Krautter, Stella Elizabeth Vogt

STELLA ELIZABETH VOGT KRAUTTER

Interviewer: David Neal Interviewed on: February 7, 2003

Interviewer: Your full name and spell it?

Stella Krautter: Stella Elizabeth Krautter…K R A U T T E R

Interviewer: Your maiden name?

Stella Krautter: Vogt…V O G T.

Interviewer: How old are you and what is your birth date?

Stella Krautter: I’ll be 85 in September. I’m 84 now. September 17, 1918 I was born.

Interviewer: Where all have you lived in Franklin Township?

Stella Krautter: Well, I lived at home, that was on Eureka Road, then I lived on Old State for a long time…for forty-nine years and eight more, fifty-seven that would be.

Interviewer: Tell me what your home was like in the early years.

Stella Krautter: It was the same as any other one, I guess. We didn’t have any electric and we had to work.

Interviewer: Did you have a farm?

Stella Krautter: Oh, yeah, my Dad had a farm.

Interviewer: How was your home heated?

Stella Krautter: With coal and wood.

Interviewer: Where were the coal and wood stoves at?

Stella Krautter: We had one in the kitchen and we had a furnace in the cellar, a coal -wood furnace.

Interviewer: Oh, you had a furnace in the cellar? That helped keep your whole house warm then. Do you remember when you had inside water?

Stella Krautter: We had a pump ever since I was born. But not running water.

Interviewer: You had a pump in the house?

Stella Krautter: Oh yeah, in the kitchen sink.

Interviewer: When did you get plumbing?

Stella Krautter: They had it before I was born.

Interviewer: What about hot water?

Stella Krautter: You had that from the kitchen stove. That was the only hot water we had, unless you put a tea kettle on the stove.

Interviewer: When did you get an inside toilet?

Stella Krautter: They didn’t have nothing. They moved away 1936 and I don’t think they had it then. The people that moved in afterwards, got the toilet inside.

Interviewer: Do you remember when you got electricity?

Stella Krautter: They moved away in 1936. I don’t think they had it then yet, there. I don’t believe they did.

Interviewer: When did you get it?

Stella Krautter: We had it when we moved back. See, we lived in town for five years after I got married. We moved back out in 1942 and we had it there where we lived then.

Interviewer: What about telephone?

Stella Krautter: We had telephone since I was this high.

Interviewer: What kind of telephone did you have, do you remember how it worked?

Stella Krautter: Well, you had to run the crank to get a number.

Interviewer: Do you remember who had the first electric telephone?

Stella Krautter: I don’t know.

Interviewer: How about radio?

Stella Krautter: Never had radio. We didn’t have one. We had television in 1957, but we never had a radio.

Interviewer: Anyone else have a radio or TV that you used to go visit?

Stella Krautter: Some had TV before we did, but I don’t know anything about a radio.

Interviewer: What about electric washing machine?

Stella Krautter: We run ours with a gasoline engine. We didn’t have no electric one.

Interviewer: Did you have that when you were a little kid?

Stella Krautter: Yeah.

Interviewer: What about a refrigerator?

Stella Krautter: We never had one. We’d carry stuff down cellar to keep it cold

Interviewer: Do you remember when you finally got one?

Stella Krautter: They got one when they moved to Lake City in 1936. Then they got one down there. I don’t think they had one on the farm. We didn’t have no electric.

Interviewer: Family members-siblings and their names?

Stella Krautter: They’re all older than I am, I was the youngest one. They’re all dead. Iva Mills was the oldest one. Leonard Vogt was the next one, Albert Vogt, Clara Krautter, Bertha Vogt and myself. Six of them we had.

Interviewer: Do you remember their birthdates?

Stella Krautter: I remember them all. Iva was born 7 June 1901, Leonard was born 22 November, he was 91 when he died, he was born 1903, Albert was born 1908, October 12, and Clara was born March 31, 1911, and Bertha was born 1912, on November 20, and I was born September 17, 1918.

Interviewer: You gave me their married names, right?

Stella Krautter: One of them didn’t get married. The others all did. I was still living, too.

Interviewer: Who else were you related to in the Township?

Stella Krautter: Just about everybody. I had an uncle that lived there, my Dad’s brother.

Interviewer: Who was your uncle?

Stella Krautter: Fred Vogt.

Interviewer: Where did he live?

