1- Nicholas Reinart Jr. (Abt 1795-1875) & Anna Maria Hoffman (Abt 1800-Bef 1870)
Nicholas Reinart was born near Mettendorf, Luxemburg, in 1795 or 1796. He was the second child of Nicholas Reinart, Sr. and Margaretha Poth. The young couples' first child, a gift named Katharina, had been born two years earlier, but had lived only two days. Margaretha herself was the elder Nicholas' second wife. He had married his first wife, Katharina Zeyer, on 9 December 1788. Before her untimely death in the early 1890's, Katharina had given him a son named Hubert.
Young Nicholas Reinart, Jr. and his half-brother Hubert seem to have grown up on a farm near the little village of Mettendorf. Mettendorf itself was situated in eastern Luxemburg on the river Enz. Surrounding it were a series of gentle, rolling hills where the borders of Luxemburg, Belgium and Germany met. Twenty-five miles to the southeast was the ancient city of Trier, originally the capital of the Germanic Treveri tribe. Trier was later captured by the Romans and then by the Franks. In 1797 it became a part of France; in 1815 it was annexed by Prussia. Four years later the surrounding Luxemburgian countryside - including the village of Mettendorf - was also annexed into that part of Prussia known as the Rhineland.
It is thought that Nicholas Reinart, Jr. remained on the farm of his father until his own marriage at the age of 31. The date was 1 February 1826. The place was the village of Mettendorf. The bride was 26-year-old Anna Maria Hoffman from the nearby town of Hoisthum. Anna Maria was the daughter of Mathias Hoffman and Anna Maria Lehners.
After their marriage, Nicholas and his new bride seem to have settled down on a farm near Mettendorf. Their first child, Anna Catherine, was born a year later. Five more children followed: Elizabeth (1829), Magdalena (1832), Mathias (1836) and John J. (1838).
Nicholas continued farming near Mettendorf for another 28 years. Then in the mid-1850's (when already nearly 60 years of age) Nicholas inexplicably sold his farm and set sail for the United States. Nicholas and his entire family left Mettendorf in 1854 never to return. Nicholas' wife, Anna Maria, was already well past middle age and their children were nearly all grown. Anna Catherine, the oldest, was 27, Elizabeth was 25, Mathias was 18 and John J. was nearing 16. It is not known what had become of the third daughter, Magdalena.
On reaching American shores, the Reinart family traveled by train to Dubuque County, Iowa, where they seem to have stayed for a time with close family relations. But by the spring of 1856 Nicholas had purchased 360 acres of farmland in Houston County, Minnersota, for $1.25 an acre. The farm was near the newly-founded town of Caledonia, a small, mostly Irish settlement near the Mississippi River in the southeastern comer of the state.
By the fall of 1856 Nicholas had made his mark on a "Declaration of Intent," signifying his desire to become a United States citizen. He declared under oath that he renounced forever any allegiance he had previously owed to any and all foreign princes, "particularly to Frederic William Emperor of Prussia and Germany whereof I was a subject." Nicholas and his two sons, Mathias and John J., were finally allowed to become naturalized citizens of the United States on 20 May 1862.
Nicholas Reinart & family were listed in the 1860 U.S. Census as living near the town of Caledonia, in Mayville Township, Houston County, Minnesota. Nicholas was listed as 64 years of age, Anna Maria as 60, and their sons Mathias as 23 and John as 21. Also listed was another John Reinart, 25 years old. This second John was probably one of Nicholas' nephews.
By the 1970 U.S. Census, Anna Maria was no longer listed, indicating that she had died sometime between 1860 and 1870. Nicholas was listed as living with his nephew, the second John, who by then had married a woman named Josephine Bouquet and fathered four children.
Five years later, Nicholas Reinart, Jr. made out his last will and testament. By then he was living at the home of his daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Philip Dimmer in Houston County. The provisions of the will provided for the payment of his just debts and funeral expenses, including $35 for a proper tombstone as well as $100 to create a special fund, the interest of which would be used by the Catholic priest at the local St. Mary's Church to celebrate "an anniversary Mass for the repose of my and my wife's soul." His daughter Elizabeth would receive the bulk of his estate, with her husband, Philip Dimmer, appointed executor of the will. Nicholas' other living children - Mathias, John J. and Anna Catherine - were each to receive $1, since they had already been given their inheritance.
Nicholas Reinart, Jr. died on 13 August 1875, just two days after signing his last will and testament. He was 80 years old. He was laid to rest beside his wife, Anna Maria, at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Caledonia, Minnesota.
(From the research of Mary Anne Rhinehart, John Andrew Reinart, Genevieve (Reinart) Gehling and Richard Gehling)
2- Mathias “Matt” Reinart (1836-1920) & Susanna “Susan” Friedman (1843-1935)
Mathias was born in Mettendorf, Prussia, on 24 February 1836. He was the firstborn son of Nicholas Reinart, Jr. and Anna Maria Hoffman. Mathias grew up on the family farm with his one brother and three older sisters.
