_____________________
|
_Anthony BONNER _____|
| (1543 - 1579) |
| |_____________________
|
|
|--Mary BONNER
| (1560 - ....)
| _Christopher SAVAGE _+
| | (1508 - 1546)
|_Bridget SAVAGE _____|
(1543 - 1611) |
|_Susanne LYGON ______
(1511 - ....)
[8452] From Bill Moyer, 6 Mar 2005 - In the magazine of the Pfaelzish-Rheinische Familienkunde society in Kaiserslautern, dated April 1990, I found a note that in 1310 to 1312, "Wirich, Lord of Sponheim, was a close associate of Kaiser Henry VII and Henry's brother, Archbishop Baldwin of Trier, in the Italian Campaign. In the fighting in Brescia, he took prisoner the leader of the opposition, Theobald of the Brusciati...For his valor he was given the new title, 'King of the Hill', by the Kaiser." (You may know that "Kaiser" is the same as the Roman title "Caesar"--the only difference is how you pronounce the "c"! ) The leader he captured was Theobaldo de Brusciati", which is pretty darn close to "Theobald Britzius." There may or may not be any significance in this, but if the guy from Sponheim took the guy from Italy back home with him for ransome, etc., and kept him in Germany, that could have been the source of the name Britzius in Germany. Just a wild, wild guess. I th! ink Wirich was a Knight from the Bernkastel area, on the Moselle or Mosel River which is the river flowing through Trier and further upstream, connecting with the Saar. Best regards, Bill
[7512]
This person is dead.
Per obit of daughter Gladys, this person's name is James Callaway.
Son of Joseph Franklin Callaway and Eleanora Cook
Line 8 Dwelling # 72 Household # 78
Callaway, James Head Owns/Mortgage age 38 WI WI WI occ? wage
Lillian wife 34 MN Ger WI
Gladys dau 13 WI WI MN
Bernice dau 12 WI WI MN
Willard son 10 WI WI MN
Hellan dau 8 Canada WI MN
Harold son 5 Canada WI MN
Mabel dau 1 11/12 WI WI MN
_Jacob DEMOUTH _____________+
| (1834 - 1905) m 1861
_Samuel L. DEMOUTH ___|
| (1874 - 1939) m 1902 |
| |_Cordelia Elirt MARTINDALE _+
| (1843 - 1923) m 1861
|
|--Lester Jacob DEMOUTH
| (1913 - 1944)
| _Frank Orlando PIERCE ______+
| | (1854 - 1936) m 1877
|_Elzora Maude PIERCE _|
(1880 - 1934) m 1902 |
|_Sarah Jane TODHUNTER ______+
(1855 - 1884) m 1877
[154]
15 March 2004
Dear Sarah, Hannah, Timmy, and Becky
Today I am writing to you about my only uncle and I never even met him.
Lester Jacob DeMouth
18 December 1913 - 24 October 1944
Lester was the third child of Samuel and Elzora Pierce DeMouth joining his two older sisters, Musa, aged 10, and Thelma, aged 2. He was born on the 18th of December in 1913 in a place called Quinion, Billings County, North Dakota. It took me a while to find Quinion because it isn't on any map any more. Here's what I found out about Quinion from a very nice lady in North Dakota named Patrice Hartman.
Quinion was located in Billings County 29 miles NNE of Medora. Mrs. Bert Townend was tired of traveling 15 miles to a place called Fairfield every time she wanted to pick up mail or send a letter. So about 1910 she circulated a petition to have a post office. There was no town where Mrs. Fairfield lived, only a few poor farms and ranches. To have a post office you at least needed a name so she picked Quinion because back in 1885 a man named H.C. Quinion had lived there. He had come from Vermont and built a ranch called the Q-Bar Ranch on Magpie Creek north of a town called Fryburg. He had 600 to 700 horses. Mrs. Townsend was the first post mistress of Quinion and held that position until the building burned down. Elzora De Mouth, that's Lester's mother, was the post mistress from 1916 'til 1918. Women could not yet vote in the USA but apparently they could be trusted for an important job like post mistress. 1918 is probably when Lester's family moved to Montana. After that Lester's grandfather, Frank O. Pierce took over as post master of Quinion until 1923. That's probably when he moved on to Oregon. And at that point the post office closed and Quinion disappeared and anyone who lived there had to go to Fairfield to get their mail.
