Christian Lobenstine or William C. Lobenstine, as he called himself
later on in this country, was born in Eisfeld, Dukedom of Meiningen, on
November eighth, eighteen hundred and thirty-one. He was the youngest
in his family. The others were Theodore, Caroline, Frederic, Bernard,
Dorothea, Georgia, and Henry. They were the children of Johanne Andreas
and of Elizabeth Lobenstein.
His father and older brothers were tanners and also farmers. Of the
brothers, Theodore, the eldest, seems to have been the most lovable,
always kind to his younger brothers and sisters. Father always spoke
very affectionately of him. Frederic, on the other hand, the first of
the boys to come to this country, was stern and rather arbitrary to the
other members of the family. These, and Henry who also came to this
country, together with his father and his mother, whose gentleness and
care he never forgot, were the only ones of whom he ever spoke.
The earliest known incident of his life, and one to which he often
referred, came when he was about seven years old. He, with other
children, was playing by a stream near the tannery, and he fell in.
It was early spring and the waters were swollen by melting snows so
that he was carried down stream very rapidly. His friends ran along
the banks with grappling hooks trying in vain to reach him. Finally,
however, the stream ran under a bridge and here Theodore ran out and
with one of the great hooks used in handling hides in the tanyard,
caught him by the buttonhole of his vest. He was unconscious but they
were able to bring him to and carried him to an uncle who had an inn
near by. After a night's rest, they took him home, none the worse for
his adventure.
As he grew older he became ambitious for a good education and one day
while working in the fields with his father, mustered up courage to ask
him to send him away to school, and won his consent. He studied three
years and a half at the Real Gymnasium in Meiningen. His life was one
of the simplest and hardest. He had an attic room with some townspeople
and ate his midday meal with them. His breakfasts and suppers consisted
of a jug of water and a big piece of the rye bread of the country with
butter. Once in a while, his family would send him down a ham. He kept
his cot at the window so that he might be awakened by the first rays of
the rising sun and begin to study, for he always worked hard for what
he got and was an earnest, faithful student rather than a brilliant
one. He kept, however, on the highest bench all the way through common
school and also ranked well in the gymnasium.
After leaving school, he studied for nearly a year with a country
doctor, a relative of his, going about with him and assisting in many
ways, but developed no liking for the profession and so gave it up and,
together with his brother Henry, decided to come to America whither
Frederic had already gone. This was in eighteen hundred and forty-nine,
when a new spirit was abroad in Germany and when people looked to
this country both as a land of freedom and also as a place where one
could almost literally pick up gold and silver on the streets. At that
time it was the rule in Meiningen that upon emigrating, you forfeited
all rights and claims upon that Government and before leaving he
went to the Castle and signed papers giving up all rights of German
citizenship. He left Germany with the definite idea of settling in
the United States, making it his permanent home and becoming a part
of this new country. From the first, therefore, he chose to associate
with Americans and to use the English language rather than keep up his
German associations.
Coming to this country from Havre to New York on a sailing ship was a
long and hard journey of fifty-three days and by the end of that time,
what with the hardships and poor fare, many of the passengers were down
with cholera. Father, among others, was taken to quarantine, which
was a very different place from what it is now. While many were dying
in the hospital—and he was taken to the ward where all the very worst
cases were—he did not believe that he was very ill or going to die.
Watching what was going on he saw them take one patient after another
and dump them into a bath without changing the water and finally they
started for him. This was too much, and he jumped up and ran back into
another ward where the less serious cases were. Here they let him stay
until he was able to leave the hospital. He had expected to find the
people of this country living in great ignorance, and came expecting
to teach, but he was adaptable and finding that such services were not
required from him, a young immigrant lad, he quickly turned to other
things.
He went first to Wheeling, where his brother Frederic was in the
leather business, and worked for him about a year. Then he took to
steamboating on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. During the next two
years he was first cabin boy and later steward and had many stories to
tell of his various experiences. Once the steamer upon which he was
steward—through a mistake in signals—struck another amidships and cut
her in two. Fortunately, the few passengers on board were saved, before
she sank. Another time, as he went into the kitchen to give an order
to the cook, that individual, more drunk than sober, proceeded to grab
up a carving knife and run Father out of the kitchen. There was much
gambling at poker on these river steamers which Father saw constantly.
