Of course no family is without its saints and scoundrels. My Great Great Grandfather John Bernard Koetting was a scoundrel. He is the big man second from the left.
Joseph was born in Milwaukee in 1843 to parents who had immigrated from Germany. John made a pretty good living for himself and was a bank officer at the Plankington Bank in Milwaukee. He got caught up in the bank crash of 1893 which interestingly plays an important part in ‘Longing for Home’.
In 1893 silver was artificially tied in value to gold, mostly to support farmers and make it easier for them to pay off their debts. It wasn’t a good system and was vulnerable to scams and bank misconduct. At any rate, multiple factors led to the panic of 1893 and the banks crashed on May 5th 1893. [Stock exchange panic pictured here in a newspaper cartoon See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]
That is when my ancestor got into trouble. He and the president of the bank knew the bank was insolvent, but they stood on the steps of the bank and told investors that the bank was fine, solid as a rock. Then they took deposits, and it seems that they absconded with the money.
In November 1893 Koetting, Plankington and others were indicted by a grand jury of running off with the deposits. There was a bit of a scandal because the jurors were working men and saloon keepers. However, one of the men who lost his life savings was the governor George Peck who was incensed that the bank president assured him that the bank was solvent when they knew it was not. They were let out on bail.
The charge was changed to fraud in November of 1894 and John was rearrested. This time John skipped bail and went to Mexico. According to my cousin Tom, John was suffering from a stomach ailment and went to the hospital. Unfortunately for him an American reporter was in the same hospital and recognized him. John was brought back to Milwaukee to stand trial. The trial went all the way up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court and is now a precedent case about bank fraud.
John’s wife Mary plead for leniency at a hearing in 1896 and asked for his release on parole. They had 9 children (3 deceased, 6 living ages 14-25) and the country was in a depression. Mary needed help keeping everyone fed. The family lore is that Mary was a battle axe of a German woman and John told the court that he would rather serve his time. I can’t find that in the papers, but it may be true. He must not have spent too much time in jail because the picture above was taken in 1913 when his son Joseph Albert was getting ready to marry.
This is Mary Adelheid Kopmeir Koetting with her grandson Joseph Aloysius Koetting – my grandfather. I think my brother Kevin looks remarkably like our Grandfather in this picture.
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