Recently, I renewed a previously lapsed subscription to Newspapers.com (get 7 days free, here) in order to search for one particular event surrounding one specific ancestor. But then, as things do with genealogy, one thing led to another, and another, and to make a long story short…it was 3 AM and I wound up in Rushville, Indiana with Nora Kirsch Lore and her family in the very early 1900s. Talk about time travel!

I have written individual articles about the principles in this article, but this story is different than before. I’ve mentioned previously that the benefit of telling each ancestor’s life story separately is that you focus exclusively on just THAT one ancestor. Of course, they were born to parents, probably married someone, and had at least one child that survived to reproduce. Clearly, their story touches on the generations on both sides of them, and must, for continuity – but the story isn’t about anyone but that ancestor, told in their voice, from their perspective.

When you find a treasure trove that spans three generations of an extended family, and you’ve already written about the specific ancestors, it’s difficult to fit the new information into the cracks, because there aren’t any cracks big enough. Not to mention, this is a story all by itself.

Boy, is it ever!

The Papers

As luck would have it, some of the Rushville newspapers have been imaged and OCRed at Newspapers.com so that you can search by keyword(s), which is often first name plus surname in either a particular newspaper or a particular area, like “Rushville, Indiana” or simply “Indiana”.

The bad news is that the surname, Lore, is also a word and also part of other words, plus Curtis Benjamin Lore never used his full name. Most often, he went by Curt or C. B. Lore. Initials are particularly difficult to include reliably in searches. His wife’s name was Nora, but as it turns out, the custom of the day dictated that she was always referred to as Mrs. C. B. Lore until after his death when she was occasionally referred to as Mrs. Nora Lore. Often, she was still referred to as Mrs. Curt Lore or some other derivative that did not include her first name.

Frustrating? You think so?

I changed the search parameters several times, and hopefully, I found all of the references. I discovered that even using the same search criteria, sometimes results varied, so search thoroughly.

Another challenge is that due to the search and OCR challenges, maybe only 25% or less of the matches were truly relevant. However, that’s OK, because I really didn’t need to sleep for 3 nights anyway. Yes, I waded through and read more than 500, and probably closer to 1000 results. Let’s just say I know way more about Rushville Indiana than I ever really wanted to know. Why, it’s almost like I lived there right along with my ancestors!

It really was like time travel as I experienced, albeit second hand, what they experienced in the 1890s and the first two decades of the 1900s.

One last challenge is that you can’t presume that all of the years of a newspaper are imaged just because some of them are. No place on Newspapers.com could I determine how to ascertain which parts of a particular newspaper’s publications have been imaged. It’s certainly possible that some weeks or months or pages are missing throughout. Remember, absence of evidence does not necessarily equate to evidence of absence.

The Players

First, before we look at what the newspapers revealed, let’s take a look at the players that we’ll visit.

The photo below, taken about 1907 or 1908 at the Kirsch House in Aurora, Indiana includes many of the people you’ll meet including Nora Kirsch Lore, her parents, and siblings.

Left to right, I can identify people as follows:

• Seated far left – one of the Kirsch sisters – possibly Carrie Kirsch.
• Standing male left behind the chair – C. B. Lore, husband of Nora Kirsch – which dates this photo to before January 1909 when he became ill for the last time
• Seated in the chair in front of CB Lore in a white dress – Nora Kirsch Lore, his wife
• Male with bow tie standing beside C. B. Lore – probably Edward Kirsch, if not then probably Todd Fiske, husband of Lou Kirsch
• Male standing beside him with no tie – probably Martin Kirsch
• Woman standing in the rear row – Kirsch sister, possibly Ida.
• Standing right rear with beard – Jacob Kirsch, father of Kirsch sisters and husband to Barbara Drechsel Kirsch.
• Front adult to the right of Nora with child – Kirsch sister, possibly Lou.
• Child beside Nora – Eloise Lore, her daughter, born in 1903, so dating the photo to about 1907
• Adult woman, seated, with black skirt – mother to Kirsch sisters and wife to Jacob Kirsch, Barbara Drechsel Kirsch
• Young woman beside Barbara to at right with large white bow – probably Curtis Lore, Nora’s daughter

Jacob Kirsch (1841-1917) and Barbara Drechsel Kirsch (1848-1930) are the parents of Nora Kirsch and her siblings. Jacob and Barbara lived in Aurora, Indiana where they owned the Kirsch House, a restaurant, tavern, and hotel that would be much like a B&B today. The Kirsch House was an exciting place, filled with travelers and colorful figures. In fact, it was at the Kirsch House that Nora met C. B. Lore who wasn’t quite exactly what he portrayed himself to be – single. His wife and children back home in Pennsylvania seemed to have slipped his mind until AFTER he had married Nora.

Whoo boy, is he ever lucky that Jacob Kirsch didn’t catch wind of that! In fact, I’m not at all sure that Nora or the Kirsch family EVER knew. There were so, so many secrets in this family.

Years of hidden drama in such a mundane, innocent-looking antique brick building. Nothing belies what lurked beneath.

The Kirsch house is the L-shaped red brick building behind the depot and the white pickup truck. Today, you can still see the larger window where passenger tickets were sold.

The Kirsch house itself was interesting in other ways. Located strategically between the railroad depot and the Ohio River, in the background above, where paddle-wheeler riverboats docked, it was subject to massive flooding during the winter and spring months.

That’s the Kirsch House, just behind the RR crossing sign in 1937, courtesy of the historical society.

The basement bears the scars of many floods, and so too did the inside of the structure.

Flooding that included ice flows was more damaging yet. As you might imagine, stories about flooding, being trapped in floods and escaping from floods were legendary in the family.

It takes special people to live in a place where devastation visits regularly, and you know you’re just going to clean up and start over to have it happen all over again in a few weeks, months, or next year.

These folk were cut from a different cloth. Brave. Resilient. Not one bit risk-averse. It’s no wonder that these people or their parents were immigrants. That too required exceptional bravery.

Jacob Kirsch was quite the character, having one glass eye and other “interesting” characteristics.

The children of Jacob and Barbara, other than Nora, are:

• Caroline (Carrie) Kirsch (1871-1926) married Joseph Smithfield Wymond (1861-1910). Joseph, a wealthy riverboat gambler contracted syphilis and eventually died of the disease. Then 16 years later, Carrie died too. She never had children. For obvious reasons, her family despised Joseph. He, in essence, killed Carrie, slowly and painfully. Given that Carrie’s father, Jacob Kirsch, was involved in one lynching AND was a crack shot, even with one eye, Joseph is lucky he didn’t “die by enraged father,” although maybe Jacob decided that a quick death would be too good for him.
• Margaret Louise (Lou) Kirsch (1873-1940) married Charles Theodore “Todd” Fiske (1874-1908). Todd lost his job as a civil engineer and committed suicide by gunshot at the Kirsch House where they were living at the time. Lou never had children.
• John Edward Kirsch (1870-1924) married Emma Miller and lived in Edwardsport, Knox Co., Indiana. Edward died at age 54 of paralysis, according to his death certificate, which generally means a stroke, given that he appears to have died the same day he became ill.
• George Martin Kirsch (1868-1949) married Maude Powers and died in Shelbyville, Indiana at age 80 of a cerebral thrombosis, another form of stroke.
• Ida Caroline Kirsch (1876-1966) married William “Billy” Galbreath (1891-1921) who died of acute alcoholism. She never remarried and never had children.

As you can see, there was a lot of grief under the roof of the Kirsch House.

Nora Kirsch (1866-1949) married Curtis Benjamin Lore in 1888 at the Kirsch House and eventually moved to Rushville Indiana, where drama to rival any soap opera unfolded. Their children were:

• Edith Barbara Lore (1888-1960) married John Whitney Ferverda in Rushville, Indiana, and moved to Silver Lake. Edith is my grandmother who is absent in the family photo at the Kirsch House.
• Curtis Lore (1891-1912), a daughter who died of tuberculosis in Rushville.
• Mildred Elvira Lore (1899-1987) married Claude Martin in Wabash, Indiana, and moved to Houston, Texas (Absent in Kirsch House photo.)
• Eloise Lore (1903-1996) married Warren Cook and moved to Lockport, New York. Eloise never had children.

The Lore of the Lore Family

If you just read the newspaper accounts, the Lore family looks like an upwardly-mobile, probably fairly well-to-do, carefree family – based on how much socializing they are doing. Of course, no one in Rushville had any idea that they had left Aurora, in part, to disguise the “premature” birth of their first child.

And no one, ever, knew about the past of roguishly handsome, charismatic C.B. Lore. Probably not even his wife and assuredly, not his daughters!

Looks, or in this case, snippets and sound bites, can be very deceiving.

Striking Gold Off the Bat

The very first newspaper entry is actually quite enlightening. It begins by telling us that C. B. Lore has his own company.

April 30, 1888, Indianapolis News – Shelbyville, Indiana – The Natural Gas Company today contracted with C. B. Lore & Co. of Greensburg to drill three more wells for $2400 on the farm of Mrs. tenant, east of this city.

Given that the 1890 census does not exist, this tidbit provides us with previously unknown information.

• May 16, 1889, Rushville, Indiana – In the column titled “Horse Talk” we discover that O. Posey and son, owners sold to C. B. Lore of Greensburg a horse named Moscoe for $400 at the Rush County Horse Breeder’s sale at the fairgrounds.

This had to be a racehorse. I wonder what Nora thought about this.

Horses would shape their future in unexpected ways.

Horse Racing In Rushville

As it turns out, Rushville was a race-horse town in the 1880s and 1890s, known for its fast horses. James Wilson began this legacy with one sire in the 1860s and 1870s that sired many record-breaking Standard Bred Trotters.

By the early 1890s, there were three competition harness tracks on the edge of Rushville, north, south, and east. Every township had at least one training track, and there were a total of 25 tracks in the county. Of course, racing-related people were attracted as were associated businesses. C. B. Lore could have been one of these.

The main track, Riverside Park, located by the old mill location in Rushville had a 60-foot wide regulation track and grandstands. A swinging footbridge was erected across the river to allow easier access to the track, saloons, of course, and businesses.

While the local articles don’t mention gambling, you know that betting was a big draw and lucrative business in its own right too, because betting and horse-racing go hand in hand. What the articles do say is that many of the large Victorian homes were built with “horse money.”

And you can bet that where there’s money, there’s always someone looking to turn a quick buck in less than scrupulous ways.

In September of 1899, the race at Riverside wasn’t held, but somehow a bogus record of the horses that “won” that day was submitted to the American Trotter Association. When the fraud was discovered, local horsemen and officials were expelled, the incident being called “one of the most extraordinary turf frauds ever perpetrated.”

The racing heyday was over, Rushville’s reputation forever tarnished, along with those who participated, but that didn’t mean individuals who loved horses and racing didn’t continue to breed horses and race.

In March of 1907, fifty horses were training at the local track according to the local paper.

But where was C.B. Lore during this time?

Where Was C. B. Lore?

The newspaper tells us what the 1890 census cannot.

• October 2, 1890 – C. B. Lore of Greensburg was here Saturday.

Nora and C. B. married in January 1888. I know that Edith was born in Marion County a few months later, but between August 1888 when Edith was born in Indianapolis, and the 1900 census, I had no idea where they were living. According to this, in 1889 and 1890, they were living in Greensburg, Indiana. Who knew?

It’s about 20 miles from Greensburg to Rushville, and about 50 miles from Greensburg to Indianapolis.

And yes, Greensburg did have a newspaper, and no, it’s not available on Newspapers.com yet. Just in case you were wondering. Trust me, I keep checking.

This makes sense of another piece of information. The photo of Edith, taken when she was maybe 3 or so, was in a studio in Greensburg.

Also worth noting – those beads she is wearing were actual gold.

1891

Not mentioned is that Curt and Nora’s second child, Curtis, a daughter arrived on March 8^th, but we aren’t sure exactly where she was born.

In 1891, the Rushville newspaper notes that C. B. had drilled wells “here” but doesn’t say that they live in Rushville. Edith would turn three in August of 1891, so they were probably still living in Greensburg at this point.

Greenburg is most famously known for the tree growing from the roof of the clocktower – a site Nora and Curt would have seen.

On May 14^th, 1891, Curtis sustained a financial loss because his drilling outfit burned. The paper says Greenfield, but I think they meant Greensburg. Greenfield is quite a distance away.