Stella Krautter: He lived down on Stancliff Road and Eureka Road. You have a Lavina Mitchell’s name on there. Well her Dad lived down there and he was my uncle. But they lived almost to McKean Township. They lived almost on the line on Eureka Road.

Interviewer: What was his name?

Stella Krautter: His name was Jim Mitchell. And Iva Mills, she lived on the corner of Eureka Road and Old State and that’s where we lived when we bought a farm right across the road from her. That’s all the relation we had in Franklin Township that I can think of.

Interviewer: Who were your parents?

Stella Krautter: William and Lizzie Vogt.

Interviewer: Do you remember your Mother’s maiden name?

Stella Krautter: Mitchell.

Interviewer: What about your Grandparents?

Stella Krautter: My Grandfather Vogt, he come over here from Germany and my Grandmother did too.

Interviewer: Do you know when they came over?

Stella Krautter: My Grandmother was four years old when she came over. I don’t know how old my Grandfather was. He married her over here, I think. And my Grandfather, my Mother’s Father, he came from England and my Grandmother on my Mother’s side was born in this country.

Interviewer: Do you remember their names?

Stella Krautter: Her name was Minnie Kendik and his name was Dick Mitchell.

Interviewer: Who do you remember in your earliest memories as your friends when you were small?

Stella Krautter: Nettie Behr, she was about the best friend I ever had, the closest one. She lived next door to us. She come out here from Erie when she was about four years old. Her and I were the same age. That’s when life started for us, for me. (smiling)

Interviewer: Do you remember your parents’ friends at all?

Stella Krautter: Well, they had lots of friends and neighbors. They knew everybody in the Township just about then. People visited then, they don’t now.

Interviewer: Do you remember any names in particular?

Stella Krautter: Louie [Lewie, Lewis] Horn was their friend, he lived next door. Albert Huyck was a friend, and August Pieper was a friend, he lived on the other side. We lived close together on that road.

Interviewer: What would you say was your fondest childhood memory of any season?

Stella Krautter: I don’t know. I don’t know much about my Dad when he was little. Well, we had a lot of cattle and I went to school when I was seven and I had the other kids to play with. Nettie, she was right next door and we played together a lot. We went to my Grandmother’s on my Mother’s side quite often. I don’t remember my Grandfather at all on the Vogt side. He died when I was 18 months old. But I knew my Grandmother. She died in 1925 and I was about seven. She lived with us, most of the time.

Interviewer: What is your fondest Christmas memory and Christmas gift?

Stella Krautter: We didn’t have any Christmas much. We had chores to do, on Christmas Day just same as any other day.

Interviewer: Sure you didn’t do anything special?

Stella Krautter: No. We went down to my Grandmother Mitchell’s, when I could remember, when I was little, on Christmas Day. That was my Mother’s Mother. But that’s about all we ever did, was go down there. We never went anywhere to stores or anything.

Interviewer: No kind of Christmas gifts?

Stella Krautter: We never had any.

Interviewer: Who did you marry?

Stella Krautter: Carl Krautter.

Interviewer: How did you meet him?

Stella Krautter: My folks was buddy with his folks. His folks moved over here from Marion, Ohio and he was born here. When he got big enough to remember, we was kids together.

Interviewer: Was he a neighbor?

Stella Krautter: Well, it was about two miles from our place but we was still neighbors. My folks used to go over there and play for couple hours.

Interviewer: Where did you get married at?

Stella Krautter: In Erie.

Interviewer: Did you go on a Honeymoon?

Stella Krautter: No. We couldn’t afford it. He didn’t have a nickel and neither did I. We ate lunch at Kresge’s Dime Store that time, and didn’t have a penny to spare. We had a room rented and that’s all we had.

Interviewer: What year were you married?

Stella Krautter: 1937, when the Depression was on.

Interviewer: Where did you live when you were first married?

Stella Krautter: That one room furnished room on 11^th and Cherry.

Interviewer: Up in Erie?

Stella Krautter: Yeah.

Interviewer: You want to go through the list of your children’s names and when they were born?

Stella Krautter: Yeah. But two of them are dead. Lauren Carl Krautter, he was born November 3, 1939. Charlie, Merlin Charles was his name, he was born November 1941. They’re both dead. June was born in November 10, 1950 and the other one was born September 6, 1957. That’s Sharon Lawrence.

Interviewer: Where did you go to school?

Stella Krautter: Goodban one room school.

Interviewer: Where was that at?

