Jessica Sanford

Back when I lived in Texas (2012-2016), Jessica Sanford called me. She was like my third cousin and lived out in Los Angeles somewhere. She was trying to reach out to extended family and wanted us to know she was out there and still cared. I recognized her name from family genealogy - in fact I had put the genealogy on the web where people could see it - and told her to come to Texas sometime. She claimed she had some connection with Texas as if her father was perhaps from there.

I am redoing some researching that I did a while back on her and her sister Erica but I may have that record around somewhere; it's as unclear now as it was then. First it's not clear whether they are descended from Arthur or Raymond but I do have some people who lived in El Paso for a while. In California, we can find her high school yearbook (Woodrow Wilson High School) but her birth certificate lists only a mother's surname and is very vague. Though they are named Sanford, the father appears to have escaped documentation.

As her friend on Facebook I noticed that she died soon after that call. She was young, born in the eighties, and it's not clear what she died of or why she died so early. When she called I'd told her that I'd be interested in talking to Erica too, but she implied that Erica was in enough trouble that that would be next to impossible. I'm still trying to sort that out and I may not have heard her correctly. If Jessica is dead then Erica is my main connection. I'm interested in piecing together any connection there could have been and reaching out. Third cousins is still family and I have actually pieced together some fourth-cousin friends.

She had an interesting story, I'll guarantee, but I have no idea at this point what it is. She didn't tell me enough of it.

Belle Leverett Sanford

Mary Belle Leverett Sanford (1860-1940) is interesting to me partly because she was a writer, and partly because she was one of the last Leverett women before Carol. In her generation was also Carrie Gertrude Augur (this is my great grandfather's generation) but that's it.

She was born in Salem Nebraska just as the Civil War was getting started; her parents were pioneers in southeastern Nebraska, but came back when she was three. She might or might not have remembered being on a stagecoach at age three, with two younger brothers and a teenage babysitter, crossing a surging Nishnabotna River in western Iowa on their way home. She ended up in Wisconsin with the family on a farm in the center of the state.

At sixteen she was proposed to by a wealthy banker, George Sanford. The family was opposed to her marrying so early. On agreement she held him off as long as she could and somehow got educated at Northwestern and University of Texas. I'm not quite clear how she pulled this off. Finally she married him and they lived in his hometown, Lavalle, Wisconsin, where she had her two boys, Arthur and Raymond. There may have been another one in there too who died.

In 1892 they moved the family to Council Bluffs where he now had controlling share in First National Bank. In a world that looks at bankers with the highest regard he was at his peak. Being a wealthy banker and all, he could provide for her in raising those boys and had a lot of social status.

But the Panic of 1893 came and put everyone under a lot of pressure. One of the problems with it was that it didn't go right away; it dragged on into 1897 or so. His father came to live with them in Council Bluffs and George installed his father Joseph on the board of the bank. He had enemies at the bank. He may have needed that support on his board.

In 1898 he had to sell his shares of the bank at great loss as Citizens State Bank took it over, and took the name with it. I'm sure this was a crushing blow. And I'm not sure what he did after the takeover. Did he still have his position? It's not clear yet.

Joseph died in January of 1902, four years later, at their house. But here's the wild thing. He took the remains back to Lavalle, where Joseph was a founder and hero, and everyone made a big deal out of him. But on his return, George himself died in August of that same year. Not sure how old he was or what he died of, I'll find out. Belle was left with the two boys.

The boys were already considerably older, I'm not sure how old. ONe I believe, Arthur, was born in like 1880, as soon as she married, and so was already 22 when his father died. The other, Raymond, may have been about 16.

She died alone in CB in 1840 though I'm not sure of that. The boys were off with families and never really lived as adults in CB. Each had sons and all of those sons had sons; there were boy Sanfords all over the place.

We considered them close relatives in part because I think Will and Belle were close, and shared a lot of concerns related to their parents who came back to CB and died there. But as the Sanford clan spread far and wide we lost track of them and Arthur and Raymond after all were in our grandparents' generation and much older.

Mary Belle was a churchgoer, a Methodist, and a supporter or member of WCTU. As such she was opposed to alcohol in general. But her husband George allowed taverns in buildings he owned and the law came after those taverns at least once. It makes me wonder if this was a conflict in their marriage or if his early death was somehow attributable to alcohol. No answer to that now. But if enemies had crumbled his financial empire and left him broke and angry at the turn of the century, alcohol might have been a natural part of that scenario.