C. B. Lore had been a well-driller in Pennsylvania, which is what brought him to Aurora, Indiana initially. He drilled the Blue Lick Well, there, so the fact that he continued in the drilling business isn’t a surprise. It’s just that we didn’t know well-drilling was connected to Rushville before.

I’m guessing, since his rig burned, that it was something like this Drake Well, common in Pennsylvania where Curtis learned well-drilling.

1892

• On June 10^th, 1892, Curtis, then a Rush County resident, filed a lawsuit.

This suit was apparently settled, as we hear nothing more. But who was John F. Pleffer and why did C. B. Lore sue him?

C. B. or Curt Lore was mentioned often in the local newspaper. Obviously, they moved to Rushville sometime in 1891 or early 1892.

• On August 2^nd, 1892, “Curt Lore shipped his horses to Columbus yesterday.”

I’m betting this was for a race, pardon the pun. The Columbus newspaper provides some context for this event.

• On December 9, 1892, W. A. Jones, Rich Wilson, Curtis Lore, and William Dagler shipped several head of horses to Chicago to be entered in the great sale.

1893

• The April 14, 1893 newspaper tells us that Mrs. Curtis Lore visited at Indianapolis last Wednesday.
• On August 1, 1893 report that Miss Lena Wise of Greensburg is the guest of Mr. and Mrs. C. B. Lore.
• August 6, 1893 – Indianapolis Journal – Miss Lena Wise of Greensburg is the guest of Mrs. C. B. Lore.
• On September 12^th, Carrie Kirsch of Aurora is visiting her sister, Mrs. Curtis Lore.
• On Friday, September 22^nd the newspaper reports that Mrs. C. B. Lore entertained in honor of Miss Carrie Kirsch of Aurora.
• On December 12^th, Mrs. Curt Lore and children left today to visit homefolks at Aurora over the holidays.

So, I wonder what C. B. Lore was doing with himself while his wife and children were visiting her parents for a month.

1894 was a busy year.

• January 12, 1894 – Mrs. Curtis Lore returned home last Tuesday from an extended visit with her parents at Aurora.
• February 23, 1894 – Nineteen members of the “What Not” Club of this city went to Manilla last Tuesday and spent the day with Mr. and Mrs. C. E. Trees. A very pleasant day was spent by all. The list includes Mrs. Curtis Lore.
• March 20, 1894 – Mrs. Cad Kirsch of Aurora is visiting Mr. and Mrs. C. B. Lore. This answers the question of who Cad was – Carrie – which means I have a photo someplace.
• March 23, 1894 – Miss Lena Wise of Greensburg is visiting Mr. and Mrs. Curtis B. Lore.
• April 3, 1894 – It appears that Curt has become an entrepreneur.

$12,000 is a HUGE sum of money in 1894 and converts to about $365,000 in today’s dollars. I can’t help but wonder where he obtained that kind of money. They didn’t even own a house.

• April 6, 1894 – under the City Council news, we discover that Curt plans to build an ice house.

C.B. Requested that the land be donated to him, but the council had a different idea.

• April 10, 1894 – C. B. Lore closed the contract last Saturday for the old site of the woolen mill on which to build the ice factory. Work will begin as soon as the weather settles.

According to Rushville history, the woolen mill stood on the riverbanks just south of the Presbyterian Church and was consumed by fire in 1887. The fire and flood-prone location would certainly make the site unbuildable for most purposes and therefore available for C. B. for his ice business.

On this 1908 plat map of Rushville, you can see Water Street, where the original mill was located, along with the footbridge.

On April 13^th, Curt apparently bought the land.

It doesn’t say how much he paid, but he would have needed even MORE money. That’s no small building.

But wait, we’re not done.

Also the same page:

Now, in addition to horses, ice, and oil, C. B. Lore is one of the founders of the local phone company. Not only that, we know, based on this article that they would have a phone for $12.50, or about $380 today, in addition to his founding stock in the company.

Either his horses and wells were either wildly successful or he had found a monetary source someplace else. I can’t help but wonder about gambling which is often synonymous with horse racing. Big winners and big losers.

• May 25, 1894, reported in the Indianapolis News – Curt Lore, Rushville, sold to E. Wiles, Charlottesville, a 3-year-old filly by Aparka, dam Sue King by King Rose.
• May 25, 1894 – C. B. Lore started his ice factory today.
• June 9^th – C. B. Lore is at Louisville, KY today to purchase a new ice wagon.

This ice wagon from this timeframe was from Washington, DC.

• August 31, 1894 – C. B. Lore is putting down another well for use at the ice factory.

More and more money invested in the ice factory. I wonder if Curt could sleep at night. Nothing like pouring huge amounts of money into a business venture that has yet to produce much if any revenue.

• September 11, 1894 – Miss Lena Wise of Greensburg is the guest of Mr. and Mrs. C. B. Lore.
• September 14, 1894 – Miss Edith Lore is at home from a visit with Greenburg relatives.

Who lived in Greensburg that was related? I still don’t know, but this might explain why Nora and Curt moved to Greensburg in the first place.

• October 2, 1894 – C. B. Lore has an aluminum bicycle, the first one in the city.
• November 20, 1894 – C. B. Lore is drilling a gas well near the ice factory. It is now over 450 feet deep and gas enough is supplied to make a blaze about 4 feet high.

C.B. is utilizing the land surrounding the ice factory to drill for gas.

On November 23^rd, Curt was in the paper 3 times.

Wow, Curt has been busy!

Wait, what?

What? Now in addition to oil, gas, horses, ice, and a phone company, he’s establishing an electric company for commercial lights?

No moss is growing under this man’s feet!

• December 7, 1894

1895 is, unfortunately, missing entirely from Newspapers.com. I need to know what happened with the lights!!!

1896 

• Jan 10, 1896 – Civil cases set for trial, Indianapolis Brewing Co. vs Lore

A brewing company? Is Curt brewing beer too?

• Jan 26, 1896 – Ladies Musicale met with Mrs. C. B. Lore on January 20.
• Jan 31, 1896 – Curtis B. Lore resumed operations at his ice-plant yesterday.

Why had operations stopped? Does this have anything to do with the lawsuit? Maybe he bought equipment from them?

• April 17, 1896

This is truly frightening. Runaway horses were a danger and killed many. Ironic that his horses became frightened by a bicycle, and he’s the one who introduced bicycles to Rushville.

• April 21, 1896 – C.B. Lore (and others) formed a party of wheelmen which rode to Greensburg last Sunday and spent the day there.

Wheelmen refers to bicyclers. Curt would have been 40 years old.

• April 24, 1896 – Mrs. C. B. Lore won a prize at a card party on Wednesday afternoon.

The following notification ran 8 different times in the local paper. I’m sure they saw it, and so did everyone else in town.

May 8, 15, 22, 26 and 29, 1896. Also June 2, 9, and 16.

The risks of entrepreneurship. Clearly, things were not going well. This would appear only to be for the pumps inside, not the building or the land. This would have been in addition to the initial $12,000 in a separate contract.

One interesting aspect is that they sued Nora too, which is very unusual for that timeframe. Apparently, Curt used the land as collateral, and this suit forces the sale of the lots to pay for the machinery.

This suit tells us exactly where this land is located. I wish there was a picture of his ice building.

Today, this is the Eagles Lodge.

• May 19, 1896

Apparently, the horses were afraid of both “cars” and bicycles. This would have been train cars, not automobiles.

• June 2, 1896 – Miss Mina Lore left last week to spend the summer with her grandparents in Pennsylvania.

Mina is Curt’s niece, his brother A. D. Lore’s daughter. So is Gertie mentioned on August 4^th.

• June 30, 1896 – Mrs. C. B. Lore and children left last Saturday for an extended visit with her parents at Aurora.
• July 28, 1896

Indeed, there was betting involved. I KNEW it.

$25 doesn’t sound like much more than a friendly wager until you realize that’s about $800 in today’s dollars.

• August 4, 1896 – Miss Gertie Lore of First Street is on the sick list.

August 18, 1896:

I believe this is baseball.

• October 16, 1896 – A. D. Lore has moved his family to Albion, PA.

Adin apparently moved back to Pennsylvania, then to Ashtabula, Ohio before 1904 and lived there, working as a blacksmith and in the “car barn”, which I presume means rail cars, until the year before his death when he returned to Pennsylvania. At the time of his death, in 1913, he was working as a well driller and died of blood poisoning from an abscess on his hand.

• November 10, 1896

Nora appears to have been somewhat of a socialite. I hope she enjoyed these years, because, sadly, they wouldn’t last.

1897

• February 5, 1897 – Miss Carrie Kirsch of Aurora is the guest of her sister, Mrs. C. B. Lore.
• February 19, 1897 – Mrs. C. B. Lore and Mrs. George T. Aultman elegantly entertained a large number of friends at the Social Club rooms last Tuesday afternoon. Progressive Euchre was played. Dainty refreshments were served.
• Feb 26, 1897

• March 12, 1897 – C. B. Lore and Mrs. Lore are a team engaged in the duplicate whist tournament at the Social Club. The 4^th contest will be held on Monday Night.

The number 428 is beside their names. According to Wikipedia, Duplicate Whist was the precursor to Duplicate Bridge.

A week later, they were still in the running as well as on March 30^th.

• March 23, 1897 – Miss Carrie Kirsch who has been the guest of her sister, Mrs. C. B. Lore returned home to Aurora yesterday afternoon. Also, C. B. Lore and Mrs. Lore are one of the standing teams engaged in the duplicate whist tournament at the Social Club. The next contest of the series will be Monday night.
• March 23, 1897 – Curt Lore had a severe strain last Friday at the ice plant while lifting a heavy wood-rack, but is able to be out again.
• April 23, 1897 – Curt Lore will manage the Rushville ice plant this summer.

This is an odd announcement, given that he purchased the land and built that plant. Of course, we don’t know if he lost the land when that suit was filed.

• April 30, 1879 – Rev. C. W. Tinsley, C. B. Lore and Walter Wilson spent Wednesday at Indianapolis.
• June 11, 1897

Amazing. Now it appears Curtis is going to manage a baseball team too. When does he find the time? What doesn’t this man do?

• July 6, 1897 – Mrs. C. B. Lore and daughters are visiting her parents at Aurora.
• July 27, 1897 – C. B. Lore left yesterday for a few days visit at Aurora.
• August 3, 1897 – Orville E. Scott succeeded Curtis B. Lore yesterday in the management of the Rushville Ice Plant.

Based on this, I’m guessing Curt no longer owns that land or the plant. Did he lose all that money? What happened???

• August 24, 1897 – Miss Lulu Kirsch and Will Fisk, of Aurora, who have been visiting C. B. Lore and wife have returned home.
• September 7, 1897 – Mrs. Daisy Navin of Indianapolis visited C. B. Lore and wife last week.
• September 17, 1897 – Mrs. C. B. Lore is visiting friends at Indianapolis.
• October 15, 1897 – C. B. Lore put 37 new flues in the boiler at the Riverside dairy this week.

What? Add metal and furnace work to the list of things Curt does!

• October 15, 1897 – Jacob Kirsch and wife of Aurora are the guests of C. B. Lore and wife, and will remain here until Monday.

This is the first of only two times that Nora’s parents ever came to visit. Of course, being the proprietors of the Kirsch House was a full-time 24x7x365 job, so it was probably very difficult for them to get away.

• October 27, 1897 – C. B. Lore has filed a suit against the Rushville Ice Co., on account, Demand $350. John F. Joyce attorney.

Apparently Curt had to file suit for some funds owed.

• November 16, 1897 – Curtis Lore has contracted to fit up an Aurora hotel with a hot water heating apparatus.

Add hot water heating to Curt’s skill set, which of course is not only for heating water, but likely for heating the building with radiators. They don’t say, but that hotel is likely the Kirsch House.

In 2008, the old Kirsch House structure was being evaluated by a structural engineering firm for the City of Aurora. In that report, they took photographs inside the building and noted that the original hot water radiators were still evident on the second floor and the plumbing and boiler remained in the basement. It’s likely that this is the handiwork of Curt Lore.

That stairway, slightly visible to the right in the photo above, and below, is the stairway his bride, Nora, descended on January 18, 1888, the day of their wedding, wearing a dress she made herself.

• December 14, 1897 – Charles Morgan left yesterday where he will assist C. B. Lore in putting in a heating apparatus.
• December 17, 1897 – The lady minstrel entertainment given at Melodeon Hall last night for the benefit of Canton No. 21 IOOF was a marked success in the high class of the performance given and the large audience which attended. The sketch given by Jesse Pugh and Little Miss Edith Lore in which the former took the part of the burglar was cleverly acted.