When Mathias was 18 years of age, his father decided to move the family to the United States. After their emigration, Mathias seems to have worked on his father's farm near Caledonia, Minnesota, until the spring of 1862. On May 20 of that year, Mathias joined his father and his younger brother, John J., in becoming naturalized citizens of the United States. Shortly afterwards, John J. is said to have joined the Union Army in its fight against the Confederate States of America. He served in Company F of the 2nd Minnesota Volunteers.
Mathias meanwhile seems to have spent some time at the farm of his relations in Dubuque County, Iowa. There he began courting a neighbor girl named Susanna Friedman. When the relationship turned to talk of marriage, Mathias decided it was time to provide a home for his future bride. He returned to Minnesota in the late winter of 1864. There, on the last day of February, he purchased 140 acres of the family farm from his father, Nicholas. The price was the grand sum of $70, little enough to pay for a piece of prime farmland in the Mississippi Bluffs region of southeastern Minnesota.
Mathias was back in Dubuque County by late March of 1864. He and 20-year-old Susanna Friedman took out a marriage license on the last day of March. The wedding ceremony took place five days later in the little town of Luxemburg, Iowa.
Following their marriage, Susanna and Mathias moved onto the land he had recently bought from his father in southeastern Minnesota. There Susanna gave birth to four children: Nicholas (b. 1865), Magdalena (b. 1866), Anton (b. 1868), and Josephine (b. 1870).
In 1870, the Reinarts moved to a Carroll County farm in western Iowa. Here their remaining eight children were born: Elizabeth (b. 1871), Joseph (b. 1873), William (b.1874), John Ludwig. (b. 1876), Peter (b. 1878), Mary (b. 1879), John Co. 1882), Anna (b. 1886). Three of the children died in childhood: Anton, William and John Ludwig. Anton and John Ludwig died a couple of months apart, possibly from the same childhood disease.
The Reinart children went to a school in Roselle, Iowa, that had German-speaking teachers. They learned to read in German long before they learned to read in English. The Catholic catechism was always taught in German. At home, the girls were expected to help around the house while the boys worked the fields. Back then the corn was always planted by hand. Mathias would drop the kernels in the rows, and the boys would follow along to push the soil back over each kernel.
All the children eventually grew up and married. Three of them - Nicholas, Josephine & Elizabeth - moved to Texas. Mary moved to Nebraska, as did Peter for a time. All the rest remained in Iowa
When the time came to retire, Mathias and Susanna turned the farm work over to two of their sons, Joe and Pete, while they themselves moved into a large frame house in nearby Halbur, Iowa.
For a time Susanna kept boarders. Mathias soon became interested in local politics. In April of 1902, twenty-seven votes were cast for incorporation of Halbur into a full-fledged Iowa town. Soon after, a caucus was held to nominate candidates for city office. Mathias was nominated for city councilman, and was subsequently elected to that office, not only in 1902, but also in every succeeding year up to and including 1906.
In June of 1914 Mathias and Susanna celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary. All of their living children were present at the celebration.
Six years later, Mathias died of "progressive muscular dystrophy." The date was 9 August 1920, the time was 12:30 P.M. Mathias was 84 years old. He was buried in St. Augustine's Catholic Cemetery in Halbur, Iowa.
Susanna survived her husband by fifteen years. For many of those years she continued to live in the large frame house they had shared in the town of Halbur, but towards the end of her life she asked if she could move into the farm home of her youngest daughter, Anna. Susanna lived only a few months longer. She was found dead in bed on 23 February 1935. She was nearly 92 years old. The cause of her death was written down as "probable heart disease." Susanna was buried beside her husband, Mathias, in St. Augustine's Cemetery, Halbur, Iowa.
(From the research of Mary Anne Rhinehart, Genevieve (Reinart) Gehling, and Richard Gehling)
3a- Peter “Pete” Reinart (1878-1963)
(from the Memories of Genevieve (Reinart) Gehling, 1980)
“My father, Peter Reinart, was born on a farm near Roselle, Iowa, on 12 April 1878. He was the sixth son of Mathias and Susanna Reinart. As a toddler he once sat on Buffalo Bill's lap. At the age of eight he traveled alone on a train to the nearby town of Carroll to have his tonsils out. He nearly bled to death on the trip home.
“By the age of 18, my dad and his older brother Joseph were left in charge of the Reinart 240-acre farm, when my grandparents retired and moved to nearby Halbur, Iowa. Dad worked the farm into his mid-twenties, then in 1904 went to Nebraska to help with the oats harvest. While there he met and fell in love with my mother, Mary Hoffert, the daughter of Anton and Augusta Hoffert. He and my mother were married the following January in Axtell, Nebraska.
“As newlyweds, my parents farmed near Funk, Nebraska, for eight memorable years. There was no means of irrigation, and the prairie fires and dust storms were severe. My mother combated the dust by hanging wet bed sheets over the windows. Once a tornado struck the farm and took all the buildings except the house, which was pushed two inches off its foundation.