Now you might think this isn't very important and why am I going on and on about where Lester was born. It is important because it tells us where this family settled in North Dakota after they left the beautiful green state of Wisconsin. Ask your mommy to help you find on a map where Quinion was. Now North Dakota may be a fine state in many ways, but it was not and is not beautifully green like Wisconsin. Many settlers were lured out to the Dakotas with the offer of free land if they put up a house and lived there for a while. And this is what happened to Lester's family. Sometime between when Thelma was born in March of 1911 and when Lester was born, the DeMouth family came pioneering in North Dakota. It wasn't just Sam and his wife and kids either. His father-in-law, Frank Pierce, also came with his wife and children, Winnie and Roy, who were in their 20's and married, and Iner, their adopted son who was a young teenager. I have a picture of the whole gang and also a picture of the DeMouth's home and the Pierce's home. But until Patrice sent me the information about Quinion, I had no idea where in the large state of North Dakota they lived.
I mentioned that North Dakota is not green. Rainfall varies from year to year from just barely enough to grow a crop to almost nothing. The DeMouths along with many other pioneers had a hard time making a living even with free land. I wrote a little bit about life on the North Dakota prairie in the story for Lester's sister Thelma. So here, let's just repeat. Life was very hard. That's undoubtedly why Lester's mom took the job as post mistress. It was something she could do to keep her children fed.
I don't remember many stories about Lester as a child but this one. Lester was very very shy. Out on the prairie they could go months without seeing anyone outside their family. One day a stranger lady came to call on Lester's mother. Lester could hear them talking in the kitchen. He was terrified. All of a sudden he came tearing through the kitchen and out the door fast as a streak of lightning. The only problem was he hadn't taken time to open the door. He broke through it screen, wood, and everything.
By the year 1920, probably by 1918, the DeMouths had given up on homesteading and moved to a little town in Montana called Ballantine. There they purchased an old building which they turned into a hotel. Lester's mom was the cook. After a few years the hotel burned down and the family moved on to Portland, Oregon. The children had gone to school through 8th grade in North Dakota and Montana but they couldn't go to high school because there wasn't one anywhere near them. Musa and Thelma went to high school after they got to Oregon. Musa tried and tried to get Lester to go but it was no use. Lester was busy getting over his shyness and discovering the joys of big city life. He was into wild living and drinking. Aunt Musa always said if Lester hadn't died in the war he would have ended up as an alcoholic bum. I refuse to believe it, but it gives you an idea what he was like after the family got to Portland.
Lester's mother died suddenly in 1934 and Lester joined the marines the following year. We know a little bit about his years in the marines before World War II from letters he wrote to Thelma. One letter tells about being aboard the ship that was searching for the downed flier Amelia Earhart. Several letters tell about being stationed in China. Lester was with a group known as the China Marines, because they went straight from a long stretch of duty in Shanghai, China to the war in the Pacific, instead of getting to go home as they had planned. You can read Lester's letters by clicking on the notes after his name, up above. Because of the internet I have been fortunate to receive letters from several men who served with Lester and remembered him. One of them was Arthur W. Jones of Del City, Oklahoma. This is what he wrote to me, 7 May 2004:
"DeMouth and I made several liberties together in Shanghai. He was a good Marine and was liked by the Marines. . . .
"We left Shanghai on the same boat to Olongopo, P.I. Was at Olongopo when we were bombed for the first time.
"We were ordered to Bataan on the 29th day of December. We were ordered to Corregidor for beach defense and after landing laid down for a few minutes rest at Middlesides Barracks when Corregidor was bombed for the first time for 3 hrs. and 15 mins. Wave after wave came over.
