I always thought I was Dutch. As I learned later in school, English speakers often confused Deutsch for Dutch, but when my father mentioned the House of Orange, I figured I truly was a son of the Netherlands.

I never knew much about my father’s family, other than that they came from Maine and he had an uncle and cousin living in East Providence. When I asked my father about his family he told me that there was nothing he could do about his ancestors, he was only interested in his descendants.

I did learn that my grandfather, who died well before I was born, left Maine working as a fireman on a steam vessel and settled in New London where he married Mary Alice Maynard.

My father was born in 1913 and lived on Howard Street. He attended Harbor School and was a paid choirboy at St. James, though he attended Sunday School at Second Congregational.

In the early 1920s the family moved to Groton where my grandfather, Simon A. Welt, bought and operated a grocery store/meat market on the corner of Thames and Smith streets and a house at 460 Thames. He served as a fire policeman and eventually a burgess.

My father told me that my grandfather had two close friends, the pastors of Groton Heights Baptist Church and Sacred Heart Church, which was then, of course, right up the street from the store on Eastern Point Road.

When my grandfather died in 1934, my father left URI, married Eileen Frusher, and took over the business in the midst of the Depression. Eventually the store was closed and my father began working at Electric Boat. In 1952 we moved to Library Street in Mystic.

Imagine my surprise when, as a college student, a friend who made a trip to Maine and visited the small town of Waldoboro reported to me that the town was full of Welts and that they were German. In fact, the Old German Meeting House, a Lutheran Church, is now a historic site.

German settlers

I later learned that the German families began to settle before the Revolution. One branch of the family operated the Reed and Welt Shipyard, which may explain why my grandfather was working on a steamship while his brother Jess was a ship’s carpenter. He was wise not to have gone to sea a couple of years earlier, as one of the shipyard’s vessels, the schooner Augustus Welt, was sunk by the Germans in July 1917 in the Bay of Biscay.

I still have no real answer as to why my father claimed Dutch heritage, but I do have a theory. Many readers will recall from their history courses that there was a wave of anti-German hysteria in the country.

In 1918, Robert Prager, a German immigrant, was lynched in Collinsville, Illinois. The perpetrators were arrested, tried and acquitted. One of the defense attorneys called it “patriotic murder.”

My father had once given me a Tom Swift Jr. book when I was a youngster, telling me that he enjoyed the original series. Over the years I have developed an interest in juvenile fiction, particularly boys’ series books, such as Tom Swift.

Now, given that my father was born in 1913, he probably wasn’t reading these books until he was about 9 or 10 years old. However, that doesn’t mean that he and his friends didn’t read books written during World War I in the years following the conflict. Boys’ series books of that era were certainly not politically correct. In fact, some of them were virulently anti-German.

A few years ago I audited an American history course taught by Dr. Matt McKenzie at UConn-Avery Point, which I enjoyed very much. When the course ended, Professor McKenzie asked me if I had any history topics I’d like to consider in depth. If so, I should sign up to audit HIST 499W, which, as it turned out, was essentially independent research, with the final product being a paper of abut 25 pages.

(Normally an auditor does exactly what that suggests – listens. However, in this class I did everything but get a grade and credit.)

Investigating impact

I presented a list of five possible topics, and Professor McKenzie suggested that I investigate the first: the impact that boys’ series books of the World War I era had on their readers. Bear in mind that these books were read by impressionable boys for many years after the war.

To be fair to Edward Stratemeyer, the creator of Tom Swift and over a hundred other series, I didn’t see any blatant anti-German dialogue in his books written during the war years. However, even Stratemeyer voiced public opinion in one volume released after the United States had entered the war when Tom’s patriotism is questioned by none other than the father of his girlfriend.

Tom had not rushed down to enlist, like so many other young men.

“It isn’t like Tom Swift to stand back, and yet it does begin to look as though he cared more for his queer inventions – machines that butt down fences – than for helping Uncle Sam.”

Tom was, of course, in the process of developing a tank.

Anti-German views certainly are evident in series by other publishers. In “The Army Boys in France,” Nick, a young son of a German immigrant, is quoted as saying, “Somebody has got to rule the world, and why not Germany?”

Anti-German sentiment in Europe is explained in a manner that youngsters can understand in “Tom Slade on a Transport.” Tom, the hero of a number of books by Percy K. Fitzhugh, was a young man who was saved from a life of petty crime by his involvement with the Boy Scout movement.

In this volume, printed in 1918 after the United States had entered the war, 17-year-old Tom, who was still too young to enlist, is working on a troop transport bringing doughboys to France. One of the soldiers, nicknamed Frenchy (of course!), an immigrant from Alsace-Lorraine, explained the situation in his native land to Tom. When Tom indicated that the disputed area was part of Germany and that, therefore, the residents must be German citizens, Frenchy set him straight.

“Zey are Zherman slaves – yes! Citizens – no! See! When still I am a leetle boy, I must learn ze Zherman…My papa have to pay fine when hees cheeldren speak ze French. My little seester when she sing ze Marseillaise – she must go t’ree days to ze Zherman Zhail!”

I always used this excerpt when teaching my middle school students about the concept of nationalism. I recently shared it with a history professor at Avery Point who also used it in class.

The most blatant prejudice I found was in the “Ralph of the Railroad” series. Ralph was a young man who rose in the railroad ranks from fireman to dispatcher in a very short time.

In the “Ralph on the Army Train” volume the book begins with a confrontation between a Jacob, a German immigrant, and other railroad workers in which Jacob declares that all the soldiers Uncle Sam can send overseas cannot defeat the Kaiser’s troops.

Ralph’s response to Jacob was, “The best thing that could happened to you Germans who haven’t the decency and sense of gratitude to make you loyal to the United States, would be to load up ships with you, instead of sending so many troops, and send you across to your blessed Vaterland. If the U-boats sunk a few of you, all the better.”

A U-boat is featured in another series novel, “Dave Darin After the Mine Layers.” The Dave Darin series began with Dave as a plebe at Annapolis. By the time of the war he is a lieutenant commander. Having been swept overboard from his destroyer during a storm, he was rescued by a Danish freighter, which was then sunk by a German submarine. After being interrogated by the submarine’s commander, the Danish skipper, LCDR Darrin, and two English passengers are left on the deck of the U-boat as it submerges.

Halsey Davidson (which, I suspect, is a pseudonym) observed in “Navy Boys After the Submarines,” that there may have been American support for Germany’s war effort.

“To be attacked by the Germans so far out at sea was both a surprise and a source of worry to the high command of the fleet…It meant, without doubt, that there were bases for German submarines on the American of the ocean…There was, somewhere near the coast, at least one base where the submarines, after crossing the Atlantic, could get oil and other supplies.”

While I have my serious doubts about the author’s premise, if such a base did exist, after what happened to the Augustus Welt, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in Waldoboro.

I don’t know whether my father ever read any of the books I’ve cited, but if he had, I don’t blame him for being Dutch!

Robert F. Welt is a retired Groton Public Schools teacher who lives in Mystic.