“My dad and my Uncle John Schneider used to hunt turkeys on the Nebraska prairies. They also shot jack rabbits and made them into a sort of hamburger - one/half rabbit, one/half pork.
“In 1913 my parents moved back to Iowa and to a succession of farms a few miles south and southeast of the town of Halbur in Carroll County, Iowa.
“On one of these farms - the one southeast of Halbur - there was a new hog house that was never used for anything except a whiskey still. During Prohibition, Dad used to have a room in the house where he kept the whiskey he cooked hidden away from the revenue men. It could only be entered from outside the house, and you couldn't tell from the inside that it was there. We were at a neighbor's one night in the mid-1920's and the revenue men came and asked the neighbor where Pete Reinart lived.The neighbor told them he lived ten miles from there, giving us time to drive across the fields, get home, and destroy the still before the revenue men got there.
“Dad had been cooking whiskey for Jim Balukoff, but after this incident he quit and moved the family into a house he bought from to Halbur. The whiskey was known as 'Templeton Rye,' and was in great demand for miles around, even - it was said - as far away as Chicago.
“It was in the year of 1927 that my Dad gave up farming altogether and moved his family into the little town of Halbur, Iowa. There he drove an oil truck for Thomas Maher, then a gravel truck for awhile, worked as the school and church janitor for seven years, then as a carpenter until he retired. He had a lot of accidents while living in Halbur: once he fell from the roof of a barn, breaking his shoulder, ribs, collarbone and arm; another time he cut his thumb with a power saw; later he was in a car accident on his way home from work.
“The Halbur house, which my parents bought from Lena and Michael Reck, had two enclosed porches and one upstairs porch. A cave for storing fruits and vegetables was built into a cement wall From this cave a small tunnel (to be used in the aftermath of tornadoes) led to an above-ground cob house. In the corner of the cobhouse was a two-hole privy. The property also had a barn, with two milk cows at first, two brooder horses, and some chickens. There was also a smoke house for hams and dried beef. It was little wonder that my mother and dad chose this property on which to spend the remainder of their lives.
“Both my parents are remembered as gentle and loving people, who rarely quarreled. The only disagreement I ever remember took place after a visit by the parish priest. Dad was in the process of emptying the chamber pot when the priest arrived. Instead of hurrying to empty the pot down the outside privy, dad stopped to engage the priest in a long conversation - the chamber pot still in his hand. Mom got so embarrassed she could not help but remonstrate once the priest had finally left.
“After their retirement, my mom and dad spent their time working in a large garden, canning fruits and vegetables, and passing out the surplus to family and friends.
“My dad also loved to play horseshoes. On warm Sunday afternoons the neighbors would come over, and the men would spend their time in the yard pitching horseshoes.
“After my mother died of breast cancer on 17 August 1956, my dad spent the next seven years boarding with one or another of his three daughters and their families. He passed away on 21 June 1963 and was buried beside my mother in St. Augustine's Cemetery, Halbur, Iowa.”
3b- Mary Agnes (Hoffert) Reinart (1883-1956)
(from the Memories of Genevieve (Gehling) Reinart, 1980)
"My mother Mary Hoffert was born in 1883 on a farm near the little town of Funk in Phelps County, Nebraska. She was the only daughter of Anton Hoffert and Augusta Meisel. One of her jobs as a young girl was to pick up buffalo chips to burn in the kitchen stove. Indians still roamed the Nebraska prairies at that time. They would often stop at the Hoffert house to demand food. Gypsies also stopped by. Once they kidnapped a little neighbor girl.
"When my mother was a teenager, her parents moved to a farm south of Carroll, Iowa. At the age of sixteen my mother was voted the most popular girl in Carroll County. She received a gold watch and fob chain in appreciation. My mother had always loved to dance, especially square dances. She also enjoyed the music of polkas and waltzes. Two of her favorites were the "Blue Shirt Waltz" and "After the Ball Was Over." Her half-brother, John Schneider, often served as a caller at the local square dances.
"After her parents' return to Nebraska, her mother took in school teachers for room & board. In the summer of 1904 my mother met a young man named Peter Reinart, who had traveled from Iowa to Nebraska to help with the oats harvest. They were married the following January 23, 1905, at Axtell, Nebraska. The priest was Father Cronin.
"My parents lived on a farm in Nebraska for ten years after their marriage. There was no irrigation there and they had dust storms. Mom used to tell that they hung wet bed sheets over the windows so they could breathe. She also told of the many tornadoes they had. One time three tornadoes struck their farm. The hired man, Don Casper, hurriedly wrapped their baby Gladys in pillows so she wouldn't get hurt. The tornadoes destroyed all the farm buildings except the house, which was pushed two inches off its foundation.
"My mother gave birth to three daughters while farming in Nebraska - Gladys, Monica, and Bertille. Monica lived only a few days after birth, crying constantly until she died. She was buried in the cemetery at Axtell, Nebraska. Grandma Hoffert planted a cactus over her grave. It has been mowed off every year for over ninety years, but still lives on.
