08:02 AM 2022-05-12Have Matha and Henry Arndorfer
HER DEATH. The youngish mother called Martha lay ill in a side room, for a year, before she died in August. With five children, they were mostly not allowed to enter the sick room, for fear of contagion. Somone reported that she had been covered with bruises, so wondered if she'd had leukemia. Someone else went golfing with her former doctor, however, and was told instead that she'd had an infection and her infection would today be solved with antibiotics. (Thyroid deficiency can cause bruising, as well as a too cool body temperature. A too cool body prevents the fevers helpful in "burning off" infections while still in a mild stage.)
Her youngest was only two, when she died in August. He was called Jerome, or Jerry. In the coming month, he would die as well. He was playing with toys in a shallow tank used to water cows. He must have leaned over, then tumbled in and hit his head hard enough to "pass out". The 4 inches of water were "just enough" to cover his nose. There had been a birthday celebrated and "company" present, so too much going on to notice immediately that he was missing. Someone did think to look for him, not long after he wandered off, but it would be too late to save him. (The modern version of this is leaving the gate to a backyard pool unlocked?)
Her surviving children would thereafter be in good hands. Her parents had already died. However, there was her unmarried sister Regina, and her unmarried brothers, apparently still living at the parents' house, closer to the church, who could take son Robert. Her sister-in-law, called Aunt Suze by nieces and nephews, married to Mike Arndorfer, would take her youngest daughter, Donna. Donna so loved playing with Suze's daughters, her father had to bribe her with a tricycle to convince her to come home. Martha's two eldest did not need supervision. Stuck in that room for a year, as Martha lay dying, she'd worried and then suggested to her older children that they quit school, so they could help their father with the farm work. Hank instead insisted they stay in school and graduate, able by then to ride a school bus to Corwith's HS, an opportunity not offered to his generation. They did not regret taking his better advice. She had picked well. He was a loving "papa", rather than a merely indifferent "dad". His children loved him back.
HER LIFE. Her sister Regina, a bit older, had been her best friend. One of her last photos shows the two women with their mother, Martha quite petite, thin, but her neck swollen, as if there was an issue with her thyroid. She spent her short life in Iowa's St. Benedict area. The main highway had come out of the east, from the Mississippi R., by following an old military road on its way west, historians said.
Now called Hwy 18, it takes a driver to her family's towns, first entering Kossuth County's east end at Wesley, with its grain elevators. The highway bypasses her St Benedict, where so many in her family lived, the road a too great distance away, that distance thought to kill the little church town's chance at keeping businesses. The road then went by Sexton, which had better access, but failed to grow anyway, perhaps as too close to the bigger town of Algona. Algona had the courthouse and a rail depot, attracting Pioneer seed corn and a tool factory. The last towns reached were Whittemore and West Bend with its grotto, at the west county line.
Kossuth was a long county formed from two shorter ones, after the northmost one failed to attract population. Smaller counties were left intact at either side. Her Ludwig grandfather was in the north half of Kossuth, his church at Bancroft, a town reached by taking a road north out of Algona. Corwith was instead reached by taking a road south out of Wesley.
Their church at St Benedict had its own Catholic school, running through Grade Nine, attended by all of Hank's children. Local Protestant children attended as well. The Protestants were excused from the religious part of the instruction. This let the area avoid the expense of a public school, with church sponsorship of schools something that had been done at her grandfather Richtsmeier old German place of Lippe-Detmold.
----SOME FAMILY HISTORY-----------
Matrtha's parents both died before her, living just east of the St. Benedict church, west of her and their cemetery. Her father was George Ludwig, mainly occupied with farming, but "making ends meet", German-style, by having a few side occupations, including local undertaker, one other discovered by her son Robert while staying at the family house.
George had come to the County with his sister Mary Ludwig Studer, both as teens, to work at a farm just south of Wesley. After their mother, Regina Herold Ludwig, died back in Winneshiek County, where George and Mary had been born, their father and some young siblings then followed them to Kossuth, but went further north inside the county, to Bancroft.
Her grandfather was known as JN Ludwig, once initials became popular. However, he called himself Nicholas/Nicholaus when he wed her grandmother, Regina Herold Ludwig, his first wife, back at Winneshiek County.
He was among the elder of five boys immigrating with their mother, the widowed Margarethe Ludwig, b. Nov. 25, 1794, maiden name probably Hein. All five boys were named for their father, Joannes or Johannes Ludwig, understood as John Ludwig by British speakers. Their sharing a first name? How to tell them apart? German rules let nicknames and middle names be substituted. Her grandfather Ludwig's full version, once here in the States, was something like John NIcholaus Peter Ludwig. He was normally called Nick when not called JN, but one record with first wife Regina showed him using Peter. (German politeness rules said if someone older was temporarily around and had dibs on a name, such as Nicholas, the younger should shift to another name. However, other things are possible. For one example-- Maybe the census-taker was told all of his names, but had been taught to write down only one, so picked the last one heard, Peter?)
Unlike Martha's Arndorfer In-laws, who came to Iowa from the Beaver Dam area of Wisconsin, nearer to Watertown and thus Milwaukee, George and sister Mary came from the northeast part of Iowa, from Winneshiek County's Spillville/Calmar area, not far from the Mississippi River, northwestish of the Dubuque bluffs.
Martha's grandfather, JN Ludwig, immigrated with his brothers and his widowed mother. They had been among the many dark-haired Germanics arriving to the States pre-Civil War, their prior places along the Rhine/Rhein River. Ancient Romans had a colony there, overtaken by the Franks in 462, historians say, causing those Romans not leaving to mix with Celts and arriving Germanics. Their main town in their multilingual French-German area was called Cologne by the French. Once fully Germanized, it became Köln. (Both names mean Colonia or Colony. The older name of Cologne reminds us of the perfumes produced there. Still surrounded by riverside towns, it is now Germany's fourth largest city. Its modern name is related to the beer style called Kölsch, an ale.)
Centuries after the Roman elites left, there were deep changes in what had turned into the Frankish end of the loosely-knit Holy Roman Empire, as some nobilities wanted their own empires. Napoleon's troops had warred with the expanding Prussians, the latter closer in ethnic appearance and history to the Scandinavians, with accordingly more blondes and Lutherans and with different dialects. The warring was resolved circa 1814 by Napoleon's defeat.
