Anna Barbara SCHNEIDER

ANNA BARBARA "Polly" SCHNEIDER


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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