The different spellings of the last name of Ida Pertiet and her siblings are not spelling errors. The original name was Petit. He was from Sweden. A Petit went to Germany. The name was Germanized there to Pertit, as is visible on the picture of the family marker at the West Dundee Cemetery. In the United States, where all the children were born, their parents let them choose whether to spell it Pertiet or Perteit. Bill chose Perteit.
William Perteit was the fifth of ten children born to Friedrich and Dorathea Pertit, German immigrants who farmed outside Algonquin, IL. One infant, never named, died prematurely. Bill did not have a lot of formal schooling; the kids spoke German at home and English out in public. My mother, Betsy, was one of their three youngest grandchildren, born after Friedrich was dead. Dorathea still spoke German at home, and Betsy learned to speak it as a small child, so that she could talk to Grandma Pertit.
Bill's lack of formal education was not a lack of intelligence, though. He spoke or understood up to about twelve languages as an adult, some better than others. The suburbs and farms around Chicago were a melting pot of immigrants, all with varying languages, and Bill was a gregarious and charming fellow, who enjoyed the visiting after church or various functions, or just hanging around the gas station. I hung around the gas station with him a number of times when I was a very little girl; I remember it. The men told stories, and laughed. Social groups.
Bill Perteit was a bachelor farmer until he met the pretty red-haired church singer, Atha Booher. He convinced her to marry him, when he was 39 and she was 23. They farmed outside Algonquin, IL. Atha had been a social worker, at Jane Addams's Hull House in Chicago, and a traveling church singer on the Sundays, until her marriage.
They had only one child, as childbirth proved to be a terrible and dangerous thing for Atha. Betsy was Daddy's girl, going everywhere with him. In the winters, when the snow was too bad, he took her to school on his tractor. One time when she was about four, she was in the pen with the sows, and those were vicious sows. Her father saw her, came running, and yanked her out of there before the sows got to her. They would have killed her.
During the Depression, Bill and Atha took in various family members to help out on the farm, and to have a place. One time or another during those years, they took in Bill's brother Bert, who was a single carpenter at the time, and another time, they took in Atha's brother Joe and his wife Theta. Joe was a school teacher, but during the Depression, you did what you had to do to get by.
When Bill was in his middle to late 40's, he lost his hand in a farming accident, and the rest of his arm, up to the shoulder, to gangrene. I only heard him tell the story once, when he, Atha, her mother and I were visiting Atha's uncle Waldo in Indiana. (Atha's mother was from Indiana, and the rest of her family stayed there.) The family, including some more of the ones from Indiana, were sitting around the living room in a circle, and Dad told the story of how he lost his hand. He was laughing as he told it -- by then it had been twenty years since it happened, and he had some perspective. The hired man was with him, witnessed it, and filled his pants at the sight. Dad thought that was hysterical. His amputated hand and arm are buried in the grave of his sister-in-law Iza in Danville, IL. Atha's sister Iza died in the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.
Bill had a lifelong case of asthma, a bad one, which precluded him going off to fight in World War I, although his brother Bert did do that. It eventually forced him to give up farming, and go into other lines of work, when he was about 60. One job he had when I was a child was working on the county road crew, cleaning up the ditches and roadsides. Back then, people threw trash and furniture and all sorts of things along the roads; there really was no local trash pickup. People either took stuff to the dump, hired someone to take it to the dump, or tossed it into whatever place they could find. My family still has a lovely bentwood chair he found and gave to my mother. She refinished and recovered furniture as a hobby.
Later, after leaving the road crew, he worked as a night watchman in various facilities around the Kane, McHenry, and Cook County areas of Illinois. One place he worked was the American Can Company; another was the watch factory in Elgin. I remember because my grandmother and I visited him at both those places when I was staying with them.
Bill did not retire until he was 82. He got someone to forge his union paperwork to take ten years off of his age, so that they would not forcibly retire him. He wanted to work.
After Bill and Atha quit farming (around 1950), they bought a small house with a couple of acres of land in the country outside Barrington, IL. Bill was able to landscape and garden to his heart's content there. He was a born farmer, with the proverbial green thumb, but in his case, it was a whole green body. He could grow anything at all, and it was his great pleasure to do so.
