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Family History

The Beischel Family in Cincinnati, Ohio

Christian Beischel - The Beginning of the Beischel Family in the United States

Christian Beischel was born on June 14, 1828. According to the St. Mary's Cemetery (Cincinnati, OH) records, Christian's parents were listed as Mathias and Magdalena Beischel. However, Magdalena is actually Christian's step-mother. Christian's birth mother was Maria Hess. Christian came to the United States in the 1850's from Gottenheim, Baden, Germany.

On January 7, 1861, Christian married a woman by the name of Mary Smith at old St. Mary's Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Christian and Mary had one child and Mary and the child died at the child's birth on December 27, 1861. The funeral took place at Our Lady of Victory Church in Delhi Township (Cincinnati), Ohio.

Christian then married Rose Roos (Rose's birthdate is listed as December 3, 1840) at Our Lady of Victory Church on May 4, 1862. Christian and Rose had five children:

William - born February 13, 1863
Jacob - born September 18, 1866
John - born February 10, 1868
Benjamin - born April 13, 1871
Elizabeth - born January 7, 1875

Christian Beischel died on May 2, 1913 and he is buried at the St. Mary's Cemetery in St. Bernard (Cincinnati). His wife Rose died on June 18, 1924 and is also buried at St. Mary's Cemetery.

Victor Beischel's Account of our Family History

In 1976, "Vic" Beischel, Grandson of Christian Beischel, dictated some of the history of the Beischel Family that settled in the Cincinnati, Ohio area of the United States.

My memory isn’t good enough to support documentation but I will try to relay this as I remember beginning with my grandfather, Christian Beischel who came to this country in 1850 from Baden-Baden, Germany. He came over on a sailboat that took 56 days and he settled in Cincinnati because he knew someone here that would befriend him. The friend took him to a hotel and got him to drive a dray on the Ohio riverfront. While doing that he met a doctor who was a very fine man who had a very fine home in Price Hill. He wanted Christian to take care of his gardens, his flowers, his horses and whatever else they had in those days. While he was working with the doctor he found out that he owned a farm in Delhi. He had sold it to the Short estate. The doctor took him out there to see it and he arranged a lease with the Short estate. He married an Irish girl named Mary Smith as his first wife, but she died with their first child and the child died also. He then hired two men who helped with the household work and the farm work. Both of these men gave him an ultimatum one day that either he get a woman to take care of the house or they would quit. About a half an hour later what was to be my maternal grandmother came across the yard to talk. She had been to the house for Mary’s layout. My mother always joked that the horsehair sofa that she saw there that day had a lot to do with the attraction she had for my grandfather! (Her family name was Rose) She helped them drop potatoes and then they went to see Father Metzgar at Our Lady of Victory Church. I think he married them before the prescribed three Sundays that had to be published in the bulletin. They lived where the Western Hills Country Club is today, and up until a few years ago, part of the original house that my father was born in. My father was born in 1863 in February and stayed there until he married my mother.

My mother’s folks came from Alsace-Lorraine, France or Germany. It belonged to either country at different times. My grandfather’s name was Louis Diss. He was a carpenter. He learned the carpenter trade in France and he came over on a sailing vessel and got a job in New York. He was working on a big building in New York and was sitting on a windowsill when my grandmother, who had come on a sailing vessel about 6 months later than him, was walking down the street and looked up and recognized him! They had known each other in France, so it was only two months or so later that they got married. Her name was Mary Diebold. She had a very fine recommendation from some people in Montmarte, France that she would qualify as a good maid and especially an upstairs maid that the rich people might like in a hotel. At some point after they were married they lived in Avondale. My grandfather Diss worked for his cousin, a contractor. Frank Diss was the oldest child, then Gus and then a daughter Emma. Then they went to Jefferson City to build a barracks in the Civil War. They had a son born down there who’s name was Henry who died and he’s buried in Jefferson City, Indiana. Then they moved back to Cincinnati. My mother, Josephine, was the next child and she was born in Avondale after they came back from the Civil War project. She lived there until she was 4. My Grandfather Diss wanted to go into business for himself but did not want to go in opposition of his relative so he moved down to Delhi (which was known at the time as Muddy Creek). He lived in a log house until he had time to build a new house (that is still standing) on Hillside Ave. They had one other daughter named Odelia. We called her Aunt Tilly. She died I think in 1933 as a maiden. She was a seamstress who made her living sewing for other people.

