Anna and Emily are waiting to hear the story of Philomena, my Grandma Effting, who is your Grandma Bracewell's mother. She was a very young child when the civil war started. Her father, my Great Grandfather Sattler, entered the union army and fought under General Grant. There were not the financial arrangements in those days that there are now. When he was gone their house supplies got down to where they had nothing in their house but flour. They took my Grandma as a very small child to a Catholic orphanage with the understanding that they would come and get her when the war was over. Years later when they went to the orphanage to get her they found out that the Sisters of Mercy had placed her for adoption. The Sisters did not know who the people were and they did not have their namesbut they thought they lived in Cincinnati, Ohio which must have been near where the Sattlers were living at the time.

My Grandmother was very upset with this and wanted to go to Cincinnati and find her. The only clue they had of where she might be was that her name was Philomena. They assumed that since she was adopted from a Catholic orphanage that the people would have placed her in a Catholic parochial school. My Grandmother had to persuade her brother Ed, my great uncle Ed Haines, to drive her to Cincinnati in the wagon. Things were very different in those days. Everyone went everywhere in a little wagon and the roads were dirt roads but Cincinnati was a comparatively big town or city. They went to one Catholic elementary school after another over rickety roads in this little old wagon drawn by a horse and asked the Sister Superior, the principal of each school, if they had a student named Philomena. There were always told no. Uncle Ed kept saying "This isn't going to work; you'll never find her this way. Let's go home." Grandma Sattler would say just one more school.

After a while she became discouraged and in her own mind said to herself this is the last school if this doesn't work. But they asked the principal if she had a student named Philomena and she said yes she did. So my Grandma said "Would you tell her that her mother is here?" The Sister Superior thought this was strange because she knew that this was not the mother she knew. But she did call Philomena to the office. When Philomena came into the room there was no doubt that this was her mother because she ran to her and was so excited to see her. So the principal did send for the lady who had adopted Philomena to come and she did not want to give her up. After persuasion, however, she agreed to let her go.

It must have been a cold day because when they put Philomena's coat on and they had mittens that were pinned to the sleeves they pinned through the skin on her wrist and she was so happy she never said anything about it. When they were riding home in the wagon, as they approached their home, when she saw her brother, Ed Sattler, running toward her she saw his ripped pants flapping in the wind as he came running to greet them.

In those days it was customary for girls to work for their neighbors as household maids. So when Philomena was older she was sent to live with a lady to be a help to her. She slept in a trundle bed at the foot of the lady's bed. During the night the lady would wake up and she would call out "Philomeaner, chivver me feet" and this has remained to this day as a saying in our family like "Who's John Stover?"

Philomena married Frank Effting. They had 5 little girls, a baby that died and then another baby that died in infancy named Helena. Then Marie, and then Hildegarde and Gertrude, twins. Frank worked as a tanner in a tanning factory as did most of the men in town, Morris, IL, sixty miles from Chicago. He liked to go duck hunting and we have two pillows in our living room which are filled with down feathers with ducks that he shot around 1890.

The family decided to move to a farm in Kansas; he was riding, all the roads were dirt roads so it was a long trip. He was riding on top of a wagon load of furniture. He fell off and broke his leg with a compound fracture which became infected. Communication was poor in those days so that by the time Grandma heard about it by telegram or telephone or what, and by the time she got the twins Hildegarde and Gertrude, my mother, your grandmother, and Marie dressed to come with her out to Kansas, the infection had gotten much worse. They amputated his leg but it was too late. The infection reached his heart and he died in Kansas. I don't know if I have the story right. Maybe the children weren't with her; maybe she left them with Grandma and Grandpa Sattler because when they greeted her as she got off the train she said "I am going to run a little store."

They lived next door to the church. I don't remember whether it was called St. Joseph's or the Immaculate Conception. The little house was so short; we saw it years later, that it didn't look taller than a person standing. I understand there was a well underneath the kitchen which she kept covered and only got water at nighttime so the children wouldn't know it was there and wouldn't fall in the well. She took the insurance money, $1000, and built a house on the lot on the side near the church and it was a convenience store. She sold school supplies, penny candy, canned vegetables, baked goods, and fruit. She said Sunday was her best day. She didn't want to sell on Sunday but it was her best day.She made a point of trying to give each of her children special attention all by themselves and would take them with her shopping and buy them a treat like an ice cream cone.

I remember going shopping with her in Chicago, up and down the street where she lived. In those days the groceries were all in different stores. There was a bakery with all its good smells, one for produce, and the meat market with sawdust on the floor. When we went to Chicago recently for Doug's graduation these stores were either empty or missing.

It was important to wait on the customers in the little store. They had fried potatoes everyday for lunch and if there was a customer you had to wait on the customer and forget what was burning on the stove. Aunt Louise would go into the front store and buy a can of Queen Anne cheeries for dessert. Something "etwas besonder" or "Something a little special for dessert".

The girls graduated from high school in Morris and went to the prom with their cousins Jake and Bob Dubelbis. They started teaching in country schools nearby and came home on the weekend to be with their mother. Gertrude and Hildegarde grew up in a back room of the store for 17 years and their Grandparents Sattler lived upstairs for a time and they took in roomers. Aunt Louise and Aunt Elizabeth who were sharp ladies working in Chicago with excellent jobs would come to visit and bought them clothes and accessories as special presents.

Hildegarde passed the city of Chicago teacher's exam. Mother went to the University of Illinois for summer school. While there she and Ray Bracewell met and later married. Mother passed the Cook County teacher's exam so then Grandma sold the store and they all moved to an apartment in Chicago. And, that has been home grounds for us ever since.