As a writer she was prolific; she wrote biographies, and she was a journalist for the Non-Pareil; she wrote many short stories. I have a few of them in typed-up form in crinkly papers in my genealogy information. Some are so crinkly pages are getting separated from each other and coming apart. This is partly why I'm trying to reconstruct what I know, quick before it's too late. If some are particularly valuable I'll find a way to preserve them.

But mostly they are Will's Trans-Mississippian: doomed to a kind of obscurity, as my book will be the only thing that even points to their existence, besides the crates of crinkly paper.

Civil War?

I realize that there is a gap in John Sengelmann's bio. He arrived in the US in 1858; I'm not sure where the information is, or where he arrived. The next time we see him is in 1864, marrying Kate Geishart in Ogle County, Illinois. The Civil War falls in there at 1861-1865.

At first I looked at all Illinois soldiers and no, not a John Sengelmann in any of the various (maybe eight or nine?) spellings I have encountered. But after stewing on it a while I decided to widen my search. Who says he was in Illinois at the breakout of the war? I know he arrived in 1858 but don't know he arrived in Illinois in 1858.

These are some possibilities: He was recruited out of German town, New York, young and single, figured what the heck and went off to war. In the army he learned about the Dutch Reformed community in Illinois and went there afterward. OR, he met Kate Geishart there in New York, and promised to reunite with her in Illinois (where she had people, after all) and did.

New York would be the obvious place to look as so many German immigrants landed there and stayed, in limbo, while they either got the money to go on west, or got another plan. Going off to war was one plan; lots did it. It gave them the opportunity to learn about the country, gave them friends around the states, and gave them a little money they could spend if and when they survived to get out. The lucky ones made it out; some were probably injured or died early, as John did.

It was a nasty war, dirty, unhealthy, bad for everyone. But some people did survive, and go on to have many children afterward.

I found Mattie

After much searching, I believe I have found Mattie (1864), younger sister of Lizzie Singelmann Mauer, my great grandmother.

There is a grave in the Silver Valley Cemetery for Martha E. Sengelmann, 1876-1896, died at the age of 19. Her parents are buried in that graveyard as well.

There are no death notices anywhere, in Council Bluffs, Omaha, or anywhere in Iowa, that I have found, though Sengelmann has over a half-dozen valid spellings and death notices can appear with any of them. Martha has only one; I am surprised I have found almost nothing on any Martha in the area.

To summarize what I know, John Sengelmann moved his family of himself, Katherine, Ana Lucinda, Ida Louise, Lizzie, and Mattie to Pottawattamie County, near Hancock, soon after 1880. In 1880 he was 49, Kate was 38, Ana 15, Ida 12, Lizzie 11, and Mattie 4. He seemed to be one of 75 called for a jury in a case of a Dr. Cross murdering Dr. McKune; I have yet to really look into this.

The timeline goes something like this: Louise married into the Mischler family in 1889; Louis Mischler was a prominent farmer who appears all over the news. Eliza married Charles Mauer in 1891 but John himself died in December of 1891. At this point Mattie was 15. Ana married in 1893.

At 19, Mattie died and was buried in the Silver Valley Cemetery, with no fanfare, no death notices. This says suicide to me for some reason. Hancock by the way was a little far out there, a ways even from Minden but in the same general vicinity. Why would a 19-year-old farm girl die and be buried like that?

Her mother died in 1898, heartbroken, I'd imagine. My guess is also that life was hard on the farm after he died. It's possible that Katherine and the girls moved in with the Mischlers toward the end of their life. Katherine is listed as dying in Minden, not Hancock.

Related to the question of what made Lizzie so unpleasant, so as to sue her own son and make life miserable for her grandson and mother, to "drive her husband into the grave" or "be the reason her daughter checked out early", I still don't know. Was there something about western Iowa at that point that drove everyone to untimely deaths? Or maybe it was the Mischlers who were doing everyone in?

Katharine Geishiert Singelmann

OK once again lost in a sea of possible spellings. Katharine/Katherine/Catherine/Catharine/Kate, Geishiert/Gishirt/Geishirt/Geishurt/Geshurt/Geshirt/Gushurt/Gushirt. Singelmann/Singleman/Singlemen/Singelmen/Singelman/Sinyelmann etc. Any combination. She seems to have fallen through the cracks.

