Some treasured objects are more than sentimental heirlooms. These items transcend their quaint decorative appearance. They stand proud above mere tchotchkes, knickknacks, or bric-a-brac that sit on a shelf, collecting dust. Some relics call to mind individuals and stories associated with them that are worthy of remembering, when we are fully informed of the provenance and history of the material artifact.
When I married my wife, I married into an extensive family—the Family Faust—whose roots run deep into the black waxy clay lying beneath Dallas, Texas and its twentieth century concrete. As part of my bride’s dowry, in addition to the family dog, we became custodians of a gilt-framed ornate certificate in German bearing the title “Andenken” [Souvenir]. My limited Sprachfähigkeit allowed me to infer only that this document commemorated a first holy communion for one Peter Faust, an event that occurred on Sunday, 23 April 1876. (See photo) From my dear mother-in-law Alice Louise Faust Rhodes, I learned that Peter Faust was her grandfather, “Big Papa.” This Grossvater [literally “Big Papa” but meaning “grandfather”] was the first of a line of several generations of north Texas butchers and grocers who populated Big D, beginning in the 19th century, who ultimately produced my spouse of over fifty years, the butcher’s daughter.
The Andenken decorated the walls of a succession of our homes and apartments until curiosity and opportunity converged to prompt me to send a copy of the text to my Germanophile colleague and friend Dr. Chris Littler. He, in turn, shared it with our native-speaking colleague, Dr. Tilo Reinhardt of Leipzig, who—in addition to his expertise in accelerator physics—understood the intricacies of archaic gothic script. Below I share (for the record) the transcription of a portion of the relevant text along with Prof. Reinhardt’s translation.
Den 23ten April im Jahre 1876 habe ich Petrus Faust von Tieffenbach zum ersten Male die heilige Kommunion empfangen in der Pfarrkirche zu Tieffenbach aus der Hand des Herrn Pfarrers Debes
On the 23rd of April in the year 1876 I Petrus Faust of Tieffenbach [Deepcreek] have received for the first time Holy Communion in the parish church by hand of Pastor Debes
An on-line search for Tieffenbach, France revealed the location of the village in northeast France, about forty miles away from Strasburg in the Department Bas-Rhin of Alsace-Lorraine. In the map below (used by permission) the red dot marks the location of the municipality.
Tieffenbach, is marked with a red dot.
Upon learning of the reality of the European patrimony of the Faust family, I continued searching on-line and stumbled on images of the parish church, Église Saint-Barthélemy de Tieffenbach [St.Barthélemy’s Church of Tieffenbach], where Peter probably took religious instruction. The graphics below display respectively a 19th century etching (left) and a contemporary photograph of the church (right). The continued existence of the Kirche/ Église contributes an even more intense sense of reality to the knowledge of the meaning of the Andenken.
What is more, the church archives have been digitized, I discovered. Interested genealogists can access the data at https://www.paulridenour.com/german.htm. What we learn is that on 15 September 1862 (appearing as 15.09.1862) Peter was born to Jacob Faust (born about 1826 or 1827) a bricklayer and farmer and his wife Catharina Derie Faust (born about 1827 or 1828).
Familie bedeutet . . .
A perennial maxim of the Deutsches Volk runs “Familie bedeutet dass niemand zurückgelassen order vergessen wird” [Family means that nobody is left behind or forgotten]. Family lore holds that when Peter Faust immigrated to the North Texas region of the United States in the late 19th century, family was here to greet him. Indeed, I found him listed as “Pierre Faust” on a passenger manifest for the Steam Ship SS Amerique that arrived from Le Havre in New York bound for Port Arthur and Galveston, Texas in December 1879. He was 17 years old and traveled alone in steerage class. The family story that I have heard numerous times recounts how Peter (or Pierre) “rode shank’s mare,” that is, walked, the approximately 400 miles from the Gulf coast to Sherman, Texas to the ranch of his Aunt and Uncle Michael “Mike” Derie and Ann Winkler Derie. According to a story told by their granddaughter Eunice Derie Cline, the Deries (the family of Peter’s maternal aunt and uncle) had arrived only a few months before, entering the US themselves via the port of New Orleans. Thus, together the Derie family and Peter Faust appear in the US Census in June 1880 in Grayson County, Texas.