Stella Krautter: On the corner of Eureka and Stancliff Road.

Interviewer: How far away was it from your house?

Stella Krautter: About a mile.

Interviewer: Remember any other schools in the Township?

Stella Krautter: I remember them all, but only went to that one.

Interviewer: Remember their names?

Stella Krautter: Goodban, and Franklin Center, Eureka, Mohawk, Falls, Townline and Foy, Shaffer and Francis. I guess that’s all. There were about 9 or 10.

Interviewer: Do you remember where they were all located?

Stella Krautter: Yeah. Mohawk was on Mohawk Road. Eureka was on Crane Road, about half way between 98 and Eureka Road on Crane Road. Foy was on the corner of Silverthorn and Crane. Townline was on Townline Road it was then. It is Fry Road now, but it was Townline then. Goodban was on the corner of Stancliff and Eureka. And Francis School was over on Gudgeonville Road and Franklin Center was right at Franklin Center.

Interviewer: Do you remember any of your teachers?

Stella Krautter: Oh yeah, I remember them all. Lowe Edwards, Violet Radel, Janette Mathewson, Arlo Ross, Hazel McLallen, Bernece Allen and Delbert Hayes was there up to seventh and eighth grade, I had him.

Interviewer: After eighth grade did you go to Edinboro?

Stella Krautter: No, I never went after eighth grade.

Interviewer: Why didn’t you go past eighth grade?

Stella Krautter: You had to pay for your own way over there and we lived over here. There weren’t any buses or anything then. You had to furnish your own way to go. They couldn’t afford to send the older ones and they wouldn’t afford to send me!

Interviewer: Who were some of your classmates in the Franklin [Twp] schools?

Stella Krautter: Wayne Goodban, Viola Mitchell, Mary Hayduk and that’s about all I remember.

Interviewer: Any of your friends still alive?

Stella Krautter: Mary Hayduk, she’s Mary Vargo now. She’s still living in Girard. But the rest of them are dead but me. I can’t get over how many of my friends have died.

Interviewer: Did you grow up on a farm?

Stella Krautter: Yeah.

Interviewer: What kind of farming did you do?

Stella Krautter: Cattle-Dairy farm. We made butter for a living. Sold pigs.

Interviewer: How many pigs did you have?

Stella Krautter: Oh, we had lots of them, more than I could ever count. See, if the pigs were too big to butcher (unclear), we would sell them, we had some little ones coming along. Because we had all that skim milk coming on, we’d make cream out of it and we’d get pigs to feed it to. My folks raised us on butter. We ate butter all our lives. It was good butter, too, really good.

Interviewer: How many heads of cattle did you have?

Stella Krautter: They must have had about 25-30 all the time.

Interviewer: Did you grow crops also?

Stella Krautter: We had corn, oats and wheat.

Interviewer: What kind of equipment did you have?

Stella Krautter: We had a thrashing machine of our own. We thrashed oats and wheat. They had their own silo filler. We had a silo that we filled with corn. Every fall when we went to school, that thing would come out and it would be grinding away when we come home from school. They cut the corn by hand, you know. The neighbors would come in to help, you know. All the neighbors come together, then.

Interviewer: When did you get the thrasher?

Stella Krautter: My Dad and my uncle had the thrasher before they were ever married. When they were young, they ran around with the thrashing machine. Then when my Dad got married, they had the cattle and my mother had to take care of them and do the housework and everything and she got sick of it. She told him to get rid of that thrasher machine and stay home. And then he started making money! When he had the thrashing machine, he didn’t make a nickel.

Interviewer: Was the farming equipment shared with the neighbors?

Stella Krautter: No. It was all our own. Oh, I think they did, yeah. You see, the neighbors would come to our place and help thrash, and then took our thrasher machine and went to their place and did theirs. That’s what they did years ago. But it was ours. They used it in other places.

Interviewer: What were your chores on the farm?

Stella Krautter: I used to go get the cattle. We had to go back to the woods to pump water for them, because there was no electric. They had to use a hand pump to pump water and I used to pump water a lot. In the afternoon, I’d have to go get them when I got home when I was big enough. I didn’t have to do too much, because all the other kids were bigger than I was and of course, they’d make them do it rather than me.

Interviewer: What did you do?

Stella Krautter: Played!

Interviewer: Did you do your own butchering?

Stella Krautter: Yeah.

Interviewer: How did you preserve the meat?