As Katharine Geishirt (1841), she immigrated around 1863 and married in 1864. Her new husband John Singelmann had arrived in 1858; if she knew him before she came she would have only been sixteen or seventeen when she met him. More likely she met him here at German Valley.

She seems to have an older sister Caroline (1839) who immigrated and married in 1862; she married a man named Knott, had seven children, and actually died in Holcomb, which is where the family lived for a while. When she arrives and gets married the same year I suspect she knew this Knott guy before she came; perhaps the house in Holcomb was his?

A brother and father also showed up. The brother, Johann Adam (1845), arrived in 1864 but I see no sign of him coming with Katharine. He would marry, have children, and die in Winnebago County (Rockford) and so stay in the area. The father, Johannes Geishirt (1811) arrived in 1868, well after the children, and somehow ended up in Wisconsin. No sign of his wife; he died in Wisconsin in 1878.

So she married this Singelmann guy in 1864, and they lived in Ogle County, near Holcomb, where the census found them in 1880. That's the census that has their children Ana Lucinda (15), Ida Louise (12), Lizzie (11) and Mattie (4) whom we will never see again. A family of parents and four girls on a farm outside Holcomb. I'm not sure where her sister was at this time but I'll find out; the sister, remember, died in Holcomb. Did she get the house upon their leaving?

It's unclear exactly when they moved to Minden but the girls started marrying in 1889; Louise married Louis Mischler (1889), Lizzie married Charles (1891), and Ana married a guy named Young (1893). By 1898 Katharine Singelmann had died but I find no local obituary. John Singelmann died also but I'm still not sure when. Who outlived whom? No local obituaries in spite of the fact that newspapers were big and Minden was small. But I'm not done looking.

Louis Mischler looms tall. He was a farmer not from Minden (from Missouri, and before that Switzerland), but arrived in Minden 1880 before marrying the first of the Singelmann girls in 1889. They were prominent and successful; Lizzie no doubt was jealous as her own man, Charles, was more of a Death-of-a-Salesman type. Not sure who got the parents' farm upon the Singlemanns' deaths. Not sure why they would even make the move from Holcomb to Minden, sometime in the 1880s, leaving Katharine's sister and brother behind, not to mention Mattie/memory of Mattie, if that was the case. No death notices at all for Mattie, a total lost cause, no matter how you spell Singelmann.

I have found two new things that indicate that the search is not over. One, they are all Dutch Reformed and Dutch Reformed keep their own records, which I have not scratched the surface of. Dutch Reformed was a minority religion (about 1/3) of Ostfriesland, but they started their own church in German Valley near Holcomb, and also in Minden; both had Silver in the name. Second, German Valley itself is in Stephenson county, not Ogle County, which may indicate that I could widen my search for ancestors or relatives of Singelmann, Geishirt, etc. There may be more people out there.

As I become more comfortable studying the life of Lizzie, Elizabeth Katherine, third child of John and Kate, I realize that whatever happened to Mattie, seven years younger than she was, turned her against young children or made it hard for her to deal with her grandchildren. Maybe I should investigate Matthew or Matthias? I was kind of assuming Mattie was a girl, their fourth, but maybe not. His/her mysterious disappearance is probably behind a lot of things here, but they did not seek out the news, or social pages, or recognition in the Minden/CB papers and seemed to be ok with slipping into obscurity which they would have done had it not been for me.

Margaret John Mauer

I love spending time exploring and learning whatever I can about any one of my given relatives. Margaret is an interesting example. She would be my great-great grandmother, my father's mother's father's mother, if that makes any sense. I feel like I know her better tonight after digging around a little. I'll add a picture but it's on another computer; I have computer problems and this one, glitchy as usual, is at least still making letters that I need to write.

Margaret immigrated at the age of about seventeen, if I'm not mistaken; I found a boat, the St. Andrew, that brought her and three other siblings, along with two parents, Christ and Catherine John, 52 years old each, in 1855. Now this might not be the right boat, as another report had her immigrating at the age of 14, in 1852. It's entirely possible that that record is lost and this one in 1855 is the closest one to what we know. What has to match is her age; she was born in 1838. But there are dozens of ways to spell John, and dozens to spell even Margaret (Margret, Margarette, Magret, etc.). Once she becomes a Mauer there are dozens of ways to spell Mauer.

