According to the Walker/Iltis family Tree on Ancestry.com the Adam Maurer family arrived in NY from Germany (Bavaria at that time) on May 31, 1834.
The Maurer Story
September 15, 2013Dear Children,
Tonight I want to tell you about my Zimmerman grandfather's mother's mother's family. That would be your great-great-great-great grandmother's family. (I think!)
The first Maurer we know anything about is Johan Nicolaus (b. 1760) in Niedermoschel, a few miles north of Waldgreweiler, Donnersbergkreis district, Bavaria. That's the part of Germany we know as Rheinland-Palatine or Pfalz for short. At the time Johan Nicolaus lived there it was part of Bavaria. He married Gertrude Schut (b. 1771) also in Niedermoschel. The two children that we know of from that union were both born in Waldgrehweiler, Bavaria.
When our cousin, Bill Moyer, was in Germany he visited a very old house in Waldgrehweiler that was said to have belonged to the Maurer family. Here's how he described it, “The original walls are three feet thick and it was nice and cool inside on an 85 degree day outside. The inside ceilings looked ancient except in the rooms he had redone. He said he didn't know when it was built - perhaps in the 1400's. It was used as an inn at one time, with a dance hall adjoining it.” If you ever get to Germany and want to visit it, give me a call. He even sent a map of how to find it!
The elder child was Johann Adam Maurer (b. 1791). He married Jacobina Philipine Mohr (b. 1795) in 1815 and they settled in Waldgrehweiler. They had seven children, all but the last born in Waldgrehweiler. The last, Adam, was born in Bucks Township, Tuscarawas Co., Ohio. According to the Ancestry.com tree of Walker/Iltis, Adam Maurer and his family arrived in New York from Bavaria on May 31, 1834. Johann Adam and Jacobina Mohr Maurer were among our immigrant ancestors. And so was their daughter, Christina, your great great great great grandmother.
Christina Elizabeth Maurer (b. 1827) lived to be 75 years old and died in St. Charles, Minnesota. You can read more about her life in the section about Theobald Britzius (b. 1820).
The Maurer family immigrated to America, Bucks township, Tuscarawas County, Ohio, between 1832 when 6th child, Margaretha, was born in Germany, and 1835 when 7th child Adam was born in America. This is about the time (1832) another Maurer and another Britzius family immigrated from the same area of Germany. In fact the Britizus family mentioned came from Bisterschied, same as ours! The letter is not about our ancestors exactly, However, the time, the places, the names are so close that they were undoubtedly cousins of some degree and the story it tells certainly gives the flavor of why our Maurer and Britzius ancestors left the Pfalz and what they endured to get here. So I copy it here:
"My Trip to America
(This is a letter written by Carl Boesel, an emigrant from the Pflaz in 1832. It was found in an Illinois library by Roland Paul, director of Helmatstile Pfalz, Kaiserlautern. It was translated by Bill Moyer.)
In 1832 it seemed as if everything important in the world was gone. The liberal spirit that had given people such hope seemed to have been crushed and we appeared to be going back into the Dark Ages without a free press.
The previous year the government had given us the impression that we might have greater freedom. Men like Frederich Schuler, Savoy of Saarrueken, Dr. Siebenpfeifer in Zweibruecken, Barth in Lauterecken, Dr. Wirth from Homburg near Kaiserlautern, and the Protestant preacher Hochdoefer in Sembach responded with speeches and publications gaining the support of freedom-loving people everywhere. A big rally was planned to be held in the ruins of the old castle at Hambach near Neustadt on Sunday, May 27.
People came from all over, even from as far away as France, Holland, and England. There was a big parade in the morning with music, flags, guns saluting and bells ringing from the Neustadt market grounds to the castle at Hambach. The crowd sang the 387th Lied and wonderful speeches were made about human rights. However, the Government later had the leaders arrested and continued in it's old ways. The movement toward freedom had ended.
I hope with this background you can better understand why so many from Germany were willing to give up their historic homeland in that period and to seek a new life elsewhere.
On the 4th of April, 1833, a group of us left the Pfalz: Jacob Maurer; Adam Braun; Peter Stein; a Mr. Hoffman; clockmaker Waelde and Mr. Semon (or Simon) from Meisenheim (Meisenheim is about 6 Miles NNW of Bisterschied); Fuerster Lang and family from Zippersfeld (now well known in Tiffin, Ohio); the Ackert (Eckert) family and the Breceus (Britzius) family from Bisterfeld (Bisterschied) and Adam Paul from Shoerborn (Shonborn); so that altogether 135 souls arrived in (Le) Havre (France.) It took us 18 miserable days to make the trip to Havre.
