Damm Family

John Domm (Damm), his wife Augusta Bohne Domm and their daughter Helen Paulina, and John's brother Frank left Texas for Brazil in 1868. The Domms settled near Santa Barbara, and their home was a popular gathering place for their fellow immigrants. They had "a great orchard and very well-maintained garden. It had many leafy arbors with swings and seesaws in the shade. It was a favorite place for the Americans to have picnics, being centrally located between the main American settlements. Like many other southerners, John was a member of the Freemasons in Santa Barbara.

"Other work for rainy days was to make implements. The blacksmiths had to improvise, heating the points of the plows until they were red hot and then beating them at the edges until they were suitably sharp. These chores could be done at home. For bigger jobs such as the construction of ploughs, etc., there were the brothers Domm, Frank and John, who had established themselves in the village with a well-equipped blacksmith shop." The Domms were "very good blacksmiths", according to Mrs. Jones in Soldado Descansa.1
John Domm manufactured the first steel ploughs in Brazil, together with Henry F. Steagall, who was a woodworker and made the handles. "So many ploughs were needed in the beginning!"1 He also introduced American-style wagons to the country.

In 1900, John Domm died, "who had made so many ploughs and taught so many people to use them....When we lost John Domm we lost a great friend, and the picnics at his place came to an end. Of course the picnics continued, but thereafter without the delightful presence of this family." After John Domm's death, his widow Augusta returned to Texas with daughter Helen Domm Currie, widowed in 1889, and her three sons, Bruce, Von Rehder, and Bertie. They came through Ellis Island in 1901 and settled in or near Dallas. Augusta died in Decatur, Texas, in 1906 and is buried at Oak Lawn Cemetery. Helen moved to Cleburne and owned a boarding house there. She eventually applied for her late husband Abe Currie's Civil War pension - an interesting story in itself. Helen lived in Port Arthur, Texas, with her unmarried son Bruce until he died in 1937, then with her daughter-in-law Clara Currie, wife of Von Rehder, in Houston until her death in 1940.

Damm Family web

page.http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~curriecousins/dammbraz.html

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Anthony Spencer
Department of Communication Studies
University of North Texas