"In 1915 my mom and dad moved back to Iowa and lived on a farm south of Carroll where Mary was born, then moved to a farm 4 1/2 miles southeast of Halbur where I was born. When I was seven we moved to Halbur, where I grew up.
"After their retirement, mom and dad spent their time working in a large garden, canning fruits and vegetables, and passing out the surplus to family and friends. The garden was a delight. It was entered through a rose-covered arbor. Near the back edge of the garden was a large raspberry patch, where the grandchildren picked and ate berries to their hearts' content. Nearby was a crabapple tree, from which my mom used to can the most delicious spiced apples. The garden itself contained vegetables and flowers of all kinds, including sweet-smelling peonies of red, white, and pink. Slips from one of these red peonies were later passed down to my daughter, Bonnie, and son, Richard, and planted in their own gardens in memory of my parents.
"Soon after celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary in 1955, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She struggled on for a few more months, before passing away on 17 August 1956. She was buried at St. Augustine Cemetery in Halbur, Iowa.”
4a- Genevieve Mary (Reinart) Gehling (1920-2005)
Genevieve was the fifth and youngest daughter of Peter and Mary Reinart. She was born on 10 February 1920 on a farm 4 1/2 miles southeast of Halbur, Iowa. When she grew old enough to began attending classes at the town's only grade school, she was expected to walk back to the farm each afternoon with her sisters. If the weather was bad, they would all take temporary shelter with their grandmother, Susanna Reinart, at her house near the school in downtown Halbur.
When she was eight years old, Gen's parents moved the family to a house high on the hill overlooking the town of Halbur. There she grew up jumping rope, playing ball, and exercising on a trapeze. The trapeze was made out of a broom handle, and was hung from chains. She spent many a summer day, hanging there upside down and swinging back and forth. During the school year she attended St. Augustine's Catholic School, and had lots of friends. On her 8th birthday, a dozen little girls gathered at her house for a birthday party.
In later years, Gen described what it was like growing up in a small Iowa town during the late 1920's and early 1930's: "Trains went through Halbur on two railroad tracks, sometimes four a day, when I was young," she wrote. "There were a lot of hoboes in those days. They would knock on doors, and want food. There were a lot of gypsies too. They would camp on the road leading into Halbur. They would steal chickens, canned foods, and anything else they could get their hands on. There were medicine shows that came through Halbur during the summer. They would sell boxes of candy with a prize in them for ten cents, and would have lineament and carbolic acid salve for $1.00, and then would put on a show. The merchants also had outdoor movies on main street on Saturday nights. These were silent movies, as they didn't have talkies at that time."
St. Nicholas used to come to Gen's house every December 6th. Sometimes there would be two who came: St. Nickolas, dressed in red and passing out goodies, and Black Pete, carrying a handful of sticks or coal for any kids who had misbehaved. Before receiving them, however, each kid had to kneel down on the living room floor and say his or her prayers. Gen always hoped to receive a bag of candy and nuts, but on one memorable occasion she was given nothing but coal. She made sure it never happened again.
As a young girl, Gen had several pets - a parakeet that used to nibble on her dad's ear, ducks, pigeons, and a little black and white dog. The pigeons she raised usually ended up in her mother's oven or in the weekday soup. The dog was a Boston Terrier, which was prone to fits. When the fits came on the dog would try to climb walls, so the girls of the family would immediately jump up on chairs; only Grandpa Hoffert remained seated, but he always grabbed a coal shovel for protection.
When Gen was nine years old she caught whooping cough, then scarlet fever. Her house was quarantined for six weeks. The next year she got blood poisoning in her hand.
After graduating from 8th grade, Gen hoped to attend high school in nearby Carroll, but was denied entrance by her parents, who reminded her that none of her older sisters had enjoyed such an opportunity. So instead of attending school, she spent her late teen years working on the farms of her married sisters.
In the summer of 1937, when a teenager of seventeen, Genevieve met a young man named Lawrence Gehling at a dance in the nearby town of Roselle, Iowa. The two began dating, and soon began planning a fall wedding. The wedding ceremony took place on Thursday, the 28th day of October at Sts. Peter & Paul Catholic Church in Carroll, Iowa. Genevieve wore a beautiful black dress to the ceremony. After a day-long honeymoon, the young couple moved in with her parents for a few months, then into a shared house on the George Wernimont farm near Auburn, Iowa. Their early years of marriage were spent moving from farm to farm and from small town to small town in western Iowa.
Genevieve gave birth to seven children over the years: Lois, Richard, Donald, Constance, Bonita, Thomas, and Charles. Before the last of her children left home, Genevieve began working as a cleaning lady for various families around Gilmore City, Iowa. She later worked at a couple of retirement homes in Pocahontas, Iowa.