Both of my mother’s brothers were carpenters the same as her father was. Many times when I met the old carpenters 60 or 70 years ago they remembered my Uncle Frank and my Uncle Gus Diss. Also, my Uncle Gus was the carpenter foreman and framed the roof on Music Hall here in Cincinnati.

My mother (Josephine), who moved when she was 4 to “Muddy Creek,” was 22 years old when she got married to my father. He was 25. They moved down to Muddy Creek and he worked for my grandfather, the carpenter contractor, for a while. I believe my oldest brother, Arthur, was born in Muddy Creek and also my sister Loretta. Loretta was born in 1890 on November 10. I was born next, I was 84 on September 30 this year (1976). Another sister, Florence, who was five years younger than I, died of pneumonia when she was seventeen in 1915. We had been on a farm until that time, but we moved into the town of Cheviot so that we could get “on the car” more readily than we could on the farm. The next child in our family was Louis. He passed away about a year ago. He was born in 1901. He was married to Clara Focke and they had one daughter. After him was Clarence born in 1903. He was married to the sister of Clara, Luella Focke, and they had one son, Jimmy. Aunt Mary is next. She was born in 1906 in May. She took care of my mother, Josephine, a good part of her life. My sister, Loretta took care of my mother after that. Mary is now a widow – having been married to Al Kenker the box manufacturer in Cheviot. The next and last is my brother Ralph who was born in 1908 and died in 1957. He was married to Helen Imholte. They had no children.

I was the first one in the family to marry. I married Edith Frey, the storekeeper’s daughter, in Groesback 60 years ago, in 1916 on October 18th. To us was born seven sons and two daughters. One of them is sitting here right now – that’s Lucy. But I’ll go through all of them for you. Robert was the oldest, He was born on Trevor Ave. in Cheviot. The temperature was 12 degrees below zero. Dr. McHenry was the doctor assisted by an anesthesiologist named Dr. Little. Bob is a contractor here in Cincinnati. They kind of followed in their father’s footsteps in the building business. He is 59 years old now and has 5 children. Next, is David who was born Jan. 13, 1919. He was also born on Trevor Ave. delivered by Dr. George H. Musekamp. Dave is 58 and is a diemaker. David has 6 children. Jack was born July 25th in 1920 at Blue Rock and Cheviot Rd. delivered by Dr. George H. Musekamp. He is 56 years old. He is a salesman and has 4 children. Jane was born June 20th, 1924 at Blue Rock and Cheviot and was delivered by Dr. Swing. Jane has 8 children and she lives in Geneva, New York, because her husband was sent up there by the American Can Company. He’s now retired. The next is Tom born May 31, 1926 on Blue Rock…Momma had been sick for 5 months before his birth and she was attended by Dr. Swing. We never thought Tom would live or Momma. Father Tom is a Precious Blood Priest. He’s the Chaplin of Providence Hospital. I can look out the window from where I live on Colerain Ave. and see the hospital. Next, is Richard who was born Feb. 12, 1928 and he was delivered by Dr. Swing. There was a question as to whether he was born midnight or after. If he was born after midnight he would have been born on Lincoln’s Birthday. Dr. Swing had three different watches that were at three different times. We finally took that he was born after midnight and he was named Richard Lincoln Beischel. Father Richard, also a Precious Blood priest, and has been in the Missions for about 13 years in Chile. He was up here this summer and just went back to Chile again. The next one is Lucy who was born in 1930 on Blue Rock Rd. delivered by Dr. Swing. After she was born at about 2:00 in the morning his automobile wouldn’t start when he wanted to go home. I pushed him from our house to Galbraith Rd. where old Dr. Vanpelt lived and it still wouldn’t start going downhill so I pushed him to Groesbeck and he left it at the garage and I took him to College Hill to his home. The next morning I went to work after not having been in bed all night to Melbourne, Kentucky to the Sisters of Divine Providence. At about 1:00 in the afternoon I went down the engineer’s room to take a nap on his cot. As soon as I laid down someone said here comes the boss and you better get up. Lucy is a Sister of Mercy and has been in the library of Edgecliff College for many, many years. After her came Mark who was born July 8, 1932. He was born on Cheviot Rd. and delivered by Dr. Swing. Aunt Irma kept all the children out at Sohngen’s in Venice for the whole day so I had some assistance. Sohngen’s owned a brewery and let Ed Frey stay there for the summers when he wasn’t in Florida. Father Mark is a professor at Calumet College outside of Chicago. Then I guess the last one is Paul. Paul was born in 1935 in November. Due to fact that Momma had some special problems it was suggested that she have him at Good Samaritan Hospital. She was attended by Dr. Swing and Dr. Kettering, an obstetrician. Paul has five children.

