George Schramm undertook the task of writing his Reminiscences at the advanced age of eighty-five. He was born in Germany in 1816 in the village of Plech, Bavaria, and died in Des Moines, Iowa in 1906 at the age of ninety. He came to America with his parents and eight of his brothers and sisters in 1837, settled in Farmington, Iowa on the Des Moines River in 1845, and moved to the city of Des Moines in 1867. The work speaks for itself. It is a mine...