Louise Caroline Bratnober
Louise Bratnober Freeburn (center) with her brother
Augustus at the Freeburn farm in Waverly, Iowa in the 1880s.
We know the least about Louise among the five Bratnober
siblings and so we must depend on the Augustus book for most of our information. We
find that Augustus affectionately calls her “Louisa” in the book, when in fact her
real name was Louise—just as he augments his first wife’s name to “Isabella” and his
sister Pauline’s middle name to “Albertina.”
Louise was the second eldest among the children, born in
Custrine, Prussia in May of 1844. Augustus notes in his book that his father
mistakenly did not purchase a ticket for Louise when they made their journey to
America on board the Isaac Webb in 1854. Thus, he says, they had to hide the
ten-year-old Louise constantly during the journey—yet another challenge for a family
that was already on a harrowing voyage.
It is likely that Louise was put to work early by her mother
in Hazel Green, Wisconsin at all the tasks that faced pioneer women—because her
sister Pauline was still just two when the family crossed the Atlantic. However
Louise also attended school, which Augustus mentions with envy when he is put to work
in his father’s shop at fourteen, as was the custom for boys in Europe.
Later, when Augustus survives imprisonment at the end of the
Civil War, he asks a nurse to write a letter for him to his sister Louise in Dubuque,
Iowa. Louise is so exhilarated to receive this letter that she “sets out on foot” for
Hazel Green, Wisconsin, no small distance, to bring home the first word that the
family has had about Augustus in almost a year.
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Isabelle (front row, center) tallest in her class at a young
women’s school in Canada around 1885
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Louise marries James Freeburn of Waverly, Iowa in about 1867.
And here we find the events of her life become difficult to trace—since we have been
unable to locate information about James Freeburn either. We do know that the
Freeburn’s generously took in the two children of Augustus about a year after his
first wife died in 1870—Augustus’s sister Pauline having taken this chore initially
before marrying and moving to Canada.
We can guess with some reason that the Freeburn’s may have
been prosperous farmers—from the appearance of the home and farm in the photo above.
In addition, Augustus takes one of his first jobs in Iowa as a peddler for an uncle
of James Freeburn—running groceries in the country from a wagon for the Waverly, Iowa
merchant firm of Allen Richards & Co.
Louise appears again, briefly, in the Augustus book in
Canada when her husband apparently goes to work navigating steamships for his
brother-in-law, Peter McArthur, during
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the 1880s. Augustus sends his first daughter,
Belle, to Winnipeg, Canada for schooling during these years and it is not too
difficult to surmise that his sisters, Louise and Pauline, were once again engaged as
surrogate mothers to their niece and future soprano, Isabelle, who had lost her
natural mother at the age of two.
At the turn of the century Augustus mentions that Louise has
bought a home in Tacoma, Washington, where she is engaged in the millinery business.
This also puts her not far from Seattle where Augustus’s sons, John and CP, have
begun to acquire timberland and build a sawmill. We have one photo of Louise’s home
(below) and the individuals are hard to discern. Louise, we shall guess, is the short
woman in front and on the right.
Home of Louise Bratnober Freeburn in
Tacoma, Washington around 1900.
Our most interesting, recent discovery about Louise, however,
is that she did, in fact, have children! Two sons—William and James—according to her
obituary If we should locate new information about the Freeburn children, and their
mother, in the near future we will happily append it to this short biography.
Louise Bratnober Freeburn passed on in Tacoma, Washington on
November 25th, 1908.
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