"Back in Shanghai we were together on guard duty at an oil company on the Yanztze river for a week with other guard members.
"After Corregidor fell we moved from there to a hell camp in Cabanatum Prison Camp. We were together there until groups of us were shipped out to work details. After that I lost contact with DeMouth. . . . Arthur (Art) W. Jones"
J. E. Dupont from Plaquemine, Louisiana, also had guard duty with Lester in Shanghai. He wrote:
"I do know that he was well liked by the other Marines and that he performed his duty well. As I recall he was rather quiet and mild mannered." Mr. Dupont also sent a copy of a newsletter from the Shanghai days with this note about Lester:
"DeMouth heard from two gals in the states the last mail and it was quite comical. One of the girls (Betty) wanted him to write more because it was hard to love him when she got no word from him, and the other girl (Betty's friend) wrote to assure him that Betty was madly in love with him. Anyway, they both wished him a speedy return. Looks as though he may have something there." Since I first wrote this I have discovered who Betty was. She was Ruby Elizabeth, called "Bette" Hicks, the daughter of Lester's cousin, Verna Demouth Hicks.
And this came from Ms/Sgt Herman E. Smith:
"I was well acquainted with Lester. We served in the same squad in Shanghai, China for about one year. Then in November of 1941 we were pulled out of Shanghai to the Philippines on Subic Bay. We arrived there seven days before the war began. We were at Olongopo when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. We left Olongopo and went down through Bataan to Marivales across the bay from Corregidor. On Christmas night 1941 we were taken to Corregidor for beach defense. When we arrived on Corregidor we were split up and sent to different companies. I remained with F Co. and Lester was sent to I Co. 3rd Bat. That was the last time I ever saw him"
Spain had lost control of the Philippines to the United States in the Spanish American War, so American troops were in the Philippines guarding the islands and doing routine kinds of things before WWII. It's interesting to think about the fact that Lester's father, Sam DeMouth, was in the Philippines during the Spanish American War that won control of the Philippines for America, and his son, Lester, was there in World War II when the islands were taken from America. So Lester and his buddies were there in Corregidor right after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and the United States officially joined theWorld War II. Lester and the other marines did not have very good weapons. They were left over from World War I and as often as not they didn't work at all. And they ran out of food. But they kept fighting and defending the island for months and months with no hope of resupply or rescue. It was horrible. Finally on May 7, 1942 they surrendered. And Lester and all the others were taken prisoner by the Japanese. The Philippine Islands were no longer an American Territory. They now belonged to the Imperial Empire of Japan.
Lester lived for two years and 5 months in Japanese POW camps. That is where they kept the prisoners of war. The prisoners were used for slave labor by the Japanese. They were treated cruelly and fed very poorly. What they ate was rice, rice with weevils, a little rice, never enough rice. Ocassionally it was cooked with a kind of tough grass that tasted horrible. Those who wanted to stay alive forced themselves to eat what little there was and they gradually became living skeletons as they lost weight from lack of food.
In 1944 the Japanese began to transfer prisoners from the various POW camps in the Philippines to POW camps in Japan in what are called the "Hell ships." Here is a description of what happened written by William Bowen, a man I know whose father was with Uncle Lester on board the Arisan Maru.
