“Nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past”
Excerpt From
Everything Is Tuberculosis
John Green
If history took one minuscule wrong path from where you now read these words, you’re not here. I’m not here. Let your brain ruminate on that for a moment while you realize how ridiculously lucky all of us are to be alive right now. Sounds pretty abstract when you merge it with the quote at the top, but, believe me when I say that it’s personal. Allow me to expand…
July 28, 1807 Muhlhausen, Hannover, Lower Saxony, Germany. Some dude named Johann is born. He ain’t born, I’m not here. One hundred years before our man Johann comes along, a guy named Bach worked here as the city’s organist. You bet that I’m going to dig into this to learn if an even earlier Moeschen was in the town then. How cool would that be? (street cred. for my well-tempered clavier…right Gerry?)
Johann grows up and becomes a painter. Portraits? Homes? Something else? I don’t know, but he makes enough money to pay his bills and marry a lady named Johanne. So maybe it was Johnny and Joanne? There must have been party jokes. Anyway, J & J had 8 kids. Pump the brakes and remember that back in the middle of the 1800’s not all kids made it to adulthood, so it was good to have a lot of kids. Beat the odds so to speak. What’s also fascinating is that it seems Ms. Johanne was married before she met our boy Johnny, but her first husband got shot and died, so the church “allowed” her to remarry. Scandal on many levels. No shooting of the first husband and I’m not here. The marriage certificate for our Johnny boy lists his wife as an adulterer, so who knows if these guys had kids behind hubbies back or what so what. Either way, it’s all sketchy. Genetics as you will learn as you read on. I’ve never fired a gun, so there’s that. Where was I?
Anyway, back to the J’s and their brood of 8. One of their older kids was named Ferdinand, and he came into the world on June 24, 1842 in St. Andreasberg, Germany. Ferdy was restless apparently. When he was 29, he sailed from Germany to New York City with his wife Eliza and their three little kids, William, Georg and Emily. He doesn’t make the boat, I’m not here. He gets in trouble and dies on the boat on the way across the Atlantic, I’m not here. He gets to NYC and becomes a German immigrant. Go Ferdinand. He gets thrown out by whatever version of ICE was around in the 1870’s-1880’s when all immigrants were not treated well……then I’m not here. Ferdinand makes a life in New York City. Here he became part of The Hudson River School of painters, and he was a grocer while living in lower Manhattan. When he wasn’t working, our hero Ferdy was pimping. Big pimping. This dude was married four times, which, in my mind, makes him extremely stupid, crazy, desperate not be alone, or all of the above. More genetics. One of his wives was loaded with money but it seems they only stayed married for a few weeks, so let’s add “looking for gold” as an angle of good ‘ole Ferd the Turd as well. Genetics? You decide. He did have one more child, Ferd Jr., who was born in NYC….
So now we have Ferd the pimping grocery store guy, living in lower east Manhattan at the turn of the century. His kids are growing up, getting married and having kids of their own. Ferd’s son William has become a drummer (I’m not kidding) and is playing, likely vaudeville shows in New York in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s. I’ve been trying to research this, but so far, nothing. It seems musicians didn’t keep good records back then. See what I did there? Musician? Records? Ba-dum-CRASH! Drums. I’ve learned that the word “drummer” back then also meant traveling salesmen who would “drum up business.” So perhaps that’s where my real chops come from. (Musicians will get that joke on more than one level.)
But I digress. Ferd’s son George marries Mary Ellen Mahon in 1898 on November 23. If they don’t hook up, I’m not here.
Sometime after they got married, they moved upstate to a little village called Kingsbury, which is part of Glenn’s Falls and sits about an hour north of Albany and three hours north of NYC. George is a wallpaper designer for Standard Wallpaper Company and he and Mary Ellen have four children: George Jr, Frank, Roy and Helen. George Jr. will grow up to play college baseball at Columbia University in NYC and become the captain of his team. His second baseman is an extremely talented young man named Lou Gehrig. Lou isn’t on the team very long, but he and my great uncle George appear in a few team photos together. When I was very young and George was very old, he presented me with my first baseball glove.