Stella Krautter: Well, we smoked the hams and the shoulders. The rest of the meat, we’d grind down and my Dad made sausages and boy, it was good. The rest of the stuff, we’d grind down and put in a crock and cover it over with lard and it would stay all summer. We set it upstairs. We could go up there and get meat and warm it up in the summer and eat it all summer. My Dad lived on meat. He never liked vegetables, only I liked vegetables, but he liked meat. Nowadays, they say you have to eat so many vegetables, but he didn’t like vegetables, only onions. But he smoked all his life and lived to be 85 and that was old then, it isn’t now, but it was then. These big shots that tell you what to do today, I don’t know if I believe them or not.

Interviewer: How much canning did you do?

Stella Krautter: Everything we could get. We used to go pick blackberries in the woods and can them. We’d pick wild strawberries and can them and make jelly out of them. Everything we could get we canned.

Interviewer: How much of a garden did you have?

Stella Krautter: Oh, we had a pretty big garden. I don’t know just how big it was. We raised everything. He didn’t want vegetables but the rest of us wanted them. We had to eat them fresh because we didn’t always can vegetables until later.

Interviewer: What vegetables did you have in your garden?

Stella Krautter: We had peas, green beans, sweet corn, rhubarb. We had lots of peas because everybody liked peas.

Interviewer: Let me know if you recognize any of these different businesses in the Township. Any Blacksmiths?

Stella Krautter: I guess I don’t remember him.

Interviewer: Sawmills?

Stella Krautter: My Dad had a sawmill. He used it one time.

Interviewer: He had his own sawmill?

Stella Krautter: A guy come in and either he had a sawmill or my Dad did but he come in our woods. He sawed down wood that he wanted and took it out.

Interviewer: Do you remember who that was?

Stella Krautter: No.

Interviewer: How about Cheese Factories?

Stella Krautter: At one time, but that was a long time ago, before that, there was a Cheese Factory in Franklin Center but that was a long time ago.

Interviewer: Do you know what it was called?

Stella Krautter: No. Just a Cheese Factory. There was a Cheese Factory at Ivoray and that was over on Mohawk Road and everybody went over there and bought cheese if they wanted it. Someone took their milk over there at the Cheese Factory.

Interviewer: Did you sell milk over there?

Stella Krautter: No. We always made butter with ours.

Interviewer: Where did you sell the butter?

Stella Krautter: Lake City. It’s Lake City now, but was North Girard then, at a meat market.

Interviewer: How about mechanics?

Stella Krautter: Oh, we fixed our own stuff.

Interviewer: Any merchants, what stores were around?

Stella Krautter: Franklin Center had a grocery store. Tinley [McKinley (?)] owned it. Ted Roan had a store there. There was one at McLane, that’s not in Franklin Township. Just the two at Franklin Center is all I can remember.

Interviewer: Just two? What were their names?

Stella Krautter: Tinley [McKinley (?)] had a store and sold it to Mike Rodak I don’t know what year they come up here from Pittsburgh. Then Ted Roan had a store there, too.

Interviewer: Do you remember any stone quarries around?

Stella Krautter: Yeah, there’s a stone quarry over there now.

Interviewer: Where at?

Stella Krautter: It’s between 98 and it’s over by Falls Road. I don’t know exactly where it is.

Interviewer: Where did you get oil and gas from?

Stella Krautter: A gas man came there and delivered gas, oil too, I guess.

Interviewer: Do you know where he was from?

Stella Krautter: No. Probably Girard or maybe McKean.

Interviewer: Do you know any wagon makers?

Stella Krautter: No.

Interviewer: Shoemakers?

Stella Krautter: No.

Interviewer: Doctors or Dentists?

Stella Krautter: Not in Franklin Center. We had them in Edinboro.

Interviewer: Who were they in Edinboro?

Stella Krautter: One was Dr. Yuri (?). He was in Edinboro for quite a while. And the Dentist, I can’t think of his name. We had to go to Edinboro or some place like that.

Interviewer: Do you remember any Feed Mills or Grist Mills?

Stella Krautter: Ted Roan had a feed mill in Franklin Center at one time, in his store. One part of it was the store and the other part was the feed mill. I used to work there, maybe in 1935, about that, I don’t know exactly.

Interviewer: Were there any others around?

Stella Krautter: My Dad had his own feed mill. He ground his own feed.

Interviewer: Any leather goods makers?

Stella Krautter: No.