Even while engaged in these many jobs outside the home, Gen found time to become interested in family genealogy. She provided information to Mary Anne Rhinehart for the Reinart Family History, which was published in 1980. She also wrote scores of letters to the descendants of Herman Gehling, seeking names and dates for her own work on the First Gehlings in America. Finally, she wrote down the memories of her girlhood, of Reinart family ancestors, and of her married life. These memories contain a vast amount of information, which will undoubtedly be treasured by generations of her future descendants.
After the death of her husband Lawrence in 1982, Genevieve moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to be near her children. She took up landscape painting and began piecing together quilts and embroidering pillowcases.
Genevieve spent the last four years of her life at the Cedarwood Health Care Center in Colorado Springs, where she continued to work on her many crafts until her death on 16 February 2005. She had just celebrated her 85th birthday the previous week. Her ashes were taken back to Iowa to be buried next to her husband, Lawrence, at St. John's Cemetery near Gilmore City, Iowa.
(Memories of Genevieve (Reinart) Gehling and Richard Gehling)
4b- Lawrence Albert Gehling (1916-1982)
Lawrence was born on the family farm near Carroll, Iowa, on 9 May 1916. He was the firstborn son of Henry and Regina Gehling. While still a baby, Lawrence was infected with a strain of the post-war influenza then sweeping the country. For a time his life was despaired of. Unlike several of the neighbor children, however, Lawrence survived the epidemic and was soon taking an active interest in the family farm. It is said that as a five-year-old he once substituted for his father, showing some construction workers the exact site and dimensions of the barn they had been hired to build.
For a time, Lawrence attended a small country school, always making the two-mile trip on horseback. Later, he and his brother, Erwin, attended an academy in town, which was run by Catholic nuns. His studies came to an end after eighth grade. For the next six years he worked alongside his father and brothers on the farm. At age 19, he and two friends - Lawrence Siepker and Eddie Klocke - decided it was time to see the country. The year was 1936, a Depression year, and money was hard to come by. But the trio confidently packed their belongings into an old car and headed west. They reached Kansas just as the wheat harvest was beginning. From there they traveled on to Arizona, rode mules down into the Grand Canyon, then went to the California orchards for a winter of orange picking.
Lawrence was back in Iowa in time for spring planting. But his stay on the family farm was short-lived. He soon met a 17-year-old girl from Halbur, Iowa, named Genevieve Reinart. The two were married on 28 October 1937, and after the wedding ceremony went for a short honeymoon to Atlantic, Iowa. On their way home they were run into the ditch by a road grader.
For the first ten years of their married life, the newlyweds moved from farm to farm across western Iowa. Sometimes Lawrence worked for wages, sometimes he rented the farm outright. His first job on the George Wernimont farm near Auburn, Iowa, paid only $30 a month, but did include three dozen eggs a week, one-half hog a year, the milk from one cow and part of the fruit from a large orchard. The hours were long - usually 5 A.M. to 9 P.M. The work was hard - farming with mules, slopping hogs, caring for over 400 head of cattle in the feedlot. After acquiring some livestock and equipment, Lawrence began renting farms on his own, beginning with the Billy Bedford farm northeast of Willey, Iowa, and ending with the Leo Wendl farms near Gilmore City, Iowa.
In the fall of 1947, Lawrence and Genevieve quit farming altogether. They sold off all their machinery and bought a house in Gilmore City. Lawrence began hauling limestone. By then his growing family numbered six children (Lois, Richard, Connie, Bonnie, Tom and Charlie). Before the last of his children left home, Lawrence had become a jack-of-all-trades, working at various times as a truck driver, an electrician, a mechanic, a welder, a lathe operator, and a city marshal. In his later years he also ran the gas, water, and sewage departments for the town of Gilmore City.
Lawrence was a restless man in many respects. Always a hard worker, he found it difficult to sit back and relax. At home, after a long day at his job, he would invariably go out into his tool shed and work far into the night. His hands were a testament to his lifestyle - large, strong hands, calloused and rough, covered with the nicks and bruises of a lifetime of labor.
Much of Lawrence's relaxation came from the animals with which he surrounded himself. He had originally farmed with horses and mules, and always had a family dog around the house. In later life he acquired a couple of saddle horses and a goat. The horses he rode, the goat he hitched to a cart of his own manufacture. The goat cart worked so well, he considered building a small stagecoach to be pulled by six Shetland ponies. The ponies were easy to come by, but the stagecoach never left the drawing board. For a time he gave home to a mischievous pet raccoon, then to a de-scented though still smelly skunk. His last menagerie consisted of seven Siberian Huskies. These he hitched to a dog sled and mushed over the wintry Iowa countryside.
In the winter of 1981-82 Lawrence was diagnosed with lung cancer. For six months he fought the cancer with every means available, regularly making the long trip to Iowa City for the drugs of chemotherapy. But try as he might, this strong man - who had rarely been sick a day in his life - gradually succumbed to the ravages of the disease. Lawrence died surrounded by family on 19 August 1982. He was 66 years old. He was buried next to his parents, Henry & Regina Gehling, in St. John’s Catholic Cemetery, Gilmore City, Iowa.
