Following a fine female lineage

“We have had a very cold and rainy spring, and vegetation is quite backward,” Amanda Trulock wrote from Jefferson County, Ark., on April 14, 1853. In an earlier letter from Georgia, she described the spring as “backward.”

We are having a forward spring in Little Rock. In 13 years of walking around Mount Holly Cemetery, I don’t think I have ever seen the little underfoot flowers come out so early.

Crocuses and daffodils in the snow have been a staple of Arkansas photojournalism for a long time; nothing unusual about seeing them in January. The little white and blue and purple flowers that eventually make up the springtime carpet at Mount Holly— Southern Bluet, Tiny Bluet, Bird’s-eye Speedwell, Virginia Springbeauty, Spring Starflower—are coming out.

Last week I found the grave of Freiderika Habermann Krause (18121877), maternal grandmother of poet John Gould Fletcher Jr. Fletcher writes in his autobiography that in the 1840s, “when the West began filling up fast from the hordes that Europe, troubled as it was with wars and revolutions, began pouring out on American soil,” Freiderika and her older brother left their home in Hanover “owing to some schism in the Lutheran faith.”

“Hanover” in the 1840s would have referred to the Kingdom of Hanover, which began to enjoy “personal union” with Great Britain in 1714, when George Louis of the House of Hanover became George I of England; there were disruptions to that union during the Napoleonic wars, but it was restored by the Congress of Vienna in 1814.

Ancient law, however, prohibited a female from ruling Hanover if a male heir was available, so when Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom in 1837, rule of Hanover passed to her uncle Ernest Augustus. Hanover fell to Prussia in 1866.

Fletcher writes that after landing in New York, Freiderika and her brother traveled by land to Pittsburgh or perhaps as far as Cincinnati, then made “a descent of the Ohio and Mississippi by steamboat, [and] a fresh ascent of the shallow, treacherous Arkansas.” They “made a halt at Little Rock, where there was already a considerable German settlement.”

“My grandmother’s brother thereupon decided to leave her behind,” writes Fletcher, “and rode off to Texas by himself. He was killed there, less than a year later, by a fall from his horse.”

Freiderika was barely 20 at the time, Fletcher writes. Going by the date of birth on her tombstone, the year would have been 1842, though Fletcher puts the journey in the waning ’40s. (He also gives her name as “Adolphine,” the name of his mother and sister.)

Always “equal to any emergency,” according to Fletcher, Freiderika acquired land and built a two-story brick house with “a garden of fruit trees and flowers out back.” (Another minor quibble with Fletcher’s account: He says that Little Rock at the time was “a brief string of log huts one street deep, along a riverbank.” In fact, the three buildings that now comprise the Old State House were almost complete, and one would hardly call that massive Greek Revival complex “a hut.”)

From her house, Freiderika “sold quinine and drugs to the townspeople, her knowledge of the local pharmacopeia having been transmitted to her by her brother,” who apparently had some background in chemistry. She married John Krause, an immigrant from Denmark.

Here are two snapshots of the Krause household, the first from 1850 and the second from 1860:

Freiderika Krause gave birth to four daughters and adopted Adeline Parker (1859-1943). The 1850 Federal Census (of the free population) found John (age 50, listed as a merchant) and “Frederika” at home with three children: Johanna, age 5; Clara, age 3; and Ludovica, age 2, male.

John died in 1856, and the 1860 census lists Freiderika Krause as the head of household with $4,500 in real property and $300 in personal property. Her four daughters are listed thus: Johanna, 14; Clara, 12; Loudowika, 10; and Adolphine, 7.

Because “Ludovica” and “Loudowika” would be pronounced the same way, I wonder if the census taker in 1850 simply mistook Loudowika Krause for a boy. (It’s also quite possible that her earlier age was the census taker’s estimate, or that parental arithmetic was off.)

Though both girls and boys wore dresses and long hair during early childhood in the 19th century and were presumably harder to tell apart, I’m intrigued by the possibility that the census taker made a mistake in identifying Loudowika. I’ve seen the tomboy quality manifest as early as age 2, and girls who have it need to be respected—revered, even—and left alone to flourish, not subjected to the ministrations of fundamentalist Christian pastors or “gender-affirming” therapists, who deserve each other but don’t deserve any role in the lives of children.

In any case, Loudowika (“Lou”) Krause is the most mysterious of the Krause sisters. Clara died in 1866 (aged 18 or 19). Johanna married Peter Hotze, and Adolphine married John Gould Fletcher (father of the poet). Hotze and Fletcher Sr. served in the Confederate army and later went into cotton brokerage together. They became quite rich.

Loudowika was reasonably handsome. The family papers contain a photograph of her wearing a dress that her sister Adolphine wore to the reception for Ulysses S. Grant when he visited Little Rock in 1880. (The Fletchers were not unreconstructed Southerners.)

The Krause girls grew up in a culturally rich household. In the words of John Gould Fletcher, they were “given piano and singing lessons; they collected books and subscribed to the current magazines; they conversed fluently in two languages, German and English, from girlhood; and they grew up to know the best society that Little Rock could afford.”

It was natural, then, for Lou to become a teacher at Arkansas Female College. From 1886 to 1889, perhaps enabled by her inheritance from Freiderika, Lou owned the college and the Pike mansion where it was housed. I’ve found no trace of her thereafter, except in Adolphine Krause Fletcher’s obituary (1913), which mentions that Lou resides in Texas.

Did something go wrong at Arkansas Female College that led Lou to relinquish control, sell the mansion (to her brother-in-law), and leave town? Did she move to one of the areas of German settlement for which her mother and uncle were originally bound, and thus in some sense complete Freiderika’s journey? Did proceeds from her sale of the Pike mansion generate enough interest for her support, or did she continue to teach?

The intellectual and material independence of the women in the Habermann-Krause line is remarkable, and I hope to find out what happened to Lou.