If he could have afforded a ticket, the teenager Pierre (or Peter) might have availed himself of a train ride on the Houston and Texas Central that already ran from Galveston to Sherman via Dallas before 1879. Fares in that day were limited by law in Texas to less than 3¢ per mile for first class and were as low as 2¢ per mile. However, even at the most uncomfortable “emigrant” class, the fare was over $8. This is equivalent to nearly $200 in today’s currency and was over a week’s wages for a common laborer. It is therefore doubtful that Peter rode the train, although the railway right of way may have provided a convenient and certain path from town to town as the map below illustrates.
We cannot overstate what an audacious enterprise the teenager Peter Faust undertook in trekking 400 miles across Texas by foot. He probably walked from town to town moving ever northward, stopping day after day, to earn a meal and night’s lodging in a barn on the way. It would have taken about 134 hours of hiking (according to Google maps) to stroll this distance. If Peter averaged twenty miles every second day after stopping to work, he could have traversed the distance in about three to four weeks. He would have passed through countryside studded with farms belonging to German-speaking farmers (see http://www.lonestargenealogy.com/courses/texas/germanset.html). Texans were not unfamiliar with German-speaking immigrants like Peter since the great migration had begun in the 1830s and continued until the new century. His odyssey probably led him through the town of Dallas City. Perhaps here he became acquainted with and received help from individuals of the thriving Dallas German community that he would later know intimately. Whatever the unrecorded story, it must have been a life-changing experience that would forever inspire confidence and self-reliance in him for his whole life.
Eunice Cline, granddaughter of Michael and Ann Wigner Derie, who showed great kindness to us, her cousins and thus also family, when we visited her in Arkansas in about 1999, had told the story of his family and was posted on-line at ancestry.com where I found it. According to Eunice, Mike Derie was a novice stockman who tried his hand at ranching in the 1880s in Grayson County, Texas until rustlers cleaned him out. The newspapers of the time are filled with stories of cattle thieves and fence cutters. In 1883 the cattle market went bust, as well. What is more, two devastating blizzards produced a great die-off in 1886, but by then the Derie family was already on its way north and east. We are tempted to speculate that it was on the ranch in Grayson County that Peter first learned the craft of meat cutting in addition to cow punching. Wherever he apprenticed, he was ready when the Family Derie headed north toward friends in Illinois but instead settled in Arkansas when their money ran out. Peter, meanwhile said goodbye to his nearest family and headed on his own to Dallas about 65 miles south of the ranch.
Das Glück hilft den Kühnen
“Fortune aids the audacious” is a German proverb that describes the experience of Peter Faust, who at the age of 24, transitioned from a country cowboy into an urban clerk. Th record hints at the wilkommen he received when he presented himself to the Germanic community of Dallas.
While the first Dallas trace of Peter Faust appears in the City Directory of 1886, (There was no directory published in 1885) he probably came to the metropolis in 1885. The Deries had already reached Arkansas by March of that year, in time for the birth of Michael Derie, Jr. Meanwhile, Peter wasted no time. He made ‘86 a red letter year for himself, a 24-year-old upstart Alsatian. Peter made real the proverb “Selbst ist der Mann,” The self [alone] is the man [who must get the job done]. The records show the following actions: he rented a home at 507 Cedar (Springs) Avenue a block north of the meat market where he probably labored (identified by a red dot and the letter A on the 1900 map); he married Fraulein Louise (always pronounced in the family “Lou-EE-sa”) Lempke/Lembke/Lemke (spelling fluid and ambivalent), who had been born among the German colonizers of Venezuela and who had come to the United States with her brother Johann in 1883; Peter secured work from Henry William Emgard at one of his meat markets, probably the one on McKinney Ave between Alamo and Caroline (red dot labeled M). Key to the first two achievements was his employment, an event that came, in part, by accident. According to a newspaper report, Mr. Henry William Emgard, the prominent Dallas butcher, suffered a gunshot wound to his right hand in October 1884 and was presumably recuperating in 1885. It was, for Faust, contrary to Herr Emgard, a lucky accident. Indeed, he was ein Glückspilz, one lucky-mushroom, as the Deutsch say.
Peter may have begun well by accident, but his continued success took more than Glück to achieve over the next five years. By about 1890 Peter (age 28) had prospered enough to purchase the franchise from Mr. Emgard and his partner Mr, Hamm. Below is a precious image from those early days (probably around 1890).