They seem to have married in 1858, and had their first child in 1860 in Schaghticoke, New York, up by Albany. He was working as a laborer when the census found them up there in 1865. They somehow moved out to Princeton, Iowa, by 1870, where a census found them again - an article said they moved to Scott County Iowa in 1869 and then to York Township, Minden area, in the western part of Iowa, in 1876. In York Township they farmed for thirty years until they moved to town in 1906. By that time thier four kids were grown: Calvin, Mary, Charles, and Lizzie. Having a long stable marriage with four children, all successfully raised as far as I can tell, reminded me of my own parents and when I read about their golden anniversary I celebrated with them.

But there are a lot of questions about their lives that I'd still like answers to. There is no wedding annoucement in the state of New York for anyone remotely resembling them. Which leads me to believe their English was so bad they couldn't manage the courthouse, but did it through their church or some other way that still was important to them, and allowed them to celebrate their golden anniversary in 1910. Whatever they did, it worked.

One major question has to do with her family. If Christ wasn't her father, and the other reports were right, she still came here as a minor, and had a family of some kind, presumably Johns, Yahns, Jahns, or some such. No sign of them. If any moved to Minden to join her, or even visit, I have found no clue. I think reporters deliberately avoided them because of the communication problems. If an aunt or brother came to visit, getting the information off anyone would be too difficult, and they just dropped it, unlike the census, which will go way out of the way to get the right information no matter what. Newspapers don't have time for such things. The German immigrants slipped under the radar, and the information is now lost.

Margaret admitted in a census, at the age of about 65, that she could neither read nor write. this could mean she could not read or write English, or could mean not either, English or German. I can hardly imagine what a life on a farm out there would be like, with no reading or writing. it's also possible that she could read flour sacks, and what she needed to live, but stopped there with English, and was humble about calling herself fluent.

Back to her family: she almost certainly had one, coming over so young, which would give us other relatives around, if we could find them. But were they really in her life at all? If we could find Johns in Minden I would have, though perhaps I haven't looked hard enough, and I didn't even check Princeton (more likely) or Schaghticoke. I am still looking for motive for them to go to Princeton, then on to York Township, perhaps someone they knew in either place who could have set them up and lived on a nearby farm. There was a general move westward at the time and word was going around that that was where the good farmland was; they didn't need that much motive. It's more that I suspect they didn't go anywhere without knowing people. It seems that what there was was on his side; he did the speaking to the world; I could be wrong though. With John, it's a common name; many of them aren't German. There's still a lot to learn.

Lizzie Singelmann, a.k.a. Catherine Mauer

According to my father, his grandmother Catherine was a very unpleasant woman. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd run her husband Charles into the grave, and he also felt like the reason his mother died early was that she not only lived there but also completely dominated the household. She had a feud with his Uncle Roy, a doctor, and as a result Roy could not come over and give reasonable medical advice to his sister, my dad's mother. Verna passed away early, before I was born.

But not Catherine; she lived to be 92 and didn't die until after they had moved to Des Moines. By then she had actually sued Roy. My dad says that their feud was over handling of Union Pacific stock, but there's no telling what the lawsuit was about. The lawsuit was in 1943, before they moved to DM, while what happened to the Union Pacific was no doubt much earlier, possibly 1932 when a UP dividend made national news but teased them into thinking the depression was over, when in fact it had just barely begun.

So I went into studying her life with the questions of what made her so unhappy? Or why would she at least appear this way to my dad? There are some clues in her life and I invite the reader to help me sort them out.

She grew up in a household of two parents and four sisters; she was the third. Second was Ida Louise, first was Lucinda Ana, and the last one was Mattie, somewhat of an enigma. Having two names and using the middle one more was somewhat common and that could be the only reason that Elizabeth Catherine came to prefer Catherine after a lifetime of being known as Lizzie, but more about that later. She and Louise were close in age, but Louise was slightly older, while Mattie was a good bit younger and only appeared in one census, 1880, at which time she was 4. I found no death notice, no trace of her after that.

