(This is taken from the information gathered by other members of the family who put together a binder of our family history)
"In Kerns Switzerland on December 3, 1896 Joseph John Zumstein was born. Josef was 37 years old and Emma was 23. He was Emma and Josef's second child joining his sister Marie, age fifteen months. Joseph was soon joined by five more sisters and one brother, Hedwig, Emma (called Gertrude), Anny, Walter, Lina, and Martha.
They were a very musical family playing a variety of instruments. Joseph played the accordion. Many evenings they would sit outside their homes playing their instruments and yodeling to their neighbors across the valley. The neighbors would then play and yodel back to them. Joseph helped his father farm their land and attended school. One year probably in his very early teens, Joseph went to live with an uncle due to the fact that he had been suspended from the local school. As was custom in the area Joseph helped take a few of the cows into the alps in the spring after the snow had melted. They would decorate the cows with bells and more people would join the procession as it headed up into the mountains. While up in the alps they would make cheese and store it in the creeks until it was time to send it down the mountain. There was a small cabin for them to live in and they stayed for a few months. Hay was made while they were there and sent down on a cable that stretched for miles to the bottom of the hill (the cable was still there in 1988). As he grew into his late teens he went to work in the local area. The custom at that time was to give most of your wages to your parents. Joseph grew restless of living at home and sharing his wages as most young men did. He dreamed of going to America, making his fortune, and then returning to Switzerland. Joseph and his best friend Joe Bucher left France on September 4, 1919 aboard the steamship La France, cost of the passage was 407 francs. Joseph was 22 years old at the time.
He arrived at Ellis Island in New York with his suitcase and accordion. He traveled to Portland, Oregon by train. He went to a certain motel in Portland where Swiss immigrants would go upon arrival. Swiss farmers would then hire the help they needed from the new immigrants staying there. Joe went to Tillamook with the agreement to work for a full year on a dairy. His new boss had the reputation of being quite a slave driver and not very nice. After the year was up Joe prepared to return to Portland. He had his trunk delivered to the train depot and everything ready to go when Mr. Vetsch, another Swiss farmer, asked him to stay and work for him. So he stayed in Tillamook and worked for Mr. Vetsch for a couple of years.
Joe's sister Hedy (Hedwig) arrived in the United States around this time and also moved to Tillamook. When he was ready to move again he worked on a dairy in Portland. While at this dairy he worked with a fellow Swiss man named John Miller. Unknown to both of them in the future they would be brother-in-law's, when John married Lillian and Joe married Carrie. Early in the year of 1924 Joe moved once again to a dairy in the Washougal area. In November of that year a friend of his asked him for a ride to Battle Ground to visit a Swiss farm owned by the John Merz family. He met their daugher Carrie on this trip."
After this the book continues on into Carrie's story and then their story together. I'll save that for another post.
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