by Lal (Gladys Krafft) Davies
Carl R. Krafft
was born in Reading, Ohio, on August 23, 1884. At
the time, his father was serving as a preacher for the Johannes Evangelical
Lutheran Church. The Reverend Carl F. L. Krafft had been born in 1847 in Regensburg, Bavaria, the
son of Pastor Carl Krafft. They
were descendants of Adam Krafft, the sculptor of the
sixteenth century whose works can still be found about the old town of
Nuremberg.
At the age of nineteen, Carl
immigrated to America to attend a seminary in Marthasville, Missouri. He was ordained as a minister in 1872 in St.
Charles, Missouri. He married Wilhemina Meier of New Melle,
whose father Henry Meier, was a pioneer who had come to
that territory in 1860.
Rev Krafft
served as a traveling pastor, or circuit rider, throughout Missouri and Kansas
until he accepted a position in Ohio in 1884. Five years later, after leaving a
parsonage in Indiana, the family moved to the South Side of Chicago. The Salem Evangelical Church welcomed the large
family which now consisted of seven children -- Emanuel, Frederick, Amanda,
Pauline, Carl, Adolf, and Emil. The church had
been founded in 1860 by a group of German settlers. After
much dissension, the congregation called Rev. Krafft
to the pulpit. For twenty-three years, the
congregation enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity.
My father, Carl, had many fond
recollections of living in the parsonage next door to the church. At one time he raised pigeons in a coop in the
backyard, much to the consternation of the parishioners who never knew if they
could reach the safety of the church unscathed. A Sunday morning chore
shared by the younger boys was the pumping of the church organ by hand in a
small room behind the pipes of the organ. Electricity
was not in use at the time. Occasionally the
pumper fell asleep during the sermon and had to be awakened to pump again for
the closing hymn.
Regular playing cards were not
permitted. The boys made up their own version of
cards using pictures of flowers, animals, and buildings.
They convinced their mother that it was a different game. Another chore was
the tending of the furnace in the parsonage. Carl
would do anything to be relieved of this duty. he
was afraid of the rats in the basement. Everyone
in the household knew when it was Carl's turn to shovel the coal in the furnace. He whistled all the way down the stairs and banged
the coal shovel to scare the rats before he got there.
The boys enjoyed sneaking out of the
house by sliding down the rain spout from their second-floor bedroom. Carl's first ambition was to be an acrobat. He and his four brothers fitted up the backyard as a
circus ground and they entertained the children of the neighborhood. It was not unusual for the boys to walk to school on
their hands. The wooden sidewalks made
hand-walking easier.
A pastor's income was very low and,
with nine people to feed, the offerings of home-grown products was appreciated. The whole family looked forward to weddings,
christenings, and even funerals to help with the finances. During Carl's school days, his teachers
reprimanded him for drawing in all of his textbooks. However,
they did recognize his talent for drawing and encouraged him by having him do
the artwork in the school. He took piano and
organ lessons and later became the church organist. His
love for music continued throughout his life.
My father gave up the idea of
becoming a circus performer in his early teens. He
entered business college and his first job was in the office of a paint factory. A job in a stationery store followed. This office position consisted of pushing a cart
through the Loop delivering orders. (The center of the business section of
Chicago is known as the Loop, because the tracks of the elevated or
"L" make a loop around certain streets.)
Carl then worked for a wholesale dry
goods store, the owner of which also had the idea that a business-college
graduate should push a cart. This time, however, it was an "inside
job," hauling goods from the stockroom to an elevator.
He next answered an ad for a "bright young man with fine
penmanship" to work in a pet store. Carl
got the job, but soon discovered that the work consisted of 90 percent cleaning
bird, rabbit, and ferret cages and 10 percent displaying penmanship. One day he refused to clean the monkey cage in the
front window of the store and was fired. Carl decided the business world was
not for him.