My father, William Beischel, was born in February of 1863. The next son, two years later, was Jacob. Then came John and next Benjamin who died as a boy. They had one daughter who we called Aunt Lizzy. She was later married to Hermann Dorr who lived in Northside. He still has grandsons around here somewhere – attorneys, building association presidents and whatnot.

My wife, Edith Christian Frey, was the daughter of John Frey and Catherine Luichinger. Her father had been a blacksmith. But Mrs. Luichinger’s father died, (my wife’s grandfather) and Mrs. Luichinger couldn’t run the store successfully so she talked John Frey, my mother’s father, into giving up his blacksmith trade and running the store for her. He ran it very successfully for many years and died in March, 1922 at the age of 69. My wife’s mother died when she was 43 years old. That was Catherine Luchinger. My wife was 9 years old when her mother died. Mr. Frey, after several years, married his widowed sister-in-law. They didn’t call her mother. They called her Aunt Monie which she had been before that. John Frey had 9 children. First, Martin Frey, next came Nora who was married to John Nye. Next was Louis who stayed in the business with his father and died at age 29 of pneumonia. He was married to a Boimanmiller girl and they had one son, Louis who is also gone. After Louis came Clara. She married a Honnert – a contractor. He was a carpenter at the time she married him. I was in business with him for about 20 years. Oscar was next. He moved to California and died out there at the age of 84. After Oscar came Ed. He died 10 years ago. Then came Edith. She died at the age of 70, that’s been almost 16 years ago. After her came John who died in 1955. Only one of my wife’s family is still living. That’s Alban who was 11 months old when his mother Catherine, died. John Frey, Edith’s father, was the son of old Elias Frey, the blacksmith. He had several brothers. Louis was a wagonmaker. Julius had some kind of business on State Ave. There was one girl, Mrs. Ries, who I knew very well that also died.

We bought our furniture one month before we got married. We rented an apartment on Pullan Ave. in Northside. We bought our furniture at Alms & Doepke because the Frey Co. had a wholesale account there and I saved 10% on it which I needed very much at the time. We had a very fine winter there and it was one of the happiest times in my life. We lived next to the library. Mamma went there frequently to get new books to read. She sometimes read part of them and then I would read up to where she left off. Once when she had laryngitis or something I read one of the books to her and she always remembered that. We went out quite a bit because we were on a car line. We went to the circus and the theatre quite a bit and had the happiest winter ever! Financially, I don’t think it was that good because I was laid off quite a bit. We stayed there until I realized we were going to have a new arrival! They immediately let us know they did not want us there with a baby. So we stayed there until October and then rented a house on Trevor Ave. in Cheviot. The first of our children, Robert, was born there. That was an exceptionally cold winter and I think there was a time that I did not work for six weeks in January and February. When Dave came on the scene I had left Penker and was working for Honnert. We stayed in Cheviot until Dave was 8 or 9 months old and then moved to a house in the country at Blue Rock and Cheviot Rd. where the rest of the children were born.

