic. Sticks were put in
the chimney in the attic to hang sausages to be smoked from
4-6 weeks
The second wide Heh Krutsch would also tend the garden
while watching the children so that Margaret and Mathias
could work but tending the garden was a very large
responsibility still since the home gardens included grapes
for eating and wine production, vegetable and fruits such
as peaches, apricots, corn, melons, and tomatoes.
Mathias would hire his services out every season to work in
the fields so he could earn a living. This entailed
planting, weeding, and harvesting the crops. The workers
would get paid in wheat, corn, soap, and ten guldens per
season. Crops were grown in the fields surrounding the
village of Ernsthausen ( See Map of Town) the specialty
crops grown in this area were sugar beets, tobacco, and
hemp. The other crops that the peasants would tend and
grow were wheat, corn and alfalfa. The farmers also kept
horses, cattle, pigs and chickens and geese.
Once the children started school, the parents and the local
villagers would make sure that their children went until the
were 12 years old, they went to the Serbian Hungarian
school. In Ernsthausen and other small villages the
schools were built in close proximity to the church Which
was difficult for the children in the town because most of
them spoke German not Hungarian or Serbia. After going to
school for six years or less, the children would leave
school and go to work. The boys would hire themselves out
in the fields or lay bricks for sidewalks, help set
building or roads. The young girls ( age 10 + )would work
in the fields watching children or to be a ditchmadl for
families in other towns.
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Year # of Homes
1822 120
1860 140
1870 175
1880 184
1890 248
1900 305
1910 416
1930 467
1944 561
While the children were growing up, the second widowed
grandmother HEH - Krutsch moved in with Mathias &
Margarete and their family because Mrs. HEH- Krutsch sons
and grandsons would not let her join their household.
So, since Mathias owed his marriage to his
grandmother-in-law, she was always welcomed into his
house . Margaret was able to go out into the fields and
work also while grandmother Krutsch would watch the
children at Home. Grandmother Krutsch died in 1894 with the
following children still at home: Peter-age 7,
Elizabeth-age 9, Frank-age 5, Mary-age 3, and Katherine
(Kate)-age 1
GOKOWA LAGER
In the workers part of the camp the people were given in
the morning only a small piece of cornmeal bred as big as
the palm of your hand. Once had to decide to eat it all at
once or to save small pieces of it for the rest of the day.
This was the only time we were feed unless a member of the
International Red Cross was coming for a visit. The
little children under the age of 6 and people to old to
work were given the same amount of corn meal every two or
three days. In the camps no child under the age of three
survived.
Rudolfgsnad, Subotica, and other camps the young working
boys would leave the camps at night and forge
the surrounding fields and barns looking for food. Kaspar
Dekold tells the story of tunneling under the barbed wire
fence at night to steal potatoes and other foods from the
Serbian workers and if they were caught they would be
beaten. After being beaten they would be placed in cellars
filled with water with rats and other vermin and feces and
have to stay like that for days if not weeks. The guards
were Partisians, Russian, and Mongolians. Many were
able to sustain life by stealing food and also escaping
from the camp at night and risk their lives. They begged for
food from local SERBS or HUNGARIANS, former neighbors who
were sympathetic and compassionate
people. Had these people not been so daring to risk their
lives, no one would have survived the camps.
Many of the people where taken to Russia to work in the
field, coal and ore mines as forced laborers. Over eighty
percent never returned. some infants and young children
were taken to Russia to be adopted and absorbed into the
Russian society to punish the men and women of Banat and
all Volkdeutsch. The women were raped and sold for
their services to make the soldiers and the men back in
Russia to have a stock of girls to breed (girls ranging from
12-16). As soon as the Partisans had taken over a town they
would select young Danube Swabian women (age 15
and up), preferably blondes who were from that village or
town and were taken to a compound at Pancevo across
from Belgrade. There they were kept like caged animals to
satisfy the sexual lusts of Tito’s elite troops. The inevitable
happened’ they all had gotten infected with syphilis. To
prevent it from spreading, the local army commander
ordered the remaining 150 women to be taken to a remote
pasture. There the women were forced to strip, and were
shot to death. The reason why they had to take off their
clothes was that the Partisans intended to sell them on the
black market. In Yugoslavia at the time used clothing was
at a premium, but would not be salable if riddled with bullet
holes and blood
In between the houses in the camps where the people slept
(remember 20 people per room -- 60 to 80 people per
house) would be a grave house. A grave house was a house
that would have nine to ten layers of bodies piled in
it, covered by twenty to thirty centimeters of earth.
People were always buried at night, usually inside the main room
of a house, so local farmers would not be frightened of the
partisans, Their LIBERATORS. One woman I spoke to
said that the guards would get her and a few other women up
during the night and all the women were given spears
and bags of lime. We were instructed to walk over into the
grave house in our barefeet and to stab our spears into
the earth. Then we each had to put lime into each hole. She
remembered that with each step she took it was like
standing on a bowl of jelly.