(Memories of Richard Gehling, 1998)
5- Anton Anthony Friedman (1815-1901) & Elizabeth Wentzel (1819-1895)
Like the seven generations of Friedman(n) ancestors before him, Anton Anthony Friedman was born in Zell, Baden, in what is now southwestern Germany. The date of his birth was 16 July 1815. At that time Zell was a little village situated on a fertile plain about fifteen kilometers east of the Rhine River, which today serves as the border between Germany and France. Just to the east lay the famed hills of the Black Forest. Far to the southeast were several idyllic lakes, and beyond them the mighty Alps of Switzerland.
Anton was the son of Mathias Friedmann (1789-1867) and Maria Anna Weiler (1789-1857). He was the firstborn in a family that – over the next twenty-two years – would come to number thirteen children.
At the time of Anton’s birth, the village of Zell had neither a church nor a cemetery of its own, so all the Catholic Friedmanns were members of St. Johannes Church in the nearby town of Vimbuch. Baby Anton was taken there the morning after his birth to be baptized by the Rev. T.B. Werle, dean and priest. Witnesses to the ceremony were Anton’s father, Mathias, and a neighbor named Landelin Bohn.
In 1832, when Anton was seventeen years old, his parents decided to leave Zell (where the Friedmann families had lived since the mid-1500’s) and emigrate to the United States. They settled in Stark County, Ohio. In April of the following year, Matthias applied for citizenship in the Stark County Common Pleas Court; he was granted citizenship on 18 September 1838.
A little over four months later, on 29 January 1839, Anton was married to a neighbor girl named Elizabeth Wentzel, whose family had arrived in Stark County just a few years before. Elizabeth had been born in Makatamy, PA on 14 April 1819. She was the daughter of Andreas “Andrew” Wentzel (1790-1853) and Mary Magdalena Shup (Abt 1794-Aft 1853). Andrew and Magdalena had originally arrived in Philadelphia on 16 June 1817 aboard the ship Xenophone. They had settled in Berks County, Pennsylvania, where it seems that all seven of their children were born and baptized as Roman Catholics. In the 1830’s the family had moved to Jackson Township in Stark County, Ohio. There Andrew had acquired a farm containing eighty acres of prime Midwestern cropland.
After their marriage in 1839, Anton and Elizabeth Friedman decided to remain in Stark County, there to farm and rear a family of their own. But as it turned out, only their first eight living children were born in Ohio. The last two were born in Iowa, where Anton and Elizabeth had moved in 1854, after having spent a year in Missouri. They settled in Liberty Township, Dubuque County, where they were destined to spend the rest of their lives on a farm near the little town of Luxemburg, Iowa.
The Friedmans prospered in Dubuque County. By the time Anton wrote his will in March of 1895, he had already given each of his ten children who had survived childhood money in amounts varying from $840 to $1240 each. Explicit provisions in his will dictated that the individual amounts be evened out by bestowing an extra $100 on his youngest daughters, Paulina and Magdalena, and an extra $400 on his son, John, and his two oldest daughters, Mary and Susanna. Any moneys left over were to be equally distributed among all ten of them, including an equal share to the heirs of his son, Louis, who had died at age 34 in 1888.
All of these provisions of the will were to take place only after the death of Anton’s wife, Elizabeth. If - as expected - Anton died first, the oldest son, John, would be executor of the will. It would be his responsibility to take care of his mother, using proceeds from the estate as needed until her death.
As it turned out, it was Elizabeth who died first. After her death at age 76 on 5 June 1895, Anton went to live with his son, John. Anton himself died on 23 April 1901. His funeral was held three days later with a solemn requiem mass at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Luxemburg, Iowa. The celebrant was his own grandson from nearby Worthington, Rev. Father J. H. Friedman. Interment was in the church cemetery next to his wife, Elizabeth.
(From the research of Dennis Friedman, Dewie Gaul, Mary Anne Rhinehart, and Richard Gehling)
6- Antoine Hoffert (1825-1897) & Mary Forstoge (1838-Abt 1855)
Antoine Hoffert was born on 17 August 1825 in the town of Walbach, province of Alsace, France. He was the son of Francois Antoine Hoffert (b. 1799) and Anne Marie Umdenstock (b. 1790), who had been married in April of 1823 in Ostheim, Alsace. Anne Marie was nine years older than her husband. She was the daughter of Nicholas Umdenstock. Francois was the son of Jean Hoffert and Madelaine Batten, whose families seem to have lived in Alsace for many generations.
Antoine grew up in the French farming community of Walbach with his six siblings. Three of them were boys: Jean, Nicholas and Joseph. The other three were girls, each named Anne Marie in turn after the preceding one died in infancy. Sometime in the late 1840's or early 1850's, Antoine seems to have left his family members behind and emigrated by himself to the United States. He settled near the town of Naperville on the Illinois prairie, just west of Chicago.