The rulers of the Cologne region were not chosen by a local vote, but imposed by outsiders negotiating in Vienna. Thus, the Cologne region had been under the French 1794–1815, but was then under the Prussians as of 1816, to be a Catholic subset ruled by non-Catholic Prussian nobles. The Prussian nobles had ordered their local Lutherans and Calvinists to join into one church (Evangelical Lutheran?). That's interesting, as Martin Luther had rejected Calvinism. The resulting churches were then ordered to tolerate the other religions. When records were gathered up from local churches and centralized, this caused multiple Catholic baptisms and weddings and funerals to be put into Lutheran books. That on top of multiple Johns in one family makes finding old records a chore. (Knowing the town helps, but if they were moving, it's tricky.)
Being put under the Prussians happened in the youth of JN's parents. JN's father and other young men were conscripted into the Prussians' seemingly endless wars, wars not meant to free anyone, but to add to the wealth of the nobles. Service was, in theory, for only a few years, but often went much longer, multiple wars possible per soldier.
Historians thus tell us the generation of JN's parents decided to immigrate, not over religion, but to avoid their sons' lives being as damaged by war as their fathers' had been. This is seen in the records, as excess service under Prussian rule caused years of delay before marrying and having children. We know that JN's father was deceased, before his mother Margretha (nickname Rita?). She brought her sons to the States early enough to avoid their conscription? Those immigrating were generally not pacifists, as many participated on the Federal side in the Civil War, the Germanics once under Napoleon as as against slavery as they had been against serfdom. Instead, they were against war done repeatedly for the wrong reasons. People tried to ignore the changing politics, no voting allowed anyway, making them moderates, true even once here. Their loyalty was instead to town and family, not to rulers.
Consistent with a Napoleonic history, in her censuses with her sons in the States, Margarethe/Margareth called herself French-born, at the same time her sons were called German-born.
BLENDING IN. Yet, they were affected by all the old rulers. From the Romans. who mixed with the Franks, came an early Christianity and love of church. From Napoleon, came a desire to be free, to own one's own land, to eliminate serfdom ("bondsmen", which was an old variation on slavery, though not as cruel, as serfs went with the land and, unlike slaves, could not be sold away from the estate owning them and thus sent away from their family). From the Prussians, came the idea that every village should have a school and it should go through at least Grade 8, and also that religious differences could be tolerated, rather than turning against all religions, as some had done under Napoleon.
IN THE STATES. The farming Ludwigs, once immigrated and in northeast Iowa's Winneshiek County, attended church at Spillville, their church and associated cemetery called St. Clement. Their Frankish Germanics mixed with Czech-speaking Bohemians whose church was instead St. Wenceslas, at Spillville. (JN's older brother John married Mary Mikota, from St. Wenceslas.
The place was sufficiently musical to attract composer Anton Dvorak for a visit. The love of music and the promotion of education came to St. Benedict with her father and was taught to his children. Martha played the violin. Everyone sang. Her youngest brother Laurence was called "Tenor".
Eldest brother George was called "Snub". Her younger brother Leo was "Spur", her brother Jacob, "Shek". (The French for Jacob was Jacques. Neither Germans nor French had the British "J sound ". Instead, the French pronounced Jacques as Zhak, which turned into Shak or Shek when the Germans and local Jewish tried it. Some male Herolds of Winneshiek reported Ashkenazi Jewish in their DNA. Cities "back home" might have been religiously segregated, but small farming villages were by necessity mixed.)
Martha's mother was Barbara Richtsmeier (pronounced Rich-meyer). Barbara's immigrant parents had come through Illinois on their way to the Ackley area of Iowa. Her father, according to one tree, from a region called Lippe-Detmold, of a father named Richts and a mother named Meier, the children not hyphenating, but merely joining the names together. A well-used train came through Ackley, its route including a college town. Locals had taken advantage of that. Barbara's sister would then be listed as a college student in one Census. Richtsmeier descendants were maybe the first to do graduate school in the modern generations.
Barbara's parents never came to St. Benedict. Instead, two of her sisters married Hanigs, who moved to farms south of St. Benedict, letting her meet George Ludwig, that way, yet be married at her family church in Ackley.
George, premarriage, initially worked for the earlier-arriving Studers. His sister Mary, then marred a Studer. A Studer family tree, once easily found on the web, but no longer, said the Studers were part of a group of plague-surviving Swiss who, long ago, went down the mountains into plague-decimated Bavaria. The Swiss were multi-ethnic, German, French and Italian, accounting for Martha's Studer cousin with a French first name, Genevieve (to be married twice and widowed twice, first to a Wimmer, then to a Fix). She had a neighbor with the Italian name of Francesca. After generations spent in Bavaria, the Studers and connected families went first, though briefly, to Canada, and then, from Canada, to St Benedict. This writer discovered that just one Studer claimed lots of land in Kossuth County in the homestead years. (Was he maybe their best English speaker, able to deal with the clerks at the government land office, filing land claims as an agent for a larger group, after a group of them had gathered enough money to buy, deciding to divide the land later? Was that the start of a "people's bank"? Note that St Benedict once had a bank destroyed by a robbery and by the rest of the Great Depression. (One of the young robbers was caught. He would apologize to everyone later, once an adult.) Did she fall sick at about the same time neighbors had lost their life savings?
SIDE NOTES.
The church at St. Benedict survived many decades, through the births and baptisms of her grandchildren, including this writer. The cemetery still exists, is maintained, bu the church is gone. Its congregation and records have since been folded into those of St. Cecelia in Algona, further west. The stained glass windows from Austria, home of the first priest, were saved with names of donating parishioners (not sure about the hand-turned castle-like, chateau-like Altar and side altars, where peopel posed for their wedding pictures.) St Benedict founded the Benedictines, plain-living, said to be important in church reforms when that was needed.
Her children who lived to marry , but who were deceased by 2014, included:
Henry Joseph Jr, Dolores, and Robert J Arndorfer.
Thank you to Lauren Hargrave and Robbie Decker for their work documenting this cemetery.