There we had to wait a week because the ship Jefferson was not ready to put to sea. Mrs. Ackert from Bisterfelt died. I will always remember how six men had to carry the body and casket three miles for burial.
Finally, on April 25 we put out to sea with 45 days' supplies. It was a bad voyage and lasted 63 miserable days before we reached Baltimore. The food ran out and the water became so bad we could hardly drink it. As I said, it was a terrible trip. Smallpox broke out so that moaning and discomfort were everyday things. We lost one child which we wrapped in a sailcloth and gave up to the waves. It belonged to the Britzius family from Bisterschied.
The captain, who was form Norfolk, suffered a stroke and became lame, so we went to Norfolk to drop him off before we went to Baltimore. We spent two days anchored at Norfolk, where for the first time we saw black people.
When we reached Baltimore we were in bad shape, especially the poor little children. I have never in my life seen children who looked so awful as these did—it made you shudder to see them. The authorities would not let us land in Baltimore but we were taken by flatboat a mile from the city and put ashore under God's free sky so that on the 27th of June towards evening we knew we were going to have the pleasure of spending our first night in free America sleeping in God's free world.
I'll pause now to tell you the story of a good deed. As we were coming ashore we noticed a few cattle. We had some resolute young women on the ship and two of them set off to obtain what would add to the skin and bones of our poor children—namely milk. It didn't take long for them to reach the herd and start to work. They were astonished to find the cows so different from in Europe, as no matter how hard they tried they could get no milk from the third one. It was a bull! One of those young women is dead now. The other lives in Sidney, Ohio.
On the 28th we continued our travel westwards, making a very difficult trip over the Allegheny Mountains which took 18 days. After that we split up and went different directions. Lang, Hoffman, and many others went to Tiffin, Ohio. Maurer, Paul and Stein stayed with our group. Paul hurried ahead of us to Cincinnati where he found a black man who spoke German and would transport some of our luggage free. However, when we reached Cincinnati, he said differently and wanted us to pay $2.15 for each hundred pounds. Cincinnati was then still a small city, not yet having earned the name, “The Paris of America.”
We rested there a few days and then went on to Hamilton, where we settled our families and set out to buy land. Our trip from there went via Dayton to Piqua. Here we heard that two German settlements were to be laid out. Next we went nine miles further through a thick forest to Fort Laramie (Ohio), passing an occasional blockhouse. Finally we came to a blockhouse on which there was a long sign pointing east. The sign was in bad shape and at first we couldn't make out the letters, but finally we read “Stallotown.”
This town had been laid out in 1832 by a man named Stallow. If I remember correctly, he was the uncle of the present Judge Stallo of Cincinnati. He died, I'm sorry to say, of cholera in 1833, before his plan for development was carried out.
We marched on to new Bremen. We found it in no better shape than Stallotown, a pair of shabby blockhouses being the only signs of anything but wilderness. All around there was Federal land available at $1.25 per acre. We determined finally to settle here because the land pleased us. We hurried to Wapokoneta and each of us bought as much land as he could afford. Maurer bought 960 acres.
Now we returned to Hamilton where we picked up our families and brought them to their new homesites in New Bremen, which took until August of the year 1833.
Bremen had been laid out the year before by a man named Schroeder who was originally from Bremen, Germany. He suffered the same fate as Stallo, dying before his town was settled. In 1833 Jacob Maurer also died of the cholera, which was a hard blow to our little group.
Our founding fathers of that time have all left this temporal blessing. May the earth rest lightly on their bones."
Johann Adam and Jacobina Mohr Maurer's daughter Christina Elizabeth Maurer (b. 1827), our ancestor, was six years old when her family immigrated to America. Her story continues with the story of Theobald Britzius in the Britzius story.
Love, Granny
per B.K. Hill - CHURCH RECORDS OF SPEYER ENC FILE # 10 COOPER AND FARMER
From "The Britzius Story" by Dianne Z. Stevens 2013:
Johannes Mathais and Maria Elisabetha had five children that we know of. The youngest was Theobald Britzius (1742 Bisterschied, Pfalz – 1803 Bisterschied, Pfalz). In 1767 he married Catharine Charlotte Gerlach (1748 Bisterschied, Pfalz – 1816 Bisterschied, Pfalz). Both her parents lived their whole lives in Bisterschied. A church record telling about this Theobald says he came from Teschenmoschel. That's about a mile SW of Bisterschied. That church record also tells us that besides being a farmer, Theobald was a cooper and a beer brewer.