Bill remained very close to his daughter his entire life. He did not travel much. Atha's sister Elda moved to Florida around 1960, and they visited her there on vacation several times. They vacationed in Canada once around 1950. It was against the law to bring live plants into the USA from other countries, but my grandparents found a couple of pine tree seedlings they could not do without, so my grandmother brought them back to Illinois inside her brassiere. They planted them on the east side of the house in Barrington, and by the time I lived with them in 1966, those trees were huge. It used to amuse me to look at them and think how they arrived.
He liked being home. Bill was raised German Lutheran, and Bill and Atha attended mostly Lutheran churches the rest of his life, but I am unsure of how devout he was. We never discussed it. He was a very good man. He loved his wife, daughter, grandchildren, and siblings, and he loved his fellow man, for the most part. I heard him tell a lot of jokes in my life, but I never once heard him tell a cruel one about any other person.
I was privileged to help take care of Dad in my mother's home the last month of his life; he went downhill daily. Even approaching death, he was still a good, kind gentleman, thoughtful and considerate. I am proud to have had such a man be my grandfather.
William Perteit was the fifth of ten children born to Friedrich and Dorathea Pertit, German immigrants who farmed outside Algonquin, IL. One infant, never named, died prematurely. Bill did not have a lot of formal schooling; the kids spoke German at home and English out in public. My mother, Betsy, was one of their three youngest grandchildren, born after Friedrich was dead. Dorathea still spoke German at home, and Betsy learned to speak it as a small child, so that she could talk to Grandma Pertit.
Bill's lack of formal education was not a lack of intelligence, though. He spoke or understood up to about twelve languages as an adult, some better than others. The suburbs and farms around Chicago were a melting pot of immigrants, all with varying languages, and Bill was a gregarious and charming fellow, who enjoyed the visiting after church or various functions, or just hanging around the gas station. I hung around the gas station with him a number of times when I was a very little girl; I remember it. The men told stories, and laughed. Social groups.
Bill Perteit was a bachelor farmer until he met the pretty red-haired church singer, Atha Booher. He convinced her to marry him, when he was 39 and she was 23. They farmed outside Algonquin, IL. Atha had been a social worker, at Jane Addams's Hull House in Chicago, and a traveling church singer on the Sundays, until her marriage.
They had only one child, as childbirth proved to be a terrible and dangerous thing for Atha. Betsy was Daddy's girl, going everywhere with him. In the winters, when the snow was too bad, he took her to school on his tractor. One time when she was about four, she was in the pen with the sows, and those were vicious sows. Her father saw her, came running, and yanked her out of there before the sows got to her. They would have killed her.
During the Depression, Bill and Atha took in various family members to help out on the farm, and to have a place. One time or another during those years, they took in Bill's brother Bert, who was a single carpenter at the time, and another time, they took in Atha's brother Joe and his wife Theta. Joe was a school teacher, but during the Depression, you did what you had to do to get by.
When Bill was in his middle to late 40's, he lost his hand in a farming accident, and the rest of his arm, up to the shoulder, to gangrene. I only heard him tell the story once, when he, Atha, her mother and I were visiting Atha's uncle Waldo in Indiana. (Atha's mother was from Indiana, and the rest of her family stayed there.) The family, including some more of the ones from Indiana, were sitting around the living room in a circle, and Dad told the story of how he lost his hand. He was laughing as he told it -- by then it had been twenty years since it happened, and he had some perspective. The hired man was with him, witnessed it, and filled his pants at the sight. Dad thought that was hysterical. His amputated hand and arm are buried in the grave of his sister-in-law Iza in Danville, IL. Atha's sister Iza died in the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.
Bill had a lifelong case of asthma, a bad one, which precluded him going off to fight in World War I, although his brother Bert did do that. It eventually forced him to give up farming, and go into other lines of work, when he was about 60. One job he had when I was a child was working on the county road crew, cleaning up the ditches and roadsides. Back then, people threw trash and furniture and all sorts of things along the roads; there really was no local trash pickup. People either took stuff to the dump, hired someone to take it to the dump, or tossed it into whatever place they could find. My family still has a lovely bentwood chair he found and gave to my mother. She refinished and recovered furniture as a hobby.