JB, 2022
HER DEATH. The youngish mother called Martha lay ill in a side room, for a year, before she died in August. With five children, they were mostly not allowed to enter the sick room, for fear of contagion. Somone reported that she had been covered with bruises, so wondered if she'd had leukemia. Someone else went golfing with her former doctor, however, and was told instead that she'd had an infection and her infection would today be solved with antibiotics. (Thyroid deficiency can cause bruising, as well as a too cool body temperature. A too cool body prevents the fevers helpful in "burning off" infections while still in a mild stage.)
Her youngest was only two, when she died in August. He was called Jerome, or Jerry. In the coming month, he would die as well. He was playing with toys in a shallow tank used to water cows. He must have leaned over, then tumbled in and hit his head hard enough to "pass out". The 4 inches of water were "just enough" to cover his nose. There had been a birthday celebrated and "company" present, so too much going on to notice immediately that he was missing. Someone did think to look for him, not long after he wandered off, but it would be too late to save him. (The modern version of this is leaving the gate to a backyard pool unlocked?)
Her surviving children would thereafter be in good hands. Her parents had already died. However, there was her unmarried sister Regina, and her unmarried brothers, apparently still living at the parents' house, closer to the church, who could take son Robert. Her sister-in-law, called Aunt Suze by nieces and nephews, married to Mike Arndorfer, would take her youngest daughter, Donna. Donna so loved playing with Suze's daughters, her father had to bribe her with a tricycle to convince her to come home. Martha's two eldest did not need supervision. Stuck in that room for a year, as Martha lay dying, she'd worried and then suggested to her older children that they quit school, so they could help their father with the farm work. Hank instead insisted they stay in school and graduate, able by then to ride a school bus to Corwith's HS, an opportunity not offered to his generation. They did not regret taking his better advice. She had picked well. He was a loving "papa", rather than a merely indifferent "dad". His children loved him back.
HER LIFE. Her sister Regina, a bit older, had been her best friend. One of her last photos shows the two women with their mother, Martha quite petite, thin, but her neck swollen, as if there was an issue with her thyroid. She spent her short life in Iowa's St. Benedict area. The main highway had come out of the east, from the Mississippi R., by following an old military road on its way west, historians said.
Now called Hwy 18, it takes a driver to her family's towns, first entering Kossuth County's east end at Wesley, with its grain elevators. The highway bypasses her St Benedict, where so many in her family lived, the road a too great distance away, that distance thought to kill the little church town's chance at keeping businesses. The road then went by Sexton, which had better access, but failed to grow anyway, perhaps as too close to the bigger town of Algona. Algona had the courthouse and a rail depot, attracting Pioneer seed corn and a tool factory. The last towns reached were Whittemore and West Bend with its grotto, at the west county line.
Kossuth was a long county formed from two shorter ones, after the northmost one failed to attract population. Smaller counties were left intact at either side. Her Ludwig grandfather was in the north half of Kossuth, his church at Bancroft, a town reached by taking a road north out of Algona. Corwith was instead reached by taking a road south out of Wesley.
Their church at St Benedict had its own Catholic school, running through Grade Nine, attended by all of Hank's children. Local Protestant children attended as well. The Protestants were excused from the religious part of the instruction. This let the area avoid the expense of a public school, with church sponsorship of schools something that had been done at her grandfather Richtsmeier old German place of Lippe-Detmold.
----SOME FAMILY HISTORY-----------
Matrtha's parents both died before her, living just east of the St. Benedict church, west of her and their cemetery. Her father was George Ludwig, mainly occupied with farming, but "making ends meet", German-style, by having a few side occupations, including local undertaker, one other discovered by her son Robert while staying at the family house.
George had come to the County with his sister Mary Ludwig Studer, both as teens, to work at a farm just south of Wesley. After their mother, Regina Herold Ludwig, died back in Winneshiek County, where George and Mary had been born, their father and some young siblings then followed them to Kossuth, but went further north inside the county, to Bancroft.
Her grandfather was known as JN Ludwig, once initials became popular. However, he called himself Nicholas/Nicholaus when he wed her grandmother, Regina Herold Ludwig, his first wife, back at Winneshiek County.
He was among the elder of five boys immigrating with their mother, the widowed Margarethe Ludwig, b. Nov. 25, 1794, maiden name probably Hein. All five boys were named for their father, Joannes or Johannes Ludwig, understood as John Ludwig by British speakers. Their sharing a first name? How to tell them apart? German rules let nicknames and middle names be substituted. Her grandfather Ludwig's full version, once here in the States, was something like John NIcholaus Peter Ludwig. He was normally called Nick when not called JN, but one record with first wife Regina showed him using Peter. (German politeness rules said if someone older was temporarily around and had dibs on a name, such as Nicholas, the younger should shift to another name. However, other things are possible. For one example-- Maybe the census-taker was told all of his names, but had been taught to write down only one, so picked the last one heard, Peter?)
Unlike Martha's Arndorfer In-laws, who came to Iowa from the Beaver Dam area of Wisconsin, nearer to Watertown and thus Milwaukee, George and sister Mary came from the northeast part of Iowa, from Winneshiek County's Spillville/Calmar area, not far from the Mississippi River, northwestish of the Dubuque bluffs.
Martha's grandfather, JN Ludwig, immigrated with his brothers and his widowed mother. They had been among the many dark-haired Germanics arriving to the States pre-Civil War, their prior places along the Rhine/Rhein River. Ancient Romans had a colony there, overtaken by the Franks in 462, historians say, causing those Romans not leaving to mix with Celts and arriving Germanics. Their main town in their multilingual French-German area was called Cologne by the French. Once fully Germanized, it became Köln. (Both names mean Colonia or Colony. The older name of Cologne reminds us of the perfumes produced there. Still surrounded by riverside towns, it is now Germany's fourth largest city. Its modern name is related to the beer style called Kölsch, an ale.)
Centuries after the Roman elites left, there were deep changes in what had turned into the Frankish end of the loosely-knit Holy Roman Empire, as some nobilities wanted their own empires. Napoleon's troops had warred with the expanding Prussians, the latter closer in ethnic appearance and history to the Scandinavians, with accordingly more blondes and Lutherans and with different dialects. The warring was resolved circa 1814 by Napoleon's defeat.