This was on an Illinois farm just outside of Rockford, in a rich valley along the Rock River, a very pretty part of the state. Her parents, John and Kate Geishart Singelmann, were both German immigrants but had married there in Ogle County. John (1832) was older than Kate (1841) and both are hard to find in various records. There is a ship passage for John, who seems to have come througn New York in June 1858, and identified himself as from Altona, Holstein. Kate was from Saxmingian (sp?) and was also known as Yershiert. If they married in Ogle County, does that mean they met there? And if so, is there any evidence of Kate's family or a group that she could have come over with?

What I found was that Ogle County was not a huge overly-German place. They had a small plot in a thoroughly mixed valley and there were other Germans around, but there was not a predominance of Germans or a large group from one area.

Somehow the whole crowd, with the exception of Mattie, who disappeared, ended up out in Minden, Iowa, out by Council Bluffs. I have found no clue about how or when they moved, or why. All three of the older girls married in Minden, with Louise marrying first in 1889, Lizzie marrying Charles Mauer in 1891, and Ana marrying a Young in 1893. The parents, John and Kate, died in the Council Bluffs area but I could not find whether they had brought the three girls west (or Mattie too?) or whether they only came later, after everyone had settled.

Louise married a kind of go-getter guy, had six children (three of each) with one going to Univ. of Iowa law school and moving off to Washington DC to work for the feds. She died wealthy after her husband, Louis Mischler, passed away. Perhaps Lizzie was jealous of her. Perhaps they knew something about what had happened to Mattie.

Catherine married Charles Mauer, and he was somewhat tragic. He had worked at a hardware store, in a partnership, for many years, but in 1921 became a pioneer in what he called a "checkless store," where customers checked themselves out and saved money. It was a radical idea, now being implemented by ALDI, but at the time it didn't go over so well. By 1926 he was a traveling something-or-other for Ney Manufacturing, and died while he was on the road, in Watertown S.D., at the age of 59. It's possible that Elizabeth (Catherine) had driven him into the grave but if so, she was just coming into a depression in which people really needed each other. My father was born in 1927, the following year, so never met him. If I had known this before today I would have told everyone self-checkout was doomed from the start and my great grandfather proved it (in his own small way, in Council Bluffs).

Ultimately she moved in with Verna, but not right away, I don't think. The depression was horrible and lasted from 1929 to about 1940, by which time my father was thirteen, still too young to join up. They were by 1943 in Des Moines,

Why did my father have such a negative view of her? I'm not sure. It shows me that some families have trauma in them that you might never know without being there, and still might never know. It is not easy to find information about this crowd, the German immigrants in Iowa. For one thing, they seemed to get their names spelled differently every time they opened their mouth. And there were several or a half-dozen legitimate ways to spell each name. And this goes for Singelmann, Mauer, and Catherine.

Speaking of her name change, though, she had a right to use it, since it was her middle name, and her mother's before her mother died. But there was another Catherine Mauer in the valley. That one had married Charles' older brother Calvin, and had several kids, including twins, and had stayed in Minden. Was she competitively trying to own a name that was hers? It seems to me it would have been easier to stick with Lizzie.

More to come later. These are still open questions, and with poorly-functioning computers I may never be able to answer them all. My good fast computer has broken a-key, s-key, z-key, 1-key, it's not recovered from some spill a ways back. This one has all the keys but keeps shutting off, overloaded and ancient. I can't win. I've stopped chatting on them or even writing reviews, and instead spend my days researching the German farmers in the family.

Living through two wars with Germany I'm sure wasn't easy. Then to have a huge depression heaped on top of that, in between, would be very difficult. It's hard not to hold it against her, suing her own son and not letting him with his medical advice into the house. He, Uncle Roy, was somewhat of a specialist in vericose veins and had taken up with the Creighton medical school. But he was also prickly himself; once his wife sued him for divorce, because he'd told her she would "either go back to work or starve." Who knows what that was all about, but hey, it was the depression. Could have been anything.

My father wouldn't know, because he never got to meet his Uncle Roy.

German immigrants

The development of Illinois and Iowa, especially the farms, is tied up in the story of the huge wave of German immigrants all through the middle of the nineteenth century. They came by the thousands, either through New York, or through New Orleans and up the river, and they were actually recruited by Illinois and Iowa which needed people to settle and farm and fill them up.

