My choices are Georg Dasing and Josef Lukas, both immigrants, and both my mother’s grandfathers. I would like to hang around them for weeks or months, best would be invisibly ala Scrooge in Christmas Carol, so their actions and comments were not influenced by my notice.
George Dasing - Georg Dasing,
George Dasing in the USA, was born in 1864 and came from Brunnholzheim, a wide
place in the road northwest of Munich. His father was a farmer, and he probably
would have been a farmer had he not immigrated. It appears that he came to America
by himself, though several of his sibs also immigrated. He settled in Chicago,
and married Margaritte (Margaret) Graeber, another immigrant. Margaritte came
from Herbertshausen, another wide place in the road northwest of Munich.
George came directly to Chicago, and
made his living selling butter and eggs from a horse drawn cart. As he
prospered, Dasings moved to a storefront on Irving Park, and added coffee and
tea to the merchandise. After a few years, George moved the business and family
to the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago, a solidly German area of the
city at that time (and as of this writing is returning to those roots after
cycling through Greek and Hispanic). This shop was on the ground floor of a two-story
building on the east side of Lincoln Avenue in the block below Lawrence, and
their apartment was on the second. My grandmother told me she often sat halfway
up the inside stairs to their apartment and watched the customers. Around 1905 the
store moved across Lincoln Avenue to a one-story building, and the family moved
to a single family house on Arthur Avenue. At some point George bought the land
under the store. This store was well known by my mother, and the family has her
stories about the store and some of the notable customers. One continuing tenet
of Dasings was hiring only fluently bilingual German/English clerks. Dasings was
in business at this location until 1952 or 1953. The business, but not the
name, was sold. Dasings became Meyers Delicatessen, adding cold cuts, wine, and
chocolate to their stock. This business existed through the 1980’s. Since then
it has changed hands several times.
Dasings was known
for its butter. Made in a buttery in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, oral tradition
says that the recipe included sour cream as well as sweet cream. Unfortunately,
that recipe was not recorded by the family, and creamery records of that era
have not survived. For most of Dasings’ lifetime, butter was bought by weight,
and taken home in the customers’ butter crock. Households living on the ‘Gold
Coast’ sent their chauffer with a kitchen maid to fetch the butter. Clerks cut
the requested weight from a large wheel of butter. When new clerks
overestimated the size for the weight requested slivers were taken from the block
of butter on the scale until it matched the order. The family knew when a new
hire had joined the staff. Their table used the trimmings. The store added cheese
and canned goods after WW2 to compete with “supermarkets.” Dasings was also
known for its coffee. They roasted their own house blend every day in the store,
and again, no recipe survived. They gave away in-house Green Stamps with every
pound of coffee purchased. My grandmother was fond of nicknames; her children
were Junior, Brother and Sis. Two customers got nicknames: “a pound of coffee
with the ticket ground,” and “junkie” because of her antiquing. My grandmother,
George’s only daughter, helped out in the store on Saturday during high school,
and then worked there full time when not allowed to go to teacher’s college by
her very traditional German-born father. (Her three brothers did go to college
and earned engineering degrees.) My grandmother lived into her 90’s and I knew
her as an adult. Margaret, my great-grandmother, also lived into her 90’s, but during
visits she was much more interested in talking with her daughter than with me.
Joseph Lucas -- The other
grandfather was Josef Lukas, Joseph Lucas in the USA, who has received much
less research time, and who seems much more difficult to research. He was born
in 1869 in Gratz, Austria, though he said Prussia on the US census. He seems to
have traveled by himself and settled in Chicago. He married Maria/Mary Mahnke, the Chicago-born
youngest daughter of a German immigrant. He came to America with mechanical
skills and opened garages. Family pictures document his son in front of one
garage. His grandson knew that Joseph owned three garages before the
Depression. I visited Maria when I was very young. She lived with her daughter
in a one bedroom apartment in a near-north apartment several blocks west of
Michigan Avenue with sight lines to Lake Michigan. During the 1970’s the one
and two story buildings between her low-rise and the lake were redeveloped as
high rises. Her building lost the lake views.
Why these gents? -- What I
find fascinating (and would love to see if I could catch from their orientation
to daily decisions) is that while both grandfathers were born 1800’s
mid-century, (and when their children, my grandparents, were introduced,
courted and married), both were prospering owners of small businesses, but with
one significant difference.
Their occupations were based in
different centuries. George’s occupation, retail sales, first as peddler
and then store owner/merchant was a solidly 19th century occupation.
He sold semi-perishable groceries to his neighborhood. Joseph opened garages, a
service business based on 20th century technology. Unfortunately,
his businesses folded during the Depression, but before this calamity he had
three garages. Notable is that garages had a different function when they first
appeared. The first autos were expensive and somewhat delicate machines.
Garages protected the paint and fabric overnight; hence one “garaged” the auto.
Autos were increasingly owned by the prosperous and not only the wealthy with
enough land for private garages. Joseph’s garages did not dispense gas. Owners
walked to the garage to get their car or called and requested that the car be delivered.
Since the business was basically 24/7 there was one man on the overnight shift who
washed and cleaned any car taken out.
Feet on the Ground -- In
2005 I toured Germany with my mother and cousin. While we did get to the
general area of Bronnholzheim, my virtually absent German, and the incredible
difference in what depth one could research from the US before that time,
resulted in a few pictures and the info that “this area of Germany was totally
flattened during WW2”. Hence the traditional farmhouse photographed with all
possible family (and neighbors?) during Margaret’s 1905 trip with her 2 oldest
children was very unlikely to have
survived. I’m not closing the book on this question, but as I hope everything
above indicates, I know that there is much more research to be done in the US
before scheduling a research trip.
see you next week... Liz Ross