Beyond our Elusive William Daniel

She was the daughter of Christian and Marie Herrmann, both born and married in Germany. Her mother died the day after she was born, and her father left her in the care of her maternal grandmother and a maiden aunt who reared her. She attended school and received religious instruction at Dresden Lutheran Church. In 1873 she was confirmed, and her father gave her a hymnal for a present. She obtained work as a servant for a wealthy family which included ten children. Their surname was Gesangvogel. While working for them, she was expected to always hang laundry according to the types of clothing. This practice continued all her life, and the sheets must never be hung among the underwear! She often quoted a German saying , "Orderliness, orderliness, Sweetness of life; It saves one time and energy."

She worked as a housekeeper for the parents of Thomas Otto Anders. The Government of Saxony had been taken over by Prussia, and large groups of Germans were being lured to the United States seeking a better life. She was pregnant at the time that she, her husband, her son, and the older Anders family immigrated to the United States around 1882, landing in Galveston, Texas. They traveled to Giddings, Texas in a hack. The two families had log cabins next door to each other. The son, Otto Anders, Jr., (25 Dec 1879-17 Nov 1882) became ill with a fever and dysentery on the ocean voyage. He never fully recovered from this illness. The day he died, his grieving mother gave birth prematurely (eight months) to a daughter. She, Gertrude Anders, was not able to survive the night, so the parents' grief was doubled.

After her husband's death in 1885, she became a housekeeper in a nearby section house maintained by the Southern Pacific Railroad where she and Elly received room and board for the next 1 1/2 years or so.

Two years after her first husband's death, Marie Augusta Ander married Franz Julius Landmann, a baker since the age of twelve. He was also German.

After her second husband died, she sold their small farm and bought a house in south Elgin, Texas. She worked as a practical nurse for the elderly, and did various housekeeping duties. She and her daughter Bertha moved in with her daughter Elly in Vernon, Texas for a period of time, but after Elly gave birth to her first child, Marie, the older Marie and her daughter Bertha returned to Elgin (1906) since they missed their friends there. Eventually she and Bertha purchased a home on West 4th Street in Taylor, Williamson, Texas, When Bertha married Gerhard Rudolph, he bought Marie's portion of the house, but let her know she was always welcome to live there.

After Marie learned that Bertha and Gerhard had signed pledges not to speak German in public due to the war, she was very upset and threatened to move out of the house. When she learned that many others had also signed the pledges, she calmed down. During this time she had to be registered, fingerprinted, and photographed since she had neer become a naturalized citizen of the United States. This was in spite of her sixty years residency. She felt that an 83 year old woman should not have been treated like a "common criminal," but she had no choice but to endure the indignity of her treatment. Much of her information has been preserved by her descendants.

She never forgot her home in Dresden, and missed the gaslights, easy access to water, warm homes, and such things as she had given up when she came to Texas and moved into a drafty log cabin, using candles, boiling tank water daily, and sleeping on corn shuck mattresses. Later in life she said that after her first husband died, if it had not been for her daughter Elly, she would have "waded back to Germany had the ocean not been so deep and wide." She has left many papers and letters which have been treasured by her family to this day.