The rulers of the Cologne region were not chosen by a local vote, but imposed by outsiders negotiating in Vienna. Thus, the Cologne region had been under the French 1794–1815, but was then under the Prussians as of 1816, to be a Catholic subset ruled by non-Catholic Prussian nobles. The Prussian nobles had ordered their local Lutherans and Calvinists to join into one church (Evangelical Lutheran?). That's interesting, as Martin Luther had rejected Calvinism. The resulting churches were then ordered to tolerate the other religions. When records were gathered up from local churches and centralized, this caused multiple Catholic baptisms and weddings and funerals to be put into Lutheran books. That on top of multiple Johns in one family makes finding old records a chore. (Knowing the town helps, but if they were moving, it's tricky.)
Being put under the Prussians happened in the youth of JN's parents. JN's father and other young men were conscripted into the Prussians' seemingly endless wars, wars not meant to free anyone, but to add to the wealth of the nobles. Service was, in theory, for only a few years, but often went much longer, multiple wars possible per soldier.
Historians thus tell us the generation of JN's parents decided to immigrate, not over religion, but to avoid their sons' lives being as damaged by war as their fathers' had been. This is seen in the records, as excess service under Prussian rule caused years of delay before marrying and having children. We know that JN's father was deceased, before his mother Margretha (nickname Rita?). She brought her sons to the States early enough to avoid their conscription? Those immigrating were generally not pacifists, as many participated on the Federal side in the Civil War, the Germanics once under Napoleon as as against slavery as they had been against serfdom. Instead, they were against war done repeatedly for the wrong reasons. People tried to ignore the changing politics, no voting allowed anyway, making them moderates, true even once here. Their loyalty was instead to town and family, not to rulers.
Consistent with a Napoleonic history, in her censuses with her sons in the States, Margarethe/Margareth called herself French-born, at the same time her sons were called German-born.
BLENDING IN. Yet, they were affected by all the old rulers. From the Romans. who mixed with the Franks, came an early Christianity and love of church. From Napoleon, came a desire to be free, to own one's own land, to eliminate serfdom ("bondsmen", which was an old variation on slavery, though not as cruel, as serfs went with the land and, unlike slaves, could not be sold away from the estate owning them and thus sent away from their family). From the Prussians, came the idea that every village should have a school and it should go through at least Grade 8, and also that religious differences could be tolerated, rather than turning against all religions, as some had done under Napoleon.
IN THE STATES. The farming Ludwigs, once immigrated and in northeast Iowa's Winneshiek County, attended church at Spillville, their church and associated cemetery called St. Clement. Their Frankish Germanics mixed with Czech-speaking Bohemians whose church was instead St. Wenceslas, at Spillville. (JN's older brother John married Mary Mikota, from St. Wenceslas.
The place was sufficiently musical to attract composer Anton Dvorak for a visit. The love of music and the promotion of education came to St. Benedict with her father and was taught to his children. Martha played the violin. Everyone sang. Her youngest brother Laurence was called "Tenor".
Eldest brother George was called "Snub". Her younger brother Leo was "Spur", her brother Jacob, "Shek". (The French for Jacob was Jacques. Neither Germans nor French had the British "J sound ". Instead, the French pronounced Jacques as Zhak, which turned into Shak or Shek when the Germans and local Jewish tried it. Some male Herolds of Winneshiek reported Ashkenazi Jewish in their DNA. Cities "back home" might have been religiously segregated, but small farming villages were by necessity mixed.)
Martha's mother was Barbara Richtsmeier (pronounced Rich-meyer). Barbara's immigrant parents had come through Illinois on their way to the Ackley area of Iowa. Her father, according to one tree, from a region called Lippe-Detmold, of a father named Richts and a mother named Meier, the children not hyphenating, but merely joining the names together. A well-used train came through Ackley, its route including a college town. Locals had taken advantage of that. Barbara's sister would then be listed as a college student in one Census. Richtsmeier descendants were maybe the first to do graduate school in the modern generations.
Barbara's parents never came to St. Benedict. Instead, two of her sisters married Hanigs, who moved to farms south of St. Benedict, letting her meet George Ludwig, that way, yet be married at her family church in Ackley.
George, premarriage, initially worked for the earlier-arriving Studers. His sister Mary, then marred a Studer. A Studer family tree, once easily found on the web, but no longer, said the Studers were part of a group of plague-surviving Swiss who, long ago, went down the mountains into plague-decimated Bavaria. The Swiss were multi-ethnic, German, French and Italian, accounting for Martha's Studer cousin with a French first name, Genevieve (to be married twice and widowed twice, first to a Wimmer, then to a Fix). She had a neighbor with the Italian name of Francesca. After generations spent in Bavaria, the Studers and connected families went first, though briefly, to Canada, and then, from Canada, to St Benedict. This writer discovered that just one Studer claimed lots of land in Kossuth County in the homestead years. (Was he maybe their best English speaker, able to deal with the clerks at the government land office, filing land claims as an agent for a larger group, after a group of them had gathered enough money to buy, deciding to divide the land later? Was that the start of a "people's bank"? Note that St Benedict once had a bank destroyed by a robbery and by the rest of the Great Depression. (One of the young robbers was caught. He would apologize to everyone later, once an adult.) Did she fall sick at about the same time neighbors had lost their life savings?
SIDE NOTES.
The church at St. Benedict survived many decades, through the births and baptisms of her grandchildren, including this writer. The cemetery still exists, is maintained, bu the church is gone. Its congregation and records have since been folded into those of St. Cecelia in Algona, further west. The stained glass windows from Austria, home of the first priest, were saved with names of donating parishioners (not sure about the hand-turned castle-like, chateau-like Altar and side altars, where peopel posed for their wedding pictures.) St Benedict founded the Benedictines, plain-living, said to be important in church reforms when that was needed.
Her children who lived to marry , but who were deceased by 2014, included:
Henry Joseph Jr, Dolores, and Robert J Arndorfer.
Thank you to Lauren Hargrave and Robbie Decker for their work documenting this cemetery.
