San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Firefighter was well-known but not chief
My grandfather, William Kracht, was a fire chief in 1890. I read a long time ago that a census showed his position was chauffeur, but my dad Alfred Kracht said that was what they called the driver of the fire engine then and that the driver was in charge of the crew.
He gave me the original photo (of his father as a firefighter) and (a shadow box with) his badge in 2001. I worked at the Crockett Hotel and took the badge to the fire station on the corner by the hotel. The captain showed me a book on the history of San Antonio firefighters (in which) the chief was identified as Bill Cook.
I wish my dad was alive so I could ask him to verify everything, since he is the one who gave me the information a year before he died. I only knew my grandfather as an old man. We would speak to each other in German. Eventually he was moved to a nursing home on Woodlawn Avenue. He stayed in bed so my sister and brothers and I stayed in the lobby while my mom and dad went to see him every Sunday afternoon.
How can I get this corrected?
– Susan Kracht Pennington
Family history, like local history in general, can be like the whisper game, where one person whispers a sentence to the next person, who changes it slightly and so on, until the end of the line or circle, when the last player speaks aloud something quite different from the original statement. Likewise, a hundred or more years after a recollected event, there’s faulty memory, conflation with other stories, embellishment, and hidden or lost information getting between us and the facts.
It doesn’t look as if William Henry Kracht Sr. was ever a chief in the San Antonio Fire Department, although he was a versatile firefighter who played several roles during at least seven years of service. Contemporary as well as current historical references show other people holding that position and point to Kracht taking a different path.
Born in 1878 to a German-born father and a German-American mother, young Will, as he was
called, went to work early. In the 1891 San Antonio city directory, the widowed Emma Kracht is listed as a laundress, and her 13-year-old son was a “cash boy” at Joske Bros. department store, meaning that he ran money from clerks to the cashier and back with the customers’ change.
That was the same year the city’s fire department changed from a collection of rivalrous all-volunteer companies to a paid professional force. Some of the volunteer firefighters signed on as city employees, and their ethnic profile would have given Kracht an advantage. Dating back to 1854, the volunteer companies — more like fraternal organizations — “consisted mostly of Germans with a few Irish, Italian, Southern Americans and German Jews scattered among them,” says Shirley Lerner in a 1986 academic paper on SAFD history published on the city’s website, sanantonio.gov. Members were accepted from all socioeconomic classes, “but men from the upper classes dominated the officer’s ranks.” The abundance of German volunteers, Lerner says, “indicates the influence and power of that particular ethnic group in the city during the 19th century.”
Members of the Kracht family were involved in predominantly German cultural organizations, such as the Hermann Sons, and members of St. John’s Lutheran
Church, though not the fancyschmancy Casino Club. However it happened, he didn’t hook up with the fire department until more than a decade after it had turned into a somewhat less exclusive club.
By 1899, says the directory, 21-year-old Kracht was a clerk at the Menger Hotel, and two years later he held a similar position at the C.H. Dean Co., purveyors of “everything in the hardware and vehicle line.” Still single, he shows up in the 1905 volume as a “callman” for Engine Co. No. 2, his entree into the fire department. Kracht started his career as an auxiliary firefighter, called when needed and paid only when he worked, something like a substitute teacher.
He must have been a quick study, because a year or less into his tenure, he was acting lieutenant of a truck and got a promotion to acting captain when E.L. Dorsett, the previous acting captain and second assistant fire chief, disappeared without word after taking a 20-day leave. As of the 1907 directory, Kracht was a full-fledged captain, and when his sister Minnie and H.H. Paulus married the following year, it was noted in the San Antonio Light, March 12, 1908, that the bride’s brother was William Kracht, “a well-known member of the fire department.”
William Kracht apparently considered himself financially
secure enough to marry Magdalene Rickert later that year, one or both sufficiently identified with the local German-American community to announce their union in the German-language newspaper, Freie Presse fuer Texas, June 12, 1908.
In 1909, the directory still has him as a “captain, fire department,” but in the 1910 U.S. census, Kracht was reported simply as a fireman. In the same year’s directory, he was a “pipeman” (no rank given) for Engine Co.
No. 6, meaning that he was the firefighter directing the hose onto the fire. In 1912, he’s the captain of a “hook and ladder company,” and the 1913 directory is the last to report him as “city fireman.”
Whether from a career reversal or a family man’s desire to work more regular hours in a safer job, he’s an employee in a “works” (factory) by 1914. On his 1918 draft registration card, his occupation is given as “teamster” (horse team driver, which makes sense since he used to drive a horse-drawn fire truck), and his employer was Alamo Iron Works, manufacturers of iron and brass objects from doorstops to huge gates and fences.
He must have learned to drive a truck with an internal-combustion engine, because the 1920, 1930 and 1940 censuses list him either as a chauffeur or truck driver for “hardware” or “iron works.”
Since titles, acting or otherwise, could be fluid in the oldtime SAFD, I checked the department’s own list of former chiefs, also on the city website on a page titled “Hall of Fire Chiefs.” Their names and dates of service are given, along with a photo of each, usually in uniform. I checked all who held the office from the beginning of the professional department in 1891 to the last years Kracht served. Their names, when checked against obituaries or other biographical material, show a pattern: Early SAFD chiefs were prominent men chosen for their executive experience rather than firefighting skills.
Nominated by the mayor and confirmed by City Council, most were businessmen, several of whom went from fire chief to other elected or appointed government posts. From 1891 to 1893, the chief was L.P. Peck, owner of Peck’s Furniture Co. and the
Peck Building at 301-393 E. Houston St. He was followed in 18931894 by Gustav A. Duerler, head of the Duerler Manufacturing Co. and later a City Council member. Next, 1895-1896, was John W. Tobin, later Bexar County sheriff and San Antonio mayor; and in 1897 to 1899, J.W. Collins, later
city auto-driver inspector. From 1899-1905, Will G. Tobin, brother of the previous Chief Tobin, held the position; and from 1905 to 1917, it went to Phil Wright, later police commissioner and acting mayor.
Neither Kracht’s name nor that of “Bill Cook” appear anywhere on the list. Maybe the captain you spoke to was looking for assistant fire chiefs, and your grandfather’s name didn’t appear because he was “acting,” perhaps for a short time.
According to his death certificate, Kracht died Sept. 20, 1963, of cardiac failure, a complication of bladder cancer. His former occupation is given as “clerk, Alamo Iron Works.” He was residing in the Laurelwood Nursing Home at 229 Dashiell St., a few blocks from his longtime home at 210 Nevada St. and the venerable metalworks.