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.