JB, 2022
08:02 AM 2022-05-12Have Matha and Henry Arndorfer
HER DEATH. The youngish mother called Martha lay ill in a side room, for a year, before she died in August. With five children, they were mostly not allowed to enter the sick room, for fear of contagion. Somone reported that she had been covered with bruises, so wondered if she'd had leukemia. Someone else went golfing with her former doctor, however, and was told instead that she'd had an infection and her infection would today be solved with antibiotics. (Thyroid deficiency can cause bruising, as well as a too cool body temperature. A too cool body prevents the fevers helpful in "burning off" infections while still in a mild stage.)
Her youngest was only two, when she died in August. He was called Jerome, or Jerry. In the coming month, he would die as well. He was playing with toys in a shallow tank used to water cows. He must have leaned over, then tumbled in and hit his head hard enough to "pass out". The 4 inches of water were "just enough" to cover his nose. There had been a birthday celebrated and "company" present, so too much going on to notice immediately that he was missing. Someone did think to look for him, not long after he wandered off, but it would be too late to save him. (The modern version of this is leaving the gate to a backyard pool unlocked?)
Her surviving children would thereafter be in good hands. Her parents had already died. However, there was her unmarried sister Regina, and her unmarried brothers, apparently still living at the parents' house, closer to the church, who could take son Robert. Her sister-in-law, called Aunt Suze by nieces and nephews, married to Mike Arndorfer, would take her youngest daughter, Donna. Donna so loved playing with Suze's daughters, her father had to bribe her with a tricycle to convince her to come home. Martha's two eldest did not need supervision. Stuck in that room for a year, as Martha lay dying, she'd worried and then suggested to her older children that they quit school, so they could help their father with the farm work. Hank instead insisted they stay in school and graduate, able by then to ride a school bus to Corwith's HS, an opportunity not offered to his generation. They did not regret taking his better advice. She had picked well. He was a loving "papa", rather than a merely indifferent "dad". His children loved him back.
HER LIFE. Her sister Regina, a bit older, had been her best friend. One of her last photos shows the two women with their mother, Martha quite petite, thin, but her neck swollen, as if there was an issue with her thyroid. She spent her short life in Iowa's St. Benedict area. The main highway had come out of the east, from the Mississippi R., by following an old military road on its way west, historians said.
Now called Hwy 18, it takes a driver to her family's towns, first entering Kossuth County's east end at Wesley, with its grain elevators. The highway bypasses her St Benedict, where so many in her family lived, the road a too great distance away, that distance thought to kill the little church town's chance at keeping businesses. The road then went by Sexton, which had better access, but failed to grow anyway, perhaps as too close to the bigger town of Algona. Algona had the courthouse and a rail depot, attracting Pioneer seed corn and a tool factory. The last towns reached were Whittemore and West Bend with its grotto, at the west county line.
Kossuth was a long county formed from two shorter ones, after the northmost one failed to attract population. Smaller counties were left intact at either side. Her Ludwig grandfather was in the north half of Kossuth, his church at Bancroft, a town reached by taking a road north out of Algona. Corwith was instead reached by taking a road south out of Wesley.
Their church at St Benedict had its own Catholic school, running through Grade Nine, attended by all of Hank's children. Local Protestant children attended as well. The Protestants were excused from the religious part of the instruction. This let the area avoid the expense of a public school, with church sponsorship of schools something that had been done at her grandfather Richtsmeier old German place of Lippe-Detmold.
----SOME FAMILY HISTORY-----------
Matrtha's parents both died before her, living just east of the St. Benedict church, west of her and their cemetery. Her father was George Ludwig, mainly occupied with farming, but "making ends meet", German-style, by having a few side occupations, including local undertaker, one other discovered by her son Robert while staying at the family house.
George had come to the County with his sister Mary Ludwig Studer, both as teens, to work at a farm just south of Wesley. After their mother, Regina Herold Ludwig, died back in Winneshiek County, where George and Mary had been born, their father and some young siblings then followed them to Kossuth, but went further north inside the county, to Bancroft.
Her grandfather was known as JN Ludwig, once initials became popular. However, he called himself Nicholas/Nicholaus when he wed her grandmother, Regina Herold Ludwig, his first wife, back at Winneshiek County.
He was among the elder of five boys immigrating with their mother, the widowed Margarethe Ludwig, b. Nov. 25, 1794, maiden name probably Hein. All five boys were named for their father, Joannes or Johannes Ludwig, understood as John Ludwig by British speakers. Their sharing a first name? How to tell them apart? German rules let nicknames and middle names be substituted. Her grandfather Ludwig's full version, once here in the States, was something like John NIcholaus Peter Ludwig. He was normally called Nick when not called JN, but one record with first wife Regina showed him using Peter. (German politeness rules said if someone older was temporarily around and had dibs on a name, such as Nicholas, the younger should shift to another name. However, other things are possible. For one example-- Maybe the census-taker was told all of his names, but had been taught to write down only one, so picked the last one heard, Peter?)
Unlike Martha's Arndorfer In-laws, who came to Iowa from the Beaver Dam area of Wisconsin, nearer to Watertown and thus Milwaukee, George and sister Mary came from the northeast part of Iowa, from Winneshiek County's Spillville/Calmar area, not far from the Mississippi River, northwestish of the Dubuque bluffs.
Martha's grandfather, JN Ludwig, immigrated with his brothers and his widowed mother. They had been among the many dark-haired Germanics arriving to the States pre-Civil War, their prior places along the Rhine/Rhein River. Ancient Romans had a colony there, overtaken by the Franks in 462, historians say, causing those Romans not leaving to mix with Celts and arriving Germanics. Their main town in their multilingual French-German area was called Cologne by the French. Once fully Germanized, it became Köln. (Both names mean Colonia or Colony. The older name of Cologne reminds us of the perfumes produced there. Still surrounded by riverside towns, it is now Germany's fourth largest city. Its modern name is related to the beer style called Kölsch, an ale.)
Centuries after the Roman elites left, there were deep changes in what had turned into the Frankish end of the loosely-knit Holy Roman Empire, as some nobilities wanted their own empires. Napoleon's troops had warred with the expanding Prussians, the latter closer in ethnic appearance and history to the Scandinavians, with accordingly more blondes and Lutherans and with different dialects. The warring was resolved circa 1814 by Napoleon's defeat.
