Water Resources People and Issues
But he was drafted into the Union Army, and he served with great pride and
has been quoted as saying he thought that to serve one's country in time of war
was one of the finest things a person could do. He ended up as a master
sergeant after the second re-enlistment. I've never had the time to check up and
find out what battles he was in, but I have seen a little write-up about him in
which he expressed his pride in his military service. Of course, a lot of what
I know about him is what my father told me.
My grandfather was very proud of being an American. He married a German
girl, a German woman, whose name was Emma Augusta Yeager, and she also
had been born in Germany. I don't know much about her. They had a large
family. They lived on Fremont Avenue in west Baltimore after the war, where
he set up shop as a shoemaker.
My father was one of the latest of the family. There were seven children, two
girls and five boys, and my father was number six of this lineup, born in 1876,
and his name was William Henry. Interestingly enough, they didn't speak
German at all. When my sister and I studied German in college, my father
could not help a bit. He told us how his mother and father spoke German-that
was their native tongue-but when the children would speak German his father,
my grandfather, would say, "This is an American household. We speak
English in this household. My grandfather was very, very patriotic-having
been in the service in the war. Anyway, that was the beginning of my branch
of the Schad family in America.
Some of the Schad children went to college, but my father wanted to get out
on his own, and he did, at a very early age-his first job, he told me, was
making wheels for wagons. I still have the spoke-shave that he used. He used
to tell about how difficult it was to make these wooden wheels and then to heat
up the steel rims and get them on it so they would fit tightly after they cooled
without burning the wood.
And he was able to do everything with his hands. He did enlist-he was very
proud of enlisting-in the Spanish-American War, and he used to tell me many
times that it was the only war in which all the American troops were
volunteers. No drafting. Because this was many years after the Civil War, Civil
War history seemed very romantic-people talked about it, and particularly his
father who was still living and thought that it was a great patriotic duty to serve
one's country as a soldier. My father never got to Cuba. He got as far as
4
Previous Page
