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To: Jim Noble
As I now know, HER grandparents spoke German at home and used a German Bible right up to 1948, when her grandfather died.

My paternal grandmother was born in the 1890's to parents who had emigrated to America around the time of the Civil War, and as a child she (and her siblings as well) spoke more German than English. She had something of an accent until she passed away in her nineties. The general sentiment in the area during WWI did pretty much drive the overt "German-ness" out of public sight, but into the 1940's, she and her sisters were still conversing in German if there was a subject that they didn't want my dad and his younger brother listening to. This led to the boys debating about turning "mom" and her sisters in to the cops as German spies.

(Dad had a brother and three brothers-in-law in uniform at the time, so he might have given "mom" more credit. Dad's older brother was second scout in a rifle platoon of 2/47, and as such he visited the "old country" with a vengeance from September of 1944, getting some use out of the German that grandma had taught the older children.)

Mr. niteowl77

51 posted on 11/18/2017 10:12:09 AM PST by niteowl77
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To: niteowl77

My Grandpa was 8 in 1918.

He remembered people breaking into the church where his father was buried and burning the Bibles, hymnals, and everything because it was in German. He remembered the threats of people to force them off the land.

He had no love for the Kaiser, but hated Democrats like Wilson till the day he died.


55 posted on 11/18/2017 11:08:45 AM PST by redgolum
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