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

Overview of the Stoeckleins

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.

Stoecklein

The Stoeckleins were a Baravian family. The first to immigrate to the United States was Joseph C. Stoecklein, born in 1827 in the village of Stadt Prozelten, in the municipality of Faulbach, Bavaria. Bavaria was in turmoil during the 1830s and 40s. Eventually, political unrest led to the Revolutions of 1848, during which intellectual leaders called for greater freedom and rights for common people. The movement was defeated by the aristocracy, but Bavaria's king, Ludwig I, was forced to abdicate and was replaced by his son, Maximilian II.

The unrest in the German states led to a wave of emigration to the United States. As was common at the time, the citizens of Stadt Prozelten stuck together, even in the New World. Joseph was the first to reach Dayton, Ohio, sometime before 1849. He got a job at a meat-packing plant, wrote back home about his success, and was soon joined by his brothers, his father (his mother had died), and many other inhabitants of the village, including the Zwisler family: Joseph and Maria Dorothy Zwisler, and their daughters Carolina and Magdalena.

Joseph Stoecklein and Carolina Zwisler married on February 18, 1851. Joseph was 24, and Carolina
was 18. Whether or not they had been sweethearts in Bavaria, they no doubt were drawn to each other as familiar faces in a strange land. Joseph and Carolina raised three sons in Dayton. Their eldest, John T., was born in December 10, 1851.

John T. Stoecklein began working as a butcher, following in his father's footsteps. On November 12, 1872, he married Appolonia Baker. They had at least four children, only three of whom survived to adulthood: Cora, Betty, and Irene. John T. and his brother eventually took over their father's butcher shop. His uncles, however, were working in the brewing and saloon businesses, and in 1896, after Appolonia's early death, he opened his own saloon, The Mint.

In March of 1913, the Stoeckleins survived the one of the worst natural disasters in Ohio history. The Great Dayton Flood broke through the levees and sent water up to 20 feet deep through the downtown. Houses were swept away, killing their occupants. Families were stranded on their roofs, some dying during rescue attempts. Gas lines exploded, causing fires that could not be contained because the fire department was unable to navigate the streets. People walked the telegraph and electrical wires to safety, balancing high above the flood waters. 360 people died and 65,000 were driven from their homes. The Mint was in the middle of the flood. Family history says that John T. lost a number of barrels of expensive whiskey to the waters. Undoubtedly there was a great deal of property damage, as well. The business survived, only to close six years later when prohibition banned the sale of alcohol. 

John T. and Appolonia's youngest daughter, Irene, married Louis Leyes on June 2, 1914.

References:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stoecklein-17

http://www.daytonhistorybooks.com/page/page/1566099.htm

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

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

Overview of the Blouins

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.

Blouin

Like the LeFebvre dit Boulangers, the Blouin family has deep roots in Québec. The first Blouin in New France was Émery "Médéric" Blouin, born April 23, 1640 in  St Pierre d'Etusson, Deux-Sèvres, Poitou-Charentes,France, which is in western France, near La Rochelle. He came to New France in 1665 and married Marie Carreau on November 30, 1669, in La-Visitation-de-Notre-Dame, Château-Richer, Canada. They farmed in Saint-Jean, Île-d'Orléans, and raised a family of 14 children. His descendants married into families whose roots were even deeper in New France, including descendants of  Hélène Desportes, who, in 1620 was the first European child born in Québec. The LeFebvre line is descended from Hélène through her first marriage to Guillaume Hébert.  The Blouins are descended from the children of her second marriage, to Noël Morin. 

One notable Blouin ancestor was Jean Nicolet de Belleborne, who came to Canada in 1618. He was a coureur des bois, one of the young men sent by Samuel de Champlain to live among local communities, learn their languages and customs, and, most importantly, negotiate trade alliances that helped France and prevented the British and Dutch from getting a piece of the fur trade. Jean Nicolet first lived among the Algonquin-speaking people of Allumette Island. In 1620, he was asked to live among the Odawa and Algonquin people of Lake Nipissing. He lived there for nine years with his wife, Jeanne, a Nipissing woman. The Blouin line married the descendants of their daughter, Madeleine Euphrosine Nicolet, who traveled widely with her father before he took her to Québec so she could have a French education. Jean Nicolet is best known as the first European to cross Lake Michigan. He reached Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1634, believing he was on the way to China through the Northwest passage. He traveled all the way down the Wisconsin River, nearly reaching the upper Mississippi before he turned back.

