Man and wife without a country. (original) (raw)

Friederich Wilhelm Martin, born in Germany in 1848, came to the U.S. and applied for citizenship in his adopted country in 1870. He married Frances Jane Brooks, a doctor's daughter at Goose Creek.

Their son John Martin one day would serve as a Harris County Commissioner from Precinct 2 and become the namesake of a well-traveled road east of Houston.

Farming his land in the community of Cedar Bayou that's now part of Baytown, Friederich never doubted his citizenship, having met all the requirements and gone through the proper procedures.

Then all of a sudden in the midst of the First World War, federal authorities informed Martin he was not a citizen then and never had been. He was an alien, they claimed.

Moreover, since Jane Brooks (born at Goose Creek in 1859) had married him, she too would be classified as an alien and her citizenship revoked.

Jane Brooks Martin - the granddaughter of Dr. Harvey Whiting, who treated soldiers wounded in the battle at San Jacinto - an alien?

A descendant of pilgrims who came to America on the Mayflower in 1620 --an alien?

As soon as the war ended, the Martins took their case to a federal court.

And they won and lived happily ever after as bona fide citizens of the U.S.A.

Friederich supported his family by selling produce from his farm at Cedar Bayou. Accompanied by son John, he traveled by wagon to Houston to sell the produce. John shared stories of those early years with his son J. Raymond Martin -- the main source of information for this column. Today the Martin family history is preserved by Raymond's son Matthew, a medical doctor in Greensboro, NC.

The ordeal that Friederich and Jane Martin experienced - when their citizenship was questioned - was not uncommon in that volatile era of World War 1.

Prejudice against German Texans got so bad then that farmers of Brandenburg in West Texas changed the name of their community to Old Glory, and many Schmidt families in Texas and throughout the country changed their name to Smith. Another example: The German Cemetery in Houston became the Washington Cemetery.

Immediately after the war, the hard feelings persisted. For instance, Gov. William Hobby in 1919 vetoed appropriations for the German department at the University of Texas at Austin.

Hostilities against German Texans actually began long before World War 1. During the Civil War many German immigrants sided with the Union. Go see the monument - Treue der Union -- in Comfort near Kerrville. Dedicated in 1866, the monument honors the memory of 34 local area Union loyalists slain by Confederates in 1862 in the Nueces Massacre.