Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home

52. Kessel and Rückels Families

Kessel and Rückels 387 52. Kessel and Rückels Families The Kessel and Rückels families were spread out across the United States, but they remained closely connected, as they had been in Europe. The two cousins Fritz Kessel and Johann Rückels were double brothers-in-law: Fritz was married to Johann’s sister Regina, and Johann was married to Fritz’s sister Johanne. Another brother/brother-in-law, Gottfried Rückels, was married to Amalie Schnutenhaus, who was also a cousin of the other four. All three couples immigrated to the United States from Rheda-Wiedenbrück in Westphalia, and during the course of the 1850s, all the other members of the Kessel family—the parents and seven other siblings— eventually came over. Left behind were the recipients of the letters: Mina Grimm, née Rückels, her husband, and Mina’s parents who were living with them.1 The core settlement of the family in the United States was in Illinois, sixty miles south of St. Louis, where Gottfried and Amalie Rückels, Fritz and Regina Kessel, and another Kessel brother established farms in the fertile Mississippi Valley. The rest of the Kessel family lived about 200 miles upriver in northern Illinois. Johann and Johanne Rückels, however, settled in the border area of north Texas, not far from the newly established town of Fort Worth.2 The two extended families were not merely simple farmers; they were more like farm managers. Their Calvinistic creed was suffused with a strong faith in the pursuit of profit, and once in America, their entrepreneurial attitudes were unmistakable . In 1859 Johann Rückels wrote from Texas, ‘‘My idea is buy and sell, win or lose.’’ Gottfried Rückels, who described himself in a letter written in 1877 as an ‘‘agriculturist with ambition and energy,’’ had a similar attitude. If he had had the same good opportunities in Germany as one of his friends, he wrote, he would now be ‘‘a gentleman, riding proudly across my estates.’’3 Their opinion of the Civil War was predominantly colored by the economic source note: Even the short passage printed here shows that Johann Rückels’s spelling and grammar are fairly weak, such that the message he tries to get across is not always clear. Amalie Rückels spells much better, though not really well, but she can express herself in a way that is easily understandable, despite the influence of her Westphalian dialect. Regina Kessel’s writing is very similar to Amalie’s. Not included here are the letters in the series from the time before 1860 (two) and after 1865 (ten), and additional letters from 1860 (two) and 1861 (two). 1. Information provided by the donor. According to the 1900 census, August Kessel was the first to arrive in America (1850), followed by his brothers Fritz (1851), Hermann (1853), Julius (1856), and Albert (1856). In 1856 Gottfried Rückels also arrived with his sister Regina, who then married Fritz in 1858. The Kessel parents and younger siblings also arrived before 1858. Johanne Rückels arrived in 1851, but her son, who came to America in 1854, was apparently born in Germany in 1852, indicating that she may have temporarily returned to Germany. MC 1900: Hancock Co./Ill., e.d. 36, #238; MC 1900: Jackson Co./Ill., e.d. 24, #64, #4; MC 1900: Stephens Co./Tex., e.d. 141, #246–47; Pension File, Albert and Julius Kessel, NatA. 2. MC 1860: Jackson Co./Ill., #650–51; MC 1860: Hancock Co./Ill., Wythe Twp., #1117. 3. Letters of November 27, 1859, and March 9, 1877, NABS. 388 Kessel and Rückels effects of the conflict; they also showed little interest in German politics.4 At the outbreak of the war, Fritz Kessel, Gottfried Rückels, and Johann Rückels were roughly the same age (twenty-nine, thirty-one, and thirty-six, respectively) and living in similar situations—all were involved in setting up their farms. Conscription policies in the North and the South, however, were very different. johann rückels 1860. / Fort Worth, October 28 Dearest parents and brothers and sisters, [58 ll.: family; farming; farm prices] Otherwise, the country is very quiet, everyone is waiting for war, and our slaves are thinking they’ll be set free, and business has gone down, on the 5th of November is the day we elect a new president, and as I see in the newspapers, things look...