The first Blouin to arrive in the United States was Ombeline Blouin. Born in Saint-Anselme, Quebec, in 1848, she married Louis LeFebvre dit Boulanger in 1870 and moved with him first to Maine and then to Minnesota. She lived the rest of her life on the upper Mississippi. Her grave is less than two miles from Nicollet Ave., a major thoroughfare in Minneapolis named for her distant ancestor.

References:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Besloin-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Nicolet

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Blouin-149

Overview of the LeFebvres

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.

LeFebvre dit Boulanger

The LeFebvre dit Boulangers trace their origins back to the beginning of New France and the settlement of Québec. The first of our line in New France was Claude LeFebvre dit Boulanger, born in 1648 near Paris. Claude was confirmed November 11, 1665, in Québec city. It is not clear if his parents accompanied him to the colony. Claude worked for a man named Jacques Bilodeau on the  l'Île d'Orléans. On October 28, 1669, Claude married Marie Arcular, who was born in Paris in 1651. She came to Québec as a "fille du roi", literally "daughter of the king". Filles du roi were young women, most of whom were poor or orphans, who were given dowries and free transportation to New France by the crown, in the expectation that they would marry one of the many single men in the colony.

Given the LeFebvre's deep history in Canada, there are too many ancestors to name, including a number of filles du roi, colony leaders, and important land-owners. The descendants of Claude and Marie married into families with even earlier ties to the colony, including the descendants of Louis Hébert. Louis and his wife, Marie Rollet, were the first European farmers in Québec. Louis was an apothocary and noted horticulturalist in Paris when he was recruited by his friend, Samuel de Champlain, to bring his skills to the new colony in 1617. He had previously accompanied Champlain to Port-Royal, Acadia (now Nova Scotia) in 1606. Louis's son, Guillaume, married Hélène Desportes, who is believed to be the first European child born in the new colony, in 1620. Their daughter's descendants eventually married into the LeFebvre line.

The LeFebvres first moved to the United States in the late 1800s, as part of a large migration of French-Canadians out of Québec, where rising populations were making land and jobs scarce. Leon LeFebvre, and his new bride, Ombeline Blouin, moved to Lewiston, Maine, shortly after they were married in 1870. Lewiston was known for its "Little Canada" neighborhood, where immigrants could find a French-speaking Catholic church and school for their children. Lewiston was undergoing an economic boom and Leon was able to find a job as a millwright. They had six children in Maine, and in 1886 moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, another major mill town, so Leon could find work. Leon and Ombeline lived the rest of their lives in Minneapolis.

Leon and Ombeline's youngest daughter, Marie-Anne Medora LeFebvre, married Frank Cunningham before 1910. They, too, made their home in Minneapolis, where they raised their two children.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_H%C3%A9bert
http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Lefebvre-879
http://niche-canada.org/2014/11/26/lewiston-maines-little-canada-revealing-the-cultural-intentions-of-french-canadian-migrants/
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=57401112

Overview of the Rooneys

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.

Rooney

The first of our Rooney line to come to the United States were John Joseph and Elizabeth (Kelly) Rooney who arrived in New York on May 18, 1848, in the steerage compartment of the ship The Constitution, out of Belfast, Ireland. The Constitution was a famine ship, over-crowded with the sick and the dying, those who were fleeing in any way possible an Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger), or what we call the Potato Famine. The peasants of Ireland were dependent on the potato, the only food that could produce enough calories per acre to feed the rapidly growing population. When the potato blight hit in 1845, it caused wide-spread hunger and disease. Although Ireland continued to export food throughout the Famine period, that food belonged to the (largely British, largely Protestant) landowners, and was not distributed to their workers. Millions died or were forced to emigrate. The population of Ireland dropped from a pre-1845 high of ten million to only four million by 1900.