On some documents her maiden name appears as "Pitz." see Moyer file 3
From "The Britzius Story" by Dianne Z. Stevens 2013:
Johannes and Elisabeth Katharina had a son, Johannes Mathias Britzius (1700 Achtelsbach, Pfalz – 1766 Bisterschied, Pfalz). This Britzius went by the name of Mathias. He married Maria Elisabetha Reissdorf (1701 Bisterschied, Pfalz – 1766 Bisterschied, Pfalz). Mathias, besides being a farmer, worked as a decorative gardener and a porter at the Castle Sötern. Early church records of this area are kept in archives in Speyer, Germany. These records are very interesting because as well as giving genealogical information, they also tell about occupations people have such as Matthias being a gardener at the castle.
In his record, Bill Moyer has a question mark after the last name. No one else gives a last name.
1860 Census shows George living and working on the farm of his future wife's family
From "The Wintermantel Story - Beginnings" by Dianne Z. Stevens - 2013
John Jacob and Salome Walter Wintermantel's sixth child was John George Wintermantel (known as George) (1835 Ihringen, Baden – 1920 Sauk County, WI.) We have two wonderful letters that George wrote, one to the folks back in Germany in 1875, the second to his sister-in-law, Matilda Druschel in Canby, Oregon in 1908. Those letters are the basis for much that we know about these Wintermantels and their circumstances.
The 1860 census shows George working on the farm of Frederick and Catherine Rose. They had a 15 year old daughter Charlotte whom he must have been sweet on, because he married her two years later. She gave birth to a baby girl, Charlotte, in Nov 1863,then died 23 Dec 1863. George's sister Salome took Baby Charlotte to care for. A year later George married Anna Kindshi. With her he had five girls, and then finally a boy, Frederick in 1881. Fred is said to have told that his father regarded his eight cows as being “a sizable herd.”
In 1871 George purchased a farm on Sauk County Hwy PF two miles west of the Ragatz Church. During the Wintermantel Reunion of 2003 we were able to tour the farmhouse that still stands. It is a Swiss style house made with very thick sandstone walls in a distinctive mode called Block and Stack.
1860 Census shows George living and working on the farm of his future wife's family
From "The Wintermantel Story - Beginnings" by Dianne Z. Stevens - 2013
John Jacob and Salome Walter Wintermantel's sixth child was John George Wintermantel (known as George) (1835 Ihringen, Baden – 1920 Sauk County, WI.) We have two wonderful letters that George wrote, one to the folks back in Germany in 1875, the second to his sister-in-law, Matilda Druschel in Canby, Oregon in 1908. Those letters are the basis for much that we know about these Wintermantels and their circumstances.
The 1860 census shows George working on the farm of Frederick and Catherine Rose. They had a 15 year old daughter Charlotte whom he must have been sweet on, because he married her two years later. She gave birth to a baby girl, Charlotte, in Nov 1863,then died 23 Dec 1863. George's sister Salome took Baby Charlotte to care for. A year later George married Anna Kindshi. With her he had five girls, and then finally a boy, Frederick in 1881. Fred is said to have told that his father regarded his eight cows as being “a sizable herd.”
In 1871 George purchased a farm on Sauk County Hwy PF two miles west of the Ragatz Church. During the Wintermantel Reunion of 2003 we were able to tour the farmhouse that still stands. It is a Swiss style house made with very thick sandstone walls in a distinctive mode called Block and Stack.
Letter from George Wintermantel about the death of his wife Charlotte to?