Little Miss Edith Lore was my grandmother, all of 9 years old. How I would love to peek back in time and see her as a child.

Rabbit Hole

I’m a quilter, and I couldn’t help but notice the prices of fabric in the newspaper.

At these prices, one could purchase enough fabric to make a full-size bed quilt for about 50 cents. In 2021, it’s closer to $150, at a minimum and that’s before batting, quilting, thread, etc. A single spool of thread today costs more than all of the fabric needed for a quilt then.

Currently, 100% cotton fabric sells for about $12 per yard, on average, and feather ticking for about $35 per yard. Linens range from $10 at bargain-basement prices to about $200 per yard for the finest.

Nora was a quilter. Was she, like me, drawn like a moth to a flame when fabric was on sale?

Nora created absolutely stunning applique quilts later in her life, in the 1930s, that would represent Indiana at the Chicago World’s Fair. I’m betting that back in 1897, with a six-year-old, a nine-year-old, and a calendar full of social engagements, her quilting was probably for sanity and utility, and not for show. Many of her quilts were loved and used by the family, for years. This yellow quilt, cherished by her daughter, Eloise, escaped much use.

I couldn’t help but notice this ad for Christmas handkerchiefs. Women of that time, before Kleenex, owned many handkerchiefs. Who didn’t need handkerchiefs? They were functional, pretty, and fun. Handkerchiefs made a lovely, thoughtful gift that didn’t cost too much.

Nora had an entire box of handkerchiefs, passed to her daughters eventually, then to Mom, then to me.

One of the favorite family quilts made by Nora was this blue quilt that was literally worn and loved to death. I used several of Nora’s handkerchiefs to patch this quilt some 30 years ago, giving it a second or maybe a third life, a century or so after Nora made this quilt. Perhaps in Rushville.

I can’t help but look at the ads for both the calico fabrics and the handkerchiefs and wonder if perhaps this quilt is the marriage of both.

Ok, climbing out of the rabbit hole and back to Rushville in 1898.

1898

• January 14, 1898 – Mrs. R. F. Scudder and Mrs. C. Lore will entertain this afternoon at the Social Club rooms.
• January 18, 1898 – Mrs. R. F. Scudder and Mrs. C. B. Lore entertained 40 of their lady friends at the Social Club rooms last Friday afternoon and evening, at cards. A nice luncheon was served to the guests.
• February 4, 1898 – S. H. Teneyck and wife and E. L. Lenix and wife of Indianapolis are the guests of C. B. Lore and wife.
• February 11, 1898 – Mrs. C. B. Lore and Mrs. R. F. Scudder gave a masked party at the Social Club last Wednesday night which was attended by several couples.

Mrs. Scudder’s husband was the president of the Republican party in Rush County. I have to laugh at the idea of masked balls. Royalty in Rushville.

• February 25, 1898 – The colonial party given at the Social Club’s hospitable home on First Street…on Washington’s birthday, was an event which will be looked back to with pleasure by the 50 lady friends and other guests that attended. The rooms were decorated in red, white and blue with pretty colors. In the dancing hall the pictures of George and Martha Washington were conspicuous being surrounded with stars and stripes.

During the afternoon the ladies played hearts, the scores being kept on red, white, and blue cards formed in the shape of a heart. The honors were awarded to Mrs. C. B. Lore.

I’m beginning to think any reason was a good excuse for a party.

I wonder if the women’s dresses looked anything like this drawing from the turn of the century.

Or perhaps these women from 1893.

Or these more matronly women.

The men in this horse-racing town might well have accompanied the women dressed like this, sporting gold-handled and gold-tipped canes and smoking cigars.

• April 1, 1898 – The spectacular production of “Queen Flora’s Day Dream, or the Butterflies Frolic,” given at the opera house under the direction of Miss Beatrice Raymond of Chicago in which a large number of young ladies and children of this city took part was attended by a large crowd last night.

The two little daughters had to be Edith born in 1888 and Curtis born in 1891 because the next child was not born until 1899.

• April 1, 1898 – Curtis B. Lore and wife to Harry B. Jones, lots in Rushville, quit claim $1000.

I wonder which lots these are. They must have been the icehouse lots. This is confusing. Perhaps deed records would help resolve this information. I need to look again. Maybe another trip to Rushville would be in order.

• April 5, 1898 – C. B. Lore delegate to the Congressional convention.

I just had a feeling Curt would be dabbling in politics.

• April 12, 1898 – C. B. Lore is a delegate of the second ward Republicans which met at the engine house. Each delegate was given the privilege to select his own alternate.
• April 15, 1898 – C. B. Lore found a lady’s pocketbook on Main Street yesterday which the owner can have by calling on him.
• April 19, 1898 – C. B. Lore was given a judgment against the Rushville Ice and Cold Storage Co. of $206 last Saturday morning. The claim was for services as Superintendent of the ice plant and the use of his team and wagon.

Apparently, Curt was providing management services, and delivery, but no longer had an ownership interest. I suspect as the result of that earlier lawsuit. Regardless, it appeared, at least until now, to be amicable, even though his interest had been foreclosed upon.

• April 22, 1898 – Claim by C. B. Lore, assisting engineer for $3.75 filed
• April 29, 1898 – Edith Lore and Master Thomas Wallace, two Juniors, sang a missionary song. This took place at the 6^th Convention of the Christian Endeavor Union of the 14^th district, held at the Presbyterian Church on Wednesday and Thursday. The church was handsomely decorated in white, pink, green and gold colors, and flowers.
• May 13, 1898 – Application of Curtis B. Lore for street commissioner was read to Council and placed on file.

Now he’s applying for Street Commissioner too?

• July 5, 1898 – C. B. Lore and wife went to Trader’s Point last week where they joined an Indianapolis camping party for a 2 weeks outing.

Trader’s Point is near Indianapolis in a now-defunct village near Eagle Creek Reservoir.

Ironically, we know that at least one child didn’t go along on this trip.

Thanks to my cousin, Chelsea, we have a photo of Edith in Aurora with her Rabe cousins taken in July 1898 at her great-grandmother’s house.

• September 16, 1898 – The machinery in the old electric light building is being loaded on cars by C. B. Lore for shipment to Indianapolis.
• December 27, 1898 – Mrs. C. B. Lore and children are visiting her parents at Aurora.

The pilgrimage home at Christmas time has lasted for four generations and counting, a luxury not afforded Nora’s grandparents who immigrated from Germany.

1899

On April 8^th, not reported in the paper, Mildred was born to Curt and Nora.

• May 23, 1899 – Curt Lore and daughter of Rushville were in our city a short time this morning.
• June 23, 1899 – Mrs. C. B. Lore and children are visiting her parents at Aurora where they will remain for 4 or 5 weeks.
• July 21, 1899 – Mrs. C. B. Lore and children returned home yesterday from an extended visit with her parents at Aurora.
• July 25, 1899 – Miss Carrie Kirsch of Aurora is visiting her sister, Mrs. C. B. Lore.

I wonder how Curt was involved with the Rushville Gas Company. Perhaps, given his oil and gas experience, he was simply providing an emergency service in a dangerous situation.

• September 1, 1899 – Harry Siebern and C. B. Lore have formed a partnership under the name of the Cineograph Electric Advertising Company. They will visit surrounding towns and give entertainments. Siebern has resigned his position with Bliss and Dowing.
• September 15, 1899 – The Warograph Company of this city, composed of C. B. Lore, Harry Seiburn and Charles E. Wolfe, will give an entertainment at Newsom’s hall, in Carthage tonight and tomorrow night. It is worthy of patronage.
• September 22, 1899 – Charles E. Wolfe went to Mattoon, Illinois, yesterday where he will join the Warograph Company owned by Frazee and Tichenor.

Apparently, Curt has now formed two new companies and inside of a week, lost one of his partners.  A week later, Charles E. Wolfe joined the military.

In the book, “Film before Griffith” by John Fell, the author states that the “cinematographe” and “Warograph” were the very first examples of projected motion pictures. Although they were identical to each other in their workings and manufactured by Luciere Brothers, the subject matter to be shown determined the choice of machine. The “Warograph” showed pictures of the Spanish American War – hence its title – “and seems to have created quite a stir among viewers. It provided “motionized pictures” of an actual war which viewers had read about in the pages of the newspaper, even though the original footage had probably been staged at the Edison studios in 1898-1899.”

I certainly didn’t see this coming. I’m beginning to wonder if Curt moved to new things because he IS successful, or because he isn’t. Is Curt struggling here? Or are they well enough off that he simply has the freedom to do whatever moves him?

• September 29, 1899 – C. B. Lore will give his warograph entertainment in the yard at the Pythian Hall tonight and tomorrow night.
• October 3, 1899 – Jesse W. Guire went to Mattoon, Illinois, yesterday where he will join the Warograph Company owned by Frazee and Tichenor.
• November 14, 1899 – Mrs. C. B. Lore went to Aurora yesterday afternoon to attend the wedding of her sister, Miss Lulu Kirsch which takes place this evening.
• December 12, 1899 – C. M. Ford, of the Big Four office, is at Claypool, called there by the sickness of his wife. Curt Lore is attending to the duties during his absence.

C. M. Ford would be the local railroad stationmaster or agent. This tells us that Curt had a working knowledge of Morse Code, mandatory for communicating up and down the line. Another skill we didn’t know Curt possessed.

• December 22, 1899 – C. B. Lore succeeded in getting out the tools, yesterday morning, which were lost in the gas well that William L. Price is drilling south of the race bridge.

It seems like Curt had a lot of experience in dealing with whatever problems surfaced.

1900

The 1900 census shows Nora and Curt living in Rushville with 3 children, married 13 years, according to the census. They had actually been married 12 years, but often adjusted their marriage date to align in a more socially acceptable way with their first child’s birth. He notes his occupation as a “machinist.” Two female servants are living with them, ages 19 and 27.

To afford two live-in servants, they must be at least marginally well-off. They weren’t alone though. There were a total of 121 servants out of a total population of 6,027 for all of Rushville Township, which includes the city of Rushville.

Their neighbor is William Covertson, the railroad agent.

William Covertson and his wife Ethel whose full name was Ida Ethel Clark were the best friends of Nora and Curt Lore. They were neighbors, their children grew up together and they remained fast friends long after Rushville was in the rearview mirror.

 

• February 20, 1900
• February 27, 1900

• March 23, 1900 – Under the title, Social Club Entertainment: A company of about 150 persons gathered at the Social Club last Tuesday night and after indulging in a fine supper, prepared by the ladies, they adjourned to the hall upstairs where a program which had been arranged by the gentlemen was rendered. The stage was nicely decorated with the national colors and a dressing-room arranged on one side for the performers. C. B. Lore in the part of a Dutch comedian, sang a song in the Dutch dialect.

A comedian?? It’s probably a good thing he didn’t quit his day job. At least we know the man wasn’t shy if he would sing in public and was confident enough to play a comedian.

• April 17, 1900 – Mrs. C. B. Lore won a favor at a card party last Friday. At 6 o’clock a tempting supper was served.
• June 5, 1900 – C. B. Lore signed a petition declaring that he was in favor of a street fair, along with many other individuals and businesses. No gambling games or devices nor any kind of vulgar or indecent shows will be allowed. Only clean attractions that will interest and amuse the people will be allowed.
• June 26, 1900 – A party consisting of…C. B. Lore and family…spent Sunday near Moscow.

• July 6, 1900 – Andy Pea had his merry-go-round at the 4^th of July celebration at Laurel. C. B. Lore was there with his warograph. Both attractions were well patronized.

I wonder if Curt was promoting the Warograph for future bookings, or if one could pay and watch a movie on the spot. Now we know why he petitioned for the street fair.

• July 10, 1900 – Mrs. Charles Fisk and Miss Carrie Kirsch of Aurora are visiting their sister, Mrs. C. B. Lore.
• July 13, 1890 – A street fair was taking place in Rushville, with very large crowds with an estimated 7000 visitors in one day.