"A draft of prisoners was assembled at Old Bilibid Prison starting in late September 1944 for transport to Japan to work as forced labor. Many of the men came from the Cabanatuan Prison Camp. The draft of approximately 1800 boarded the Arisan Maru and departed Manila on October 10, 1944. The ship sailed south to the vicinity of Palawan Island and laid over until 19 October. One reason advanced for the move South and the layover was to avoid US air and naval action. The Arisan returned to Manila on the 19th, took on supplies on the 20th and left in a convoy around midnight headed for Takao, Formosa. The 6886 ton Arisan Maru was sunk in the Bashi Straits, South China Sea, Latitude 20 o 46' N, Longitude 118 o 18' E, on October 24, 1944 at about 5:00 PM. Naval records indicate that the USS Shark II (SS 314) attacked a Japanese freighter in the late afternoon of October 24, 1944. The USS Shark was lost with all 87 hands in that same action and is believed to have torpedoed the Arisan. The Arisan carried no markings or flag indicating that it was carrying Allied prisoners. It was hit aft of midships causing the ship to split open with the rear section sinking downward into the sea. A torpedo is thought to have hit in number three hold where Japanese troops and civilians were located. The Japanese quickly evacuated the ship and were picked up by their destroyer escorts. Before leaving the Japanese guards cut rope ladders into the prisoner holds but these were restored by the prisoners and the survivors agree that almost all prisoners were able to get off the ship. Many scavenged whatever food and water they could before leaving the ship. At first, many prisoners swam toward the Japanese destroyers hoping for rescue. They were pushed and beaten away with poles. The men climbed on whatever wreckage they could find to stay afloat for rescue."
I doubt very much if Uncle Lester could even swim. A few men, 9 of the 1800, did survive and came back from the war to tell their story. But Uncle Lester's bones rest at the bottom of the South China Sea.
Lester was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, American Defense Service Medal with Base Clasp, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal. These are in the possession of my brother, Jon Zimmerman.
So this is the story of my Uncle Lester. He was strong and good. He was a poor boy from the American prairie who became an adult in Oregon during the Great Depression. He didn't have many opportunities in life so he joined the Marines. He never would marry and raise a family. Instead, he suffered unspeakable horrors in the battle of Corregidor, in Japanese prison camps, and in death aboard the Arisan Maru. He died to keep America and the world free from the Japanese empire. In this he won. Please never forget your Uncle Lester. Lester Jacob DeMouth is an American hero.
Love,
Granny
DeMouth heard from two gals in the states the last mail and it was quite comical. One of the girls (Betty) wanted him to write more because it was hard to love him when she got no word from him, and the other girl (Betty's friend) wrote to assure him that Betty was madly in love with him. Anyway, they both wished him a speedy return. Looks as though he may have something there.
[161] This article was sent to me by a buddy of Lester's from Co. F in Shanghai, Joseph E Dupont, Jr. Walla Walla was a weekly magazine of the Fourth Marines in Shanghai. He says Walla Walla in Chinese means, "Talk Talk."
Line 42 West Ave. dwelling # 77 Household # 77
Demouth, Samuel L. head rents $20/mo age 56 M age 28 WI NJ VT occ: Painter of bldgs Vet Phil
Elzora M wife 49 22 WI WI WI none
Musa I dau 26 s WI WI WI maid - in school
Thelma E dau 19 s WI WI WI none - in school
Lester J son 16 s WI WI WI none - not in school
Simons, John H boarder 49 s WI Eng Eng lumber grader
"In the story you wrote about Lester. the woman Betty is my mom...she was named after Ruby Demouth...her name was Ruby Elizabeth and went by Bette"
Bio: Demouth, Samuel (birth of son - 1913)
Poster: Ann Stevens
Email: [EMail address deleted]
Surnames: Demouth
-------- Source: Neillsville Times (Neillsville, Clark County, Wis.) Jan 1, 1914
-------- Demouth, Samuel (birth of son - 14 Dec 1913)
Born to Samuel Demouth and wife at Quinion, N.D., a son Dec. 14th. Mr. and Mrs. Demouth will be remembered by many around here.
__
|
_Christian L. HORNSCHUCH _|
| (1847 - 1911) m 1870 |
| |__
|
|
|--Theodore Robert HORNSCHUCH
| (1874 - 1959)
| __
| |
|_Wilhelmina GUENTHER _____|
(1853 - ....) m 1870 |
|__
Line 10
Hornschuch, Theo age 44 head b. PA Prussia Prussia occ: dairy Farmer
Amelia 41 wife IA Baden Prussia
Fey 19 dau OR " "
Joy 17 dau OR " "
Theodore 11 son WA " "
Lois 6 dau WA " "
Melva 2 6/12 dau OR " "