In the 1890s, the structures on McKinney Avenue were surveyed and appeared on the 1896 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map available from the Library of Congress. When Peter began work he worked for Hamm and Emgard, located on the “ne corner of McKinney and Caroline” according to the City Directory of 1888. On the map the Hamm and Emgard building is identified as a grocery (“GRO.”) at 143 McKinney Avenue. (Note that the number is in fact 143, despite the unusual handwritten typography.) Later, in 1891, Peter moved the business to the corner over Caroline to 137 McKinney (see Peter Faust Market advertisement from 1891-92 City Directory) that had bee,n a Hay and Feed store. At the time this part of Dallas was on the outskirts of town. Alamo and Caroline Streets were unpaved and McKinney Avenue had only recently paved with wooden blocks according, to the Sanborn maps.
From the details of the location of the market we can deduce something about the business acumen of Herr Faust. Peter saw an opportunity to expand by moving the shop across the street to larger quarters that were formerly occupied by a Hay and Feed store, according to the Sanborn map. In addition, at about that time Peter’s Brother Victor Faust immigrated to Dallas from Tieffenbach, in what has been called “chain immigration.” Victor later (1900) recalled it as about 1888. In 1891 after the birth of two of Peter’s children. Moreover, Peter moved his family to larger quarters on N. Harwood where Victor joined his family. Then Peter purchased a house up the block where two more children were added to his household. He continued to prosper apparently, since he obtained (according to the tax rolls) a cart and two draft animals that he had to stable and provide livery for on his property.
Victor lived with Peter’s family until in 1894 Victor married Stella Florence Williamson and moved next door to Peter and Louise on Harwood. Meanwhile, Peter and Louise took in her sister Christina Lembke White and her husband Joseph along with their daughter Mary. Victor continued to be part of the family business even as he began his own family. Things began to change for Peter Faust when Louise died in 1902, however, leaving him with four orphaned children, ages 15, 13, 11, and 8. We can only imagine the trauma the loss of their mother wrought in the hearts of her children. Perhaps Christina filled the gap temporarily by providing emotional support during this troubling time. There are no family stories that have come down to us from that time that I have heard.
Hints of family friction lie in events of this period. In 1903 Uncle Victor became a driver for Peter Faust (a possible demotion from butcher), and the next year Victor founded his own market on Cedar Springs only a block northwest of the Peter Faust Market. Therefore, the two Faust markets went into competition and began to share the pool of potential customers. Fortunately, the influx of immigrants to Dallas continued so that there was no dearth of hungry patrons. Among the customers of the Peter Faust Market one woman caught widower Faust’s eye: Fraulein Ella Naumann, daughter of the successful carpenter and builder C. A. (Carl/Charles) Naumann. We infer that “Miss” Naumann had been married briefly (for about two years) to William Enfield, an English émigré pharmacist whose shop lay just up McKinney on the corner with Highland St. Moreover, since 1900 when the Enfeild-Naumann marriage must had been annulled, Ella lived on Maston St, sometimes rooming at the Greer Hotel, sometimes residing with her parents a few doors away from the Faust home. Both residences were less than two blocks from the Faust household. Whatever the form of the courtship, Peter and Ella did not marry until after William Enfield died in 1908.
A word is appropriate regarding how we came to these conclusions regarding Peter’s second wife: (1) Ella appears in the 1900 census in the C. A. Naumann household on Maston as “Tella Enfield” having the same birthday as Ella and having been married for two years but with no children. (2) Meanwhile William Enfield lived nearby, listed as married for three years but without a spouse in residence. (3) The same year (1900) Ella appears in the City Directory as resident at the Greer Hotel address but as “Miss Ella Naumann.” From these scraps we can stitch together a coherent story of a short-lived failed union.
Dallas has boomed over the century and a half since Peter came to town. Few of the structures have survived the wrecking ball. But in a curious turn of events, the spot where the (Second) Peter Faust Market stood on the southwest corner of McKinney and Caroline, has taken on other special historical significance for my family. In 1937 the Luna Family, who emigrated from Mexico in the 1920s during the second wave of immigration, built a fine Spanish Colonial style building on the site to house their tortilla factory that remains today. Early on in my marriage, I did not fully appreciate the special bond that my Mother-in-law Alice Louise Faust Rhodes had for the Lunas and for the Martinez Family, who had earlier launched El Fenix Tex-Mex Restaurant down the block in 1917. The restaurant occupies the site of an 1890s saloon adjacent to the location of the Luna property. My wife’s family faithfully patronized the businesses of these citizens of “Little Mexico” who were Louise Faust Rhodes’s schoolmates and the successors to her grandfather’s stewardship of the properties. Every time I ate the Martinez’s delicious Tex-Mex cuisine, I felt a connection to my spousal family’s past. It is one of the closest places I know to what the Celts called a “thin place,” where we, the living, experience the spirit of our ancestors. Of course, I had to expose my grandchildren to this place.