Other people were recruited too, and both Illinois and Iowa have Swedish towns, Norwegian towns, and even a few Dutch towns. But the Germans far outnumbered the rest and especially in Illinois and Iowa (Wisconsin and Minnesota tended more toward the Scandinavian). There were several reasons: conditions in Germany made the things the US offered much more desirable. Religious freedom, ability to educate your children, and have a large farm with lots of room, ability to advance economically if you worked hard: these were things that spoke to the average German in those days. So they picked up, moved here, and in many cases bought cheap plots of land to start their farm and raise their families.

Often they would go where their friends were, so there were places that were full of people from Holstein, for example, or from some other part of Germany. Naturally, they would speak German when they got together and this began to alarm some people, who noticed that in many cases the Germans outnumbered the English speakers who were already in a location. Iowa at one point passed a law prohibiting speaking any other language besides English in public, and it was aimed at the Germans; there were enough Germans that German could be heard in many small towns at the time the law was passed.

For the most part assimilation was natural and easy, and they learned English like other groups to the point that their children were fluent and nobody would even know that they were second or third generation immigrants; their advantage here was the German kids were as white as anyone and didn't look all that different from the English that were already here. There were enough Germans that young German children could find others to marry and didn't have to assimilate, but still they did, as was entirely natural.

The Civil War played a huge role in their development and movement; many were already here in 1859 when it broke out. They tended to be living in northern states (Illinois, Indiana, Ohio) and territories (Iowa), but supported Lincoln and in many cases sent their children to fight. They became Republicans as followers of Lincoln were. But something happened after the war that changed that; Republicans began to set their sights on the evils of alcohol and gather political support for prohibition.

This was probably the biggest cultural difference between the Germans and English; the Germans liked their beer, and they saw no reason not to drink it outside, or drink it in front of people, in public, in festive occasions. The English not only were offended by these public displays of alcohol consumption, but even gathered up laws against them in many cases.

Two ancestor families are interesting cases in studying this German immigration; together they produced my paternal grandmother, a product of both of them. One was started by Henry and Margaret Mauer, who immigrated in 1852 and married in 1858. I don't know if they immigrated together (she would have been only fourteen in 1852) but by an 1865 census they lived in the small town of Schaghticoke, New York, just east of Albany, and had already had their first two children, Calvin (1860) and Mary (1862). Charles (1867) would be their third. In New York they spelled their name Mower and it appears there were other spellings too. It's a common name in Germany but in the US they became Mowers, Moors, Mauers, Mours, Maurs, lats of things. Henry and Margaret seemed to change it to Mauer later down the line.

The 1870 census found them in Princeton, Iowa, just up the river from Des Moines, on a farm. It was a German community; they were surrounded by people from Holstein. I have no idea how long they stayed as their next stop was out in the western part of the state, near Council Bluffs. Henry had been a laborer (probably in the mills) back in Schaghticoke, but now he was a farmer, and was surrounded by other German farmers.

We don't know their reasons for moving out to York Township, Pottawatomie County, out by Minden and Council Bluffs, but I suspect they did it pretty quickly, and they were out there by 1900 for sure. Both Calvin (1860) and Mary (1862) married people in Minden, near York Township, so that suggest to me that they came of age there and were probably there before 1875. But how did they get there? What was more desirable about far-western Iowa farmland, as opposed to on-the-Mississippi farmland?

Young Charles, by the way, would move to Council Bluffs, open a hardware store with a partner, marry Lizzie Singelmann, and have three children of his own, the youngest being Verna (1898).

Lizzie Singelman had come the way many Illinois farm-country Germans had, and had landed in Ogle County with her father, mother, and three other sisters. I know less about them and about how Lizzie found her way out to Minden, but it was similar; they knew people. Ogle County was just southwest of Rockford.

We're heading into the turn of the century with Charles and Lizzie, who is now Catherine Singelmann Mauer, having three children before 1900. Henry has brought his mother out to York Towship and everyone lives in Minden, Council Bluffs, or the area. Minden is still heavily German. Alas, World War I arrives. It is hard to be German. One must hide one's Germanness, not speak a word of German. No problem for Verna, she marries an Anglo boy.

Henry Mower

Here's a little more information about the ancestors of Verna Mauer Leverett. I think it's important to know these people so I'm learning as much as I can about them. Verna was my paternal grandmother whom I never met.

