The daughter of Johann Heinrich Kreke and Maria Catharina Wilhelmina Alberding Kreke, Elizabeth Mary Kreke Meiners was born in Ankum, Landkreis Osnabrück, Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), Germany on May 10, 1845. She had four siblings. In 1860 she and her older sister Anna Kreke sailed to Baltimore, Maryland and then traveled on to Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio where she became the third wife of Herman Heinrich Meiners. Elizabeth and Herman were from the same town in Germany. They had nine children: George Gerard Meiners, Rose Elizabeth Meiners Helmers, John H. Meiners, William Gerhard Meiners, Mary Agnes Meiners Schinner, Bernhard F. Meiners, Joseph Peter Meiners, Leo Lawrence Meiners, and Gertrude Elizabeth Meiners Uhl. She also had nine stepchildren.

Less than five months after the death of his second wife, Herman and Elizabeth were married on May 13, 1869 at Saint Francis Seraph Catholic Church in Cincinnati. She was 24 years old, and he was 48. From at least 1880 she and her family lived at 513 Betts Street in the West End neighborhood of Cincinnati. She continued to live there after her husband's death, moving in with her daughter Rose Meiners Helmers' family on Saint Wilham Avenue sometime between 1910 and 1920. She died at age 76 on February 10, 1922 at the home of her daughter, Gertrude Meiners Uhl, in Greenfield, Highland County, Ohio. Elizabeth's granddaughter, Margaret Uhl Hays, remembers her grandmother's body being taken from the house. Elizabeth is buried on one side of her husband, and his second wife is on the other side at Saint Joseph Catholic Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Family tradition has it that both Herman's first and second wives picked out their successor before dying. Apparently each told Herman whom he should marry next, and he obliged.

Thanks so much to descendant Mary Donnelly Minges for so much of this information. Special thanks to Elizabeth Kramer Stagg for detailed information on Herman and his wives. Any errors, however, are mine alone. Please go to the "edit" link on this site with any corrections or additions.