• August 24, 1900 – Mrs. C. B. Lore and family returned home last Wednesday from an extended visit at Aurora. She was accompanied home by her sister, Miss Ida Kirsch, who will visit here.
• September 28, 1900 – C. B. Lore and wife are visiting her parents at Aurora.
• October 30, 1900 – Mrs. C. B. Lore entertained about 40 friends last Friday afternoon with cards at the Club House. A pleasant time was spent by all.
• October 30, 1900 – Republican Rally – Third Division, all on horseback. New Salem Band, Aides included Curt Lore. Mounted Rough Riders and all persons on horseback.
• November 23, 1900 – C. B. Lore is putting in a bathroom outfit for Dick Wilson in the house formerly owned by Mrs. Helen Wilson.

Homes are getting that all-important indoor plumbing!

It’s interesting to note that Rushville did have at least some telephones, but the ads in the same paper don’t list phone numbers for businesses, or anything indicating that they have telephones. I’m guessing this is before the days of phone numbers. You simply picked up the phone and asked the operator to connect you to a specific house. I’d also wager that most families didn’t have phones and that they were somewhat of a status symbol. Now I wonder if people had phones before indoor bathrooms.

• November 27, 1900 – Mrs. Lore received a prize at the club house when Mrs. Sexton entertained a number of ladies.

All Hell Breaks Loose

Remember that horse racetrack scandal that took place on September 16, 1899, where the race didn’t actually occur, but a list of winning horses was submitted anyway?

Yes?

This story was published nationwide on December 6^th, and the local paper ran it on the following day.

If you’re guessing that C. B. Lore was involved up to his eyeballs, you’d be right.

• December 7, 1900

The board of review of the American Trotting association investigated one of the most extraordinary turf frauds ever perpetrated, and at the close of the inquiry issued an edict of expulsion against the following persons, all residents of Rushville, Indiana.

Note that the parenthesis are my notes.

• • W. A. Jones (race track owner)
  • Harrie Jones (was in Evansville that day, son of W. A. Jones)
  • James Williams
  • W. J. Wilson (17 years old, son of Dick Wilson who was in Rhode Island with his horses)
  • W. W. Wilson (invalid and has been for several months)
  • J. D. Hiner (signed record knowing very little of its contents and because asked to do so)
  • C. F. Vance (signed papers at the solicitation of friends)
  • J. B. Vance (says he is driver, in case the race happened)
  • C. B. Lore (have not seen him, but newspaper was told he had no part in making the bogus record)
  • R. F. Scudder (says he is not a horseman and knew nothing about this until months later)
  • John Sail (colored stable boy)

The offense for which these people were put outside the pale of reputable turfdom – the sentence being effective on tracks of the National associations as well as the American – is the “faking” of an entire day of alleged trotting and pacing over the Rushville track on Sept. 16, 1899, procuring the admission of summaries of the same in the official records of the American Association as well as the year book of the American Trotting Register Association and then selling and otherwise making use for gain of the horses alleged to have made fast records on the day in question.

W. A. Jones (horse breeder in 1900 census) who owns Riverside Park informs the Republican that bona fide arrangements were made for a race meeting there on Sept. 16, 1899, and that he consented that two or three of his horses might be entered in order to fill out classes. In consequence of bad weather the meeting was not held. He had no other connection whatever with the affair.

Mr. Jones says that his son, Harrie Jones (horseman in the 1900 census, living with his in-laws), had no connection with the proposed races here. He was at Evansville that week with his string of horses, a fact with Secretary John Steiner, of the American Association knows, because he was, in his official capacity receiving reports from the Evansville races.

R. F. Scudder (Insurance agent in 1900 census) says he is not a horseman and had nothing at all to do with the proposed races, and did not sign or authorize anybody else to sign his name to any paper or record of that meeting. As a matter of fact, he never heard of any such record until months afterwards.

Jesse Vance (salesman in 1900 census, boarder, looks to be brother of Cicero) says his only part in the races was that of driver, in case they had come off.

Cicero F. Vance (widowed, drayman, boarder in 1900 census) says he signed the papers as one of the judges at the solicitation of some friends. Personally, he had no interest whatever in the matter.

John Hiner (liveryman in 1900 census) says he signed the record, knowing very little of its contents, and because he was asked to.

W. J. Wilson is a son of Dick Wilson (age 42, no occupation listed, his family lives with his wife’s family who list their occupation as “landlord”) and is about 17 years old. Dick was not here at the time, being in Rhode Island with his horses.

W. W. Wilson, better known as “Boo!,” is an invalid and has been for several months. (On the same page as this article, his death was reported on the same day of heart trouble. Born in 1862, son of late James Wilson, wealthy breeder who owned the original sire of the race horses in Rushville.)

We have not been able to see Mr. Lore (machinist in 1900 census) but are told that he had no part in making the bogus record.

John Sail is a colored stable boy.

Up to this date, no one has been found who made the bogus record of the races. Whoever it was has not helped the fast horse business in Rush County.

Oh boy, what a shameful mess.

It’s interesting that one man admitted signing the papers at the behest of others, but doesn’t say who. I can’t help but wonder if he did tell the association, and that’s why these men were expelled and publicly shamed.

Notice that there is no notice that year about what Curt and Nora were doing for Christmas. This was probably a very difficult time for them, especially Nora and the girls who clearly had nothing to do with this, regardless of Curt’s involvement.

This smacks of outright fraud. The value of horses depends on their speed and wins. It looks like the track owner, members of the wealthy Wilson family who were horse breeders, a few businessmen, a couple of people who worked at the livery and probably had little choice in the matter, and perhaps a few irresponsible fringe-element people looking to make an easy buck were all involved.

It’s hard for me to believe that no one knew anything – including Curt.

One Hum Dinger

This was one long decade.

Nora and Curt’s lives seem oddly juxtaposed against one another.

They seem wealthy and have servants, but don’t own a house.

They act the role of wealthy socialites but owe an incredible amount of debt, which is foreclosed.

Curt seems to be quite focused on success, trying one thing after another or perhaps several things simultaneously. Nora seems oddly disconnected from whatever he is doing – concentrating on cards, the social club, luncheons, her children, church, and visiting other similarly situated wives. Perhaps being able to provide Nora and his daughters with this lifestyle is part of what Curt feels defines him as successful.

But then again, they aren’t entirely disconnected. They went “camping” together for two weeks, having a child nine months later, and he traveled to Aurora to visit her parents. But then again, she went home for Christmas alone.

Rushville may be a small town, but there’s a lot of horse-racing money and proportionally many wealthy people. Maybe it’s similar, on a somewhat grander scale, to those make-it-or-break-it oil boomtowns where Curt was raised, back in Pennsylvania. Live fast and take risks, because tomorrow isn’t assured.

Curt had to be a scrapper his entire life. He was orphaned young and began making his way in the oilfields before he was even a teenager. He had certainly known fear and grief and hunger and cold and poverty. He seems to be driven never to endure those things again. He adored his daughters, and they, in turn, nearly worship him.

Curt was always busy, granted, but never too busy for his girls. He took them with him when he went visiting for business, or out to check on his horses – and they loved to ride along in the buggy with their father. As old women, they would talk about those cherished days in Rushville where he told them tales about his father being a river pirate. Maybe those weren’t tall tales after all.

In the span of a decade, Curt had:

• Drilled for oil and gas in multiple locations
• Bought and raced horses
• Founded an ice plant company
• Drilled water wells for the ice plant
• Bought an ice delivery wagon
• Lost the ice plant through foreclosure
• Been hired as the superintendent of the ice plant
• Started a telephone company
• Started an electric light company
• Applied to be the street commissioner
• Founded a baseball team
• Managed the team
• Was perhaps brewing beer, or at least was sued by a brewing company
• Founded two “moving picture” companies
• Been the delegate for the Republicans
• Applied to be the Street Commissioner
• Functioned as a stand-up comedian at the “social club”
• Installed indoor plumbing in homes
• Installed hot water heat in a hotel
• Repaired a broken gas line
• Substituted for the local railroad station agent
• Gambled, perhaps for high stakes, and apparently…lost
• Suffered very public humiliation and expulsion from horse racing. Tarred with the brush of dishonesty and labeled, along with the rest, as “outside the pale of reputable turfdom.”

Did Curt simply think that rules were for other people and he was above all that?

Maybe not.

Perhaps as an orphan back in Pennsylvania, Curt had learned to do whatever needed to be done to get ahead, to survive. Perhaps he got carried away. Maybe founding those companies, in particular, the Warograph company, the day before the racetrack event, is a symptom of financial desperation.

Was he close to losing it all – and with it – his pride? Was he afraid to bringing shame to his wife, daughters, and her family? Was he afraid of losing or maybe worse yet, being pitied by his beloved daughters?

What drove Curt? He was, assuredly, a driven man. I keep hearing Kenny Rogers in my mind, singing, “Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run.”

Curt was only 45 years old and seems to have lived enough for several lives already.

What tales will the next decade of newspapers reveal?

_____________________________________________________________

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It never fails to amaze me when fate joins cousins from across the globe.

Yep, it has happened once again and I’m jumping for joy.

Johann Rudolpf Muller and his wife, Margretha had several children – among them, two daughters.

I descend from daughter Sibylla born in 1672, and my distant cousin, Wolfram descends from her older sister, Veronica, born in 1666. That makes us roughly 7th cousins.

Let me say before going any further that this article would not have been possible without Wolfram’s generosity – sharing his research, information, time, and photos. He has been immeasurably patient with me asking what probably feels like endless questions.

For me, the view he has provided of where our ancestors lived is like drinking the nectar of the Gods. This not only provides a glimpse into the village of Grossheppach, but transports me across time as well.

This ancient stone marks the boundary of Grossheppach where it borders neighboring Kleinheppach. Gross means large and Klein means small. Of course, both are a matter of perception.

Originally, these two villages were one.

Großheppach and Kleinheppach emerged as a joint expansion site in the 9th century (at the time the Fronhof constitution was still in force) and was probably founded in Waiblingen. The place takes its name from the stream, which at that time was already called Heckebach or Heggebach, which stands for a stream between hedges; the village and corridor image of the Middle Ages was characterized by the many hedges that served as fences. The oldest spellings of the place name are Hegnesbach (1236) and Hegbach (1365). As an independently tangible place, Kleinheppach first appears as Heckebach superiori (1294) or Obernheggebach (1297).

Kleinheppach, the smaller village consisted of a church surrounded by a few houses in 1686.

Sometimes the church records of residents of Kleinheppach are mixed with those of Grossheppach in the Grossheppach church register.

Wolfram has a unique perspective because he still lives in Grossheppach, village of our ancestors, along the little stream beside the church, the blacksmith’s shop, the old inn, and the mill.

I’ve asked Wolfram a lot, and I mean A LOT of questions this week. I’m very grateful for his answers and insights, not to mention, pictures.

Did I mention pictures???

Grossheppach in Pictures

Yes, pictures of beautiful Grossheppach, today and yesteryear! Notice the stately church dome in the background.

Many of these buildings hail from the time when Johann Rudolph and Margretha lived here. They walked these streets which were probably cobblestones or even dirt at the time and saw these very same buildings. This building on the corner above, now the Schreiber bakery, is one of the oldest buildings in town, built before 1560.

The historic Lamm Inn was the only place for travelers to rest, standing across from the church in the center of the old part of town, also originating on the old Roman road before 1560.

Rudolph and Margretha knew these buildings well. They would have been in and out of these structures over the years. Their daughter, Sibylla, may have been the midwife in Grossheppach before she became the official midwife in neighboring Beutelsbach.

Given the apparent age of this building in this early 1900s photo, Wolfram thinks it’s from the 1800s. It’s not connected to our family.

Wolfram tells us about the milk house:

The milk house was a house where the people sold their milk to if they had more than they needed. I am not sure. Maybe they did cheese out of it but definitively also butter. There you were able to buy milk, butter, cheese.

The people you can see on the picture was the family of my grand-grandfather.

The small child at the hand of my grand-grandfather Gottlob Stilz (1875-1942) was my grandmother Sophie (1909-1977). The wife is my grand-grandmother Sofie Böhringer (1881-1964) with her other child (aunt Anna Bertha) on her arm. The picture must be from 1912.

The house is not existing any more. But my mother told it was placed at today’s Kleinheppacherstrasse 26.

By the way, maybe interesting for you. Normally the people had beside the chicken, some cows for the milk and sometimes maybe meat. Most people were poor. And as you might know, a cow needs to birth every year a calf to get milk. Means you need a bull. So the bull was normally a municipal owned animal, so not everybody needed to have one. They had an extra stable for these bull which was called “Farrenstall”. Because the name of such a bull was “Farren”. In Großheppach it was located in former days in the town hall – ground floor;)

I’m sorry, but this made me just laugh out loud. I was raised on a farm in the US and am all too familiar with bulls. We too shared one bull for the entire neighborhood. You might say he got to go for slumber parties. Happiest bull ever.