Interviewer: Any Tinkers?

Stella Krautter: No.

Interviewer: Horse or cattle Dealers?

Stella Krautter: Not in the Township. They come in from other places.

Interviewer: Do you remember who any of them were?

Stella Krautter: No. Not that long ago, I don’t.

Interviewer: Where did you do your purchasing or trading? Did you just shop at the two main stores there in town?

Stella Krautter: Yeah.

Interviewer: I have some different items and see if you know the prices of them back then.

Stella Krautter: Bread was ten cents a loaf. Everything was cheap then.

Interviewer: Remember how much cheese was at the Cheese Factory?

Stella Krautter: I don’t know how much it was. But boy, they made good cheese, everybody bought some. They cut off a three-corner piece, not flat like now.

Interviewer: Remember how much flour was?

Stella Krautter: No.

Interviewer: How about clothes?

Stella Krautter: Well, they were a lot cheaper than now. They made their own clothes, lots of people did. My Mother made our clothes, most of them.

Interviewer: Where did she get the fabric from?

Stella Krautter: Pattern.

Interviewer: Do you remember the price of candy and toys?

Stella Krautter: They were cheap, too but we didn’t get much candy or toys.

Interviewer: What were farm or land values?

Stella Krautter: When we bought our farm, we paid only $3500 for 100 acres, and that was in 1942. That was about what they were.

Interviewer: What about furniture and household goods?

Stella Krautter: (Shaking her head no.)

Interviewer: What all jobs did you hold through the years?

Stella Krautter: I worked in Lake City for a family, doing housework. Years ago, they used to figure women and girls shouldn’t work, just in households. Had to do somebody else’s dirty work for nothing, you know? But after the war, they had to put women to work. The men couldn’t do it. There weren’t enough men around. I worked in Lake City or North Girard it was then for a family. We lived down there. My sisters worked too, in households. My one sister kept kids for mothers to go to work.

Interviewer: Do you remember the pay?

Stella Krautter: I got $3.50 a week when I worked there, and I worked six days a week.

Interviewer: What year was that?

Stella Krautter: That was 1937, the year we got married. And then I picked grapes, too that year. We picked grapes for different people, and this guy we knew. I picked grapes for him. We got paid by the box for grapes.

Interviewer: Where was this at?

Stella Krautter: Lake City. Now it’s Lake City. It was North Girard then.

Interviewer: How did you get to work?

Stella Krautter: Walked, it wasn’t that far.

Interviewer: Do you remember any Civil War or WWI veterans still living?

Stella Krautter: My brother-in-law was in WWI and Iva’s husband was in WWI, and he lived out across the road from us when we had our farm.

Interviewer: Who was he?

Stella Krautter: Leon Mills. Then there were other ones that I probably remembered then but I don’t now.

Interviewer: Now did he tell you any about the war or anything?

Stella Krautter: Not very much. He only used to talk a little bit, but not much.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about churches in Franklin Township.

Stella Krautter: Franklin Center had a church always. But they had different denominations. Once they had Lutheran services there. Then after I grew up, we had Methodist there and there was one at Crane Road and Eureka Roads. It was Methodist and we went there.

Interviewer: Do you know when the Center Church changed from Lutheran to Methodist?

Stella Krautter: No. I don’t.

Interviewer: Any other churches in town?

Stella Krautter: Silverthorn School. They used to have Sunday school there all summer. There was a man there and he was real religious. He held Sunday school, not church, no preaching, and boy; he had a lot of them coming around there for that.

Interviewer: Who was he?

Stella Krautter: Elmer Mathewson. And I used to walk there every Sunday as soon as I was big enough to walk.

Interviewer: So, you went to Sunday school there?

Stella Krautter: Yeah.

Interviewer: Do you remember the pastor of the church?

Stella Krautter: We had Wayne Furman. He was real good. He’s the one who married everybody. There was a couple of young ones, one was Kirk, that was his last name. One was named Shirk, that was his last name. They would take Franklin Center and another church like Fairview or McKean because there wasn’t enough people going to make them pay. We had one that went from McKean up to our church and then he went from there back to McKean. He lived in McKean.

Interviewer: What did you do for fun and entertainment and recreation?

Stella Krautter: Dances, square dances.

Interviewer: Where were the dances held?