At Naperville, 28-year-old Antoine Hoffert married a young girl named Mary Forstoge. Mary was only sixteen at the time of their wedding. By October of 1854 she had given birth to a son, whom she named Anton in honor of his father. But the family unit was soon shattered. Mary died sometime in 1855, perhaps during the labors of a second childbirth. She had not yet reached her 18th birthday.
Two years later, Antoine remarried. His second wife was named Mary Mathers. She had been born in 1838 in the city of Ostheim, France. After the marriage, Mary took over the care of young Anton. She and Antoine also began a new family of their own. One source says that over a period of 23 years Mary Mathers gave birth to a dozen additional children.
Antoine Hoffert and his second wife, Mary Mathers, seem to have lived in northern Illinois the remainder of their lives. It is not known exactly when his second wife passed away, but Antoine himself lived into his 72nd year. He died on 11 September 1897 in Lee County, Illinois. He was buried in St. Mary's Cemetery, Sublette, Illinois.
(Research of David Mather, Genevieve (Reinart) Gehling, and Richard Gehling)
7- Anton Hoffert (1855-1940) & Augusta Meisel (1855-1945)
Anton Hoffert was born in 1854 or 1855 at Naperville, Illinois. He was the son of Antoine Hoffert and Mary Forstoge. Antoine had come to the United States from France, and had settled in the town of Naperville, Illinois, just west of Chicago.
Anton grew up in Naperville. His 17-year-old mother seems to have died soon after his birth, and his father was re-married to a woman named Mary Mathers. Mary not only took over the care of baby Anton, but also provided her husband with a dozen other children, among them Anton's childhood playmates, John and Joseph Hoffert.
Anton was blessed with red hair, and - in later life - always sported a mustache. When he first came of age he moved to Buffalo County, Nebraska. While in Nebraska he met the recently-widowed Augusta (Meisel) Schneider, a neighbor of his brother, Joseph, who owned land in nearby Phelps County.
Augusta was the eldest child of John and Fredricka (Staugie) Meisel, who had married in Prussia before coming to the United States. The young couple had settled first in Pennsylvania, then in Bureau County, Illinois. Their daughter Augusta was born 17 May 1855 on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. She was eventually joined by four sisters (Anna, Hannah, Emma, & Maeia) and two brothers (Henry & Benjamin). All of them called her "Gusty." Augusta grew up scrubbing the family clothes and helping care for her younger siblings, and so never received any type of formal schooling.
When eighteen years of age Augusta married twenty-year-old George Schneider. The ceremony took place in LaSalle County at Mendota, Illinois, on 21 February 1874. The bride signed the marriage certificate with an "X". She and her husband farmed for a time in Illinois. A son named John was born on 28 July 1878 and baptized into the Lutheran Church. Shortly after, the family moved to a sod dugout in Juanita, Adams County, Nebraska. The dugout was very crudely built. Augusta later said snakes were living there when they first moved in.
The next spring Augusta and her husband purchased 160 acres of land in Phelps County, Nebraska, from the Union Pacific railroad. The land cost $400. It lay in the northwest quarter of section 25, township 7, and range 17.
Two years later George died of pneumonia. Augusta had so little money that the neighbors had to pitch in to help buy the coffin. After the funeral, Augusta and her son returned to her parents' farm in Bureau County, Illinois.
In 1881, Anton Hoffert seems to have followed Augusta back to Illinois. He and Augusta were married on 15 March 1882. The ceremony took place before a Justice of the Peace in Princeton, Illinois.
The newlyweds then returned to Anderson Township, Phelps County, Nebraska, sometime during the summer of 1882. On September 22 of that same year, Anton Hoffert made a final payment of $350 to the Union Pacific Railroad for land in the northeast quarter of section 27, township 7, range 17, five miles west of the later 1887 town of Funk, Nebraska. Augusta eventually transferred to Anton her portion of the nearby farm, which she had inherited from her first husband.
A daughter named Mary was born to the Hofferts on 8 November 1883. She was baptized a Catholic like her father. Eleven years later, Augusta and John - who had originally been baptized Lutherans - also joined the Catholic Church.
Anton Hoffert was listed as a farmer in two Phelps County historical documents: the 1889 Phelps County Map, and the 1890-91 Wolfe's Gazetteer Farmer Directory of Phelps County, NE. In the first his post office was located in the town of Axtell, NE; in the second in the town of Kearney, NE.
Times were tough in Nebraska during the last decades of the 19th century. The year after Anton and Augusta returned to the state, a fast-moving prairie fire spread southwestward from the town of Kearney and scorched much of Anderson Township. Four years later, in 1886, another great prairie fire swept across much of Phelps County. Anton Hoffert himself is said to have started a small prairie fire while lighting his pipe. Ever after, he rubbed every match between thumb and forefinger to make sure it was completely extinguished.
The years 1890 and 1893 were both bad years for crops, while 1894 was a terrible drought year. There was always little or no wood for the kitchen fire, so buffalo chips - remnants from the great herds of yesterday - had to be collected by the wheel barrowful. For a time small bands of Indians still roamed the Nebraska prairies. They would often stop at the Hoffert house to demand food. Gypsies also stopped by. Once they kidnapped a little neighbor girl.
