The Somerset press. [volume] (Somerset, Ohio) 1873-1977, 1874-03-13
Lost in the Language.

As far back as in the year 1886 re-
spectacle family of yeoman emigrants,
named Hassemeier, arrived in Baltimore
from Hanover, intending to make new
home in one of the Western States
Those were days before there were rail-
roads in that direction, and travellers
bound for the prairies, bought huge
wagons. stout horses and oxen, and spent
months on the journey. The Hasse-
meters joined stock with party of their
fellow -emigrants for the long ride; but
found themselves so pressed for room in
the wagons, after a day or two, that it
seemed advisable to leave, son, John,
youth eighteen or nineteen years old,
at wayside village, to rejoin the cara
van at a stated point in Pennsylvania,
where some of the party were to quit the
train. But it was no easy thing for the
young man to reach that same stated
point, after being thus left behind. In
their ignorance of the country, his par
ents did not take thought of this diff
Guilty, and as no other emigrant trains
happened to pass through the village for
months, and neither stages nor railroads
offered transportation, John Hassemeier
found himself fairly lost in the great
New World. Not speaking a word of
English, he could not ask counsel Of the
villagers, nor even remember the name
Of the village whittier his father had di-
rected him to go, and that parent, upon
waiting in vain for him at said place
several days, could not tell the name of
the village whence he shonld come, nor
communicate bis trouble to others than
his equally ignorant fellow-travelers.
Thus were family and son separated
nearly forty years, and destined to be
kept apart for nearly a lifetime by what
may be called "the difficulties of an nm
wonted language" Despairing of bet
ter fate, young John was finally obliged
to go to work where he had been left, for
a living, and could relate his story to no
one until it was too late to think of find
ing his kIndIed. He never could recall
the Ito him) outlandish title of the town
where he was to have rejoined the wagon
train, and when, after several years, his
imperfect English was sufficient for the
wording of newspaper advertisement
for information of his people, he lessen
ed all likelihood of gaining such infor-
nation by spelling his name "Hossa-
mer," as his American friends always
pronounced it.
In 1852 he went to Newcastle, Ind,
and in 1869 to Nebraska; from which
latter place he wrote to Lutheran min
lister in Hanover, his infaney's home, in
quiring if that good man had ever heard
from his old parishioners, the Hassem-
eiers, after their American emigration?
The minister answered that he had Eeen
advised of the death of the father and
mother in Missouri, and the supposed
death of the son in Pennsylvania; but
believed there was sister surviving in
Cincinnati. Finally, after nearly forty
years of separation, John, now quite an
old man, has found his sister in the
above-named city; whither-says the
Newcastle Courier-the emigrant train
went after leaving Pennsylvania, and
where the lady is the mother of son as
old as her brother was when the wagons
left him in the wayside village. Liter
ally lost to each other in the bewilder-
ments and obstacles of a strange Ian
guage, the family and their frst-born
had heard naught of each other until
the parents were in their graves, and the
brother and the sister old people.