The rulers of the Cologne region were not chosen by a local vote, but imposed by outsiders negotiating in Vienna. Thus, the Cologne region had been under the French 1794–1815, but was then under the Prussians as of 1816, to be a Catholic subset ruled by non-Catholic Prussian nobles. The Prussian nobles had ordered their local Lutherans and Calvinists to join into one church (Evangelical Lutheran?). That's interesting, as Martin Luther had rejected Calvinism. The resulting churches were then ordered to tolerate the other religions. When records were gathered up from local churches and centralized, this caused multiple Catholic baptisms and weddings and funerals to be put into Lutheran books. That on top of multiple Johns in one family makes finding old records a chore. (Knowing the town helps, but if they were moving, it's tricky.)
Being put under the Prussians happened in the youth of JN's parents. JN's father and other young men were conscripted into the Prussians' seemingly endless wars, wars not meant to free anyone, but to add to the wealth of the nobles. Service was, in theory, for only a few years, but often went much longer, multiple wars possible per soldier.
Historians thus tell us the generation of JN's parents decided to immigrate, not over religion, but to avoid their sons' lives being as damaged by war as their fathers' had been. This is seen in the records, as excess service under Prussian rule caused years of delay before marrying and having children. We know that JN's father was deceased, before his mother Margretha (nickname Rita?). She brought her sons to the States early enough to avoid their conscription? Those immigrating were generally not pacifists, as many participated on the Federal side in the Civil War, the Germanics once under Napoleon as as against slavery as they had been against serfdom. Instead, they were against war done repeatedly for the wrong reasons. People tried to ignore the changing politics, no voting allowed anyway, making them moderates, true even once here. Their loyalty was instead to town and family, not to rulers.
Consistent with a Napoleonic history, in her censuses with her sons in the States, Margarethe/Margareth called herself French-born, at the same time her sons were called German-born.
BLENDING IN. Yet, they were affected by all the old rulers. From the Romans. who mixed with the Franks, came an early Christianity and love of church. From Napoleon, came a desire to be free, to own one's own land, to eliminate serfdom ("bondsmen", which was an old variation on slavery, though not as cruel, as serfs went with the land and, unlike slaves, could not be sold away from the estate owning them and thus sent away from their family). From the Prussians, came the idea that every village should have a school and it should go through at least Grade 8, and also that religious differences could be tolerated, rather than turning against all religions, as some had done under Napoleon.
IN THE STATES. The farming Ludwigs, once immigrated and in northeast Iowa's Winneshiek County, attended church at Spillville, their church and associated cemetery called St. Clement. Their Frankish Germanics mixed with Czech-speaking Bohemians whose church was instead St. Wenceslas, at Spillville. (JN's older brother John married Mary Mikota, from St. Wenceslas.
The place was sufficiently musical to attract composer Anton Dvorak for a visit. The love of music and the promotion of education came to St. Benedict with her father and was taught to his children. Martha played the violin. Everyone sang. Her youngest brother Laurence was called "Tenor".
Eldest brother George was called "Snub". Her younger brother Leo was "Spur", her brother Jacob, "Shek". (The French for Jacob was Jacques. Neither Germans nor French had the British "J sound ". Instead, the French pronounced Jacques as Zhak, which turned into Shak or Shek when the Germans and local Jewish tried it. Some male Herolds of Winneshiek reported Ashkenazi Jewish in their DNA. Cities "back home" might have been religiously segregated, but small farming villages were by necessity mixed.)
Martha's mother was Barbara Richtsmeier (pronounced Rich-meyer). Barbara's immigrant parents had come through Illinois on their way to the Ackley area of Iowa. Her father, according to one tree, from a region called Lippe-Detmold, of a father named Richts and a mother named Meier, the children not hyphenating, but merely joining the names together. A well-used train came through Ackley, its route including a college town. Locals had taken advantage of that. Barbara's sister would then be listed as a college student in one Census. Richtsmeier descendants were maybe the first to do graduate school in the modern generations.
Barbara's parents never came to St. Benedict. Instead, two of her sisters married Hanigs, who moved to farms south of St. Benedict, letting her meet George Ludwig, that way, yet be married at her family church in Ackley.
George, premarriage, initially worked for the earlier-arriving Studers. His sister Mary, then marred a Studer. A Studer family tree, once easily found on the web, but no longer, said the Studers were part of a group of plague-surviving Swiss who, long ago, went down the mountains into plague-decimated Bavaria. The Swiss were multi-ethnic, German, French and Italian, accounting for Martha's Studer cousin with a French first name, Genevieve (to be married twice and widowed twice, first to a Wimmer, then to a Fix). She had a neighbor with the Italian name of Francesca. After generations spent in Bavaria, the Studers and connected families went first, though briefly, to Canada, and then, from Canada, to St Benedict. This writer discovered that just one Studer claimed lots of land in Kossuth County in the homestead years. (Was he maybe their best English speaker, able to deal with the clerks at the government land office, filing land claims as an agent for a larger group, after a group of them had gathered enough money to buy, deciding to divide the land later? Was that the start of a "people's bank"? Note that St Benedict once had a bank destroyed by a robbery and by the rest of the Great Depression. (One of the young robbers was caught. He would apologize to everyone later, once an adult.) Did she fall sick at about the same time neighbors had lost their life savings?
SIDE NOTES.
The church at St. Benedict survived many decades, through the births and baptisms of her grandchildren, including this writer. The cemetery still exists, is maintained, bu the church is gone. Its congregation and records have since been folded into those of St. Cecelia in Algona, further west. The stained glass windows from Austria, home of the first priest, were saved with names of donating parishioners (not sure about the hand-turned castle-like, chateau-like Altar and side altars, where peopel posed for their wedding pictures.) St Benedict founded the Benedictines, plain-living, said to be important in church reforms when that was needed.
Her children who lived to marry , but who were deceased by 2014, included:
Henry Joseph Jr, Dolores, and Robert J Arndorfer.
Thank you to Lauren Hargrave and Robbie Decker for their work documenting this cemetery.