Stella Krautter: In peoples’ houses. We had it at in house sometimes. In the kitchen we’d dance a square dance. My uncle, that’s my Mother’s brother, that’s Lavina Mitchell’s father, he had dances at his house. He had two big rooms joined together by a big double door. And my other uncle played the violin and called dances. We had dances there every Saturday night. We just went crazy to get to them! That’s all the entertainment we had. Oh, and we had Christmas entertainment at school every year. But that was just your own school.

Interviewer: What kind of School and Church activities did you do?

Stella Krautter: We had a Christmas entertainment. I don’t know much about church. We had some singing at the church at Christmas. I don’t remember much about that.

Interviewer: Do you remember the box lunch dinners?

Stella Krautter: Yeah, we had to carry our lunch. We had a box social in the fall. Filled boxes with stuff in it and that was the only way we made any money.

Interviewer: Did you do that?

Stella Krautter: Yeah.

Interviewer: Do you remember who bought your box?

Stella Krautter: If you had a friend, a boyfriend, that you liked, you’d see that he got it. I did!

Interviewer: Do you remember anything about politics?

Stella Krautter: I know we were Republicans all our lives. But my husband’s side, they were Democrats. And that didn’t go over very good, you know!

Interviewer: Do you remember who any of the Road Supervisors were?

Stella Krautter: No.

Interviewer: What were the roads like?

Stella Krautter: All mud! I drove the bus in my twenties (garbled), and it was all mud. One time I had to go in second gear from the time I left home ‘til I got back there again. They didn’t have gravel roads then or blacktop or anything.

Interviewer: How else did you get around?

Stella Krautter: It was horses in the winter. Everybody had horses. Of course, years ago, they had cars, but they used to put their cars in the garage in the fall and not take them out until the 21^st of March.

Interviewer: Did you have a sleigh?

Stella Krautter: Yeah.

Interviewer: Do you remember any assessors or constables?

Stella Krautter: Albert Huyck was a constable at one time.

Interviewer: Do you remember when that was?

Stella Krautter: No.

Interviewer: What about School Directors?

Stella Krautter: Ernie Wells was a School Director when I was young. And I don’t know of any more School Directors, either.

Interviewer: Any Justices?

Stella Krautter: No. There might have been. I wasn’t interested then.

Interviewer: Do you know of anyone who went on to higher political office?

Stella Krautter: I don’t think so. I don’t remember any.

Interviewer: Do you remember any roads in the Township that the names changed?

Stella Krautter: Yeah. They changed Townline Road to Fry.

Interviewer: Do you know why?

Stella Krautter: There was an old woman who lived on there. She was pretty popular and her name was Fry. I don’t know why they changed it from Townline to Fry.

Interviewer: Remember any other roads?

Stella Krautter: I can’t think of any.

Interviewer: Do you remember any major natural disasters?

Stella Krautter: They had a hurricane one time but that was when I was a baby, I was little. It tore a barn all to pieces on Old State. It wasn’t Old State then, it was just a road. And the next place after that, it never took your hat off. That’s what they said it did.

Interviewer: How did you guys go around in the winter with snowplowing?

Stella Krautter: Heavens no. We had to go with horses.

Interviewer: Do you remember people from different ethnic backgrounds, immigrants and where they come from?

Stella Krautter: Polish and Slovak.

Interviewer: Any particular families you remember?

Stella Krautter: We had families like that in our school, a lot of them. They didn’t exactly come over from the Old Country; a lot came from southern Pennsylvania. Then they came up to our area to work and bought farms up there.

Interviewer: Why did they come to Franklin Township?

Stella Krautter: Some of them had relations there, I don’t know. I know the first one did.

Interviewer: Do you remember any prevalent diseases during your childhood?

Stella Krautter: Oh yeah, we had a whole lot. The kids got the Mumps when I was in first grade and they didn’t want me to walk to school alone. I wasn’t sick, I could have went to school, but the rest of them were sick, so I couldn’t go. I guess I went once or twice myself. I never had it very hard. We had chicken pox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, everything we had at school.

Interviewer: Do you remember a flu epidemic?

Stella Krautter: No, I wasn’t born then. I don’t remember that. But we had it at our house.

Interviewer: Do you remember when that was?

Stella Krautter: 1919.

Interviewer: Where were the cemeteries in the Township?

Stella Krautter: One in Francis, that’s over by Gudgeonville, and that’s the only one in Franklin Township. People had to go to McLane or Sterrettania if they want to get buried.

Interviewer: Anything else that we might have missed that you want to bring out?