German “farms” are much different than in the US. Because of the need to cluster houses together defensively, all the houses are built with the barns in the village, and the farm fields extend behind the village.

Medieval cities were walled, but in smaller towns, only the church and cemetery were walled. In some cases, estates that enclosed several houses and barns were walled as well.

In the Beginning

Let’s start closer to the beginning, with the bridge and the mill, above and also seen in this beautiful 1686 drawing of Grossheppach when Rudolph, Margretha and their children were living in one of these approximately 55 homes.

The count is approximate for two reasons. First, it’s hard to discern between roofs, and second, because some of those roofs are likely barns beside houses. I can’t tell. So perhaps as few as 20 or 25 houses.

In 1832, Grossheppach had a total of 125 houses.

Even in the 1950s, Grossheppach was still a small village nestled snugly in the Rems Valley beneath sloping hillside vineyards.

We do know a few things for sure.

Rudolf and Margretha didn’t live at the mill, although they were quite close to the miller who stood up for several of their children’s baptisms. They didn’t live in the church or in the vineyards. People didn’t actually “live” in either of those places. Farmers and vinedressers lived in the village and walked up to the fields to work. The village was established in time out of mind beside the little stream of Heppach and grew slowly over many centuries.

Wolfram begins:

I can tell you the origin of “Heppach” which is “Heck-bach”. This phrase of the town is often shown in early documents. Origin is ‘Hecke’ and ‘Bach’ which basically means ‘hedge’ and ‘creek’. So the creek at the hedge, or hedge at the creek – as you wish😉

On your second picture you can see a big building close to the bridge. This is the old mill. The buildings still existing. And today the bridge is almost at the original place. Two years ago they digged part of an old bridge. You can read an article about the bridge here.

The archivist Bernd Breyvogel is working in the archive of Weinstadt which is – by the way – located in the old castle of Großheppach. In the 1970’s there was a reform and the 5 villages Großheppach, Beutelsbach, Endersbach, Schnait and Strümpfelbach went together to the new city “Weinstadt” but still the people here know which village they relate to;).

The article asks, “Is the historical bridge the bridge where there was heavy fighting between the imperial and Swedes with 300 dead in January 1643?”

Based on the archaeological dig in combination with this drawing, the answer appears to be yes.

As a genealogist, I have to wonder – how in the heck would a small village bury 300 dead people all at once. That’s probably more people than the entire adult population of the village, maybe more than the population of surrounding villages, combined.

The battle in 1643 occurred during the Thirty Years’ War. This bridge connects Grossheppach with the vineyards on the north side of Beutelsbach. Clearly, anyone living in either village would have been painfully aware of this battle. While Rudolf Muller wasn’t yet living in Germany, my ancestors from Beutelsbach certainly were, and they would clearly have heard that battle, assuming they weren’t involved in some way themselves.

That battle lived in infamy and shaped the village where Rudolph and Margaretha would settle 17 years later.

Wolfram continues:

About the small island close to the mill. This “island” can still be recognized, even though it is not in use any more. On site you can see, that there is the old mill race between the two old buildings. I marked it here into the google map. The one building above the yellow arrow is the one in the map of Kieser’s forest map with the mill wheels. The building below the arrow is built after 1686. But the river course of the Rems has been changed.

Ahh, this explains why I was having trouble finding that island on the map today.

By the way, you can also use Google Maps in 3D. Then you have even a more real and realistic view of my (actual) village:

Wolfram explains that Grossheppach is much older than this though.

As of location of this village you need to know, the village is placed directly at an old road from roman times. Which were going from east to west. The road is today located in Großheppach as “Grunbacher Straße” and “Pfahlbühlstraße” and came from Bavarian region along the former roman border “Limes” and finished in Bad Cannstatt.

There was a roman fort at this strategic place, built in the first century AD. Still today some construction from roman times in the ground of the former castle. Unfortunately, I have only found a site in German. Maybe Google can do the rest for you: https://www.roemerkastell-stuttgart.com/geschichte/

Also the corresponding Wikipedia article is only in German: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kastell_Stuttgart-Bad_Cannstatt.

But about the roman border “Limes” there is an article in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limes_(Roman_Empire)

It’s only about 500 feet from the castle to the church, so it’s probable that this old portion of the village is much older than Grossheppach as we know it.

The Roman limes passed directly through Grossheppach, guarded by Roman soldiers from the first through the fifth centuries.

I can’t help but wonder how many of the original families in this area are descendants of the soldiers and local women. Y DNA of early families might well tell that story.

Grossheppach to Beutelsbach

It’s just over a mile from church to church, across the infamous bridge. Throughout Europe, it’s quite common to see steeples in every direction in the countryside, looking at the horizon across the fields. Most villages remained small and all residents needed to be able to fit inside the church and get there quickly.

The mile between villages would only have taken a few minutes to walk. During that 1643 battle, the sounds of armor clashing and the screams of men would have traveled piercingly through the air.

I sure wish Google had StreetView in Europe.

Understanding the dynamics of chronic warfare in Europe over the ages, the walled church and churchyard/cemetery make much more sense.

Both churches retain at least a portion of their original walled structure.

Seen from the air, the church in Beutelsbach is walled with a separate entrance through a small tower near the bottom of the photo.

The yard beside the church is the old cemetery where Rudolph and Margretha’s daughter, Sibylla would have been buried.

Residents would have gathered within those walled churches. Looking at the front, we can see the fortification slots that would allow archers to shoot from the church towers.

Safety was found within churches, in more ways than one. It’s no wonder that everyone lived as close as possible to the church, made of stone, easier to defend and less likely to burn.

The church would literally have been where the community sheltered and literally made their last stand.

Wolfram shares this bit of history:

Rudolph Müller was a farrier, specialized in horseshoes. But you need to know, this was a small village with not so many people living – especially after the 30-years-war. I estimate that 70 – 80% of the people died during the war – mainly from diseases and hunger.

There were some bad periods which were mainly two pest pandemics: 1627 and 1634 after the lost battle of Nördlingen where thousands of marauding foreign soldiers came down the valley of the Rems from Aalen and taking everything which was not nailed down. They destroyed even wine yards. The big and important city Waiblingen – which is only 5 km away – was destroyed totally (only 2 or 3 buildings from the period before are still available in the town). Details of the battle you can read here,

The Church

The church in Grossheppach is ancient, predating Rudolph and Margretha. Their children were baptized in this building. Some of their funerals were preached here too, just before their tiny caskets were carried out the side door into the churchyard, their final resting place. Eventually, Rudolf and Margretha would join them, the dust of their bones still lingering.

Wolfram tells us about the church:

The nave of the church was built in 1468, so it is a Gothic building.

But they built on an older building which was has been built between 1300 and 1350 as a chapel and became a church around 1430. The chapel was built on a place which was part of the estate “Gmünder Hof” and was owned by the earl of Württemberg (by the way, three estates merged together and founded the village Großheppach).

In 1540’s the church converted from catholic to protestant by decree from Duke Ulrich of Württemberg. His son, Duke Christoph ordered on 30 Jun 1550 to stop catholic mass. The protestant baptism records of Großheppach are available from 1558. Earlier church documents are not available as far as I know.

The lower part of the tower is the oldest part (Romanesque) and might even older than the first chapel. Still today you can see the arrow slits on the east side. I am not sure, if those you can see on the south side are original. The helmet of the tower was different in the past and was looking similar to the one of the church in Endersbach:

In the local historic book is a small but quite nice drawing how it could has been around 1560. In the book you can read, that the drawing has been made according to researches of old documents:

You can see the gothic church with its churchyard. A high wall around with a 2-floor wall walk and arrow slits. Parts of the wall on the east and south side are still existing (west is left, east is right at the pic). On the right side you can see the former estate “Gmünder Hof” on the lower right corner of the estate you see a bigger timbered house. This is also still existing and contains today the bakery Schreiber (they have the world’s best Prezel!). Across the street you can see the Lamb Inn with its double roof.

There’s a significant difference in this drawing from 1560, which was followed by the Thirty Years War which began in 1618, and the drawing from 1686. Wolfram doesn’t say when the three estates merged to form Grossheppach, but based on the 1686 map, I’d wager it was between 1560 and 1686. By 1686, based on the map, we know it’s called Grossheppach.

If more than half of the people died during that war, then some of these homes would likely have been empty. Families would have been recombining, attempting to make the best of things. If the three independent estates had not yet merged, it would have made sense at this time.

Income of the nobility relied on taxes, and if people weren’t living on the land and raising crops, there was nothing to tax. After the devastation of the war, Germany needed people to work the land again and rebuild the economy.

After the war ended, it was common for German localities to advertise, in the vernacular of the day, for settlers from neutral countries such as Switzerland that were relatively unaffected by the war – hoping to relieve overpopulation there and provide opportunities for land ownership, freedom of religion and other benefits that might entice settlers.

Devastation for some, leaving empty homes, meant opportunity for the next generation.

Looking at Google Maps, we see those same three buildings today. The church at left, the Lamm Inn with a yellow star and the bakery with red.

Wolfram tells us that in 1769 the top of the church tower roof was replaced by a baroque helmet. The original tower would have been in place when Rudolph and Margretha walked from their home, not far away, to worship.

I asked Wolfram if he had a photo of the interior of the church, and if the baptismal font is original.

Unfortunately, the inside of the church is very puristic.

In former days the church has been painted inside, like you can see in the church of Beutelsbach or Schnait today and there were pictures at the walls and statues.

Also the windows have been different.

The protestant pietists broke very much with the catholic and wanted to reduce more to the inner spirit of the people. They destroyed a lot of old interiors in all of Europe. So today the chorus area/chapel looks like this which is directly below the tower:

If the baptismal is original from former days I do not know and I was not able to find it in the Grossheppach history book.

The baptismal font is underneath that tablecloth.

When I first saw that church tower, I wanted to see what was inside. Church towers are often off-limits for safety reasons.

It was my lucky day because Wolfram sent several photos from inside of the church tower and narrates his visit.

The picture is from inside the church tower. Normally the tower is closed and only some small wooden stairs are going up. The entry is outside from the north. Some years ago there was an open house day and I had the opportunity to get up the tower. I took some pictures.

Just look at this bell. I wonder if this bell was in place when Rudoph and Margretha lived there? Fortunately, Wolfram has the answer:

About the church bells – the biggest was from 1495, called “Hosanna bell”. But this bell was melted in 1904 into a new one after it has been broken during ringing on 28 Feb 1904. But this new big one has not been melted then. Neither in the first nor second World War. (You need to know, many bells have been melted because metal was rare). So at least the size and material is original:)

 

Then there were two smaller bells. They had to be melted in 1917 for the first World War. Only 1922 they had money enough to get two new ones but those both had to be melted again in 1942. The two small ones we have now are from 1948.

 

And here is a link for something you will definitively love. There are some videos of the church and you can hear the bells ringing 🙂

 

The history of the church provided in Wolfram’s link says that the church had a beautiful peasant painting above the pulpit at one time. I suspect this is beneath the paint and I can’t help but wonder if that couldn’t be painstakingly restored, or at least exposed. It also mentions that the church had an organ by 1600. I wonder how much damage the church sustained during the Thirty Years War. I suspect a substantial amount, but no one would want to carry parts of an organ or church bells away. The original organ was replaced more than a century ago.

You can see and hear Easter and Christmas services here and here.  

Still, we know that even after a couple of remodels, it’s still the same church. Rudolph and Margretha sat in pews in this very place, baptized their children in this very building, probably in a baptismal font in just about that same location.

They would have been as at home in this church as they were in their own house.

They would have heard the voices of the bells every time they rang. They would have heard them ring to announce deaths, including those of their own children. The only thing they never got to do in this church, together, was to attend one of their children’s marriages. The family attended Margretha’s funeral in this very sanctuary in 1689 before any of their children married.

This bell would have summoned residents to church on Sundays.

Of course, the beams had to be strong enough to support the weight of the bells and not shift as they rang. Thinking about the engineering required for these early churches and large buildings – it’s actually an amazing feat and not only do they still stand, they are functional. These buildings have truly withstood the test of time.

If only these walls, beams and bells could talk. What stories they could tell.

Two bells side by side. The bells do sound quite different.