Recently, I inquired of one of my teenage granddaughters, Joanna, if she remembered our meal together there over a decade ago. “I will never forget it. Didn’t they serve sugar-coated fried bread shaped like little people?”
“’Sopa-people’ they called them.” I replied, “it’s a pun on the Spanish word sopapilla.” She marveled as I filled her in on the history that transpired in the neighborhood. Such is the nature of an Andeken in any language.
Gott gibt, aber der Mensch muss seine Hände öffnen [God gives, but a man must open his hand]
The second marriage of Peter and Ella apparently was not met with universal enthusiasm if stories originating from Victor Babe Faust, my wife’s grandfather and Peter’s son, are to be believed. Ella was seldom mentioned in family discourse. One story, however, came down to my wife, Carolyn, who shared it with me. Victor B disparaged Ella’s care of her children in a tale in which she sent then out of the house with an “Oat meal sandwich,” consisting of two slices of white bread cradling a ladle of cold porridge. Victor B considered it a scandal worthy of a charge of child abuse. But at the time of Peter and Ella’s marriage, her step-children were nearly grown; Victor Babe was 17; Jacob, the youngest, was about age 14. On the other hand. when Peter wed their step-mother, things did change. Peter and Ella soon sold the home on Harwood and moved into a rental home. The children, one-by-one, left home, perhaps willingly. By 1910 Victor was rooming with another family next door to the Peter Faust Meat Market. He never lived at home again. Elder sister Katie Faust-Thacker was already married in 1904 and out of the house before Ella joined the family. John P, on the other hand, married Myrtle Byrd two years after becoming Ella’s step son. Jacob, the youngest. only lived off-and-on with his father and stepmother for the next several years. It seems that very soon after Peter and Ella wed, they began disconnecting from their Dallas entanglements, so much so that after a few years of living in various short-term rentals and boarding houses, they closed the doors of Peter Faust Market and headed west to San Diego, California. It was in about 1913.
Jacob accompanied the Fausts, as did Ella’s brother and sister-in-law, Paul A. Naumann, he quitting his job as a clerk at Sanger Brothers and reinventing himself as a real estate agent. Peter soon found employment as a butcher and sausage maker with Kuhlen and Weber. After about a year and a half, Peter and Ella made news in the Chula Vista area paper by taking a trip back to Dallas in 1916 to visit family and, in particular, Victor Babe Faust’s grandchildren Peter Carl and Alice Louise, who had been born to Victor and Alta in the interim.
At about the same time son Jacob Faust returned to Dallas to enlist in the National Guard (Jun 1916). He was discharged a few months later only to be inducted into the regular Army. He was honorably discharged within a few months, however, 75% disabled. {Presumably his disability involved his vision. My wife recalls her great uncle’s very thick glasses.) Over the rest of his life he alternately lived in Texas and the west coast, where he had fallen in love with southern California. In the censuses and city directories in this period of his life he is often identified as a waiter.
Apparently, the Faust family mended fences because a few years after their visit back in Dallas (in about 1921) Victor and Alta traveled to San Diego for a visit, as is documented in the montage of family photographs of Alta and Louise Faust with Peter. By all accounts Big Papa doted on his granddaughter who later became my dear mother-in-law forty years later.
These are Andenkenen of a different sort. Such artifacts speak to the reality of Peter’s continued audacious spirit.
After a few years working for Kuhlen and Weber, the Alsatian-Texan butcher joined the staff of the flamboyant grocery mogul Charles S. Hardy. In the early 1920s Hardy gathered his complete meat department staff of Bay City Market for a group picture. The City Directory lists Peter as a “Chief Clerk.” Indeed, in the group photo we can identify a single gray-haired gentleman in an apron, the figure looks very much like other photographs of Big Papa, who would have been 60 years old in 1922, a venerable mentor meat cutter.
