Overview of the Leyeses

This is part of a series from the family history book I wrote for my mother's birthday. To see all the posts, click on the "Mom Book" tag at the bottom of this post.

Leyes

The first Leyes in the United States was John (or Johann) Leyes, who was born September 1, 1824 and arrived in the United States by 1853.He settled in Mad River Township, outside of Dayton, Ohio. Family legend claims he came from the Alsace, a culturally and historically German region in France. However, the documentary evidence suggests he actually came from the Palatinate, an adjacent area to the Alsace but on the German side. "Leyes" is a Rhenish name and in every census John gave his birthplace -- and that of his parents -- as Bavaria or Rhine-Bavaria; his children's death certificates all list their father's country of birth as Germany. It is possible that he originally came from a border area, but I suspect the Alsace legend dates to the 20th century, when many German families tried to distance themselves from their origins during the time of jingoistic nationalism around World War I. 

On December 8, 1853, John married Margaretta Saeger. Margaretta was born around 1835 in Hesse-Darmstadt, the region adjacent to the Palatinate. She came to the United States in 1839 with her parents and brother, but unfortunately her parents died young. By 1850, she was a young orphan and living with another German family. She was raised Lutheran but converted to Catholicism, either at the time of her wedding or sometime after her parents died. After their marriage, John and Margaretta farmed in Mad River Township and had eight children, five of whom survived to adulthood.

John and Margaretta's eldest child, Joseph, was born August 8, 1858. He worked as a farm hand while a young man but eventually found a job as a teamster and moved to Dayton. On May 9, 1883, he married Mary Schutte in Emmanuel Church. Like Joseph, Mary was the daughter of German Catholic immigrants. Joseph and Mary Leyes raised six children and lived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their wedding.

Joseph and Mary Leyes's second son, Louis, was born September 8, 1889. Like his father, he became a driver, although later in life he was a salesman. Also like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, Louis was a stalwart member of Dayton's German Catholic community. He married within that community when, on June 2, 1914, he was united with Irene Stoecklein. The couple lived in Dayton, raising two children, including their eldest, Mary Jane Leyes, who married Robert Francis Cunningham on July 9, 1938.

References:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~schenot/hecht_leyes/leyes.html
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Leyes-11