ROOTS & BRANCHES

Commercially published author David DeKok, who’s also probably the world’s leading authority on the mine-fire-plagued ghost town of Centralia, had a welcome surprise recently.

A few months before the Pandemic ground the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to a halt, DeKok had ordered his grandfather’s naturalization file, documenting the arrival of John Kilian (1901–1995) in America and granting him citizenship as a young man in the 1920s.

DeKok already knew much of his grandfather’s story from having interviewed him years ago.

“He told me stories about delivering suitcases full of cash in payment to suppliers (that’s a guess) during the hyper-inflation,” DeKok wrote, referencing the economic conditions in the Weimar Republic.

Kilian had told DeKok names of the towns he lived in, but was in his 80s when DeKok interviewed him. “One of the other nice things about the documents filled out by the German police (they had to attest that he had no criminal record) is that it gives the approximate dates he lived in the town,” DeKok wrote. “He was a journeyman dairy worker, and lived in a number of towns across southern and southwestern Germany between 1918-25.”

This helps give more details and timings to the chronology of the grandfather’s life. “He grew up in Elpersheim, a village not far from Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and emigrated to America with his brother George in 1925,” DeKok wrote.

In addition to adding practical information, DeKok found some fun—and at times contradictory—details.

“My grandfather’s hair color is variously listed as blond, light red, or reddish brown,” he reported. “As a boy, I always just thought of him as bald with patches of hair of indeterminate color on the side. Certainly not blond or red.  I always thought my sister Gretchen’s red hair came out of nowhere, but obviously it didn’t. His eyes are blue on one form and brown on another.”

The file was also able to confirm another detail about John Kilian’s biography: Who fronted the money for his trip to America.

“I had always suspected that my grandfather’s uncle Leonard, who was a well-to-do banker in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, paid for their passage over, because Germany in the spring of 1925 was still in the throes of hyper-inflation, though beginning slowly to emerge,” DeKok wrote.

“There was no way he could have accumulated enough debased marks to pay his own passage. The proof is right there on his application for a visa—Leonard Kilian paid his way. The price of the visa is on the form: $9, which must have been a hurdle, too, at the time.”

DeKok also noted Kilian was admitted to the U.S. under the Immigration Act of 1924, which was great for Germans and other northern Europeans but limited those from other areas.

Beidler is a freelance writer and lecturer on genealogy. Contact him by e-mail to jamesmbeidler@gmail.com. Like him on Facebook (James M. Beidler).