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.