Photographs

My great-grandparents, Friedrich “Fritz” Wilhelm Salzbrenner and his wife, Amelia “Emilie” Pohl, came to America from Meerane, Germany in 1873 and settled in Amana.  Their daughter, my grandmother, Emilie Salzbrenner, met another immigrant from Germany, Joseph Behles, while she was serving him in the dining room.  He was working on the railroad nearby.  They married, moved to Illinois, and had my mother Elizabeth and two other siblings.  After my grandfather Joseph died, my grandmother and her two daughters moved from Wilmette, Illinois, back to Amana to live there for a while in 1933 and 1934.  When my grandmother died in 1944 she was buried there with her parents.  After my mother died, she left me pictures that were taken of people in Amana, including the school, houses, and a bread & cookie stand.  Most of the pictures have names of the people she had written on the backs.  A lot of them were taken in 1938 when they went back for a visit, but others were taken before or after that date.  A few pictures I got from a distant Salzbrenner cousin I met online.