Less than thirty percent of the our people who were still
alive when world public opinion finally forced the
Yugoslavs to end the camp system in 1949. By 1950 the Red
Cross determined that over 30,000 children from the
Ethnic Germans/Hungarians were still alive in state homes
or in Russian, but with few or incorrect papers. The
Yugoslavs not wanting to give up THEIR children either
destroyed the papers on the children or changed the
children’s names to Slavic or Serbian/Croatian names. In
1951, the Yugoslav government told the families that
without an original birth certificate, type in Serbian,
they where powerless to help. How many people would have
had birth certificates after six or seven years of camps,
on the run, or settled in different countries?
As the Russians moved into the Banat province, the Serbs
and Partisans use our ‘forced’ association with the SS
division as an excuse to expropriate and destroy us. They
moved everyone out. The men were separated from the
women. The women, including Margaret Furo and Kate
Tessling, were taken to Rudolfsgnad, Yugoslavia, which
was an internment camp in which Germs were relocated. To
get everyone there every woman had to walk, but the
aged or disable or the sick were able to ride on a wagon
part of the way. The women were put into camps with
40-60 women to a room. That room was filled with straw to
lie on, and human waste filled the rooms. Living conditions
were very poor and over 90,000 were killed there between
l944 and l950. As the women would die the Yugoslavians
would come in and throw the bodies into the muddy streets.
Whenever they would get enough bodies to bury,
they dug a large hole and had a mass grave. This is where
Margaret Furo and Kate Tessling died and were
buried.
The men from Ernsthausen (30 to 40) were taken to
Katrinfeld where they were asked what types of jobs they
wanted to do as prisoners. After choosing work the
Yugoslavians fed the men a large meal. During the night,
the men started getting sick to their stomachs, and in the
morning 36 of the 40 men who had eaten the food were
dead from deliberate poisoning. This is where Mathais
Tessling died. At the Trefen that David Witte attended in
the spring of 1997, David met a man Michael Antis who was
in the same room and besides Mathias Tessling on
the night of the poisoning. He remembers the night very
well and remembers that he gave some of his food to a
hungry and sick Mathias and then in the morning finding
Mathias dead next to him.
The present day habitants (Serbo-Croatians and Dalmatians)
despise the memory of the German speaking
Catholics. When the Russians moved into the area the
Catholic Church in Ernsthausen was destroyed (see
picture) and so was the government office that had the
birth, marriage, and the land records for the area.
After l950 the Catholic cemetery was leveled and the
headstones were used to fill holes in the muddy streets.
The place that the cemetery was located is now a parking
lot, While Joe Furo was in Ernsthausen a few years back
he saw that the Furo’s house was being torn down. Every
four years since the first Treffen was held in Linz, Austria
the residents and their families’ get together to see each
other and to remember the good and the bad times.
Reunions have been held in Linz in 1948 and 1952 and then
in Ulm, Germany in 1956 then back to Linz and then onward to
Barackenlager and the last few in Spaichingen which is in
the Danube Swabian. The following provided very
valuable help and remembered the Furo’s and the Heh’s while
living in Ernsthausen: Antis, Mulršth, Friedlein
Tessling, and the Remolling families. Carl Remolling
visited with Mathias Tessling and Kate and grew up with
Frank Tessling and remembers being with and in Mathias’s
Furo home on various occasions he lived just
down the street.
Customs and traditions
Christmas: The
Christmas that we celebrate today is completely different than the way my
grandfather, Peter Furo, celebrated in his youth. Only the godparents gave
their godchildren gifts. There was usually an orange, apple, hard candy, and
the girls were given a gingerbread doll, and the boys a wooden horse. The
children would receive their gifts after going to church.
Outhouse:
The Furo’s in Ernsthausen never had any type of outhouse or bathroom
facilities, so they use the manure pile in the back of the house.
House:
The house that the family lived in was made out of compressed mud, then apply
pressure to the mud, then take off the frame and move on to the next sections.
At first the roofs in the town were covered with bamboo shoots, but since fires
in houses were very common; the law said, “all roofs must be covered with
ceramic tiles”. (See picture)
Winters:
The winters in Ernsthausen were like the ones in St. Louis or Chicago, cold and
snowy during the winter months.
In researching the Furo’s
family, four familial characteristics have continued to arise:
1. Boys are usually shy.
2. Very hard to show emotion.
3. They are hard to get along
with, but they were
always fair.
4. They are very stubborn.
This
section has covered the beginning of the Furo-Heh family to the death of the
father, Mathais Furo and the mother, Margarete Heh. The later chapters will
deal mainly with the Furo-Dekold and then the Rosemary Furo and Edwin Witte,
Jr.
generation. Since the
recording is primarily for and about the David A. Witte branch of the family, I
shall go into a slight detail regarding to the occupations and families of the
other branches of the family.
At this time David is trying
to CONTACT as many relatives and Descendants of Mathias Furo and Margarete Heh
to finish this compilation of history, stories, people to unite the Furo and
Dekold family as possible. The strength of a mighty oak is not from the strong
branches and the mighty leaves that everyone sees but rather from the strength
of the root structure and the core of the small sapling inside that has grown
into the mighty oak.