If This House Could Talk -- Blog #23

 To hear Charles tell it, it wasn’t easy getting from St. Joseph to Marysville. Charles, his parents, his sister Jane and brother-in-law Frank Schmidt, and his young nephew made the trip. Teams of oxen pulled seven wagons loaded with all their earthly possessions. Their journey took five long days and four miserable nights of camping. Along the way, they encountered severe and soaking rainstorms.

The Koester family entered Marysville via the Military Road. They arrived at nine o’clock on the night of August 7, 1860. It was very dark, and the occasional lightning guided their way into town. They spent their first night in the empty, unplastered, one- story frame building that Frank Schmidt had constructed during the spring months to be his general merchandise store.

Contrast Charles’ arrival with the scene in 1902 when he took a horseless carriage ride. The automobile was exhibited by a young traveling salesman at the corner of Broadway and Ninth Street in front of the brick, two-story Exchange Bank of Schmidt & Koester.

Charles described his ride on April 14 in his diary: “It is the first time a treat of this kind to ride in a horseless carriage down town across the bridge and return up Broadway all within a short space of about 10 minutes or perhaps less … people admire smilingly the rapid passing carriage without horses; along the way some horses shy while others pass on quietly.”

Charles noted the prices the prior year ranged from $1,000 to $1,800. The car in which he rode was for sale for $650 ($24,300 in today’s dollars).

He recalled that people thought 50 years ago that steam carriages (self-propelled vehicles powered by steam engines designed to travel on regular roads) would be the next big thing. After his ride, he proclaimed steam carriages are “superseded by a more elaborate and finer conveyance and I this day have had a spinning ride in one of them called automobile.”

A lot of changes have happened to our Marysville. Although I wasn’t here in 1860 when Charles first arrived, I do very much remember a parade of “horseless carriages” passing by me on Broadway a few years after Charles’ ride.  No, Charles never bought one. He died four months after his ride.