Henry Mower was born in 1835 in Germany. He immigrated to the US in 1852, at the age of 17. In 1858 he married Margaret Mower though I haven't found where. She also immigrated in 1852 (though I may have those dates wrong, it seems to me I found they'd immigrated in different years) - but, since she was born in 1838, she would have only been 14 at the time, so it seems she would have come with family. But I haven't found a family name; I don't know what family she was from.

In 1865 they lived in Schaghticoke, New York, a small town just east of Albany. He was a laborer, possibly in a textile mill there. The town only had 3 or 4 thousand people and was in fact getting smaller because throughout that era people were moving west, which is what they did. Henry and Margaret would have four children, three of them there in Schaghticoke, Calvin, Mary and Charles, then, later, Lizzie.

In the 1870 census they were in Princeton, Iowa, just north of Davenport on the Mississippi. Henry listed himself as a farmer. At this point Charles was 4 but like his siblings, Calvin (10) and Mary (8), was listed as being born in New York. Somehow they would then find their way out to York Township, just south of Minden, Iowa.

Back in Schaghticoke, there are four Mowers buried. Starting in Iowa, the state and they themselves called them the Mauers, but back in New York, there seem to be Mowers but not Mauers. In Schaghticoke we have Catherine E.(1855), Helen A. (1876), Joseph K. (1885), and Sophia (1837). Sophia is the most curious because she could be the generation above Henry, namely Henry's mother or aunt. But a mother seems to appear later in Iowa so I'm guessing aunt and extended family, if they are even related. Mowers/Mauers were very common and Germans were flooding into the country at the time. But speaking of Schagticoke, I'm still looking for the explanation for how they got there in the first place. Did they have family? Did they meet and marry there? It was a small town. But they were clearly not interested in staying; he wanted to be a farmer.

I'm not sure how long they were in Princeton, Iowa but they were in York Township, out by Minden, in 1900. Many others found their way out to Minden as well. It will be a puzzle to figure out who got there first. By 1900 Calvin was 40, was married and had four children; they all ended up in York Township. Mary, second oldest, would marry Henry Leaders who I believe was in Minden; she was 32 in 1900 but my guess is they had already been in York Township/Minden for a while. Lizzie married a Simon but I have no details. As for Charles, third child, father of Verna, he would marry Catherine Singelmann and move to Council Bluffs but I have no details on that yet either.

At some point Henry's mother, Anna Margaret Mauer (1837), arrived. It's curious that she had the same birth year as Sophia who was buried back in Schaghticoke - perhaps they were twins? or just not related? But she seems to have died and was the first of the Mauers to be buried in Silver Creek Cemetery, with Henry Leaders filing all the paperwork. It brings up some questions, but it's interesting that she reported her father to be Yahn; that was her maiden name. There is no sign of the Mauer she married, or evidence that Henry had brothers or sisters, perhaps the people buried back in New York. If those were his brothers or sisters, Anna then would have chosen to come out to Minden rather than stay in Schaghticoke with them. But she did and was therefore the main matriarch of the clan. She did not appear in the Schaghticoke census or the Princeton Iowa one; my guess is she came over later. Perhaps I can find this out as well.

I believe Charles had a hardware business in Council Bluffs but I would still like to find out how he met Catherine Singelmann; Verna was to report that she was born "near Minden" which I take to mean York Township. All that is in the 1900s and I haven't gotten that far yet.

Verna Mauer Leverett

Lately I've been looking up some information about my grandmother Verna, who I never met, because she had died before I was old enough to meet her. I had always assumed she was first- or second-generation immigrant, but I was wrong. Her family was German, but both her mother and father were born in the USA. Here is what I've learned so far.

Verna was born around 1896, near Minden, Iowa, a town recently half destroyed by a tornado. Her father, Charles Mauer, was born in 1867 in Shaghticoke, New York, a small town near Albany. How he found his way to Council Bluffs is a mystery. Also, how his parents found their way to this small town in New York State is a mystery.

His parents, Henry Mauer and Margaret Mauer, appeared on the census in New York as Henry Mower and Margaret Mower, living in Shaghticoke in 1860. At that time Charles' older siblings were born, but Charles himself wouldn't come along until 1867. This census does not give Margaret's maiden name but says both Henry and Margaret were born in Germany. Their children were clearly born in Shagticoke. He was a laborer.

