Leland J. Kennedy Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

more German than I was I guess. (laughter) I went to Ireland. But I did never go -
I was in Germany as a soldier, but they've been - I talked to one cousin of mine since
you left. Her first husband died. He was in the shoe business in Decatur, but I got ahold
of her. She's still there. She's remarried to a man by the name of McDermott. But she's
been to Ruett, Germany.
Q: Did she find a record there?
A: Yes. Well I don't know whether she found any records. She found that the only thing
that we didn't quite agree on was that - she thought that Grandpa and Grandma Herwick
met on a boat coming over here but I questioned the correctness of that because I thought
they came over as children, but they may not have. Of course they could have been on the
boat as children too as far as that goes. But my paternal grandparents came over at different
times, both at eight or nine or ten or something like that. I had that somewhere in
the records.
Q: Yes. Well good. So you located the . . .
A: Yes. I located that, yes, yes.
Q: And you say that's near Austria?
A: Near the Austrian border, at least that's what Mrs. McDermott said. I assume that she's
correct yes.
Q: Do you remember any of your grandparents talking about that part of Germany'!
A: No. No. My Grandma Herwick, my mother's mother is the only grandparent I knew,
and she talked German and my mother talked German and I remember her, oh, quite
well. She probably didn't die until I was eight or nine I guess but I don't ever recall her
talking about the old country. We referred to it that way. But my mother's sisters, a
number of them died fairly young. One of them died at childbirth, and of course Uncle
Henry, he left then, left and went somewhere else and we never heard from him. But I
mentioned another one of my mother's sisters married a fireman in St. Louis, Worminghouse
was their name, so that's quite German. Worminghouse and Herwick, that was a good
match.
Q: Yes.
A: But he was in the firehouse with - he got killed in a - of course I guess they wcre
horse-drawn vehicles in those days. He got killed and left a family of six. He died quite
young. But one thing I remember him saying was that one of his firehouse mates was the
late Cardinal Cody's father.
Q: Oh?
A: And I believe that Cody did come from St. Louis, Cardinal Cody. I think that's
true. They did say that Cardinal Cody's father was a brother fireman. I don't know how
close they were or anything like that. That's just family history.
Q: Now this is Cardinal Cody from Chicago was it?
A: Yes, the one that died. He came from St. Louis and his father was a fireman and my
uncle - hell, I don't know what his name was. IIis name was Bill, Bill
Worminghouse. They were in the same firehouse together.
Q: Well. Did you get to know that uncle at all?