Well, this is a mystery. Always a curious genealogist, I asked Wolfram about this whatever-it-is.

It turned out to be an old clock that used to be located outside on the tower.

Also this one which looks like a cupboard or cabinet, it is from the old church clock.

Today the clock is electric and this one is from 1900 and they placed it there. I do not know if this is the original place but there was space in the tower. As you can see on the picture there is some text. I will translate it for you:

“In memory of
Miss. Elise Vreede,
died here 19 Nov 1899,
donated from her three sisters
Mrs. Marie Schmid, Schorndorf,
Mrs Luise von Wendland, München,
Mrs. Therese von Abel, Grossheppach
In the year of salvation 1900.”

Therese von Abel was the local landlord’s wife. They lived here in the small castle.

I would guess that this is the platform inside the tower and the steps to the bell lead upward from there. Back then, the bell-ringer would have climbed those steps to ring the bell as needed. It would be interesting to know how often the bell rang.

The churchyard in Grossheppach is now bricked with pavers, but the graves of both Rudolph and Margretha assuredly lie beneath these pavers, within the fortified walls.

Wolfram added information about the cemetery beside the church in Grossheppach.

As of cemetery: There were three of them. The oldest was around the church in the churchyard, you are totally right. Once this cemetery became too small because of higher population and some pandemic diseases and they needed to create a new cemetery. And outside the village also because of the pandemic. In Großheppach they built a new one northwest of the church. The location you can see here:

This second cemetery does also not exist anymore. And since some years people totally forgot about it. But then bones came out of the ground due to some new buildings, people remembered. By the way, the bones have been buried a second time on the actual cemetery. The third one is that what is used today, northeast of the church. The age I have to estimate (never thought about it) but it is maybe interesting for you to sort it historical wise. I think it is around 100 years old, maybe 120 years. But honestly, I do not know, it could be also only 80, or 150 years.

What this tells us is that in 1832, when this map was created, that part of the village was still pretty much vacant. Notice the fields surrounding the cemetery. What we don’t know, of course, is when it began to be used. Of course, I wonder if those soldiers were buried here in 1634, while spaces in the churchyard were reserved for Grossheppach families.

On this current map, I’ve marked the church. The red star shows the 1832 cemetery and the purple star at right indicates the castle.

The blue dots are the end of the walking path from Beutelsbach to the church in Grossheppach. It’s clear that the old village consists of the buildings immediately surrounding the church. You can view many at this link.

Extracting More Information

Understanding the culture and customs in the village allows descendants to extract more information about the life and time in which our ancestors lived.

Wolfram made this observation about the burial record of Johann Rudolph’s second wife, also named Margaretha.

Her second marriage:

“Den 12 Nov. ist H, Johann Heinrich Berger Schulmeister v. Gerichtschr. alhir Mit Margretha Margaretha Knauß[en] Copuliert word[en] ./.“ [On 12 Nov has been married here Mr. Johann Heinrich Berger, schoolmaster and law clerk (the one who was writing the official documents of the village) with Margretha Knauß.]

Margaretha’s burial record:

„Eodem ward begraben Margaretha, Rudolph Millers, gewesenen Schmidts u burgers allhir hinterbliebene wittib, (…) genannt die Knaußerin, weil ihr erster Mann Hanß Jerg Knaußen, Barbier alhier geweßen.“ [at the same date has been buried Margaretha, survived widow of Rudolph Miller, former smith and citizen here, (…) called the „Knaußerin“ because her first husband was Hanß Jerg Knaußen, barber here].

Interesting here is, that this wife was from a “better” family because she was the widow of the schoolmaster and law clerk Knauß. And well-off family members have mostly married in a family with similar social status. Means, the smith Rudolph Müller was also part of the “upper class”.

Citizenship

Wolfram found Hanss Rudolph and Margretha’s citizenship records in Grossheppach in 1662.

Hanß Rudolph MÜLLER/MILLER; von Stein am Rhein; „aus dem Schweitzerland“ [Seelenbuch GH, pg 431]; Bürger und Hufschmied zu Großheppach; * um 1632 Stein am Rhein [Fleckenbuch GH, pg 422]; □ 28.07.1692 Großheppach [TotB]

Hanß Rudolph becomes a citizen from Großheppach at 28.02.1662 together with his wife

No marriage record in Großheppach]

Margretha NN.; von Schefen [= Stäfa?], area of Zürich [Fleckenbuch GH, pg422]; from 1662 Bürgerin in Großeppach; * in Switzerland; „ein Cammermädgen“ [Seelenbuch GH, S.431]; □ 30.10.1689 Großheppach [TotB]; Die Margaretha becomes a citizen from Großheppach at 28.02.1662 together with her husband.

Their first child born in Grosshappach arrived in May of 1661 and died in October of the same year. On the last day of February in 1662, when both Rudolph and Margretha became citizens, she was about 4 months pregnant for their next child.

I have no idea what the criteria was at that time to become a citizen. Did Rudolph and Margretha always intend to become citizens, or did they make that decision after living there for some time? Did they discover that the village needed a blacksmith and ferrier and moved to Grossheppach from Switzerland intentionally for that position?

Were the local residents excited about the young couple settling in their midst, providing a much-needed craftsman?

Perhaps these new settlers helped them heal from the ravages of such a long, miserable war.

Drum Roll – Origins

Wolfram’s research about Rudolph and Margretha is very, VERY illuminating and resulted from his one-place-study research.

And now about the origin of Johannes Rudolph and his wife.

During searching for interesting sources for my study of Großheppach in the archive of Großheppach, I found a historical source which is called “Fleckenbuch”. Which means basically “book of the village”. The record started in 1529. The recorder of the village was writing important things in. Also people who became citizen in Großheppach. You know, church records are the most important while searching about family history. But sometimes also civil sources are important. Especially during and after 30-years-war many people moved around and settled somewhere. Furthermore, church books from the period of 30-year-war are often missing or information are listed bad. Even in the years after the war – so 1648 until around 1670 – church records are often not precise and information missing. In addition to this, these civil records become very important.

 As in this case with Johannes Rudolph Müller.

Anno 1662. „Denn. 28 Februarÿ seindt NachFolgende Persohnen zue MitBurgern vff: vnnd angenom[m]en worden.

1. Hannß Rudolph Miller, Huoffschmidt von Stein am Rhein gebürtig, vnd seine HaußFraw Margaretha. von Schefen, im Zürcher gebieth.“ [On 28 February following persons became citizens. 1. Hannß [= Johannes] Rudolph Miller, farrier and born in Stein am Rhein and his wife Margaretha, from Schefen, territory of Zurich.]

So it is written clearly that he came from Stein am Rhein.

The name of the town where his wife came from could be also read as ‘Schefer’, ‘Sehefen’ or ‘Sehefer’ but these villages cannot be located. So finally, this is open.

I can tell you, here and now, that indeed Rudolph has been located (thanks to cousins Wolfram, Pam and Tom) and we have a lead on a possible marriage to Margretha thanks to Tom’s sleuthing.

There’s going to be a wonderful article in the future. You’re just not going to believe how this unfolded between several very eager people. Now, we wait for another friend to see if she can find the original record we need.

Fingers crossed!

The Castle

Rudolph was a ferrier, and Margretha was a “waiting maid,” according to Wolfram’s translation of her death record. Tom translated it as “chambermaid,” but the essence is the same. This makes me wonder if she was a “waiting maid” at the Grossheppach Castle. Who else would be able to afford a maid?

This castle photo dates to about 1930, and below, the castle as restored today.

A portion of the original defensive wall remains today. I wonder how badly this structure was damaged during the Thirty Years War.

This castle dates to 1592 and was expanded in 1655. In addition to the castle itself, the property included a horse stable, below.

Is this the farm building at the castle where Rudolph shoed horses? I’d wager that answer is yes.

The castle cellar door is at right. The stone vaulted wine cellar dates from 1593 but I think that has a separate entrance.

Families who owned this castle were reportedly not aristocrats, but the bourgeois upper class.

Hmmm, a horse stable…Rudolph was a ferrier and Margretha was a “waiting maid”….

This surely makes me wonder. These families could assuredly afford both a ferrier and a waiting maid. Could Rudolph and Margretha possibly have lived in one of these buildings on the castle property?

Beautiful Vineyards

Grossheppach is located in the middle of the wine region where the entire economy is dependent on the grape harvest.

After the soldiers destroyed the fields in 1634, the residents would have immediately begun to replant the vineyards. From seedling to grape harvest takes about 3 years – years which are filled with pruning and cultivation. Baby and pamper those vines.

And pray. Pray that the temperature doesn’t drop below freezing and damage those tender shoots.

A good vinedresser knows how to strike the perfect pruned balance of shoots and buds that will produce not just a good harvest, but quality, sun-ripened grapes.

It’s very unusual to find a cousin, interested in genealogy and history, who still lives in the ancestral area. Wolfram has graciously provided several photos with historical significance, which I’m including here.

You can also see additional photos on his website, here, including basket weaving.

Why is basket weaving important? Baskets were used for harvesting grapes without damaging or bruising them.

Grapes were and are picked by hand, but that’s just the final task.

When the vines are dormant in the winter, they need to be tended and pruned.

Vines are tied to stakes so that they will grow and produce as much yield as possible. Too much shade from leaves and other vines prevents ripening. Hence the ancient occupation in the wine region known as a vinedresser.

This work needed to be done in the winter when the vines were dormant, without leaves.

Note the little buildings on the hills in the background. They look to be too small for people to live in, so I asked Wolfram.

Wolfram says:

The tiny houses are not for living. You are right, they are for the needed tools and in former times definitely also for sudden bad weather or to warm up by using a small oven inside. Still today you can see them. I guess you can see them also at google maps🙂

I never thought about warming up, but of course. Much of their work was done in the winter.

And yes, most pictures were from grape harvesting. For the people these were festival days. You collect the fruits of the whole-year-work!. When I was young it was still this way. And relatives and friends helped relatives and friends. Today it became different. It became more a business and during harvesting seasons there are also foreign workers from Poland etc. So on these pictures mostly relatives are working. But still today the most of the grapes are harvested by hand. This improves the wine quality.

“Festival days.” What a wonderful way to view this activity. Of course it was festive. A celebration. I never thought about that. I had commented to Wolfram about how happy everyone in the following photo looked. They are all smiling and happy, and the people sitting on the ground are eating grapes right out of the basket. They must have been luscious, sweet and warm.

I notice that the women all have their hair pulled back with scarves. Having long hair myself, this would be to prevent your hair from getting in the way and to prevent it from getting tangled in the vines and leaves. I’m thinking grape juice in hair would be very sticky.

I asked Wolfram about the various sized baskets, from small to the one on the man’s back, to the vat in the wagon behind the man.

Yes, these were the standard “baskets” for carrying the grapes. They were made from wood and they are called “Butte” (single) or “Butten” (two or more). In former days most of the people were poor. Horses were almost not existing (only at the mill). Mostly they had some single cows for the milk and some chicken for the eggs and meat. All for their own need. And the hills are quite steep. In some areas they were able to use cows to transport the grapes in bigger barrels (as you can see at this pic) but often they had to carry the grapes in these baskets downhill to the wine press. Therefore this bigger size. When I was young, we still had always these “Butten”. But made of plastic instead. Today you can drive almost everywhere in the vineyards in Großheppach with tractors through the rows. So you cut also by hand but you are using buckets to put in a 1000 l tub on the tractor.

The age of this picture is quite clear because the man with the “Butte” is my grandfather Hermann Mayer (1904 – 1996) and the wife with the white bucket is my grandmother, Sophie Stilz (1909 – 1977). And the wife next to her with the white cap is my grand-grandmother Pauline Mayer (1872 – 1945) 😉 My grand-grandmother died in 1945 and in 1939 my grandfather got injured very heavy and was not able to work for at least 1.5 years. And it seems for me the picture has been made before 1939. So maybe between 1932 and 1939.

This “mountain press” was built in the Grossheppach vineyards in 1660, which means it was brand new when Rudolph and Margretha moved to Grossheppach.

I asked Wolfram about the mountain presses along with the man, the cart and what he was doing:

There were three presses in Großheppach. I tried to localize it but for me it was only possible for two of them.

The use of the small barrel honestly I do not know. It might can be for some wine. But definitively not for grapes, you carry them always open. It could also be used to transport cider. Unlikely water. The man is also interesting. He is wearing a backpack sprayer for agent. And therefore the barrel could be also for the agent.

