ANNA KERSTAN MANK'S STORY

I was born in East Prussia on April 7, 1902. My parents had eleven children, but three of the boys died when they were young. My oldest brother, Gustav, was born in 1891. My youngest sister, Ida, was born in 1912. All were born on the same farm, which was about a half mile down a dirt road from a small town named Lucka. The Kerstans had a good-sized farm, consisting of 50 to 60 "morgen", which is more than 100 acres.

The farmhouse had four rooms on the ground floor - living room, kitchen, bedroom and a storeroom. To accommodate the whole family, there were beds in all the rooms, not just the bedroom. Of course, with eight children, we had to share beds. The walls were plastered and wallpapered, except for the storeroom. The windows had curtains. Upstairs was a storage room for grain, usually rye, and a small grinder. In the basement was storage space for potatoes. Access to the basement was through a trap door in the wood plank floor. The exterior of the house was wood. None of the buildings on the farm were ever painted. There were cement steps leading to the front porch, which was not enclosed.

We had three main barns, and several smaller barns. On both sides of the farmhouse were cow barns. The barn to the right of the farmhouse also held the two horses. Behind the cow barn on the left was the grain barn used to store straw, rye, oats and buckwheat (and sometimes wheat and barley). Vegetables needed to feed the family, such as peas, carrots, beans and onions, were also grown on the farm. Of course, corn and tomatoes were not grown on the farm; they were "American" vegetables, not known in Europe at that time. In addition to cows and horses, we kept pigs, chickens, ducks, geese and a few sheep (and, of course, dogs and cats). The pasture was fenced in with barbed wire. We also had a smoke house to cure hams. The milk was taken every day to a dairy (Mölkerei) in Lucka, where we sold the cream. Skim milk was returned to the farm to feed our pigs.

There was no running water or electricity on the farm. The privy was behind the house. The well had no pump, so you had to drop a bucket down the well and haul the bucket of water to the house or barn. The only light in the house was from a kerosene lantern. We bought kerosene by the liter at the store in Lucka.

None of the farm buildings had shingles; each had a straw roof. A pair of storks once built a nest on the grain barn. In Europe this is considered a sign of good luck. Unfortunately, the storks damaged the roof and let the rain get in, so my father had to move the nest. The storks arrived every spring, and flew south every fall.

The climate is too cold in East Prussia to raise cotton, so we grew flax. After soaking, I used a spinning wheel to make linen thread from the flax. We also had a loom for making cloth and carpeting. The linen cloth was used to make shirts and bags to hold the grain.

In the kitchen, an oven had been built of bricks with an iron door. A wood fire heated the oven. When the oven was hot enough, the fire was raked out, and 5 or 6 long loaves of bread were placed in there for baking. The bricks held the heat for a long time. The back wall of the oven was in the living room. There was also a porcelain stove built in the wall between the living room and the bedroom. During cold winters, I knew that the best place in the house to get warm was to lean against one of the heated walls. The iron range on top of the oven had iron rings on top, similar to the wood stove now in my kitchen. The farm did not have a large wood lot, so we had to buy wood, usually birch.

My father had a sideline in the winter. He hitched two horses to logging sleds and headed south across the Polish border. He bought logs in Poland, hauled them back to East Prussia, and sold them to a sawmill for a profit. My father was a quiet man (a man of not many words). For that era and that region, he was well educated, and could read and write both German and Polish. My mother, on the other hand, was illiterate. I can speak English, German and Polish. (I learned English from the first-grade reading books that my son, Erich, brought home.)

My father could fix anything, including mending shoes. He set up a thresher inside one of the barns. We children were assigned to guide the two horses outside the barn so as to operate the thresher.

In addition to the sleds, the horses pulled a manure spreader, a wagon, or a "fancy" wagon that was used only to go to church, weddings and christenings. We had no car or truck, but there were two bicycles.

The local area is flat farm country, although a forest was within walking distance. A professional forester (Jäger) tended the forest. This practice is still the custom in Germany. When we got a permit, we were allowed to pick mushrooms and blueberries in the forest. My father sometimes hung mushrooms down the chimney to dry them out.

We would eat our meals in the kitchen. The children sat on benches around the table. Father had his own table, and ate by himself. A typical breakfast consisted of coffee, hot cereal made from barley, and fried or boiled potatoes. A typical dinner included chicken, potatoes, sauerkraut and dumplings (Klöse). Meat was reserved for special occasions.

The winter weather in Lucka was similar to that in Brockport. We normally walked to school, but in winter, my father hitched the two horses to the logging sleds and gave us a ride. Children attended school until they were 14. Indeed, their fourteenth birthday was their last day of school. When the Russians invaded Lucka during World War I, the first thing they did was to burn down the school.

Lucka had one cobblestone street, which had no sidewalk. In addition to the school and country store, there was a church, a dairy and a post office, which was in someone's house. The postman delivered mail to our house. There were no telephones in the area; to send a telegram, you had to go to the next town, Fürstenwalde.

My nearest neighbor in Lucka was my mother's brother, Gottlieb Rosowski, who had 10 or 11 children. My sister Emma married one of his sons, named Emil (her first cousin). Emil was killed in World War II. My sisters Ida and Emma (and her two sons) emigrated to the vicinity of Essen in West Germany.

In 1923, I married Frederich Mank, whose home was in nearby Lindenort (now Lipowiec). He had been a postman, but we met when came home from mining coal in Westphalen. We were married in the Evangelische (Lutheran) church in Fürstenwalde. Our first son, Erich Wilhelm, was born at home on October 17, 1924 in Lindenort, where we shared the home of my mother- and father-in-law.

Inflation was rampant in Germany in the 1920s, and it appeared that there would be no end to the country’s economic problems. Many Germans had emigrated to the United States to escape these problems. Fritz Makofka, who was married to cousin Emma Mank, had become a coal miner in Belle, Pennsylvania. He had sent for his wife as soon as it was possible. In turn, she arranged papers for my husband to emigrate to the U.S. to work in the mine with her husband, Fritz.

My husband arrived in America in January 1926, and settled in miners’ housing in Belle. By June 1926, he had saved enough to pay for the fare for me and our 18-month-old son. I arranged for my visa in Königsberg. My mother, Marie Rosowski Kerstan, died in April 1926 of stomach cancer. When my uncle, Wilhelm Kerstan, came from West Germany for the funeral, he accompanied me and Erich by train from Lindenort to Berlin. We continued by train to Bremerhaven, a North Sea port, where we boarded a passenger ship. We were assigned a small private second-class cabin on deck level, which contained an upper and lower bunk for sleeping, and a private bathroom. The voyage took 10 days, and it was a terrible ordeal for me. Since the ship had no stabilizers, it rolled with the waves, and I was seasick from about day 4 through day 7, along with most of the other passengers.

Eventually, we arrived at Ellis Island in New York harbor. Ellis Island was closed to immigrants by 1926, except for unaccompanied women with children. At the time, I knew not a word of English, but the staff at Ellis Island were wonderfully kind, and arranged for our trip to Somerset, Pennsylvania, which, except for a long wait in Philadelphia, took place without incident. My husband shortly left his job in Belle to take another mining job in Jenners, Pennsylvania – not far from Belle. Our daughter, Hertha, was born in Belle, and Evelyn was born in Jenners. Fritz and Emma Makofka returned to Ortelsburg, Germany in 1932 or 1933, so we no longer had any family in the U.S.

I had trouble adjusting to life in America, and was very homesick. Every day, I said to myself – “Maybe tomorrow, I’ll go home." It wasn’t until 1964, when Evelyn and Dick took me back to Germany that I realized that my home was on the farm in America.