JB, 2022
HER DEATH. The youngish mother called Martha lay ill in a side room, for a year, before she died in August. With five children, they were mostly not allowed to enter the sick room, for fear of contagion. Somone reported that she had been covered with bruises, so wondered if she'd had leukemia. Someone else went golfing with her former doctor, however, and was told instead that she'd had an infection and her infection would today be solved with antibiotics. (Thyroid deficiency can cause bruising, as well as a too cool body temperature. A too cool body prevents the fevers helpful in "burning off" infections while still in a mild stage.)
Her youngest was only two, when she died in August. He was called Jerome, or Jerry. In the coming month, he would die as well. He was playing with toys in a shallow tank used to water cows. He must have leaned over, then tumbled in and hit his head hard enough to "pass out". The 4 inches of water were "just enough" to cover his nose. There had been a birthday celebrated and "company" present, so too much going on to notice immediately that he was missing. Someone did think to look for him, not long after he wandered off, but it would be too late to save him. (The modern version of this is leaving the gate to a backyard pool unlocked?)
Her surviving children would thereafter be in good hands. Her parents had already died. However, there was her unmarried sister Regina, and her unmarried brothers, apparently still living at the parents' house, closer to the church, who could take son Robert. Her sister-in-law, called Aunt Suze by nieces and nephews, married to Mike Arndorfer, would take her youngest daughter, Donna. Donna so loved playing with Suze's daughters, her father had to bribe her with a tricycle to convince her to come home. Martha's two eldest did not need supervision. Stuck in that room for a year, as Martha lay dying, she'd worried and then suggested to her older children that they quit school, so they could help their father with the farm work. Hank instead insisted they stay in school and graduate, able by then to ride a school bus to Corwith's HS, an opportunity not offered to his generation. They did not regret taking his better advice. She had picked well. He was a loving "papa", rather than a merely indifferent "dad". His children loved him back.
HER LIFE. Her sister Regina, a bit older, had been her best friend. One of her last photos shows the two women with their mother, Martha quite petite, thin, but her neck swollen, as if there was an issue with her thyroid. She spent her short life in Iowa's St. Benedict area. The main highway had come out of the east, from the Mississippi R., by following an old military road on its way west, historians said.
Now called Hwy 18, it takes a driver to her family's towns, first entering Kossuth County's east end at Wesley, with its grain elevators. The highway bypasses her St Benedict, where so many in her family lived, the road a too great distance away, that distance thought to kill the little church town's chance at keeping businesses. The road then went by Sexton, which had better access, but failed to grow anyway, perhaps as too close to the bigger town of Algona. Algona had the courthouse and a rail depot, attracting Pioneer seed corn and a tool factory. The last towns reached were Whittemore and West Bend with its grotto, at the west county line.
Kossuth was a long county formed from two shorter ones, after the northmost one failed to attract population. Smaller counties were left intact at either side. Her Ludwig grandfather was in the north half of Kossuth, his church at Bancroft, a town reached by taking a road north out of Algona. Corwith was instead reached by taking a road south out of Wesley.
Their church at St Benedict had its own Catholic school, running through Grade Nine, attended by all of Hank's children. Local Protestant children attended as well. The Protestants were excused from the religious part of the instruction. This let the area avoid the expense of a public school, with church sponsorship of schools something that had been done at her grandfather Richtsmeier old German place of Lippe-Detmold.
----SOME FAMILY HISTORY-----------
Matrtha's parents both died before her, living just east of the St. Benedict church, west of her and their cemetery. Her father was George Ludwig, mainly occupied with farming, but "making ends meet", German-style, by having a few side occupations, including local undertaker, one other discovered by her son Robert while staying at the family house.
George had come to the County with his sister Mary Ludwig Studer, both as teens, to work at a farm just south of Wesley. After their mother, Regina Herold Ludwig, died back in Winneshiek County, where George and Mary had been born, their father and some young siblings then followed them to Kossuth, but went further north inside the county, to Bancroft.
Her grandfather was known as JN Ludwig, once initials became popular. However, he called himself Nicholas/Nicholaus when he wed her grandmother, Regina Herold Ludwig, his first wife, back at Winneshiek County.
He was among the elder of five boys immigrating with their mother, the widowed Margarethe Ludwig, b. Nov. 25, 1794, maiden name probably Hein. All five boys were named for their father, Joannes or Johannes Ludwig, understood as John Ludwig by British speakers. Their sharing a first name? How to tell them apart? German rules let nicknames and middle names be substituted. Her grandfather Ludwig's full version, once here in the States, was something like John NIcholaus Peter Ludwig. He was normally called Nick when not called JN, but one record with first wife Regina showed him using Peter. (German politeness rules said if someone older was temporarily around and had dibs on a name, such as Nicholas, the younger should shift to another name. However, other things are possible. For one example-- Maybe the census-taker was told all of his names, but had been taught to write down only one, so picked the last one heard, Peter?)
Unlike Martha's Arndorfer In-laws, who came to Iowa from the Beaver Dam area of Wisconsin, nearer to Watertown and thus Milwaukee, George and sister Mary came from the northeast part of Iowa, from Winneshiek County's Spillville/Calmar area, not far from the Mississippi River, northwestish of the Dubuque bluffs.
Martha's grandfather, JN Ludwig, immigrated with his brothers and his widowed mother. They had been among the many dark-haired Germanics arriving to the States pre-Civil War, their prior places along the Rhine/Rhein River. Ancient Romans had a colony there, overtaken by the Franks in 462, historians say, causing those Romans not leaving to mix with Celts and arriving Germanics. Their main town in their multilingual French-German area was called Cologne by the French. Once fully Germanized, it became Köln. (Both names mean Colonia or Colony. The older name of Cologne reminds us of the perfumes produced there. Still surrounded by riverside towns, it is now Germany's fourth largest city. Its modern name is related to the beer style called Kölsch, an ale.)
Centuries after the Roman elites left, there were deep changes in what had turned into the Frankish end of the loosely-knit Holy Roman Empire, as some nobilities wanted their own empires. Napoleon's troops had warred with the expanding Prussians, the latter closer in ethnic appearance and history to the Scandinavians, with accordingly more blondes and Lutherans and with different dialects. The warring was resolved circa 1814 by Napoleon's defeat.
