His father and older brothers were tanners and also farmers. Of the brothers, Theodore, the eldest, seems to have been the most lovable, always kind to his younger brothers and sisters. Father always spoke very affectionately of him. Frederic, on the other hand, the first of the boys to come to this country, was stern and rather arbitrary to the other members of the family. These, and Henry who also came to this country, together with his father and his mother, whose gentleness and care he never forgot, were the only ones of whom he ever spoke. The earliest known incident of his life, and one to which he often referred, came when he was about seven years old. He, with other children, was playing by a stream near the tannery, and he fell in. It was early spring and the waters were swollen by melting snows so that he was carried down stream very rapidly. His friends ran along the banks with grappling hooks trying in vain to reach him. Finally, however, the stream ran under a bridge and here Theodore ran out and with one of the great hooks used in handling hides in the tanyard, caught him by the buttonhole of his vest. He was unconscious but they were able to bring him to and carried him to an uncle who had an inn near by. After a night's rest, they took him home, none the worse for his adventure. As he grew older he became ambitious for a good education and one day while working in the fields with his father, mustered up courage to ask him to send him away to school, and won his consent. He studied three years and a half at the Real Gymnasium in Meiningen. His life was one of the simplest and hardest. He had an attic room with some townspeople and ate his midday meal with them. His breakfasts and suppers consisted of a jug of water and a big piece of the rye bread of the country with butter. Once in a while, his family would send him down a ham. He kept his cot at the window so that he might be awakened by the first rays of the rising sun and begin to study, for he always worked hard for what he got and was an earnest, faithful student rather than a brilliant one. He kept, however, on the highest bench all the way through common school and also ranked well in the gymnasium.