Overview of the Bakers

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.

Baker

Casper and Anna Maria Baker (or Becker, depending on how the name is transliterated) were the first of our Baker line to move to the United States. They were from Saxony, according to their census information. Place names in Germany are difficult to interpret. The same town and region names can be used for a variety of different locations, and, of course, the boundaries of those regions could change over time. Saxony, in the period 1820-1860, most likely referred either to the Kingdom of Saxony (an independent member of the German Confederation that included the major cities of Dresden and Leipzig) or the Province of Saxony (a somewhat less coherent region annexed by Prussia and including areas that had previously been part of the Kingdom of Saxony, such as Wittenberg, but also Magdeburg, Halberstadt, and parts of the former territories of Brandenberg and Erfurt.) 

Casper was born on March 18, 1822, and Anna Maria on February 2, 1826. They probably married in Saxony and emigrated together to the United States. They arrived in Dayton, Ohio before 1849, the birth year of their eldest child. Casper was a stonecutter by trade. Casper and Anna Maria had nine children. Their third child, and second daughter, was Appolonia Baker, who, at the age of 18, married John T. Stoecklein. 

Appolonia died at the age of 41, after a long battle with illness. Although the cause of her illness is not known for certain, her descendants have a strong history of biliary cancer. She had three surviving daughters, the youngest of whom, Irene (the future wife of Louis Leyes), was only four when her mother died. 

References:

http://thedeanbeaverblog.blogspot.com/2016/01/appolonia-baker-stoecklein.html