The rulers of the Cologne region were not chosen by a local vote, but imposed by outsiders negotiating in Vienna. Thus, the Cologne region had been under the French 1794–1815, but was then under the Prussians as of 1816, to be a Catholic subset ruled by non-Catholic Prussian nobles. The Prussian nobles had ordered their local Lutherans and Calvinists to join into one church (Evangelical Lutheran?). That's interesting, as Martin Luther had rejected Calvinism. The resulting churches were then ordered to tolerate the other religions. When records were gathered up from local churches and centralized, this caused multiple Catholic baptisms and weddings and funerals to be put into Lutheran books. That on top of multiple Johns in one family makes finding old records a chore. (Knowing the town helps, but if they were moving, it's tricky.)
Being put under the Prussians happened in the youth of JN's parents. JN's father and other young men were conscripted into the Prussians' seemingly endless wars, wars not meant to free anyone, but to add to the wealth of the nobles. Service was, in theory, for only a few years, but often went much longer, multiple wars possible per soldier.
Historians thus tell us the generation of JN's parents decided to immigrate, not over religion, but to avoid their sons' lives being as damaged by war as their fathers' had been. This is seen in the records, as excess service under Prussian rule caused years of delay before marrying and having children. We know that JN's father was deceased, before his mother Margretha (nickname Rita?). She brought her sons to the States early enough to avoid their conscription? Those immigrating were generally not pacifists, as many participated on the Federal side in the Civil War, the Germanics once under Napoleon as as against slavery as they had been against serfdom. Instead, they were against war done repeatedly for the wrong reasons. People tried to ignore the changing politics, no voting allowed anyway, making them moderates, true even once here. Their loyalty was instead to town and family, not to rulers.
Consistent with a Napoleonic history, in her censuses with her sons in the States, Margarethe/Margareth called herself French-born, at the same time her sons were called German-born.
BLENDING IN. Yet, they were affected by all the old rulers. From the Romans. who mixed with the Franks, came an early Christianity and love of church. From Napoleon, came a desire to be free, to own one's own land, to eliminate serfdom ("bondsmen", which was an old variation on slavery, though not as cruel, as serfs went with the land and, unlike slaves, could not be sold away from the estate owning them and thus sent away from their family). From the Prussians, came the idea that every village should have a school and it should go through at least Grade 8, and also that religious differences could be tolerated, rather than turning against all religions, as some had done under Napoleon.
IN THE STATES. The farming Ludwigs, once immigrated and in northeast Iowa's Winneshiek County, attended church at Spillville, their church and associated cemetery called St. Clement. Their Frankish Germanics mixed with Czech-speaking Bohemians whose church was instead St. Wenceslas, at Spillville. (JN's older brother John married Mary Mikota, from St. Wenceslas.
The place was sufficiently musical to attract composer Anton Dvorak for a visit. The love of music and the promotion of education came to St. Benedict with her father and was taught to his children. Martha played the violin. Everyone sang. Her youngest brother Laurence was called "Tenor".
Eldest brother George was called "Snub". Her younger brother Leo was "Spur", her brother Jacob, "Shek". (The French for Jacob was Jacques. Neither Germans nor French had the British "J sound ". Instead, the French pronounced Jacques as Zhak, which turned into Shak or Shek when the Germans and local Jewish tried it. Some male Herolds of Winneshiek reported Ashkenazi Jewish in their DNA. Cities "back home" might have been religiously segregated, but small farming villages were by necessity mixed.)
Martha's mother was Barbara Richtsmeier (pronounced Rich-meyer). Barbara's immigrant parents had come through Illinois on their way to the Ackley area of Iowa. Her father, according to one tree, from a region called Lippe-Detmold, of a father named Richts and a mother named Meier, the children not hyphenating, but merely joining the names together. A well-used train came through Ackley, its route including a college town. Locals had taken advantage of that. Barbara's sister would then be listed as a college student in one Census. Richtsmeier descendants were maybe the first to do graduate school in the modern generations.
Barbara's parents never came to St. Benedict. Instead, two of her sisters married Hanigs, who moved to farms south of St. Benedict, letting her meet George Ludwig, that way, yet be married at her family church in Ackley.
George, premarriage, initially worked for the earlier-arriving Studers. His sister Mary, then marred a Studer. A Studer family tree, once easily found on the web, but no longer, said the Studers were part of a group of plague-surviving Swiss who, long ago, went down the mountains into plague-decimated Bavaria. The Swiss were multi-ethnic, German, French and Italian, accounting for Martha's Studer cousin with a French first name, Genevieve (to be married twice and widowed twice, first to a Wimmer, then to a Fix). She had a neighbor with the Italian name of Francesca. After generations spent in Bavaria, the Studers and connected families went first, though briefly, to Canada, and then, from Canada, to St Benedict. This writer discovered that just one Studer claimed lots of land in Kossuth County in the homestead years. (Was he maybe their best English speaker, able to deal with the clerks at the government land office, filing land claims as an agent for a larger group, after a group of them had gathered enough money to buy, deciding to divide the land later? Was that the start of a "people's bank"? Note that St Benedict once had a bank destroyed by a robbery and by the rest of the Great Depression. (One of the young robbers was caught. He would apologize to everyone later, once an adult.) Did she fall sick at about the same time neighbors had lost their life savings?
SIDE NOTES.
The church at St. Benedict survived many decades, through the births and baptisms of her grandchildren, including this writer. The cemetery still exists, is maintained, bu the church is gone. Its congregation and records have since been folded into those of St. Cecelia in Algona, further west. The stained glass windows from Austria, home of the first priest, were saved with names of donating parishioners (not sure about the hand-turned castle-like, chateau-like Altar and side altars, where peopel posed for their wedding pictures.) St Benedict founded the Benedictines, plain-living, said to be important in church reforms when that was needed.
Her children who lived to marry , but who were deceased by 2014, included:
Henry Joseph Jr, Dolores, and Robert J Arndorfer.
Thank you to Lauren Hargrave and Robbie Decker for their work documenting this cemetery.
JB, 2022
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