Thursday, June 30, 2016

Overview of the Schuttes

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.

Schutte


The first Schuttes in the United States were Joseph and Mena (possibly Maria) Schutte, who arrived in Ohio from Hanover in the 1850s. The short-lived Kingdom of Hanover was conquered by the Prussians in 1866. Even before it was forcibly added to the Prussian empire, the Kingdom of Hanover had been a difficult place to live. Between 1800 and 1825, when Joseph Schutte was born, the region was controlled first by the British crown, then the French, then the Cossacks, then the British again. The economic and political insecurity prompted many Hanoverians to immigrate. In the 1850s, immigrants from throughout the German states were settling in the Midwest, where cheap land tempted immigrants to farmstead.


Unlike many of his fellow immigrants, however, Joseph Schutte was a skilled laborer, a shoe-maker. He set up a shop in Dayton, Ohio, where he and Mena had five children, only two of whom survived to adulthood. Mena, unfortunately, appears to have died at the age of 39 in 1867. Although Joseph remarried, he had no other surviving children. 


Joseph and Mena's eldest daughter, Mary, was born October 9, 1860. As a teenager, she went to work in Mad River Falls township for a German farming family. Either there, or in church, she met Joseph Leyes, whom she married in 1883. Mary's only surviving sibling, Anna Woeste, is buried near her in Calvary Cemetery in Dayton, as are her younger Schutte siblings who did not survive to adulthood.


References:


http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~schenot/hecht_leyes/leyes.html


http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Shutte-11

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