During this time Peter welcomed his mother-in-law to his home, moving her with Ella, into the Imperial Avenue bungalow where Mrs. Naumann lived until 1920 when she died. Five years later in 1925, Ella also passed away, at the age of 51. Peter remained in San Diego until in 1928 at 66 he retired from Bay City Market and returned to Dallas.
Not long before his relocation, his son-in-law Frank Thacker expired. Big Papa moved in with Katie, Peter’s eldest child and her son, Frank, junior and his wife Hazel at their home on Bowser Avenue. In the decades since that home has been obliterated to make way for progress and the construction of modern apartment buildings. Soon after Peter returned to Dallas, the Great Depression began with the stock market crash in October 1929.
Intermittently over the final fifteen years of his life, Peter lived with daughter Katie, son Victor Babe, and granddaughter Louise Faust Rhodes. Peter worked for a time at Victor’s market; Victor Babe had taken up the mantle of the family business after Uncle Victor had died in 1924. Peter settled into his role as patriarch. He, fortunately, had avoided much of the financial losses of the crash. Big Papa reportedly loaned Victor B. and Alta money to help build a house in the depths of the depression. Indeed, he lived with Victor, Alta, and their children at 1306 Ann Arbor Avenue.. During this time Louise Faust (ultimately, my mother-in-law) formed sweet and indelible memories there.
Ich bin ein Franzose
One memory my Mother-in-law shared with me. Louise nee Faust Rhodes recounted how that as tensions in Europe rose in the 1930s and 40s, Peter—in a heavy German accent—would insist, “I am French!” [Ich bin ein Franzose!] Indeed, he was accurate since when he was born (Alsace in 1862), his home was in French hands. By 1871 and the end of the Franco-Prussian War his hometown had become part of the new German Empire. Soon afterward an economic contraction, called initially the “Great Depression,” but later renamed “The Long Depression” prompted the teenage Herr Faust to cross an ocean. Then after his retirement he experienced the second “Great Depression.” Perhaps memories of Peter’s early days of austerity prompted him often, at the conclusion of breakfast, to ask “Vaht vie goin’ ta have fur zupper?” I can imagine him pushing back from the table then stroking his ample stomach. The Ann Arbor residence still stands. It is the nexus of many good memories for my wife and her siblings. In the photo we see Victor and Alta in the backyard shown beside a Google Maps street-view image of their home.
Subsequently, Peter resided again with Katherine Faust Thacker at 3512 Douglas St. a structure that still stands in testimony of the reality of his life. In the final years of his life Peter Faust lived with his granddaughter Alice Louise Faust Rhodes. That their home on Carpenter Avenue did not survive until today underscores how precious any material object is that commemorates a life, be it a certificate or a house.
Some Andeken do not fit on a self or in a frame
“Sentimental” attachments cynics call them, as if emotion and memory were somehow lacking in value. In response, I argue that I wear a golden band on my left ring finger both as a reminder of the promises I made on the last day of May 1968 and as a continuing declaration of my fidelity and love for my mate. The worth of this ornament far outstrips its fair market value as a material object. So it is with many mementos, souvenirs, and Andenken. That a word exists in Latin, French, and German for the same concept hints at the universality of the appreciation of objects evocative of memories. It is the memory, the story, the association that suffuses an inanimate object with meaning. In the process the object becomes precious and accretes almost mystical power, or at the very least, psychological power to connect us to people and events we are apt to forget. In the gospel story of Jesus of Nazareth we see this reality as well.
Zu meinen Gedächtnis
In 1 Corinthians 11:24 The Apostle Paul recounts how that Jesus Christ instituted a simple ritual, now celebrated as a memorial meal—Holy Communion—to be shared by his followers. Luther translates the words in the Corinthian letter as “zu meinen Gedächtnis” [to my memory]. So the practice of Andenken and simple memorial rituals have a divine affirmation. How appropriate that the certificate that first led me to pursue the story of Big Papa is an Andeken of his first celebration of the great Andeken that Herr Jesu instituted!
In 2014, Emily Edington, Peter’s 3x great granddaughter shared his story with her sixth grade classmates, complete with costume. Her interest was sparked by his audacious journey to America. Indeed, the life of Peter Faust was characterized by audacity, by diligence, and by family. I have realized as a result of this study that it is the story that gives these objects their meaning. So in a strange way, this post—that tells his story and gives us a glimpse into his character as judged by his actions—is itself a commemoration of him. So, in a very real sense, this document becomes for us a virtual Andenken.
Sam Matteson 
