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317
I was born in Grosslelitch, Germany, then Poland, March 19, 1844, and came to America with my mother and grandmother in 1856. We landed at Galveston in December of that year, from whence we journeyed to Indianola and then to San
Antonio in an ox wagon, arriving in San Antonio in 1857. From San Antonio we went to Gallinas, Atascosa County, where my aunt and sisters lived. They came to America only the year before we came. I secured work with a Frenchman at four dollars per month, remaining with him a year and a half, saved my wages and bought a horse for forty dollars. I rode that horse just half a day and he died. Thus I gained my first real experience. I was next employed by Joe Walker, the first county clerk of Atascosa County, for six dollars per month. I remained with him until 1862, when I went to work for Ben Slaughter, who lived at La Parita, and he paid me seven dollars per month Confederate money. Later Ben and John Slaughter, Lee Harris, the two Forrest boys and an Englishman named Moody, and myself, started to Mexico, and while on the way we stopped one day and took dinner with John Burleson. The dinner was fine, the menu consisting of cornbread and clabber, and we enjoyed it immensely, for we were all very hungry and could have eaten the skillet the bread was cooked in.