Written by Ernst Kapp’s Wife who lost everything on the journey to Texas.
After a prison sentence in Germany resulting from his advocating a more liberal government , Professor Ernst Kapp took his family to Texas.The “free earth” of Texas overwhelmed the professor’s wife as the family journeyed inland: writing home she described a strange psychic landscape in which fear of the unknown mingled with the temptation to see what lay ahead. “ Everybody tries to stop you by painting the next succeeding region as horrifying but up to now as far as we have come, the land has become more and more beautiful. I find that one is overcome with an amazing change; the farther one comes inland, the more civilization ceases.”
While the professor cleared the farm, wrote and experimented with natural cures for physical illness, his wife told of the change which had come over him. “How contented, healthy and happy Ernst here is. Daily he extols how fortunate it is for him that he came away from tired Europe.”
The whole family in Ida Kapp’s words, seemed transformed by the new surroundings and infected with energy and purpose. “If someone portrayed life the way we are living it – we sleep with a cover and a pillow on the floor of a semi furnished room. Do our cooking with one pot, one cauldron and one cornbread pan for which we have to build a fire out in the yard. Eating and drinking utensils consist of a few tin plates and tin cups; we have rented an ordinary kitchen table. For chairs we use baskets and trunks. Yes, would someone have portrayed it to me, I would have laughed. And yet I don’t know how it happens, but I never before have been more content and in better health. I now have the courage to tackle any and all things and I know now that everything will take root.”
