Fred Moritz was born in Briesen, Prussia (Germany) on July 21, 1851 to Friedrich and Regena Reborth Moritz.   His father died of tuberculosis before he was born.
     A few years later his mother married Peter Zeifeldt (also spelled Zeefeldt).  The zeifeldt family was considered wealthy and had servants.  One of those servants was Anna Regina Maske (also spelled Maaske), with whom young Fred had gone to school.
     Anna Maske was born in Briesen on November 12, 1853.  Her father died of tuberculosis when she was quite young.  Her mother died of fever when she was 9 years old.   Her older sisters took care of Anna.
     She worked first as a "goose girl", herding flocks of geese in the community and then was a servant in the Zeifeldt household.
     When she and Fred Moritz planned to be married, Fred's stepfather forbid it because of the young people's difference in social status--she a servant girl and he the son of wealth.
     In 1872 Fred left for the United States accompanying a Berndt family.  Before leaving he posted a bond (the equivalent of $500 in American money) with German authorities for support of the child Anna was expecting.
     He and the Berndts landed in New York and went to the Chicago area to join another Berndt family who had gone there earlier.   Fred worked on wheat farms in Illinois for about two years, most of the time in the Des Plaines area.   There he met Mr. and Mrs. Fred Puls, their daughter, Mrs. Mary Gielow, and their sons, John and Henry, who had come from Mecklenburg, Germany.   John Puls married Minnie Berndt and Henry married Annie Berndt.
     Some of the farmers heard of good land at a good price in Iowa and Fred Moritz was one of those who investigated the report.  He bought an 80 acre farm three miles south of Greene, in Butler county, and left for Germany to bring Anna and their child, Augusta, born November 17, 1872, to the new home in America.   Anna had moved to Berlin where she was working as a nurse-maid.
     Fred was refunded the bond he had posted and he and Anna and Augusta boarded a ship for the United States.   The voyage took three weeks.   Women and children traveled steerage and men passengers occupied cabins.  It was a difficult journey, Anna later told her children.   She and her husband did not see each other during the entire trip.
     Reaching an East Coast port, they left immediately for Iowa, arriving probably in April of 1875.  The Puls family also moved to Greene.
     Most of the farmers lived in frame shacks.   The Mortiz home was a one-room lean-to with a wood floor.   The families burned wood from trees along the creeks and rivers.  Those who had no trees on their places bought trees, chopped them down and cut them into stove lengths on the spot, hauling home the ready-cut fuel.
     Some wealthier families had two-story or story-and-a-half houses.   The Meisner family, on a rise east of the Moritz place, had an extra room upstairs in the home.   Some of the Debbans were in the Greene settlement, where many Germany families lived.
     On December 28, 1875, another daughter was born to Fred and  Anna Moritz---Emma Martha Helena.  She was born in the wooden shack with a midwife in attendance.   Augusta was 3 the November before.
     The wooden shack later was used as a barn and Fred built a better house.
     The community had a public school and Augusta attended as soon as she was old enough.  Emma started in 1881.   The girls became bilingual--classes were in English and at home only Germany was spoken.   Fred subscribed to German papers published in Chicago and Milwaukee.   The family attended the Lutheran Church.
     The farmers raised wheat until rust infected the grain.   Then they switched to corn.   The share-croppers had a difficult time because the land owners wanted their share in cash and not in corn.
     In 1882, a group of farmers went to Nebraska to look at land open for homesteading under the Land Act of 1863.   Fred Moritz, Henry Puls, a Berndt, and a Boecker made the trip.   Bu the next fall several families were ready to move to Frontier County, Nebraska.
     Fred and daughter Augusta joined a wagon train with five other families.   In their covered wagon, they took food, bedding, clothing, some furniture, some small farm machinery, and a crate of chickens.  They led two cows.  Prince and Dolly were the names of the horses on their wagon.   Anna Moritz and the other children, Emma, Mary, Helena, and Anna went on an emigrant train.   These trains had cars for furniture, livestock and family housekeeping.  John and Minnie Puls also were on the train.   They were shipping a stallion.
     Anna became ill, so could not breast feed baby Annie, who was about two months old.   No baby food or milk was available, so under Anna's direction, Emma held crackers in her mouth until they became moist and soft.  Then Anna fed them to the baby.
     When the mother and four girls arrived, Fred and Augusta were already at the homestead site.   The Moritz family stayed with the Muhlenseifer family the remainder of the winter, during which time neighbors helped Moritz dig a water well and build a sod house.  Settlers helped each in this new frontier.   
     Fred Moritz had filed his intent to become a US citizen June 6, 1882, in the district court of Floyd County, Iowa.  He was granted citizenship in district court in Gosper county, Nebraska on May 25, 1891.  His name was recorded as Frederick Moritz, although he continued to use the spelling Friedrich as his signature.
     In February, 1884, he homesteaded 320 acres---160 acres as farm and pasture land and 160 acres as a timber claim.   For the timber claim, the government furnished black locust, box elder, and ash trees,   18 inches tall, which the homesteader was required to plant on five acres of the 160 and to care for them.
     Moritz daughters---there were nine girls and one boy in the family who helped with all the farm work, including herding cattle to keep them out of the fields and away from big ranch herds before fences were built.    Grain, live stock, and other farm products were hauled to market in Arapahoe and other nearby towns.  
     Moritz was among early settlers who established schools and churches.    During the early years on the farm, the only school was conducted by the Lutheran church.   Lessons were in German four days a week and in English one.
     Music was a part of family life.   Both parents had received good educations in Germany, including classical music.   Moritz played the accordion.   Daily bible reading also was a practice.    Germany publications were augmented by English papers and magazines as the parents became more a part of their new homeland.