William farmed cotton and corn with a hand plow and two horses and always kept milk cows, chickens, and hogs.  Perry, being the only one left at home, did much of the farm work since William was now over sixty-five years old.  Whereever the family lived, a vegetable garden was kept for home use, and Augusta always cared for a nice flower garden.  She was a good seamstress and sewed clothes for the family.  William had a long, snow-white beard and was called Santa Claus by all the children.  He was an avid fisherman and enjoyed hunting.

 

For entertainment, the young people enjoyed dances at the schoolhouse, first the McDonald School, the Haertig School, and the Beck School, or they gathered for a social hour at the Hermann Sons Lodge with coffee and refreshments.  Perry, Willie Haertig, Hertha Zabel, and the Haertig girls organized the SPI Club (Seek-  ers of Pleasure and Instruction) and put on plays at the Beck School.  The men also enjoyed football and baseball games with teams from surrounding towns partici-  pating.  When possible the family attended church.  Baptists, Methodists, Presby-  terians, and Lutherans were all conducted at different times in the same building located at the site of the present-day Methodist Church.

 

In 1926 William sold the farm to Erwin Zabel's father and built their final home on an acre of land in Bonnie View where Mr. and Mrs. Norman Walter now live.  He and Augusta retired to enjoy their later years together.  Ernest had died in 1925 at the age of forty.  On July 24, 1934, Augusta Schlabach passed away at home at the age of seventy-three after a long illness.  She was paralyzed for the last three years of her life.  William lived to be eighty-three years old.  He died on January 17, 11939, after being confined to bed for about two weeks.  There were both buried in La Rosa Cemetery in Woodsboro.

   

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