Later, after leaving the road crew, he worked as a night watchman in various facilities around the Kane, McHenry, and Cook County areas of Illinois. One place he worked was the American Can Company; another was the watch factory in Elgin. I remember because my grandmother and I visited him at both those places when I was staying with them.
Bill did not retire until he was 82. He got someone to forge his union paperwork to take ten years off of his age, so that they would not forcibly retire him. He wanted to work.
After Bill and Atha quit farming (around 1950), they bought a small house with a couple of acres of land in the country outside Barrington, IL. Bill was able to landscape and garden to his heart's content there. He was a born farmer, with the proverbial green thumb, but in his case, it was a whole green body. He could grow anything at all, and it was his great pleasure to do so.
Bill remained very close to his daughter his entire life. He did not travel much. Atha's sister Elda moved to Florida around 1960, and they visited her there on vacation several times. They vacationed in Canada once around 1950. It was against the law to bring live plants into the USA from other countries, but my grandparents found a couple of pine tree seedlings they could not do without, so my grandmother brought them back to Illinois inside her brassiere. They planted them on the east side of the house in Barrington, and by the time I lived with them in 1966, those trees were huge. It used to amuse me to look at them and think how they arrived.
He liked being home. Bill was raised German Lutheran, and Bill and Atha attended mostly Lutheran churches the rest of his life, but I am unsure of how devout he was. We never discussed it. He was a very good man. He loved his wife, daughter, grandchildren, and siblings, and he loved his fellow man, for the most part. I heard him tell a lot of jokes in my life, but I never once heard him tell a cruel one about any other person.
I was privileged to help take care of Dad in my mother's home the last month of his life; he went downhill daily. Even approaching death, he was still a good, kind gentleman, thoughtful and considerate. I am proud to have had such a man be my grandfather.
The different spellings of the last name of Ida Pertiet and her siblings are not spelling errors. The original name was Petit. He was from Sweden. A Petit went to Germany. The name was Germanized there to Pertit, as is visible on the picture of the family marker at the West Dundee Cemetery. In the United States, where all the children were born, their parents let them choose whether to spell it Pertiet or Perteit. Bill chose Perteit.
William Perteit was the fifth of ten children born to Friedrich and Dorathea Pertit, German immigrants who farmed outside Algonquin, IL. One infant, never named, died prematurely. Bill did not have a lot of formal schooling; the kids spoke German at home and English out in public. My mother, Betsy, was one of their three youngest grandchildren, born after Friedrich was dead. Dorathea still spoke German at home, and Betsy learned to speak it as a small child, so that she could talk to Grandma Pertit.
Bill's lack of formal education was not a lack of intelligence, though. He spoke or understood up to about twelve languages as an adult, some better than others. The suburbs and farms around Chicago were a melting pot of immigrants, all with varying languages, and Bill was a gregarious and charming fellow, who enjoyed the visiting after church or various functions, or just hanging around the gas station. I hung around the gas station with him a number of times when I was a very little girl; I remember it. The men told stories, and laughed. Social groups.
Bill Perteit was a bachelor farmer until he met the pretty red-haired church singer, Atha Booher. He convinced her to marry him, when he was 39 and she was 23. They farmed outside Algonquin, IL. Atha had been a social worker, at Jane Addams's Hull House in Chicago, and a traveling church singer on the Sundays, until her marriage.
They had only one child, as childbirth proved to be a terrible and dangerous thing for Atha. Betsy was Daddy's girl, going everywhere with him. In the winters, when the snow was too bad, he took her to school on his tractor. One time when she was about four, she was in the pen with the sows, and those were vicious sows. Her father saw her, came running, and yanked her out of there before the sows got to her. They would have killed her.