The second winter in the country Dave had an infected gland in his throat that swelled to an enormous size. We had to get a surgeon from Cincinnati who actually operated on him at the kitchen table! A far cry from how things are done today.

Next, I was building St. John’s School in Dry Ridge and I got a call (the first time mamma had ever called me at work) to say that Dave got his fingers cut off on the lawn mower. He tried to pull on the bar on the front of the mower and Bob was pushing it. The first time the reel went around it cut Dave’s finger off and Edith wanted to know if she should keep them! I called Dr. Swing and came home. We couldn’t do anything about the fingers so two of them are deformed as a result.

At the time Tom was born I was working on some buildings over on Madison Ave. in Kentucky called Koenig Stores. Mamma was sick for 5 months of pregnancy with Tom so I was glad when he was born. Here are the troubles I went through during that time. I had women of every description staying with her while I went to work and they were all unsatisfactory. Until finally I got to the end of my rope and went over to Uncle Jake’s to ask one of his daughters to come and stay with my family so I could have peace of mind that at least part of the household would be there when I got home. I told him I would pay him any amount of money and I was quite surprised at the price, but I won’t tell you what it was! She stayed with us until Tom was a week old. Her name was Ruth Beischel and she was about 19 years old and I have always been grateful for the fine job she did. Tom was born weak and could not talk plainly when he first learned to talk. The first thing he learned to say is “Hold me mamma” and wanted everyone to hold him. But he finally became a fine priest as all of you know and everyone loves him and knows how proud we are of him!

When Richard was born Dr. Swing was the physician for the Cinti. Boxing Assoc. and he naturally attended all the fights. So he was down at the Freddy Miller Lightweight Championship of the World at the arena down on Vine St. when I called his house and told him we needed at doctor. His wife said he was at the fight. When we got him from there he was in a pretty bad humor because he didn’t want to leave the fight when it was a question as to whether Freddy Miller would be the Lightweight Champion of the World!

Lucy’s story I already told about being on the cot at a job in Melbourne, KY for the Sisters of Divine Providence. Well, she got her name from Mother Lucy who was there at the time and I guess I liked her and they sent all kinds of cute little presents for Lucy when she was born. I’ve been back there a few times since then. Once was when Lucy wanted to enter the convent, but it didn’t seem like the place she wanted to go so later she joined the Sisters of Mercy.

I already told how at Mark’s birth everyone stayed at Sohngen’s.

The last one is Paul who was born at Good Sam. He was born with the ligaments in his arm torn or something and it was straight up and we were positive that he would never be able to use that arm or even get it down. It was parallel to his head. I would venture he was 3 or 4 months old before he put his arm down on the pillow! He was also at Good Sam for about 2 weeks after Edith went home. He had impetigo which is a skin disease that a lot of children got in the hospital. Paul had a bath in baby oil instead water for a whole year.

Today is January 29, 1977 at about 4:30 in the afternoon looking at 3 to 4 feet of snow! It was 10 below this morning. It’s 20 degrees now.

“Maybe you can tell us how life on the farm was,” Lucy asked.

I was born on a farm in Monfort Heights about a half mile West of Northbend Rd. At that time it was called Pleasant Ridge Pike. Now it’s called West Fork Rd. My folks moved there in March of 1890 and I was born in Sept. of 1892. I can recall many things from the time I was 4 or 5 yrs. old. It seems to me that my worries started then already. I remember one of our fine horses dying and the replacement was not so easy. I remember my mother crying and I guess I did too. At any rate, that must be about the time I started taking over the worries for the family.