Anton and Augusta continued farming their land until 1919, when the time came to retire. Together they had endured years of drought and tornadoes and prairie fires, and they were ready for a long rest. They gave their two farms to their children, John and Mary, with the understanding that they would be allowed to shuttle back and forth between the two households for the remainder of their days.
After retirement, the Hofferts first moved to the Iowa farm of their daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Pete Reinart. They stayed there until the Reinarts sold the farm in 1927, then moved with them into a house high on a hill overlooking the little town of Halbur, Iowa.
The house in Halbur had both an enclosed porch at ground level and an open upstairs porch. There were two bedrooms upstairs, one for the daughters and another for the Hoffert grandparents. A cave for storing fruits and vegetables was built into a cement wall behind the house. From this cave a small tunnel (to be used in the aftermath of tornadoes) led to an above-ground cob house. In the corner of the cob house was a two-hole privy. The property also had a barn, with two milk cows at first, two brooder horses, and some chickens.
Anton was sixty-four when they first came to live with the Reinarts in Iowa, and was already showing symptoms of the facial skin cancer that would eventually claim his life. His granddaughter, Genevieve Reinart, would long remember "the many times he went by train to the nearby town of Manning, Iowa, to have the cancer burned off his nose, lips, and face."
"My grandfather Hoffert used to forecast the weather," she later wrote. "If the sun would go down red in the west it would be windy the next day. If he saw a rainbow in the morning, it would rain before noon, etc. He was usually right too."
Augusta was also sixty-four at the time of the move. She had long before taught herself to read and to sign her name with her left hand. She was looking forward to many more years of piecing together quilts of her own design, but was already experiencing a painful edema in her legs, an edema which in another eight years would necessitate the use of crutches and a wheelchair. She would nonetheless eventually finish more than four dozen quilts.
"My grandmother Augusta," Genevieve Reinart later wrote, "never cut her hair and had braids down to her waist...She was very superstitious: if a spoon dropped, a boyfriend was coming. If a dishcloth dropped, it meant dirty company. If a rooster crowed in the morning, it meant company. If a black cat crossed your path, it meant bad luck. Going under a ladder meant bad luck. If you broke a mirror it was 7 years bad luck. If you saw a snake while you were pregnant, it meant the baby would have a birthmark of a snake, etc. She used to make Pepperneuse cookies for Christmas."
After more than ten years with the Reinarts in Iowa, the Hofferts went to live with their son, John Schneider, on his farm in Phelps County, Nebraska. They remained there for the rest of their lives. Anton died of cancer 24 May 1940 at the age of eighty-five. Augusta passed away from heart failure on 23 December 1945 at the age of ninety. Both were buried in the nearby town of Axtell in Kearney County, Nebraska.
(From the research of David Mather, Mary Ann Rhinehart, Genevieve (Reinart) Gehling and Richard Gehling)
8- Johann “John” Meisel Jr. (1830-1900) & Fredricka Staugie (1831-1906)
Johann H. Meisel, Jr. was the son of Johann and Christine Meisel. He was born on 2 November 1830 in Odenhausen, District of Erfurt, and Province of Saxony in modern-day Germany. As a teenager he learned the trade of linen weaver. He left his parents' home as a 23-year-old when he married Fredricka Staugie. The newlyweds set up housekeeping in a home of their own in Odenhausen. There Johann worked for two years at his chosen profession.
But Johann and Fredricka longed for a new life in America. They sailed westward in the early spring of 1855. Fredricka was then in the advanced stages of pregnancy. Her first child, Augusta, was born aboard ship on the 17th day of May right there in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Upon arrival in the U.S. the Meisels settled first in Pennsylvania. They stayed but a year in the Keystone State, then moved to Bureau County, Illinois, near the town of Princeton. Initially their farm totaled a mere 80 acres, but within a few years they had purchased another 96 acres.
Johann and Fredricka spent a total of 29 years on their Illinois farm. While there, Fredricka gave birth to six more children: Anna, Johanna, Emma, Maria, Heinrich and Benjamin.
In 1885, the Meisels decided on a move to Carroll County in western Iowa. With money generated from the sale of their Illinois properties, they purchased 120 acres in Roselle Township. They later added another 85 acres in Washington Township, and - a little while later - another 160 acres, bringing their Carroll County land holdings up to a total of 365 acres, more than a half section of land.
Johann Meisel retired from farming in 1894, and moved with his wife to a large house in the town of Carroll, Iowa. He died there on 28 May 1900 at the age of 69. His wife, Fredricka, survived him by just over six years. Although a devout Lutheran like her husband, soon after his death she sold 88 acres of Meisel land to the Catholic congregation of nearby Halbur, Iowa, so that they might begin construction of St. Augustine's Catholic Church.
Fredricka died on 15 June 1906, and was buried beside her beloved husband in the Carroll City Cemetery.
(Research of Richard Gehling, 2007)