I noticed in this picture that the vineyards seem to be fenced with rocks. This is somewhat enlightening because it’s reported in the records for Sibylla Muller’s husband, Johann Georg Lenz, a vinedresser, that “stones fell on his body and back.” Were those stones being quarried for the vineyards? I notice that the stones are all squared. Where were they quarried and how far were they transported?

This looks like a new vineyard, with the stakes for tying vines just waiting. Lots of small sheds for supplies. I must admit, I’m quite curious as to why it appears they were “starting over” with such a huge swath of land.

Wolfram included another photo of an old house in the vineyards.

Wolfram didn’t know the history of this structure, but it’s clearly old and is no longer standing today.

I asked if the vineyards are privately or governmentally owned.

The vineyards are privately owned. Behind my house my cousin has one of his vineyards here.

Wolfram indicated that most of the work was done by oxen and not horses. The vat is an open barrel into which grapes were deposited as family members picked the harvest.

He noted:

The man on the back is my grandfather Hermann Mayer (1904 – 1996) and right next to him his wife and my grandmother Sophie Stilz (1909 – 1977) And yes, it is a picture from autumn, harvesting grapes. My mother told, they had some cows for the milk. I do not know if they had oxes just for work. Maybe I should ask my mother.

Translation via Google translate: Here too, grapes were harvested in 1928 in Bader, below the steep Buhlerbuckel. At the front as the smallest you can see my father Gottfried Klopfer holding his sister Johanna’s hand.

Confession

I’ve been drawn to vineyards ever since I can remember. I have no idea why. I like only a few wines – ones that tend to be sweet. Muscatos and Niagaras – and oh yes, ice wines.

Or maybe some Moscato wine and apricot liqueur. Oh yes!!!

Of course, a real vintner would laugh me right out of the building. These are “sissy” sweet wines when compared to the “real thing.” My husband accuses me of loving grape juice – and he’s right. I love grape juice too – including the sparkling variety.

But I love, and I mean LOVE vineyards.

Not to get all sappy on you, but, can I tell you a secret?

I got married at a winery. Outside, in the yard, with the majestic medieval stones providing a beautiful backdrop. The vineyards are right next door where you can’t see them in the photo.

Weddings don’t’ normally happen at wineries, but we told them not to worry – the yard outside would be just fine.

You can see the barrels stacked behind the wedding party. We stood in front of the grape arbor, of course. What else?

The Mon Ami Winery original building was purchased in Europe in the 1870s, essentially in ruins, disassembled, transported to the US on ships, then reassembled.

When I travel, I almost always seek out wineries. I don’t actually mean to – it just kind of happens.

• Indiana – check
• Michigan – check
• Ohio – check
• California – check
• Williamsburg – check
• Texas – check
• Austria – check
• Germany – check
• Norway – check
• Australia – check
• Homer, Alaska – check
• New Zealand – check
• Tasmania – check
• North Carolina – check

Oh, look! I think I found the colonists…

Finding dark chocolate while following a “wine trail” I just happened across. Check.

Yes, I find wineries everyplace. I have never understood this allure, especially given that I’m not much of a wine drinker. Maybe it’s the old-world ambiance I love. Maybe it’s my roots showing through.

Our standing joke when we go wine-tasting is that Jim gets his and mine too, and I drive. But if there’s a lovely sweet wine, I’m sunk. Unfortunately, there almost never is – but I’m just happy being around grapes, vineyards and anything that smells like wine. Winery tours are always wonderful fun and every one is unique.

I’ve made grape and wine-themed quilts. There are also Quilt Wines but they look too dry for my taste.

Although in all fairness, I should warn you that quilting and wine do not pair well. Well, at least the mistakes are funny.

At one point, I made wine at my own very own “Ore Creek Winery.” Don’t ask, I’m not a vintner. I’m more the vinedresser. But designing and making those hand-stitched wine bottle labels was fun nonetheless.

I often take pictures of grapes when I travel, with the sun shining on or through them. They represent liquid sunshine and I feel incredibly close to both the earth and my ancestors.

It’s amazing where you find grapevines growing. While these are in a vineyard, it’s not unusual in Europe to find them growing up the side of a house or fence in a very small space. Grapevines are beautiful as well as functional.

I especially love grapevines with roses blooming nearby. Roses are often planted at the end of rows of grapevines in vineyards and serve as an early-warning system for fungus and other pests that invade both plants. If they appear in the rosebushes, the grapevines need to be treated before the year’s harvest is damaged.

Not only that, roses attract pollenators and beneficial insects, and they are a feast of color for the eyes, and the soul.

I even have wild grapevines growing in my yard that I can’t seem to get rid of. It’s like they sought me out and found me, compliments of my ancestors, I’m sure.

Yes, I know, my ancestors are probably rolling over in their graves at the thought of me trying to “get rid” of grapevines.

My husband tried to harvest these, and they are, bar none, the sourest grapes either of us has ever tasted. The birds wouldn’t even eat them and the bear threw them back. The raccoon and possums looked at us like we were crazy. No wonder their seeds are proliferating all over the place – no one wants them.

There’s simply not enough sugar or fermentation to fix this problem. We tried. But darn, those leaves, berries and vines are just so stunningly beautiful.

How ironic that my ancestors prayed for the vines and grapes to grown and here I am with doing everything possible to arrest their growth.

Nevertheless, these cumulative experiences connect me with my German vintner, vinedresser, vineyard roots.

My moth-to-flame attraction to anything and everything vineyard connects me to those ancestors – where they lived, what they saw and experienced. I can paint their lives in the colors and flavors of the vinebow.

Winemaking wasn’t just a part of their life – their entire economic existence depended on the ripening harvest on the hillside – whether they were vinedressers or the ferrier who serviced their horses and oxen. Everyone depended on the lowly grape.

I can close my eyes and almost smell the earthy soil and see them among the rows of vines, picking grapes in the warm sunshine, smiling at me across the centuries.

Or maybe, just maybe, they’re amused at their descendant with a wild grape problem.

Cheers!

_____________________________________________________________

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We don’t know Margaretha or Margretha’s birth surname, but we do know that she was born in Switzerland and married Johann Rudolph Muller, probably in Switzerland as well – sometime before the birth of their first child in Grossheppach, Germany in 1661. Clearly, the young couple migrated from Switzerland before that time, probably about that time, and not long after their marriage.

They theoretically could have met and married in Grossheppach, on the Rems River in Germany after both families migrated, but there are no records to support that theory – and church records in Grossheppach do exist during this timeframe.

It’s most likely that the newlyweds answered the call of the German nobles for settlers in the German lands that had been devastated and depopulated during the Thirty Years War which had ended in 1648. It took generations to recover from that war – in terms of rebuilding and in terms of population loss which averaged 50%, but ranged from 30% to 100% in various regions.

Grossheppach, shown here in 1686, was spared the worst of the devastation, so was probably more stable with at least some remaining original population. Note the mill – you’ll see it again later!

Grossheppach, a small village, is located smack dab in the middle of the wine-growing region, but Margretha’s husband, Rudolph, was a blacksmith and ferrier.

Like many women of that era, what little we know about Margretha is from the church records.

Margretha’s Birth

We can estimate the year of Margretha’s birth based on when her last child was recorded in the Grossheppach baptismal records.

Her first child in the Grossheppach church records was born in 1661 and her last child was born in 1675. If we presume Margretha was about 43 when the last child was born, that places her birth at about 1632, give or take a couple years in either direction.

If Margretha was born about 1632, she likely married sometime after 1652. She may have married and had children in Switzerland, but there are no burial or marriage records for Rudolph and Margretha in Grossheppach as parents to children not born there.

My suspicion is that the young couple married and saw settlement in Germany as the “great adventure” that awaited, promising reprieve from taxes among other perks for settlers.

Opportunity awaited.

They may have migrated with others. After all, there’s safety in numbers and family is more likely to help you in a time of need than unknown strangers.

One-Place Study

How lucky could I have been to stumble across a one-place study about Grossheppach families, which you can find here.

The one hint I can find about the Swiss location of Margretha is in the document of tracking “foreigners” in Grossheppach, in German, on page 59 where we find the locality, name of the individual, a year, and what the researcher found.

In this case, the locality is “Schefen, Kanton Zurich (=Stafa?), the individual is Margaretha, no known birth surname, This indicates von “Shefen” which translates literally to “from sheep,” followed by (wird Bg. in GH) which means became a citizen in Grossheppach.

Her husband’s information is noted with him being from Stein am Rhein. What the heck is Stein am Rhein? It’s the name of a village!!!

The researcher also lists Rudolph as “Bg.” meaning berger, and farrier. This is the researcher’s list of ancestors, so I suspect that the researcher descends through daughter, Veronica.

If this location is indeed accurate, this provides us with a location, probably for both Rudolph and Margretha. I’ve written to the researcher and heard back just before publishing this article today. Hint – there will be a chapter 2😊

Stein am Rhein is breathtakingly beautiful, the central, compact medieval old city still quite visible. It was probably walled at one time.

Be still my heart!

Stein am Rhein is a small, stunningly beautiful village on the Rhine River in Switzerland, with the medieval church still intact. Just take a look. OH MY.

I’m trying to tell myself NOT to fall completely in love until I can confirm the accuracy of this information. I already want to climb on a plane.

Stein am Rhein is 20-25 miles from Zurich as the crow flies.

Church records do exist for Stein am Rhein, but I’d need the transcribed records, only available at the Family History library in Salt Lake, here, as opposed to the unindexed and German script original records, here. Not only that, but Stein am Rhein has records dating from the 1400s. I might have to seek out someone with expertise in Swiss records who can actually read that script!

Stein am Rhein would have been about a 100-mile journey to Grossheppach.

Let’s hope there are records in Switzerland and they are somewhat available. My heart is racing just thinking about an additional 200 years of possible records and ancestors.

Margretha’s Life’s Story Spun Through Her Children

A huge thank you to Tom for finding and translating these Grossheppach records.

Margretha’s known children were all born in Grossheppach and baptized in the local church which includes the remains of a fortified wall.

If Sibilla, born in 1661 was Margretha’s first child, this was truly a heartbreaking time. Margretha had looked forward to the arrival of her first baby, loved her, and then lost her 24 short weeks later. I wonder if the baby struggled from birth or contracted some childhood disease that ripped her from her mother’s arms and broke her heart.

Baptism: 6 May 1661 + Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Child: Sibilla

Parents: Rüdolph Müller & Margretha

Godparents: Jerg Lienhardt Herman; Margretha, Ulrich Schweikhardrt from Stutg(art); Sibilla, Stöckler(in) from Stutgardt, farm maid.

Note that one of the godparents was also named Sibilla, which might be a hint indicating a relative.

Burial: 19 Oct 1661 Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Sibilla, 2 weeks old, child of Rüdolph Müller, smith

These churchyard fortifications likely enclosed the cemetery at the time Margretha buried her baby.

In this aerial view, you can see the area that would have been the cemetery, with its fortified wall remaining yet today, at the lower right.

The treed area may be another portion of the ancient cemetery, now returned to nature.

Margretha became pregnant about the same time that Sibilla died, and the first son, Hanss Rudolph, named for his father, arrived the following August.

Baptism: 7 Aug 1662 Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Child: Hanss Rüdolph

Parents: Hanss Rüdolph Müller & Margretha

Godparents: Jerg Leonhardt Herman; Ulrich Schweickhart from Stutg(art); Sibilla Glöckhler(in) also from ?

The next two baptisms are somewhat confusing. Someone later stamped the church records with dates. Obviously these two children could not have been born 8 months apart – or at least not unless the first child died and the second child was very premature. If these girls had been twins, they would have been baptized at the same time. There are no death records, nor any further records for either Anna Magdalena nor Anna Margretha.

After I originally wrote this article, cousin Wolfram who lives in Grossheppach and has access to the original records and corrected this record for Anna Margaretha’s birth in 1663.

Baptism: 12 Feb 1663 Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Child: Anna Magdalena

Parents: Hanss Rüdolph Müller & Margretha

Godparents: Jerg Schmid from Grunbach; J.L. Herman, miller; Daniel’s wife, Magdalena.

Baptism: 11 Oct 1664 Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Child: Anna Margretha

Parents: Hanss Rüdolph Müller & Margretha

Godparents: Jerg Leonhard Herman, miller; Magdalena, wife of Daniel Ziegler; Anna Margretha, wife of Ulrich Schweickh(a)r(t).

