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Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kindt
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kindt were both
born in the year 1862 of parents who came to this country from Germany on the
same boat in the year 1854. Their parents were pioneers in these parts (preceded
by probably less than a dozen other families) and helped to build Niles Center.
Shortly after their birth they were baptized by Rev. J. Stumpf, an Evangelical
Pastor. Education in these days was limited to the lower grades in a rural
public school and several years in the German Church School. At the age of
fourteen they were confirmed in the St. Peter Evangelical Church in Niles Center
by Rev. Emil Werner. From then on they worked with their parents on truck farms
until the age of twenty-five when they were married in the same church by the
Rev. Henry Wolf in the year 1887. Their whole life (75 years) has been spent
within less than two miles from where they now reside. They recall the building
of Lincoln Avenue as a private toll road ( about year 1870) the first gate at
what is now the intersection of Lincoln Avenue and Carpenters Road in Niles
Center and the last gate at Lincoln, Fullerton and Halsted Streets, which at
that time was the north end of Chicago. They have seen the transition of forest
to a rich truck farm territory which today has been subdivided to a great
extent; homemade tallow candles to electricity; rough trails to concrete
highways; farmers traveling in crude built carts drawn by oxen to automobiles.
After they were married they started a
truck farm of their own on Howard Street where they lived until the year 1901
when they moved into the village. Mr. Kindt then worked in Klehm's General Store
for fourteen years after which he spent sixteen years hauling the mail between
the Niles Center Post Office and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad
Station at Morton Grove (Mr. Kindt boasts that regardless of weather and
condition of roads he never missed the mail train - if he was late "the train
was late also"). This job terminated in the year 1930 and from then on they have
lived more or less in retirement, but always finding things to do, so life to
them has never become monotonous.
Author: W.H.S.
Dated: October 27th, 1937
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