During the Depression, Bill and Atha took in various family members to help out on the farm, and to have a place. One time or another during those years, they took in Bill's brother Bert, who was a single carpenter at the time, and another time, they took in Atha's brother Joe and his wife Theta. Joe was a school teacher, but during the Depression, you did what you had to do to get by.
When Bill was in his middle to late 40's, he lost his hand in a farming accident, and the rest of his arm, up to the shoulder, to gangrene. I only heard him tell the story once, when he, Atha, her mother and I were visiting Atha's uncle Waldo in Indiana. (Atha's mother was from Indiana, and the rest of her family stayed there.) The family, including some more of the ones from Indiana, were sitting around the living room in a circle, and Dad told the story of how he lost his hand. He was laughing as he told it -- by then it had been twenty years since it happened, and he had some perspective. The hired man was with him, witnessed it, and filled his pants at the sight. Dad thought that was hysterical. His amputated hand and arm are buried in the grave of his sister-in-law Iza in Danville, IL. Atha's sister Iza died in the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.
Bill had a lifelong case of asthma, a bad one, which precluded him going off to fight in World War I, although his brother Bert did do that. It eventually forced him to give up farming, and go into other lines of work, when he was about 60. One job he had when I was a child was working on the county road crew, cleaning up the ditches and roadsides. Back then, people threw trash and furniture and all sorts of things along the roads; there really was no local trash pickup. People either took stuff to the dump, hired someone to take it to the dump, or tossed it into whatever place they could find. My family still has a lovely bentwood chair he found and gave to my mother. She refinished and recovered furniture as a hobby.
Later, after leaving the road crew, he worked as a night watchman in various facilities around the Kane, McHenry, and Cook County areas of Illinois. One place he worked was the American Can Company; another was the watch factory in Elgin. I remember because my grandmother and I visited him at both those places when I was staying with them.
Bill did not retire until he was 82. He got someone to forge his union paperwork to take ten years off of his age, so that they would not forcibly retire him. He wanted to work.
After Bill and Atha quit farming (around 1950), they bought a small house with a couple of acres of land in the country outside Barrington, IL. Bill was able to landscape and garden to his heart's content there. He was a born farmer, with the proverbial green thumb, but in his case, it was a whole green body. He could grow anything at all, and it was his great pleasure to do so.
Bill remained very close to his daughter his entire life. He did not travel much. Atha's sister Elda moved to Florida around 1960, and they visited her there on vacation several times. They vacationed in Canada once around 1950. It was against the law to bring live plants into the USA from other countries, but my grandparents found a couple of pine tree seedlings they could not do without, so my grandmother brought them back to Illinois inside her brassiere. They planted them on the east side of the house in Barrington, and by the time I lived with them in 1966, those trees were huge. It used to amuse me to look at them and think how they arrived.
He liked being home. Bill was raised German Lutheran, and Bill and Atha attended mostly Lutheran churches the rest of his life, but I am unsure of how devout he was. We never discussed it. He was a very good man. He loved his wife, daughter, grandchildren, and siblings, and he loved his fellow man, for the most part. I heard him tell a lot of jokes in my life, but I never once heard him tell a cruel one about any other person.
I was privileged to help take care of Dad in my mother's home the last month of his life; he went downhill daily. Even approaching death, he was still a good, kind gentleman, thoughtful and considerate. I am proud to have had such a man be my grandfather.
William Perteit was the fifth of ten children born to Friedrich and Dorathea Pertit, German immigrants who farmed outside Algonquin, IL. One infant, never named, died prematurely. Bill did not have a lot of formal schooling; the kids spoke German at home and English out in public. My mother, Betsy, was one of their three youngest grandchildren, born after Friedrich was dead. Dorathea still spoke German at home, and Betsy learned to speak it as a small child, so that she could talk to Grandma Pertit.
Bill's lack of formal education was not a lack of intelligence, though. He spoke or understood up to about twelve languages as an adult, some better than others. The suburbs and farms around Chicago were a melting pot of immigrants, all with varying languages, and Bill was a gregarious and charming fellow, who enjoyed the visiting after church or various functions, or just hanging around the gas station. I hung around the gas station with him a number of times when I was a very little girl; I remember it. The men told stories, and laughed. Social groups.
