Place and Time

Relatively little is known about my great-grandfather William Stager’s family. He was born in 1877, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, then an independent member of the German empire. The names of his parents have been lost in time, but we do know that his father was a butcher by profession and that at age fourteen William's mother sent him and his brother Frederick to South Carolina. According to family records, the brothers were sent to America to avoid service in the German military. However, since the year was 1891, Germany was not currently involved in any major military conflicts. It seems strange that the boys would have to flee a draft during peacetime, but so the story goes.