myself. Though I wanted to go with them badly, I was then serving the mail route and it took the combined efforts of my father, Fred Brec Brechler (with whom I lived when my folks moved to the country), M. G. Doering and others to dissuade me from going with them.
Other than myself, the family consisted of William, Joe, Esther, George, Barbara, Laura and Dorothy; of these Will has passed away, Joe and Esther remain on the home place, Barbara (Mrs. Helmricks) recently widowed, lives on a farm nearby, George is retired and lives in Rock Springs, Wyoming, Laura teaches in Ogden, Utah, and Dorothy, also a teacher, has for the last ten years served as Assistant to the Secretary of the Utah Educational Board — in the shadows of the Temple in Salt Lake City. Though they have for nearly twenty-five years served among the Mormons, they are each serving as organists in their Lutheran churches in Salt Lake City and Ogden.
Of Mrs. Zimmerman's (Irene B.) parents — Mr. and Mrs. Emil E. Winter — came to Madison County in 1895, though her father Emil Winter was born in the St. Paul Lutheran colony three miles north of Norfolk in 1870. He attended school in Watertown, Wisconsin and taught in a Lutheran Parochial School in West Bend, Wisconsin where he met Augusta Wynhoff of Tripoli, Iowa, who was then living with her grandmother in West Bend.
When they were married April 24, 1895, they came to Madison immediately where Mr. Winter was for a time employed in the post office but soon went into the bank headed by James Stuart founder of the Stuart dynasty of banking and large land holdings, including now the Stuart building in Lincoln. In 1901 he was elected County Clerk, leaving this post to move to Petersburg, Nebraska as cashier in the Jouvenaut bank there. In 1915, he came to Battle Creek to enter the old Battle Creek Valley Bank as cashier. In 1920, he had to resign this post because of ill health, passing away in 1926.
He was always active in Democratic party politics, and served as delegate to convention held in Baltimore in 1912 when Woodrow Wilson won the nomination as candidate for president. In Petersburg, he served on the Town Board and in Battle Creek he served on the Public School Board.
The Winter family consisted of Irene (Mrs. Chas. Zimmerman), Esther (Mrs. Harry Doering), Ruth (Mrs. Elmer Doering); Frank who married Lulu Nelsen of St. Edward and is presently a druggist in Lincoln; and Miriam (Mrs. Robert Johnson) now of Boulder, Colorado, where she is a nurse in the Colorado University Hospital.
In both our families, a close knit family life, love and unity always prevailed and does to this day among those of us who remain. Perhaps we were not left riches as the world measures, but the best heritage possible is that inbred love and interest in our church and community.
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