|
|
|
|
Trying to find the right Fischer? - At least they’re all in Potton... |
|
It’s the sort of situation that will drive some future genealogist crazy. It would likely make writers of fiction throw up their arms with the complaint that, however heartwarming the stories, they’re just too improbable.
How often does a woman, upon marrying, take her husband’s name without changing her own? And how often will that happen over three generations in the same family?
“It’s a common name,” explains George Fischer, “at least in Germany, it’s a common name.”
“And names run in our families,” adds Katie Fischer (née Fischer). “My mother’s name was Katherine, I’m Katherine and my niece is named Katherine. She’s the other Katherine Fischer who married a Fischer. Also, my father was Joe and so is our son.”
George and Katie Fischer are sitting in their south-facing breakfast nook that offers a superb view of Owl’s Head, a view they’ve enjoyed daily since moving permanently to Potton Township in
1976. In the 16 years before that, it was a view they enjoyed on weekends and holidays, a respite from the travails and traffic of Montreal. As they talk about their lives, and their 70 years as a married couple, the coincidence of names all but disappears into a pattern of fateful coincidence.
Katie was born in Bukin, and George in Batch, two small towns in what was then Serbia, and which once had large German-speaking populations. In 1929, when she was nine years old, Katie sailed to Canada with her mother and brother to join her father who had come here three years before.
“In 1936,” Katie recalls, “my bother (two years my senior) and I went back to my native village in what had then become Yugoslavia to spend the summer with my grandmother Fischer. When we arrived our passports were confiscated by the authorities and not long after my bother was forced to join the Yugoslav army. He was eventually killed just days before the end of the war in 1945. I was stuck in Bukin, but at least I was with my grandmother and I had family nearby.”
George, by coincidence, was also in Bukin. “I was working an apprentice at a spinning mill in Bukin,” he says.
“In those days,” Katie continues, “village girls were often married by the time they were 15 or 16. I was 16 and unattached and seen as almost an old maid. I met George through friends.…”
“I had organized a little boating party,” George interjects. “We were going to go to the Danube where there were small rowboats that could be rented. I had a camera, a rare thing in those days. It was very precious to me. When we got in the rowboat, I had to row but I couldn’t row holding a camera in my hands. I gave it to this Canadian girl to hold.”
“When I saw him,” Katie picks up, “the first thing I said was, ‘Isn’t he cute,’ which was a very bold thing to say and I only said it because I was from Canada where things were different and didn’t fully realize what a faux pas I had made.”
Later, when telling her grandmother about the young man she’d met, Katie only knew his first name. “In Bukin, at the time, last names were rarely used. You’d more likely name the man by his trade, so you’d talk about So-and-so, the Baker, or So-and-So, the Blacksmith. I knew George was an apprentice, I knew he had a camera, and all sorts of things about him, but I didn’t know his last name. To my grandmother, I identified him as George Sailer, which means rope maker. Bukin wasn’t a big place and my grandmother was fretting and scratching her head trying to place this boy’s family.”
By April of 1938 the two Fischers, George and Katie, were husband and wife. With a small inheritance which Katie had received, they started a small spinning mill. But other events were also unfolding. Within a short while George received papers informing him that he’d been drafted into three different armies. “Everybody seemed to want me,” George smiles. “The Yugoslav army, the Hungarian army, the German army — they all drafted me. As it happened, I spent the first year and a half of the war in the Hungarian army as a border guard. Then, for the last four years of the war, I was in the German army.”
For Katie the war years began with the birth of her first child, Joe. “The first few years of the war were not so bad for me. I had my son. I went to live with George’s parents in Batch where his father had a small bottling plant that produced sodas and carbonated water. Then one night everything changed. Everything we had was taken from us.
“We had a couple of hours to get out of our house with whatever we could carry. For two and a half years I lived in a horse-drawn wagon with my son and my father-in-law. We went north as far as Selesia and then we went south again. My son would beg for some hay for the horses, and then he’d ask if he might have some bread for us.”
When the war ended, George and Katie, by coincidence, were both in Austria.
“Like Germany, Austria had been partitioned,” says Katie. “I was with Joe in the American sector. I knew there was nothing to go back to in Bukin. I had no idea if George was alive or not. We had last seen him in 1943. I told myself that I’d stay right where I was, that if George was alive, he’d find me.”
“I was maybe 50 km away, but in the British sector,” notes George. “After the war I knocked on a farmer’s door. In those days, before agriculture became mechanized, there was work on farms. I had never done farm work, but I learned quickly. As soon as I could, I contacted the Red Cross which, among other things, was helping locate people. I found out Katie and Joe were still alive and eventually, in 1946 we met up again.”
Three years later, in 1949, after moving from Austria to Germany, the Fishers sailed to Montreal. “Passage was $250 per person,” Katie recalls. “It was a horrible crossing. The men and the women were segregated. There were storms that sent the boat pitching back and forth. Joe was badly seasick. I had to fight just to go see him. And, because they considered us to be Germans, they wanted us to work. I had to tell them I had paid for my passage, I wasn’t going to do their work. When they heard me talking English and demanding to see the captain, they backed right off.”
“We got to Montreal,” George continues, “with the princely sum of $15 in our pockets.”
“And we had my parents,” adds Katie. “My father had a small grocery store not far from the Montreal City Hall. The store is still there. Joe was 10 years old and he started delivering groceries. We had to fight to send him to French school. I wanted him to learn French because when I had been in school I had been given half an hour of French per week! We knew that English would be easier for him to learn.”
“I started working in upholstery, earning 55 cents an hour,” George recalls.
A few years later, George purchased a truck and started a small transport company. The family grew with the birth of a daughter, Ingrid. Katie was a stay-at-home mom but used her sewing skills to do piece-work at home. For a while the family took in boarders. The transport company grew into a small fleet of nine trucks, but they carried a certain amount of stress and in 1976 George sold the company.
“If you want to be busy,” says Katie, “retire.”
“She’s right,” George says. “I did carpentry work and enlarged the house. I kept a big garden. I made wine. I’m 88 and my eyes aren’t very good, so I do a bit less now.”
If there’s such a thing as a tradition of marrying into the same name, George and Katie helped continue it. One of the things they did was bring together two other Fischers who, like them, became a married couple.
“When I came to Montreal in 1954,” recalls John Fischer, “I went to live with my Uncle George. I met my wife, Katherine Fischer, at a family gathering because she was then living with Katie’s parents. I’m not sure if it was love at first sight, but I certainly noticed her. We married five or six years later and we’ve been together every since — 48 years!”
“It wasn’t easy convincing the priest,” recalls John Fischer. “Katherine and I had the same last name. George is my uncle and Katie is Katherine’s aunt. We were definitely related, but not by blood. It took some explaining.”
The third generation Fischer to marry a Fischer is Lydia Fischer (grand-daughter to George and Katie) who married Philip Fischer. “He was no relation,” Katie says. “They met when Philip came to the house to do some work.”
Do birds of a feather stick together? If they’re named Fischer the answer is yes.
All three generations of Fischer-Fischer families have homes in Potton.
By Nick Fonda
April 29, 2008 |
|
|
|
Montreal Canadiens
