This is a short account of the life and times of my grandfather. I know little detail and much of this account is stories that were told me by him and others that knew him in his younger days. He was born about 1866 in Philadelphia, and grew up there along with two sisters, Annie and Bessie, and an older brother, Charles. His father Christian and mother Hannah emigrated to the U.S. from Baden-Wurtemberg, Gemany prior to the Civil War, apparently along with other Kronmillers that landed in Baltimore and travelled on to Indiana and farther. He died in 1942.

He told me the story that his family emigrated to Dutch Mountain around 1875 when he was 5 years old. They travelled by covered wagon, taking five days to make the journey from Philaelphia. This is excellent time for travelling that far on the roads of the day. They must have had a good team.. They built a house to the west of Leo Dieffenbach's present home (Bowman place). Leo told me that his mother told him that the Kronmiller house had a circular stairway. His great grandson unknowingly repeated the same trick in his home in Bellasylva.

Both boys had nicknames that were used by the locals. Charlie was Skinny and George was Shorty. Adolf Otten told me that their names were either painted or carved inside Otto Behr's barn at Shady Nook. Shorty was always Pop-pop to me.

Pop-pop left home when he was 12 years old and went in the birch bark distilling business with Lee Kester, Clyde's father. When he was somewhat older, I think, he, Lee and probably others used to go to dances on Saturday nights in Lovelton, by hiking down Devil's Elbow Road. In those days it was a traveled road and the Bellasylva mail came up it via horse and wagon. When the automobile replaced the horse, Devils Elbow Road was abandoned because the cars couldn't make it. Pop-pop also picked up odd change by barbering in the lumber camps He liked to demonstrate how he could shave himself with a razor-sharp axe. He was also not above demonstrating how he could hold the far end of a double bitted axe handle in one hand and holding the axe head over his head, slowly lower it until it touched the tip of his nose, and then he would raise it again. I was very impressed.

The story goes that when he was eighteen, feeling down and in the company of Lee Kester and Adolph Otten, Adolf's father. He said that if he had two dollars and a pair of pants that he would get to hell off the mountain. Apparently the other two wanted to get rid of him because one gave him the money and the other the pants. He went to Philadelphia.

His first job was driving horse cars before there were trolleys. It appears that looking at the rear end of a horse all day must have got to him becaue, from then on, he always worked for himself. If he were alive today, he would be called an entrepreneur (small scale). He seems to have started a lot of different businesses managing to sell them at a profit and then starting something else. Among them was an ice cream business whereby he made the ice cream and had men pushing hokey-pokey carts around the neighborhoods hawking their wares. When ice cream parlors became popular, he opened one up selling Breyers ice cream. Since ice cream was quite seasonable,and oyster houses were also seaonable, his parlor would become an oyster restauant and bar in the months containg an "R". Along about that time, automobiles were becoming popular, say 1910 . So he opened a two story garage providing storage, repairs and fuel.

In the meantime he found that he could make a fast buck selling Christmas trees in North Philadelphia, so he would come back on the mountain, and make up a RR carload of trees to ship to Phillie. He soon found that it was more profitable to go up to Maine where there were more spruces of suitable size and cheap labor available to cut and tie them up. . He shipped them by rail to this area. I remember one year, as a toddler, my grandmother, Louis (Simon) Kronmiller**, and he at the big round oak dining room table counting a pile of crumped folding money.

Along in the early 1920's he had in mind retiring to a farm in the country, so he invested in row-house rental real estate and Wall Street. He bought a new 1923 Dodge touring car and along with Mom-mom went up to Bellasylva and stayed with his old buddy, Almon Hunsinger. At the time, the Charles Fincke estate was up for grabs and he bought it. A Kronmiller was back on the mountain. It was a rather well equipped farm for the times with a good orchard, grape arbor, barn, outbuildings and a two hole backhouse.

My grandparents would winter in Philadelphia and in early May go to the farm (and clean-up after hunters who would break in, live and use one room as a toilet). This is about the time I showed up on the scene for the summer. As I grew up, I graduated from riding in the hay wagon to helping load and unload it., picking apple drops to feed the pig, and getting my own cow to milk. The summer of '30 was not a happy one, it was after the stock crash and both the Ottens and my grandfather lost heavilly in the debacle. I remember them commiserating with each other that summer. As a result, the following winter, Pop-pop opened a store front secondhand furniture business. There was a lot of liquidating going on by the poor depression victims. New families starting up needed furniture--cheap used furniture. Besides, the back room made a good pinochle parlor for him and his old city cronies, in the cold weather. In the Spring, he would return to the mountain. He used to say that this was the best busines he ever had, He just shut it up and left it in the Summer time.

He always had plenty of hard cider, blackberry and huckleberry wine and home brew both porter and lager style. I made batches of root beer with Hires extract. As a result, it was always a popular place to visit for folks as far away as Lopez and Dushore. Remember it was the days of the Volstead Act.

**Family History Note: My grandmother's maiden name was Simon, also of German origin, and she lived until 1946 or 7. My father was Raymond W. Kronmiller, born in 1896 and died in 1967. My mother's maiden name was Keating; they divorced when I was about seven years old. She came from Tremont in Schuykill county, PA.

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