Bill Perteit was a bachelor farmer until he met the pretty red-haired church singer, Atha Booher. He convinced her to marry him, when he was 39 and she was 23. They farmed outside Algonquin, IL. Atha had been a social worker, at Jane Addams's Hull House in Chicago, and a traveling church singer on the Sundays, until her marriage.
They had only one child, as childbirth proved to be a terrible and dangerous thing for Atha. Betsy was Daddy's girl, going everywhere with him. In the winters, when the snow was too bad, he took her to school on his tractor. One time when she was about four, she was in the pen with the sows, and those were vicious sows. Her father saw her, came running, and yanked her out of there before the sows got to her. They would have killed her.
During the Depression, Bill and Atha took in various family members to help out on the farm, and to have a place. One time or another during those years, they took in Bill's brother Bert, who was a single carpenter at the time, and another time, they took in Atha's brother Joe and his wife Theta. Joe was a school teacher, but during the Depression, you did what you had to do to get by.
When Bill was in his middle to late 40's, he lost his hand in a farming accident, and the rest of his arm, up to the shoulder, to gangrene. I only heard him tell the story once, when he, Atha, her mother and I were visiting Atha's uncle Waldo in Indiana. (Atha's mother was from Indiana, and the rest of her family stayed there.) The family, including some more of the ones from Indiana, were sitting around the living room in a circle, and Dad told the story of how he lost his hand. He was laughing as he told it -- by then it had been twenty years since it happened, and he had some perspective. The hired man was with him, witnessed it, and filled his pants at the sight. Dad thought that was hysterical. His amputated hand and arm are buried in the grave of his sister-in-law Iza in Danville, IL. Atha's sister Iza died in the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.
Bill had a lifelong case of asthma, a bad one, which precluded him going off to fight in World War I, although his brother Bert did do that. It eventually forced him to give up farming, and go into other lines of work, when he was about 60. One job he had when I was a child was working on the county road crew, cleaning up the ditches and roadsides. Back then, people threw trash and furniture and all sorts of things along the roads; there really was no local trash pickup. People either took stuff to the dump, hired someone to take it to the dump, or tossed it into whatever place they could find. My family still has a lovely bentwood chair he found and gave to my mother. She refinished and recovered furniture as a hobby.
Later, after leaving the road crew, he worked as a night watchman in various facilities around the Kane, McHenry, and Cook County areas of Illinois. One place he worked was the American Can Company; another was the watch factory in Elgin. I remember because my grandmother and I visited him at both those places when I was staying with them.
Bill did not retire until he was 82. He got someone to forge his union paperwork to take ten years off of his age, so that they would not forcibly retire him. He wanted to work.
After Bill and Atha quit farming (around 1950), they bought a small house with a couple of acres of land in the country outside Barrington, IL. Bill was able to landscape and garden to his heart's content there. He was a born farmer, with the proverbial green thumb, but in his case, it was a whole green body. He could grow anything at all, and it was his great pleasure to do so.
Bill remained very close to his daughter his entire life. He did not travel much. Atha's sister Elda moved to Florida around 1960, and they visited her there on vacation several times. They vacationed in Canada once around 1950. It was against the law to bring live plants into the USA from other countries, but my grandparents found a couple of pine tree seedlings they could not do without, so my grandmother brought them back to Illinois inside her brassiere. They planted them on the east side of the house in Barrington, and by the time I lived with them in 1966, those trees were huge. It used to amuse me to look at them and think how they arrived.
He liked being home. Bill was raised German Lutheran, and Bill and Atha attended mostly Lutheran churches the rest of his life, but I am unsure of how devout he was. We never discussed it. He was a very good man. He loved his wife, daughter, grandchildren, and siblings, and he loved his fellow man, for the most part. I heard him tell a lot of jokes in my life, but I never once heard him tell a cruel one about any other person.
I was privileged to help take care of Dad in my mother's home the last month of his life; he went downhill daily. Even approaching death, he was still a good, kind gentleman, thoughtful and considerate. I am proud to have had such a man be my grandfather.
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