The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1899-02-16
A STRANGE STORY.
Yakima Grand Army Man Tells Of the Course
Of True Love. Which Never Runs
Smooth-He Was Born Under
an Unlucky Star

| North Yakima whose autobiography
would furnish material for romance. In
the matter-of-fact columns OF news
paper, however, only brief and unvar-
nished notice is practicable, of a strange
and eventful life. Henry A. Nordeck was
born in Bavaria, October IL, 1925, of no.
BILE ancestry, his family dating their an
cestral tree back to the year A. d. 10ll,
when Leopold /, surnamed Hawk
snout" ruled Bavaria.
In the Schleizwig- Holstein war of IS4S,
which involved thousands of German
military officers, young Nordeck served
at first as cadet and subsequently was
promoted to lieutenantcy. Previous to
going to the war he fell in love with and
secretly married Fraulein Mauler, who
was Lutheran in belief. Mr.. Nordeck's
father was Catholic and he concealed
the marriage from his family fearing his
fathers d .spleasure.
While he was in the army, engaged in
war, his young wife gave birth to child,
and soon thereafter mourning her hus-
band as dead, departed for the United
States with hor child and father Young
Nordeck, at the first opportunity had
written missive to his spouse from the
battlefield and another letter to his
father, but having been born under an
unlucky star, he says, he put the letter
to his wife in the envelope addressed to
his father. IL was thus the latter be-
came aware of his sons alliance with Il
protestant and thereafter he systemati-
cally intercepted all communication be-
tween the young couple. On his return
from the war Lieut.. Nordeck sought for
his wife only to learn she had gone to
America. Sorrowfully he returned to
the home of his father, only to see the
old mansion shut up, or Sealed" as he
terms it. He went to Muhlenburg, four
teen German, or seventy English, miles
away for official authority to break in
and enter the old homestead. Return.
ing he sadly entered the library but to
find that his father had died and his step.
mother had sold at auction the personal
estate, reserving to herself $1,000 which
she claimed as her own.
Henry A. Nordeck, which by the way,
is not his whole name, then determined
to come to the United States and search
for his wife and child. Arriving eventu-
ally in San Francisco he learned that
persons answering to the name and de-
scription had gone to Lima, Peru. To
that city he went in fruitless search
and, broken in purse and spirit managed
to make his way back to San Francisco,
where he got work with a matchmaker.
In conversation with some sailors he
was told that the object OF his search had
gone to the gold mines of Australia. De-
termined to raise money to pursue his
search, Nordeck went to the gold mines
of California, but the civil war breaking
out soon after, he enlisted in the army at
San Francisco in March, 1861, and served
through the war. He returned to San
Francisco only to find his unlucky star
again in the ascendant, for the mine he
had located had been taken up by some
one more lucky than he and nugget
valued at s25, 900 had been found there.
In 1868, after many adventures while
roughing it in the territories, he went to
Oregon and paying $50 for getting ferried
across the Colum bia at Wallulu found
himself at The Dalles. While there a
runaway horse struck him in the side Of
the face with his hoofs and for weeks be
lowered between life and death.
Mr.. Nordeck has resided in Washing
ton for the past sixteen years and re.
ceives pension for almost total blind
ness OF $I2 month. Being man Of ex-
traordinary vigor, aside from his blind.
ness and great age, and with no one to
care for. he manages to supply his frugal
wants and passes his declining years in
peace, though ever haunted by the mem
DRY OF his first and only love.