John and Elizabeth were a young couple, only 25 and 21 when they arrived in the United States. Their eldest (surviving) child, Patrick, was born at sea. On average, pre-Famine Irish married young (16 for girls, 18 for boys), so John and Elizabeth may have lost children in Ireland before emigrating. They lived in New York when they first arrived in the United States, but around 1855 they moved to Columbus, Wisconsin, where they owned a small farm. This is where their paths crossed with the Cunninghams, who moved to Columbus shortly after. John and Elizabeth had ten children. Their third child, Elizabeth Theresa Rooney, married Robert Steven Cunningham on November 24, 1880. 

While the Cunninghams farmed a full section of land, the Rooneys had only a quarter section. With their large family, it must have been difficult to make ends meet, and they would have had no land to pass on to their children. Around 1890, most of the family moved to Minnesota, including the Rooney's grown children and their families. Although most of the Rooney siblings -- including Elizabeth Rooney Cunningham --  settled in Minneapolis, John and Elizabeth homesteaded in western Minnesota with their youngest son, Ambrose. They lived with his family until they died in 1906. They are buried in Osakis, Minnesota.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

http://thedeanbeaverblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/rooneys-of-columbus.html

Overview of the Cunninghams

For my mother's birthday, I put together a family history book, with a two-page layout dedicated to each of her family lines. I only went back to her great-grandparents to determine how many family lines to include, but I talked about their multi-family ancestry, too, if I knew it.

Since there are a number of descendants of these families, I thought I would reproduce this information on the blog, as well. Some of this information I have posted before in greater detail or with a different focus, some of it is new. If you want to see all the posts together, just click on the "Mom Book" tag on this post.

Cunningham

Our first Cunningham ancestors to come to the United States were Maurice and Elizabeth, who arrived in New York on October 2, 1828, from Cork, Ireland. They were a young couple, aged 21 and 18, probably only recently married. Prior to 1828, most Irish emigrants were well-educated, well-to-do Protestants from Ulster, but in 1827 the British government repealed all restrictions on emigration, allowing more Catholics, more of the poor, and more people from outside Ulster to leave. Between 1828 and 1847, 400,000 Irish left for North America. They were looking for opportunities that weren't available for them back in Ireland, where overcrowding and failed harvests had led to epidemics of famine and disease that, eventually, would culminate in the horrors of the Potato Famine.

Upon entering the United States, Maurice gave his occupation as "carpenter", but he found work as the head gardener on the estate of Robert Livingston Pell of Pelham in Ulster County, New York. Robert Pell was known for his agricultural innovations, and Maurice's produce won prizes at the agricultural Fair of the American Institute in the 1840s. About the time Maurice started working for Pell, an orchard of 20,000 apple trees was planted on the estate. Pell eventually exported the fruit to England, where it sold for over $20 per barrel.

By 1860, Maurice and Elizabeth moved to Columbus, Wisconsin, where they farmsteaded. They had eight children. Their youngest, Robert Steven Cunningham, was born November 22, 1850. He trained to be a carpenter, like his father, and worked for a wagon-maker in Columbus where he met his future wife, Elizabeth Theresa Rooney. They were married November 24, 1880, at St. Jerome's church. A decade after their wedding, Elizabeth's family moved farther west, to Minnesota, to find new opportunities. Robert and Elizabeth moved as well, and Robert set up shop as a wagonmaker in Minneapolis.

Robert and Elizabeth had five children, the oldest of whom was Robert Francis "Frank" Cunningham, born in Wisconsin on December 6, 1881. Frank was ten when the family moved to Minneapolis. It was there that he met his wife, Medora LeFebvre, whose French-Canadian family had moved from Quebec to Maine to Minneapolis in the late 1800s. They were married June 9, 1908 and spent the rest of their lives in Minneapolis, raising two children, including Robert Francis, Jr. Robert married Mary Jane Leyes in Dayton, Ohio, on July 9, 1938.

References:

http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/emigration/pre-fam.htm

http://thedeanbeaverblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/robert-steven-cunningham.html

http://thedeanbeaverblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/cunninghams-of-columbus-wisconsin-part-1.html