Stella Krautter: I guess not, not that I can think of.

Interviewer: (Daughter speaking) Mom, tell him your parents sold butter down in McKean.

Stella Krautter: Yeah, they peddled some butter in McKean house to house but they sold most of it in Lake City to the store.

Interviewer: Well, I interviewed Ken Foy and he said to ask you about when you left the tractor running all night?

Stella Krautter: Oh, he was working for us that time and we were making hay back in the field. The field was quite a little ways. There come up a storm. We had two tractors there, and the horses. We went to that barn quick, with whatever we had on the wagon, the hay and whatever. I got the horses and left the tractor sit there running. And when we went back next morning, the tractor was still running! And he was getting a kick about that! (Ken Foy)

Interviewer: Well, we’re all done.

Interviewer: (Daughter speaking) Do you want to know anything about the Krautter side of the, that would be her husband’s family side? They were all from Franklin Township, too.

Interviewer: Yeah, any information you can give me. I don’t think we have any of those people written down.

Interviewer: (Daughter speaking) There isn’t because they’re all gone. So, there isn’t any.

Interviewer: You want to tell me about the Krautter side?

Stella Krautter: Whatever you want to know. They moved here from Marion, Ohio in 1912 and they had four kids then, and they had four more after they moved here.

Interviewer: What were their parents’ names?

Stella Krautter: Charlie and Ottilla, Carl and Ottilla. I don’t know where they got the “Charlie” from when his name was Carl.

Interviewer: And they had eight kids at home?

Stella Krautter: They lost two before they ever come out here.

Interviewer: What were the kids’ names?

Stella Krautter: Ernestine, Marian, Pauline, Minnie, Carl, Robert, and Ruth and Ruby that moved out here.

Interviewer: Do you remember the women, who they married?

Stella Krautter: Pauline went to Ohio and lived all her life. Bob, he went to California, eventually. He didn’t right away, at first. He lived in Erie for awhile. We went to Erie five years and lived and once we lived in Union City then went to Erie. After five years, we moved out here on the farm. Minnie, she married a farmer. Ernestine, she did everything.

Interviewer: (Daughter speaking) Mom, tell him about who Minnie married.

Stella Krautter: Minnie, she married my brother. Three of us married into the same family. People said, “What did you do that for?” But I couldn’t see as it hurt anything. We were the last ones to get married and we lived together 52 years. I think Albert and Minnie must lived together that long, so did Clara and Marion.

Interviewer: Were you guys neighbors?

Stella Krautter: Yeah, we lived about two miles from each other. They had a car. But he could walk down to see me in the winter if there was not a lot of snow. He had a car and if there was not much snow, he could drive. But they didn’t have much open roads then. The winter of ’44-45 we really had snow. Everybody had to stay home. All we had was horses that was all we had to get through. We couldn’t get through with anything. If somebody died, they had to keep him until spring.

Interviewer: Know any place where that happened?

Stella Krautter: Yes, it happened at Edinboro. Most of Franklin Center comes over here for their funeral home. I don’t know who they had to keep, but I know if anybody died, they had to wait 'til spring to bury him. It was rough that winter. Oh, man, it was rough! It was ’44 and ‘45 year. Of course, you only go to ’40.

Interviewer: I’ve heard a lot of people talk about that winter, that it was rough.

Interviewer: (Daughter speaking) Can you tell who the Krautter’s all married? Say who they are.

Stella Krautter: Ernestine married Chet English, but she was getting pretty old when she married him. Pauline married a third cousin of hers, Earl Thayer. Three married into the Vogt family. Ruth married into the Goodban’s and Bob married into the Goodban family. Two of them married into the Goodban family. Three married into our family. A double relation!

All the Krautter’s are dead by the way. Every one of them are dead. None of them are long livers like we are. Our family was all long livers and they [Krautter’s] all died young. My husband was 76. Another one was 71. Bob was only 68. That’s young for now. Everyone in our family lived ‘til their 80s and 90s. My oldest sister, she worked just like a horse, and she lived to be 95. She died in this place here. She had 7 kids and she worked all the time.

Interviewer: Which sister was this?

Stella Krautter: Iva Mills married to William [Leon] Mills and she lived to be 95. And one brother, he lived to be 91 and the other one lived to be 85. That’s young now, but wasn’t then.

Interviewer: Well, I guess we’ll wrap it up. Thanks for your time.