Person:Louis Pfeiff (1)

Name	Louis Pfeiff
Gender	Male
Birth`^?`	15 Aug 1861	Daumstadt, Germany
Marriage	28 Sep 1893	Union Township, Des Moines County, Iowato Emma Miller
Death`^?`	10 Jul 1952	Burlington, Iowa, USA
Other^[1]		Reference Number - wikitree.page_id
Other^[2]		Reference Number - wikitree.privacy
Other^[3]		Reference Number - wikitree.user_id

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Biography

Template:Migrating Ancestor

Louis Pfeiff was the second child born to Peter and Maria, born in 1861 in Daumstadt, Germany. He was 4 years old when his father Peter brought him to the U.S. Louis as a young man, along with some friends, homesteaded land in Kansas, staying only 5 months. Returning to West Burlington, Iowa, he obtained work in the West Burlington C. B. & Q. Shops, where he was employed about 2½ years. Then he and his sister Elizabeth, moved to the Kassel farm south of Burlington and he farmed for 4 years there before marrying Emma Katherine Miller. Louis and his bride bought the Gieselman farm south of Burlington and stayed there 7 years, moving to Mediapolis (16.2 miles north of Burlington) in 1902, but were not happy because of the distance from their families. They purchased the Schooley farm near West Burlington and moved there in 1903 and the remainder of their married lives on that was on that farm, buried near by in Greenwood Cemetery.

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Stories

There was never a dull moment with the Pfeiff family on the farm. Both Louis and Emma were very ambitious people and each member of their family worked at whatever had to be done. Besides keeping the house in order, Emma knit all of the stockings and mittens sewing her own and her girls dresses and underskirts, and some of the boys clothes too until daughter Alvine was old enough to start sewing. Emma pieced quilts and quilted them, worked in the garden and raised the chickens. The family did lots of canning, cooking it all on the wood range. If it was housework, hoeing and weeding the garden and sometimes pulling weeks in the corn fields or taking care of chickens, the older children helped. Wash days were big days. The wash boiler was filled with water and put on the stove to heat. When it was hot, it was poured into the wash tub. More water was put into the boiler and homemade lye soap was cut into it. The washing was done on the washboard with lye soap rubbed in the dirty clothes and some hard scrubbing was done. Then the white clothes would be boiled. After the boiling and the rinsing, and most of the cotton things were starched, especially the dresses, underskirts (They always wore more than one!) and the boy's and Louis' shirts. Then there was always all the ironing with flat irons heated on the cook stove. Later on they had a washing machine with a gasoline motor. Before they had electricity in southeast Iowa on the farms, which was the late 1930s, they were the kerosene lamps (and lanterns in the barns). It was nearly an everyday chore to clean the lamps and lantern flues and occasionally trimming and cleaning the wicks and keeping the bowls filled with oil. Later Louis had a carbide plant put in, so they had gas lights in the house which eliminated a few chores, and later purchased a Delco plant so they had electricity to light the home. And - what a joy when ironing could be done with an electric iron instead of the "flat" or "sad" irons. The yearly threshing was a big job. For a number of years they would have to wait for the threshing machine to come to their neighborhood. Later on the neighbors, including Louis, formed a company and had their own machine. Everyone took turns , so you would not always be first or last to get your crops done. It also meant more work for the women to cook the dinner for the threshing crew of about 14 or more men, which were the engineer, separator man, water man, 2 bar cutters , 4 or more on the hay racks bringing in the bundles of grain to the separator. There were 2 or more in the field to pitch the bundles onto the hay racks, and a couple of men with wagons to take care of the grain when it was threshed. Also sometimes there would be one more more working on the straw stack. Some of the neighbor ladies would nearly always help with cooking . If they had children, they would come too. After the men were finished eating, there would sometimes be nearly a table full of ladies and children waiting to eat. Butchering was truly a big affair, killing at least 3 hogs, sometimes 4. Again neighbors come to help the men killing, scalding, scraping and cutting up the hogs. The women cut up the fat to be rendered into lard and cut up the meat to be stuffed into casings and some made into patties. The hams, shoulders, bacon and jowl would be salt cured, then some of it with sausage in casings would be taken to the smoke house and smoked. The rest would be fried down, put into large earthen jars and covered with lard until ready for use. They also made head cheese and liver sausage. The cracklings after the lard was rendered was made into soap and cooked in a large iron kettle outdoors. Louis raised hogs, milk cows and horses. The cows were milked by hand - sometimes they sold milk, sometimes cream and butter. When churning butter, they made about 30 lbs every other day with the hand powered churn. The youngsters would do the churning, then Emma worked it to get out all the buttermilk wash it with fresh water, worked it some more yet, then salt it and weigh into pounds she had orders for. When the kids had nothing else to do, Emma would put them busy cutting and sewing carpet rags for rag rugs. During the 9 months of school, they were going everyday, 5 days to public school, Saturday morning to to German school and/or Sunday to Sunday school and church services and again to church that evening. They had their fun times too, playing baseball with neighboring children. Among other games were the rook parties and Sunday school class parties. Those were the "good old days" then..... but who wants go back then?

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