Roy will grow up to fight in a tank brigade, in North Africa, on the side of the Allies in WWII. I will meet him a handful of times and have no memory of these meetings. I am told that Roy made it to Germany and that his entire battalion got out of their tanks outside Berlin to urinate into the Rhine to celebrate the fall of Hitler. I can’t find that in any history books, but I hope that it’s true. When Roy returned from the war, he had trouble holding down a job and his life. He was also afflicted with alcoholism. More genetics.
George Sr. was a man about the small hamlet of Glenn’s Falls and always had funny stories and jokes to tell. From what I’ve read and heard, my great grandfather was a popular guy who also enjoyed social company and could be the hit of the party who held his audience captive as he weaved tales of this and that. Genetics. George was killed when he was driving his car drunk and, with a buddy in the front seat, decided that a wagon in front of him had a horse that was moving too slow. It was night and George tried to pass. He drove into a deep ditch on the left of the road where the railroad tracks were. He was pinned when the Model T Ford flipped, killing him instantly. His passenger was ejected but survived. His wife was suddenly a widow with four young kids. George, Frank, Roy, and Helen were about to move back to NYC.
George doesn’t crash, his wife doesn’t move, Frank doesn’t grow up in Manhattan and meet his wife. I’m not here.
Frank does grow up in NYC and on November 29, 1928 (a lot of action in November in my family…) he marries Helen Carney, she a graduate of Columbia University and the love of Frank’s life. They don’t meet, I’m not here.
Frank and Helen have two sons: Peter and Timothy. Both grow up in Manhattan on the upper east side. Frank runs an afterschool club for boys. During this time, he and his wife pursue their dream of running a summer long camp for boys, ages 6-15. They want kids to experience life outside the big city, perhaps in the way Frank remembered it from his own youth. They look for land in Massachusetts, Connecticut, the coast of Maine and in New Hampshire.
They find and purchase 75 acres on a small lake in the Dartmouth area of New Hampshire in 1933. It is the middle of the Great Depression, but Frank and Helen secure 2 loans and purchase the land at a cost of $12,000. They open, grow, and maintain a healthy summer camp business until the winter of 1968 when rising costs, and snow damage become too much. They retire happy and healthy and now have grown sons who do not want to go into the camp business.
Peter is an elementary gym teacher on Long Island and Tim works for a company on Wall Street running stock orders. His Uncle George encouraged him to go into finance, and George himself had done. Tim meets a you woman named Helen who is also working on Wall Street. She grew up in Hyde Park New York, about 2 hours north of the city. Her and her best friend Elise fled the small town after graduating high school to work at the FBI and live in 1960’s Manhattan. Helen doesn’t leave her home town, and I’m not here.
Tim and Helen meet in 1962, date for five years and get married in Hyde Park, New York on April 27, 1968. They honeymoon in Jamaica and live in Brooklyn, New York.
At 2:45AM on November 5, 1972, I am born at Doctor’s Hospital in Manhattan, New York. I am healthy and happy. I am a miracle and I contain multitudes. Just like you. Stop and think about YOUR thread for a moment. Perhaps do some research. How many things had to happen IN ORDER and at the time that they did for you to be here reading this?
Exactly.
Stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned. I would love to hear about your thread.
PS: Two side notes: (1) You may see that I talk mainly about the MOESCHEN name of my thread. This is deliberate. I didn’t want to turn this into 50,000 words about all of the spouses that also made my life possible. My wife has done EXTENSIVE research into my family ancestors, and, like today, behind all men there are great women. Most of the ladies in MOESCHEN history were and are spicy and take shit from no one. Genetics. (2). Isn’t it interesting how details get lost through time? I would love to know EXACTLY why my great-great grandfather got on that boat and left Germany. Likely one of the biggest events in his life leaves me having no idea what happened. Write your story, share with people, save your history. All of the people in your thread are why and how you are here. Fascinating.
Patrick moeschen 