Given that the next child, Veronica, didn’t arrive for 21 months, it’s unlikely that Anna Margretha died at or near birth.

Baptism: 29 July 1666 Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Child: Veronica

Parents: Hanss Rüdolph Müller & Margretha

Godparents: Daniel Ziegler….; Hanss Eiber……; Maia Elisabetha Blaror(in)?

Two years and a few days later, Hanss Jacob joined the growing family.

Baptism: 9 Aug 1668

Child: Hanss Jacob

Parents: Hanss Rüdolph Müller & Margretha

Godparents: Ulrich Schweigger from Stuttgardt; Jerg Lienhard Herman, miller; Magdalena, Daniel Ziegler’s wife.

A death record for Hans Jacob exists on August 18, 1675, but with no parents’ names, and is most likely this child. Just 9 days after his 7th birthday.

The next baby arrived 16 months after Hanss Jacob, just before Christmas. By this time, assuming all children except two lived, when Anna Barbara was born, Margretha would have had four children ages 16 months to 7 years. I’d say she had her hands full.

Baptism: 17 Dec 1669 Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Child: Anna Barbara

Parents: Hanss Rüdolph Müller & Margretha

Godparents: Jerg Schmid, schoolteacher in Grunbach; Jerg Lienhard Herman, miller; Magdalena, wife of Daniel Ziegler.

Anna Barbara died on October 31, 1679.

It would be almost three years before the next child arrived, hinting at a child that was stillborn in late 1671. We don’t see births of children who were not baptized in the records – nor burial records.

Baptism: 6 Sept 1672 Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Child: Sibylla

Parents: Hanss Rüdolph Müller & Margretha

Godparents: Jerg Schmid, schoolteacher in Grunbach; Jerg Lienhard Herrman, miller; Magdalena, wife of Daniel Ziegler.

It’s interesting that they named a second child Sibylla. It’s also interesting that the original godmother, Sibilla, of the first Sibilla born in 1661 is not present for this baptism. That original Sibilla Stockler(in) or Glockler(in) was only present for the births in 1661 and 1662, causing me to wonder why she wasn’t present later, and isn’t present for this birth when the child is apparently named in her honor. Of course, this makes me wonder if she died.

This also causes me to ponder the possibility if she is a sister or maybe niece to Margretha. The (in) suffix to her surname indicates that she is not married, so either Stockler or Glockler would be her birth surname.

Fortunately for me, this child named Sibylla lived. She’s my ancestor and her story can be found here.

Baptism: 27 Sept 1674 Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Child: Jerg Lienhardt +

Parents: Hanss Rüdolph Müller & Margretha

Godparents: Jerg Schmidt, schoolteacher in Grunbach; Jerg Lienhard Herman, miller; Magdalena, wife of Daniel Ziegler.

I noticed that Jerg Leinhard Hermann, the local miller, is the godfather for six of seven of Margretha’s children. This close association also suggests a close relationship. Their last child, who, unfortunately, did not live long, was named for Jerg Leinhard.

Burial: 31 January 1675 Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Cause of Death: ?

Decedent: Jerg Lienhard, 18 weeks old

Child of Hanss Rüdolph Müller, smith.

It appears that Margretha ended her childbearing years in almost exactly the same way she began them. In 1675, Margretha was likely in her early to mid-40s. She had given birth to at least 9 children whose baptisms appear in church records.

Given the three-year space, she probably had one stillborn child who was simply buried but not baptized, meaning she had at least 10 children.

We don’t know that Margretha didn’t have more children that died in Switzerland before settling in Germany, or after the child born in 1675. We do know that the last child baptized, in 1675, Jerg Lienhard passed away 18 weeks later.

To Margretha, who 14 years earlier had lost her firstborn daughter 24 weeks after she was born, this must have seemed terribly, horribly familiar.

Margretha’s Death

Margretha died on October 30^th, 1689 when she was about 57 years old.

Burial:30 Oct 1689 Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Buried the wife of Rudolph Müller.

At the time of her death, none of her children had married. Her eldest son would have been 27 years old, but he wouldn’t marry until 1696.

Daughter Veronica would marry a year after Margretha’s death, in 1690.

Sibilla, born in 1672 would have just turned 17 that late October day when the family gathered inside the medieval church to hear Margretha’s funeral sermon, then walked outside to bury her mother’s coffin. Sibylla didn’t marry for another several years, in 1698.

There are no marriage records for any other children, before or after Margretha’s death.

No grandchildren were born before Margretha died, so she never had the opportunity to enjoy those cherubic faces. I hope they all heard stories about Margretha and her life, including her family left behind in Switzerland.

In 1689, Margretha’s home was probably bustling with activity as her adult and near-adult children helped with household activities. Her son named for his father, or two sons if Hans Jacob survived, likely assisted Rudolph in the blacksmith shop and as the local ferrier.

The men may have worked in this very barn, or one similar, still standing, in Grossheppach.

The daughters would have assisted Margretha with the never-ending household chores and probably took care of her in her final illness.

Margretha’s home might have looked like, or could even been this medieval cross house in Grossheppach.

Or maybe this one.

Regardless, Margretha would have been in and out of all of these homes over the years. They would have been familiar, likely open to the neighbors, most of whom were related, at any time. Women likely came and went, especially in a time of need – childbirth, illness and the ever-present death.

Two years later, Rudolph remarried to another Margaretha. He died a year later, in 1992, joining Margretha and their children in the cemetery beside the church in Grossheppach.

It’s somehow ironic, and not just a little sad, that Margretha’s daughter, Veronica died in 1708 at only 41 years of age. Of course, there were many causes of death, but I always wonder about childbirth for women of childbearing age. Her sister, Sibilla, was a midwife and I wonder if she delivered Veronica’s children.

Unfortunately, the minister, in the Register of Souls, incorrectly attributed Veronica’s step-mother, who was also named Margaretha, as her mother. I realize that’s an easy mistake to make, but it hurts my heart for Veronica’s mother, our Margretha.

Hopefully, this error meant one thing – either Veronica and step-mother Margaretha had a wonderful relationship. Of course, it could also be that the minister was new to the church and didn’t know the family history. We don’t know exactly when this register was compiled, but it was clearly after 1711.

Seelenregister (Register of Souls) Grossheppach Evangelical Church

Veronica (spouse of Johann Jacob Mahler); died 11 January 1708, aged 41 years, 6 months.

Father: Rudolph Müller, citizen and farrier (smith) from Switzerland Cand (Kanton?); died 1692.

Mother: Margaretha, born in Switzerland, a chambermaid; died 23 March 1711, about 71 years of age.

Note by Tom who performed these translations: This Margaretha is Veronica’s step-mother. Her birth mother died in 1689 and was also named Margaretha.

This does cause me to wonder if step-mother Margretha truly was also from Switzerland, or if the two Margrethas have been intertwined, which I suspect is the case. If the step-mother is also from Switzerland, this tells us that perhaps several Swiss families settled in Grossheppach – and maybe they are related or from the same region or village.

Was our Margretha a chambermaid, or was the step-mother the chambermaid? Was chambermaid somehow different than “housewife” in that time and place? If so, how?

Godparents

I’m always so grateful when ministers include the names of the various godparents with baptisms. I wish when records are indexed, the godparents’ names were indexed too, because they are often the keys to unraveling relationships.

I compiled this table of godparents in order to see who is found in multiple baptisms and what can be discerned about those individuals. People who journeyed from out of town were more likely to be relatives than those who might have been godparents because they were neighbors or village officials.

It’s worth remembering that the Godparents were responsible for raising the child, and raising them up in the church, if something were to happen to the parents. Before the days of modern medicine, that happened all too often. Godparents were making this solemn promise in from of everyone, including God.

Godparents made a serious commitment, which is why they are often trusted family members.

Child	Godparent	Location	Comment
Sibilla 1661	Jerg Leinhardt Herman, Margretha		In 1657, one Georg Leonhard Hermann married Maria Magdalena Krausin. This family seems to have been in Grossheppach for several generations, so not Swiss.
	Sibilla Stockler(in)	Stuttgart, farm maid	Given the same first name, the distance from Stuttgart and her peasant status, this person is likely related.
Hans Rudolph – 1662	Jerg Leinhardt Herman		This family is found in the region in the earlier 1600s, so not Swiss.
	Ulrich Schweikhardt,	Stuttgart	I don’t find this individual, but I do find this family in Stuttgart earlier than this timeframe, so apparently not Swiss.
	Sibilla Glockler(in)	Also from…[probably Stuttgart]	These 3 people at this baptism are the same as the 1661 baptism, so likely all 3 connected in some way. There is a 1626 birth in Stuttgart for Anna Sybilla Gletler or Gloeckler.
Anna Magdalena 1664	Jerg Schmidt	Grunbach	Jerg died in 1686 in Grossheppach. Grunbach was perhaps 2 miles distant.
	J. L. Herman	Miller	Probably Jerg Leonhard Herman
	Daniel’s wife, Magdalena		Probably Daniel Ziegler, see below
Anna Margretha – 1664	Jerg Leonhard Herman	Miller
	Magdalena, wife of Daniel Ziegler
	Anna Margaretha, wife of Ulrich Schweickh(a)r(t)
Veronica 1666	Daniel Ziegler
	Hans Eiber		Mayor in Grossheppach
	Maria Elisbetha Blaror(in)?
Hans Jacob 1668	Ulrich Schweigger	Stuttgart
	Jerg Leinhard Herman	Miller
	Magdalena, Daniel Ziegler’s wife
Anna Barbara 1669	Jerg Schmid	Schoolteacher in Grunback
	Jerg Leinhard Herman	Miller
	Magdalena, wife of Daniel Ziegler
Sibylla 1672	Jerg Schmid	Schoolteacher in Grunbach
	Jerg Leinhard Herrman	Miller
	Magdalena, wife of Daniel Ziegler
Jerg Leinhardt 1674	Jerg Schmidt	Schoolteacher in Grunbach
	Jerg Leinhard Herman, miller
	Magdalena, wife of Daniel Ziegler

Typically, when we see the same people repeat as godparents, especially when they have to travel from out of town, that often means they are relatives, and probably close relatives – often siblings.

Stuttgart is not nearby, about 11 miles distant. Either Rudolph or Margretha had some connection to the individuals from Stuttgart.

In this case, the fact that these families were living in this region for at least a generation suggests strongly that they were not from Switzerland, but perhaps they had married people who were, or there is a connection from an earlier generation.

Johann Rudolph and Margretha appear to be particularly close to Jerg Leinhardt Hermann, the local miller. They both would have seen the former Grossheppach mill, above and below, daily.

Why Johann Rudolph Muller and Margretha selected the same godparents for their children repeatedly will have to remain a mystery, at least for now.

Mitochondrial DNA

The mitochondrial DNA of Margretha would have been passed on to her children of both sexes, but only females pass it on.

We don’t know what happened to three daughters:

• Anna Magdalena reportedly born in 1664
• Anna Margaretha reportedly born in 1664
• Anna Barbara born in 1669

We know that two of Margretha’s daughters did in fact marry and have children, Veronica and Sybilla.

Veronica

From the Register of Souls, we see that Veronica had six daughters.

• Veronica’s daughter Veronica born in 1700, died in 1717.
• Veronica’s daughter, Anna Barbara Mahler married Jacob Kloepfer in 1732 and died in 1763. It looks like she had one daughter in 1733, but only three children are shown in the Grossheppach book through 1737.

Sibilla

Margretha’s daughter, Sibilla Muller born in 1672 married Johann George Lenz/Lentz in neighboring Beutelsbach in 1698. She had two daughters who lived.

• Elisabetha was born in 1709, but we know nothing more.
• Anna Barbara Lenz born in 1699 and died in 1770 married Johann Georg Vollmer in 1729, having four daughters who lived to adulthood:

1. 1. Barbara 1729-1744
   2. Maria Elisabetha 1732-1795
   3. Regina 1738-1740
   4. Anna Maria 1740-1781

Descendants of these females, through all females, to the current generation which can be male or female would carry the mitochondrial DNA of Margretha. I have a DNA testing scholarship for the first person who qualifies.

Stay Tuned

Just before I finished this article, I received a reply from the researcher who performed the one-place study of Grossheppach. They, indeed, to descend from Johann Rudolph Muller and Margretha through daughter Veronica – and – they have additional information they are willing to share. Bless that person.

As it turns out, they still live in Grossheppach.

I’m doing the genealogy happy dance.

Stay tuned. There’s more to come!

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