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448 Lehmann rice and lack of character comes to light in legal disputes with their workers, whereas in the past all their disputes with free workers were put down by bribing the judges, and those with the slaves by the whip.11 Despite Schwarting’s reservations about freed slaves, he obviously had more sympathy for them than for southern aristocrats. In 1867 Schwarting married a German widow and acquired, so to speak, a complete farm and family. He supplemented his income by importing goods from Germany. In a letter of April 1867, for example, he ordered a variety of things from his brother: ‘‘I would also like a couple of cases of good rum and cognac, but since these drinks are subject to high taxes, they should go by the name of Bremen beer, i.e. filled into Bremen beer bottles, with the case well marked for safety’s sake, and at the end where the case can be opened most easily, they should pack a row of real beer. You can’t get along without humbug.’’12 At the end of the 1870s, Schwarting suffered increasingly from paralysis, and he returned to Germany twice in an unsuccessful attempt to find a cure. He also fell out with his wife and family and moved to California in search of a better climate. When his wife died in the mid-1880s, he got into a legal dispute with the children over her estate and then failed to provide for them, so that neighbors in Texas from Oldenburg had to help out. Schwarting himself probably lived off money he had inherited from his family in Germany. He survived well into his eighties, dying in 1916 in a German old people’s home in San Francisco.13 11. Letter of November 16, 1870, NABS. 12. Letter of April 1, 1867, NABS. 13. Letters of June 10, 1877, February 27 [187?], April 4 [187?], May 2 [187?], May 25 [187?], December 9 [187?], March 13, 1880, June 4, [1880], January 4, 1882, June 3, [1882], July 4, [1882], July 14, [1882], August 12, [1882], September 6, [1882], November 2, [1882], November 17, [1882], NABS. See also letters of Wm. Bartels, Kreuzmoor, February 7, 1877, and May 6, 1882, NABS; Fayette Co. District Court Minutes, Book P: 699–701, Book R: 85–86, Reel #1468698, Texas StateA; Fayette Co. Probate Records, Book P: 333–37, Book Q: 35–37, 121–23 (guardianship hearings ), Reel #964423, Texas StateA. 57. Private Ludwig (Louis) Lehmann, CSA, and Friederike Lehmann Karl Ludwig Lehmann, born on Christmas Day 1824, was the son of a man who was a baker, farmer, and former town councillor of Havelberg in Brandenburg. source note: It is rare that the written language of a man and his wife differ as much as is the case here. Friederike Lehmann’s spelling and grammar are distinctly nonstandard, her vocabulary is limited, and in several cases it is difficult to figure out what she means. Louis Lehmann’s writing reflects his educated middle-class background; he handles the language easily and effec- Lehmann 449 Karl Ludwig grew up in comfortable circumstances and graduated from a prestigious local grammar school. In 1849, together with his parents and three younger brothers, Lehmann left Germany and settled on a farm near Brenham, Texas. They were among the first Germans to locate in Washington County, but the following decade saw the growth of a substantial settlement, called Berlin, around the Lutheran Ebenezer Church that the Lehmanns had helped establish. In 1860, with a population of 600 whites and 320 slaves, the county seat of Brenham was no longer backwoods—it even had a railroad connection.1 Louis Lehmann, as he soon called himself, got married in 1854 to the daughter of a farmer from Westphalia, Friederike Clausmeier, and took over the family farm. By 1860 he had paid out his three brothers and built up a flourishing operation worth $3,400. With only one farmhand to help him, he brought in twenty bales of cotton —more than the average American with one to five slaves. A free labor system, therefore, could certainly compete with slavery.2 Washington County was a major cotton center. Located on the fertile plains of the Brazos River, the county ranked second-highest statewide in cotton production . Slavery played a key role there, and blacks outnumbered whites: the average plantation counted thirteen slaves, and eighteen had more than fifty. The only thing that...

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