Wilhelmine Mina Falkenstein

input by liz oliner, 10/21/09--told to me by Florence Stepp--Mina lived on turner street. You got off at 26th street and columbia, it was a little street. They had a big 3 story house and her daughters, hettie, myna and rose slept on the 3rd floor. There was a little window on the third floor. Hettie at one point heard someone try to break into the 3rd floor window. They woke Mina up and told her to call the police. Mina put the girls downstairs. She took a baseball bat and stood by the window and said, "if anyone tries to come in here they're gonna lose their head. No one will follow the first one." The girls said, "What will the police do?" Big Mina (she was big) said, "The police, the police they will no nothing."

~Awesome slice of life, thanks florence!

I heard another story about Mina. Her husband bought his first two daughters a washing machine at the turn of the century. Mina was so mad that there was a huge fight that I have heard about over and over again when I was a kid. When I was a kid it was about 60 years after the fight. Can you imagine what that fight must have been like? Its 100 years later now and I am writing about it. Whew.

4/10/08 (input by Liz Oliner)

My dad (Paul Daukas) told me that Mina was the sweetest person. Such a hard worker too. From what I understand she raised 9 children and only spoke German even after being her all those years. My guess is this was the case because she had so many children and probably just didn't get out of the house. She was Gottleib's third wife and that couldn't have been easy either, moving to a whole new country and also helping with his two children from his first marriage and she was only 8 years older than those girls (more like sisters in age.)

Cousin florence stepp has the address of the church the family lived in in Neckarwestheim