Also much crooked work. One day a man left the table and asked another
to take his hand for a few moments. This fellow lost some money and
wished to repay it, but was not allowed to. So the others gradually
drew him into the game and cleaned him out. Another time a man gambled
his all (he had come on board with a good pile of money) and when he
lost he grabbed up his money bag, ran to the deck of the steamer, and
before any one could stop him—jumped overboard. Whether he reached the
shore no one knew. Probably, however, he was drowned in the turbid
waters of the Mississippi. These incidents, together with what he saw
while in California, always gave Father a strong prejudice against
cards, which he associated almost inevitably with gambling and all its
evils.
After two years of this life, he decided to seek his fortune in the Far
West, and his diary tells much of these days. A few other details of
which he spoke may however be of interest.
The emigrant party as it started from Pittsburgh consisted of
about forty men and ten wagons. They shipped their wagons down the
Mississippi and up the Missouri to St. Joseph where they bought forty
oxen. In Father's wagon was Captain Speers, a river pilot with whom
Father had worked while steamboating. He was a farmer's son who knew
about cattle. There was also a business man named Logan from Allegheny
City. He was a strong Christian man, the only one in the party who
carried a Bible and his life and death (for it was he whose death is
mentioned in the diary) made a profound impression on Father. One
evening as they sat at supper, Logan put down his cup saying, "I don't
feel well," and went into his tent to lie down. There was a doctor in
the party who did what he could, but the next morning at four Logan was
dead—of cholera. They buried him there on the prairie, wrapped in a
buffalo robe with a mound of stones over the grave and sent the little
Bible back to his wife. On this whole trip Father was the cook for his
mess and he has always claimed that he made a splendid one. The men of
each wagon seem to have camped together and had their own mess. When
night came the ten wagons were arranged in a circle—the tongue of one
against the back of the next—and after the cattle had been allowed to
graze till midnight, they were corralled within this circle.
Father's mates while mining were Captain Speers, McElrey, and Evans.
Their camp was back in the mountains quite close to the border of
Nevada, with Sacramento as their nearest city, where they went for
supplies. Their claim was located several hundred feet above the level
of the creek, so in order to get water they had to go back into the
mountains fifteen miles. They had a surveyor survey the line and then
these four men, not one of whom was a mechanic and all but one town
bred, went to work to bring down water. In the first place they built
a dam. Then they brought the water down hill and in one place bridged
a valley two hundred feet wide. Their form of mining was called gulch
mining. They built flumes or long boxes with enough fall for the water
to run slowly and into these they dumped the pay dirt. The water would
wash away the earth while they stood and tossed out stones, etc.
Finally, after running through several boxes, the earth was all washed
away, leaving only the heavy gold, which was collected by quicksilver.
The men worked in this way for three years, making no strikes and
averaging about five dollars a day. Then Father and Speers sold out
their claim and went to a large camp, Camp Secco, Dry Creek, it was
called, and went to merchandising. They bought mules and a wagon and
brought in from Sacramento the usual goods necessary to miners. After
two years, the captain went home to his family. Father hired a man
and kept on for another year, after which he sold out and came away,
having accumulated six thousand five hundred dollars, the beginning of
his fortune. He was in California from eighteen fifty-two to eighteen
fifty-eight. His mates were sober, hard-working men. They made no
wonderful strikes and what they got was by hard work and perseverance.
There were many robbers and desperadoes about, and Father made one
dangerous trip. He had left the few schoolbooks that he had carried
even out to California miles away with some people he knew, and one day
when it was raining so that he could not work his claim decided to go
after them. He took a mule and on several occasions had to swim swollen
creeks. Finally, night came on, and he was caught in the hills alone
where many a man had disappeared never to be seen again. However, after
wandering about for hours in the darkness and in growing terror, he
reached his destination at two o'clock in the morning.
Before leaving California in eighteen fifty-eight he was naturalized in
the San Francisco court and ever held his naturalization papers as one
of his most prized possessions.
His diary tells of his return to the East and his choice of Leavenworth
for a home. Here he went into the leather business as the one of which
he knew most and with his later life and business success, we are all
familiar.