I found a reasonably good article about life in Shagticoke 1850-1860. There were a lot more Irish immigrants than Germans, but Germans were flooding into the country at the time, especially into New York City. It would make sense to look for another laborer who knew him from Germany and invited him up there with the offer of a job. In a town with so few German immigrants he would have to learn English quickly but apparently the place was good enough for him to have at least three kids. How did Charles end up in Minden, Iowa? On reflection I would guess the whole family moved out there, knowing that there was rich farmland and a town so full of Germans one didn't have to speak English at all if one didn't want to. If it wasn't the whole family, it could have been an older brother or sister who went there first. It remains to be seen and one of the variables is alternate spelling of the Mower/Mauer name. I would say, though, that an immigrant before 1860 had a different experience from those of the immigrants of the late 1800's who mostly filled up Minden. They were German, but they'd been here for a while; the kids like Charles knew English if nothing else from school.

Verna's mother went by two names, Katherine and Elizabeth. As a child she was Lizzie Singelmann. Singelmann also has several spellings, Singleman/Singelman/Singlemann etc. She has been characterized by my dad as most unpleasant. He has said that it was likely that she drove poor Charles into the grave, and also that his mother Verna died early in order to get away from her. So in looking at her early life I look for clues for unhappiness or unusual circumstances that would set her to this kind of anger.

But she seems to have grown up an ordinary farm girl with brothers and sisters, in Ogle County, just this side of Rockford, on a farm in Scott Township. Once again, how her parents got there is a mystery.

Her parents were John Singelmann, and Kate, or Catherine Geishart Singelmann. Why young Lizzie would take Katherine's name instead of her own, with her own spelling, is a mystery but it seems it was her middle name; she was Elizabeth Katherine Singlemann as a girl in Ogle County. She also had siblings, Lucinda, Ida, and Mattie (all girls?), only Mattie being younger. She was born in 1869.

How did John and Kate find this farm in Scott Township in the 1850's? That story may be easier to track down, beccuse it's true throughout Illinois at least in the northern part where I now live, which is still to this day predominantly German. Germans were coming in by the thousands, through Quincy often, not always fluent in English, but well aware that the government was parceling up homesteads in the north and west of the state. Early history of Ogle County is all about the Anglo settlers who knew their way around enough to make waves in local politics, but the German families were there too, getting by, and putting their kids on the schools to learn English.

How she or they found their way out to Minden or council Bluffs is also a mystery. One of them? All? Or did Henry meet her in transit?

Verna herself, born in 1898, was a musician in a church choir, but met my grandfather somehow in Council Bluffs and married him in 1920. According to my father (b. 1927) Grandma Singelmann made life miserable when she moved in with them, and she had a feud with his Uncle Roy, Verna's brother, over handling of Union Pacific stock.

Now there are several ways to interpret that, but some history is in order here too. The Depression started over a long weekend in late October of 1929, but the stocks didn't reach their lowest point until 1932, and the went down more, apparently, between 1929 and 1932 than at any other time. By 1932 people were pretty depressed and were beginning to realize that the stocks weren't coming back up and that they were in for a long Depression. A sudden dividend announced by Union Pacific, one of the major stocks, gave them hope temporarily in 1932 but turned out not to turn anything around at all. At least this is the way I understand it. Now I don't know if my dad's reasons for the falling out are accurate, and I don't know the timing, but you can put two and two together from what I said and guess that Grandma Catherine was mad at Roy for misreading the stock market and investing too much in a failed railroad, or one whose stock had just crashed.

When Verna got breast cancer Roy was still not allowed around the house due to this feud, and my father never got to know him. HIs expertise as a doctor might have been helpful, but wasn't, because of Grandma Singlemann, apparently.

I had always thought that these Mauers had emigrated in about 1890, but I was wrong; they'd all been here, both sets of Verna's grandparents, in the 1850s. But this brings up another question: what about the Civil War? Was it that, by generation, they all had small children when it broke out in 1859? My guess is yes, that small children made you excused from the draft. The fact that Iowa was not yet a state could have played a part too. But I'm not even sure that both Henry and John were not in the army; I may simply have not found that.

There's more to it, obviously, but I ran out of time. I'll try to put the pieces together later.