ANNA BARBARA SCHNEIDER was born October 27, 1826 in Hoheinod, Germany. Her
parents were Jacob Schneider and Elizabeth Schilbel of Hoheinod, Germany.
Jacob and Elisabetha
located first in Pennsylvania, then Ironton, Ohio until 1846. Then they settled
at Straight Creek in Jackson Township, Brown County Ohio where Jacob farmed
with the help of his sons for 13 years. Anna Barbara's Grandfather, Uncles
and Aunts
had also immigrated to Jackson township. Many other families, also from Rheinpfalz
Germany, had settled there as well. They all attended the Peace Lutheran Church
in Arnheim, Ohio where the services were conducted in German.
Oral history has it that Anna Barbara's parents were dairy farmers. If so,
she must have spent a great deal of her youth helping with the milking. In
Germany
traditionally milking was the responsibilty of the daughters. This meant
getting up before dawn every morning to milk the cows, and then milking
them every
evening. Anna Barbara also surely helped with the making butter and cheese
which was the
main products of dairy farms before refrigeration. She was her parents eldest
daughter. She had four younger brothers and four younger sisters. Her parents
must have really depended on her because even after her sisters married she
remained at home helping her parents. Her father died when she was 32 and
left her $400
in his will (enough money to buy 200 acres of good farm ground.) Her mother
died when she was 34 years old.
It was after the passing of both her parents At the age of 35, on November
12, 1861 Anna Barbara married JOHANNES KIESEWETTER a new-comer to the community
from
Austria. He was recently widowed and had a nine year old daughter. Anna
Barbara and Johannes stayed in the German settlement and attended the Lutheran
German
speaking church and Arnheim, the same church Anna Barbara had been attending
since was 12.
She had her first baby, a son, two days shy of her 38th bithday. He was
named John Jacob. On her 39th birthday she had a daughter Rose Margaret.
At age
41 she had another son Frank William, and at 43 she had her last child
a daughter
Caroline Barbara.
She and her husband made their living farming. They were were quite prosperous.
Anna Barbara was still milking cows and making lots of butter. In 1879
she made 500 pounds on butter!
During the Civil War on the 14th of July their
stable of horses at their homestead in Sardinia, Ohio was under threat of
expropriation by raiding confederate
soldiers under the leadership of John Morgan. John Morgan had been pillaging
towns on
the Ohio river. The town of Ripley called for aid fearing an attact. But
while the militiamen of were waiting in Ripley word reached them that Morgan
was
in Sardinia destroying everything before him. Anna Barbara let the horses
loose so they couldn't be rounded up. The soldiers didn't get the horses,
but the
soldiers
did take all their food.
After 26 years of marriage Anna Barbara was widowed in 1888 at the age
of 61. She lived 16 more years and died September 25, 1904 of cancer at
the
age of
77 in Franklin Twp., Brown County, Ohio. She was buried in the Arnheim
Lutheran Church Cemetery.
biography written and researched by Linda Rawles ©2006 Linda Rawles
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