Charlotte Wintermantel, Nee Rose, daughter of Fredrich Rose and Katrina Heidman, was born January 17, 1845 in the state of Missouri, came with her parents to Wisconsin in 1846 and settled in the town of Honey Creek, where Charlotte spent her childhood and youth. In 1862 she was converted at a camp meeting and lived a pious and committed life which gave witness to a real change of heart. On December 9, 1862 she was married to George Wintermantel, but after a brief marriage of one year and 14 days she was taken from her husband in death. Her sickness was in the nervous system, and lasted 17 days, and in the end she got a stroke which ended her young life. The sickness began on December 6th 1863 with a headache and stomach pains and back pains. On December 8th professional help was sought which, however, did not help. Then a practical doctor was asked for advice and he did not deem the sickness as serious or dangerous, but his medicine did not help but rather the sickness got steadily worse, and Charlotte began to doubt her recovery. When the doctor came for a second time he assured us that the sickness was not serious, and even said to Charlotte while standing beside her bed, "As sure as I stand here I will make you well again, and if you die, here is my hand, I will go with you," so said Dr. Lackmund. But the dear Charlotte knew better how things were with her. She said often to me, "I'm going home." Another time she said to me, "George, live a devoted life, in heaven we will get together again." On Saturday, December 19th fresh medicine came again, and as she took a dose she said, "The medicine will take me into the grave." Then for a while I didn't give her any of it. Then several of those who visited Charlotte were of the opinion that she should be given the prescribed medicine again. Then I began to give her some of it and she said again to me, "It will bring me to the grave." And since it did not agree with her I stopped giving it to her. On Sunday night, December 20th, she began to sing lustily, "O how wonderful it will be in heaven when the Christians go home to stay there forever." And when we began to weep she said, "Why do you weep when I am so happy." Even though she had pain, this was her expression. She would have liked to go to sleep but couldn't. During the whole time of her sickness she often said, "Sleep wants to close my eyes." She now became weaker from day to day until she could not stand alone anymore. When she had to get out of bed I had to lead her. Even when she sat on a chair I had to hold her. On the night of the 21st of December she prayed earnestly and passionately in the English language for herself and her loved ones. She prayed that God deliver her of all pain and to take her home into heavenly rest, where one is relieved of all suffering and care forever. During the whole night she was very restless and spoke much because of her fever. The next morning she was somewhat better as she was every morning. Usually she got up every forenoon while her mother made her bed, so also this time. And that was the last time in this life. I led her to the stove where she sat down between the cradle and the stove, and I had to hold her while she was sitting, for she was now so weak. In this condition Charlotte was quiet and didn't say a word, and in her sad looks her future could be clearly seen. Her looks were such that those who noticed it were emotionally stirred, and it was as though someone had told her that the end of her short life was near, and the doors of eternity were standing open. Mother was hardly finished making her bed when she asked to be taken back to it. As she rose from her chair she turned to the cradle where the little child lay, reached down her hand and said, "Good-bye, child," with a sorrowful voice, as though she had a premonition that she was seeing her child for the last time in this life. Charlotte went to bed for the last time. It was about 11:00 a.m. During that day she seemed to feel quite well. many people came to visit. Charlotte was very glad for the visitors. She was especially thankful for every service done to her during the whole time of her sickness. In the meantime she had received other medicine. Toward evening she lost her mind (or senses), and in her fever she talked continually for about half an hour. After dark, her father came, but she did not recognize him. At 7:30 she was to take medicine again. I raised her up. She took the medicine quite willingly, but it was about to come up again, at least so it seemed, when in that moment Charlotte bowed her head and was gone, right in my arms. She slowly became cold, the pulse was gone and all signs of life had disappeared. But she came back to life again, breathed very quietly, then stronger, became warmer again and opened her eyes, and we hoped that she would get better again. With all this happening we spent half the night weeping and praying. Yes, we acted as though we wanted to force God to lengthen her life. At last I noticed that a nervestroke had affected a part of her head. For while the forehead was hot and red, dripping with sweat, the chin was ice cold. From 7:30 on she was unable to speak, and now one could see that the end of her life was near. But she still moved her eyes and hands, and it seemed as though she wanted to see those who were present. In this condition she lay for 18 hours. But finally here deliverance came. At about 2 o'clock in the afternoon of the 23rd my dear loving Charlotte breathed her last breath. Dr. Lackmund, who had come 1 1/2 hours before her death said likewise that a nervoustroke was the cause of her death. Here lay the dear body. The pure spirit had left and flown to heaven, leaving behind a sorrowing and weeping husband, parents and other loved ones and friends and neighbors. O what pain to be parted from those with whom one has lived in the closest ties of love and friendship! But God be praised for the sweet hope of a happy reunion in a better land where there will no parting forever.
Her funeral was held on holy Christmas Day, the 25th of December. A large number of people attended her funeral. She reached the age of 19 years less 24 days.
Geo. Wintermantel
Honey Creek in January 1864