To get on with more interesting things:

I went to school when I was almost 6. At that time if you lived near a certain distance from a parochial school, you were allowed to go to the public school by the parish priest for 2 or 3 years.

On the farm we were practically self-sufficient. We raised everything we ate. We had potatoes and kept them in bins in the cellar. We also had apples in the cellar. We killed hogs for meat and kept it in brine in barrels. We had cabbage for sauerkraut kept in a barrel. We buried turnips and cabbage covered with rye straw and then covered with dirt to save them. We didn’t open these mounds very often, just as we needed to use them. We also dried apples in the sun and took them up to the attic and in the winter that was the fruit we had. We had berries and carrots. We had a barrel of flour and mother made all of the bread we ate. She had yeast that she always kept as a starter to make all of her own bread. When I was about 9 yrs. old I was sent to Cheviot with a chip basket with 3 or 4 dozen eggs and 3 or 4 lbs. of butter and I took it to the grocery where I traded it for staples that we needed like sugar, starch, and coffee. I would come home with a dollar or something like that left over.

It’s 1977 at 2:30 in the afternoon. It’s Fr. Dick’s 49th birthday today.

“Tell us about your jobs, “ asks Lucy.

I’m going to make an attempt to leave you with the knowledge of some of the jobs I had in the construction industry. Some work I had was superintendent for Honnert and later for architects and engineers. The first job I ever had as a foreman was for the Penker Construction Company. It was in March 1918 after a real bad winter that Theodore Penker called me and said I guess you’ve been home long enough – you better come to work tomorrow. So he gave me the plans to put the piers and the footings on the Gold Register Co. warehouse on Reading Road. In May 1918 I went to join Honnert with an agreement to receive a percentage of the profits. The first job that I took care of was the First Romanian Baptist Church at Dayton and Whiteman Streets in Cincinnati. It was very near where my grandfather lived and I could go over there to get my lunch.

List other jobs he worked on…
(Not all are included here – I have transcribed only those with stories attached.

The next job I worked on was a remodeling job of St. Edward’s on Clark Street. The job was to remodel the inside of the church and the front and put a steeple on it. I remember what a dangerous job it was. For some unknown reason the thought I could build a steeple without figuring on scaffolding.

A job that stands out in my memory as giving me the most worries of any job I had ever done and was the least fitted for was the Moose Temple. It was after WWI and the Moose membership had no work on their regular jobs so they decided to build this temple with their own members who were out of work. They hired a superintendent who was qualified but not for the kind of sheet-piling that was supposed to be done there. They dug the whole basement with dump wagons and teams of mules and shoveled all the ground and sand into wagons and hauled it away. The back part of the building which was, I think, 100 ft. long and 50 ft. wide, was supposed to be 12 ft. deeper than the rest of it. That was supposed to be the power plant and heating systems. When the Mila Motor Car Co. right across the alley started to crack, the Board of Directors sued the Moose people for the damage to their property and then the city of Hamilton enjoined them from proceeding with the work. They left it out to a contractor and I was sent there.

I knew as little about sheet-piling as an atheist does about Sunday. I did find a fine old gentleman who had done sheet-piling many places along the Big Miami River which goes through Hamilton. He said if I would pay him $15 or $20 he would spend two days with me making a lumber list and a detail of how to sheet-pile this extra depth. I had to make a drawing of this and take it to the Building Commissioner’s office and they immediately okayed it and told me to go ahead with it. But I’m positive I didn’t get very much sleep until the sheet-piling was done and the deep foundation was in and back filled. Uncle Lou, my brother, worked up there as a laborer for me for 3 or 4 months. Every Sunday night I got him and took him back on Saturday.

Next I worked on the North College Hill Public School. [After that in March 1922, I remember, when I came home and I saw a sign on the door that said Edith’s father had died – Mr. Frey.] In 1923 I built St. Stephen’s Church and rectory on Eastern and Donham Ave. In 1924 I found myself back in Hamilton again at the Notre Dame Academy. That was a six-story college building.

