This Christmas story is taken from documents on the Klee Family Website. (See "Letters to and from Denmark, 1890-1905" on the Klee Family website at http://www.letreb.com/historyandgenealogy/LettersDenmark.htm

The story is in the form of letters written at Christmas time, over 100 years ago, by the two older Klee children in this picture. The oldest, Caroline (Cara) Millicent Klee, was born in 1885 and was probably about 15 at the time the photo was taken in Denmark. Her brother Fred (right front), was born in 1888 and Bertel, left front, was born in 1890. Bertel was my father.

All the children were born in California and lived with their parents, Waldemar and Jane (Jenny) on the family ranch in Santa Cruz, California until the parents died and the children had to be sent to Denmark to be raised by their father’s family.*

After they were orphaned and before they went to Denmark, they were looked after by close friends of their mother, who had also been her college classmates at the University of California, Berkeley. The friends were "Aunt" Millicent Shinn and "Aunt" Kate Wertz and the following letters were addressed to them. After they arrived in Denmark, the children were lovingly cared for by Waldemar’s sister Elise and his brother Frederik Emil, and their spouses, but perhaps their Christmas letters to California betray a little homesickness for their California home .

These are the only letters from the children that are known to have survived from that time in their lives. The letters were transcribed using the exact wording and spelling as the originals. The children had already begun to forget their English.

* The children’s father, Waldemar G. Klee, was the youngest son of Frederik A. G. Klee and Caroline von Moth Klee. (See Table II in the genealogical tables on the website.) Waldemar migrated to the US in 1872, at about the age of 19, but he died in1891, at age 38, from tuberculosis. (There is much more about him and his wife Jane (Jenny) Barry Klee on the family website.)

I will write a few lines to you because I have not written to you for such a long time. Now I have vacation for forteen days.  I have some Guinea pigs who have got eight young ones that are so sweet and pretty, but they cost money and we expect to get some again for them.  I have had a merey xmas and I hope you have had the same.  I got two books to Christmas.  One was about six hundred pages, the other about three hundred pages, and then I got a knife and pens.  I got a pencil box and a play of dominoes.  I have been out in the country in the summer vacation.  I went out rowing sometimes.  Once I caught an eel and two (Abbore)=the Danish name for that fish.  When I had caught the eel I ran home with it to give it to the cook to fry, but on the way home I steped in some mud as I was going through the woods so that I lost one of my shoes in the mud but I took my other shoe and ran barefooted home with the eel.  I got the farmer to dig it up again for I couldn’t have found it if I didn’t know exactly the spot where I had lost it.  I went the water and I have learned to swim.  Once I rode on a horse about two miles.  It was such fun when I and the boy who watched the cow who was at my age drove the calves home.  We took hold of their tales because it does not hurt them and they ran straight home for they knew the way.  I wish you a happy new year.  Goodbye.