Several times I spent 6 or 8 months as a superintendent on outside work but would always find myself on one or two inside jobs and then I stayed there. One of them was the Condon School for crippled children.

In 1927 I spent quite a bit of time on the Crosley mansion that Tom now lives in the chauffeur’s quarters of as the Chaplain of Providence Hospital. Part of the time I spent between there and Mt. Healthy High School. It was not only a high school, but also an enormous gym where they still play their basketball tournaments around here. I always remember that the concrete ceilings were all exposed. We had so much trouble because there were two big walnut trees that overhung the roof of the school. Every time a walnut fell down in the concrete somebody had to pick it up because it was going to show in the finished ceiling.

From there I went to the Bell Telephone Co. in Mt. Healthy not maybe a square and a half from where Paul lives now. Nothing special remembered from there, just the same hard work as on all the jobs.

In 1929 I went to St. Agnes Church and School on California Ave. in Bond Hill. It was a beautiful granite building. The whole outside was what you called seamed-face granite. The granite was quarried up in the eastern part of granite district but it was granite that was grown flat on the ground and it got its discoloration from rusty water running through the layered stone that colored them the beautiful brown and golden colors.

I have to laugh when I say this, but when I went to Melbourne, Kentucky to build St. Anne’s Convent and that is when Lucy was born. She is named after Mother Lucy.

I went to work, I think, at St. Boniface School in 1932. From St. Boniface School I went to build a diary barn for Mr. Bosse. He brought his children to school every day and he said if he ever had anyone build anything that’s the guy I want to build it because he never walks, he runs all the time. So I built a dairy barn in 3 or 4 weeks.

From there I went to Ohio Life Insurance Co. on Reading Road. It had been a recording company – a factory style. Everything was taken down except the core skeleton and that was faced with limestone and that’s where I set the biggest stone and the heaviest stone I ever had. It weighed 11 tons. It was a stone over the entrance that had a big eagle on it and the words, “Ohio Life Insurance Co.”

I spent 8 or 10 weeks on a jury, but when we got the contract to remodel the Reds ballpark, I had to get permission from the Jury Commissioner to go out there because he agreed with me that couldn’t delay Opening Day just because I was on the jury. I had to promise him that I’d come back some day and serve the rest of my term on the jury – which I never did!

I then went to the Lawrenceburg Distillery owned by the O’Shaughnessy brothers who originally purchased the land from the Sisters at Melbourne, Ky. because one of their Sisters as an O’Shaughnessy daughter. So that’s how we got to bid on the distillery down there. A number of things happened on that job. One of them was that I went down to find out how many men we could bring from Cincinnati so that when we got the job I would try to carry out the order I got from the union down there. But immediately the union wanted one man to be the carpenter foreman. I had an agreement from the meeting that I could bring a carpenter foreman, a laborer foreman, a cement finisher foreman, and a couple other fellows with me. When this man wasn’t made the carpenter foreman, he immediately became rather difficult and made a lot of trouble. We finally settled by giving him the name carpenter foreman, but he didn’t have anything to say because Joe Kraemer went down with me everyday and was the actual carpenter foreman. The man’s name was Burley Clark. He had been up here in Cincinnati as a nonunion man. When the union carpenters took over they ran him off the job and he vowed that no Cincinnati man could ever work on any job in Lawrenceburg. So, that’s what made most of the trouble there. One day when I went up on the roof on the power house, I had sent Joe Kraemer to stretch a line for the saddle of the roof. Anybody that knows the building business knows that they go up on a slope on the parapet wall and a slope roof until they finally train the water over to the drain. When I got up there, a couple hours after they worked on it, the saddle was smaller on the roof and lower on the parapet wall and I asked him why he didn’t stick to the line and he said they didn’t need a big saddle on that kind of roof. So I said, “That’s it! If you don’t take orders from us we might as well stop right here!” So, I went down and got his money ready and gave it to Joe and Joe fired him. So that night he was sitting up on the road with a big old 44 revolver and he said, “This is to tell you don’t come here tomorrow morning to work.” So when I came the next morning, he was sitting there again and I stopped to talk to him. I told him that if you shoot an unarmed man you know what you’ll get for it. You’ll get burned in the electric chair as sure as the Lord made little green apples. He finally uncocked the gun and I went on down the road to see Victor O’Shaughnessy and I told him we simply could not finish the job on schedule. We only had May to October. They wanted to be making whiskey in October. He told me to wait just a few minutes. He and I went to court in Lawrenceburg. We went to see a judge without any legs. He was in a wheelchair. His name was Judge Rickens. He wanted to hear my story. He pressed a button and four policemen came in. He said, “I want you to go out and pick up Burley Clark right away.” So it wasn’t but 20 minutes until they brought him in. They said, “Is this the man?” I said, “Yes, that’s the man.” They read what I had told them and the judge said, “we have every evidence from Mr. O’Shaugnessy that this man doesn’t lie. Now do you agree?” He said, “I guess I have to.” The judge said from now on you will never go back into Greendale which was the name of the area right out of Lawrenceburg where the distillery was built. We never saw him again after that.

In 1935, I spent several months on Anchor Motor Freight which was one of the first buildings that was built to house trucks that haul automobiles. They never hauled automobiles on trucks until 1935.

After I finished that I went to St. Bernard’s Church in Taylor’s Creek. I was there from June until about Christmas. From there I went to Fort Scott in the beginning of 1936 and after finishing Fort Scott some time prior to June 14 when it opened, I went to St. Anne’s Church in Hamilton and poured the footings and foundation before I finally left the employee of Honnert. From the time I left there , I supervised many buildings for architects and engineers.

One of them was Lincoln Court Housing project which had 1,015 families. One of the biggest in Cincinnati in a permanent housing, all concrete and brick. It moved very fast. They poured four floors every day on those long apartment buildings.

After I finished there I put in 5 or 6 months for the United States government in a housing development in Hamilton.

From there I went to the supervision of bringing soldiers’ barracks into Cincinnati after WWII was over. They were cut into pieces and brought in on flat cars. At seven different locations we built up temporary housing for the soldiers that couldn’t find homes. One was in Winton Terrace to house 500 families. One was right across from Baldwin Piano Co. on Gilbert Ave. One was out in Anderson Township. I had a very fine colored young architect with me that had just graduated from architecture school. We had a lot of work. Finally, we finished all but 30% of it because we ran out of money. So while they were our money I had a furlough and that’s when I did most of the work on Dave’s house. I went out nearly every day in the year of 1946. From there I went back again to finish this housing because they had reactivated a bill passed that gave them another half a million dollars to finish this up.

I was doing this work when Momma had her first sickness. We thought it was stroke. They called it several other things, but she never was the same after that. That’s a memorable day for me. I know that. All through these jobs --- there are a lot more of them --- the Cincinnati Public Library, Hamilton County Home and Hospital, Seton High School and many more that I supervised for architects and engineers. Some were for the Hannaford Co., some were for Garber and Woodward, some for Bonestein and Schuster.

Finally, I think when Momma got to where she couldn’t help herself much anymore, I think I quit work when I was 65 years old. I went back and did work after that again but not much consequences. That’s all for today!

An Addition:

Saturday, February 19, 1977 3:45 PM

I did want to say in addition that if it wasn’t for your mother, I don’t think I could have successfully carried out all of these jobs that I did because she was with me 100% and she didn’t bother me during the day and if I remember right she only called me once on a job in 20 to 25 years. I want to give her credit as much as anything for that….

The above is a transcript of Victor Beischel speaking on two audio cassette tapes with the help of his daughter, Sister Lucy Beischel, RSM; and transcribed by his granddaughter, Brigid Beischel Almaguer, for the Beischel Family Reunion on August 8. 1998.

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