One Township's Yesterdays Chapter XXVIII  

STAHL

Few records of pioneer families in this part of the world are as complete and accurate as that of the STAHL family.

Painstaking research on the part of family historians has made possible such a clean backward view of the progress of the STAHL family out of the dim mists of the long past. The earliest known STAHL ancestor is Coelestine JOHN STAHL, an alderman in the community of Monnekam, as was set down on the record of the Church of Oestelsheim an the state of Wuertemberg, Germany.

The genealogical trail is followed, and next we come to JOHN MICHAEL STAHL, citizen and farmer, born February 9, 1679, and married in 1709 to AGATHE HAUG, daughter of a doctor.

Then we find JOHN JACOB STAHL, magistrate and farmer, born January, 1716, who married ANNA KATHERINE SCHNAUFER and died in 1794 at the age of seventy-eight.

The trail leads on to JOHN GEORGE STAHL, born October 7, 1743, who married MARGARETA HOFMAYER, whose death occurred in 1809 at the age of seventy. The husband died July 29, 1822, aged seventy-eight.

Then appears Grandfather STAHL - - JOHN JACOB, citizen and farmer in Oestelsheim, Wuertemberg. He was born April 1, 1774, and died November 5, 1842, aged seventy-eight. He married KATHERINA MAGDALINA GEHRING in 1797. She was born April 4, 1779, and died December 19, 1840, aged sixty-one. They had seven children, five sons and two daughters.

Sarah, the oldest, was born in Oestelsheim December 31, 1800, and married PETER STAHL

a cousin, and thus never changed her family name. Her husband was a farmer. She died in 1862. The children were:

Henry
Sarah
Louisa

The mother's brothers and sisters, the rest of the seven children, were:

Henry / Charles Henry came to this country
Louisa
John
Karl
Jacob Frederick came to this country
Ludwig

Grandfather JOHN JACOB STAHL was a taverner [Tavernier] and a man of no small local distinction in his quaint old "home town" in Wuertemberg.

JACOB FREDERICK STAHL

But let us turn our attention to the pioneer, JACOB FREDERICK STAHL, born in Oestelsheim, February 7, 1819, and one of the principals in an August wedding in 1844. The bride was CHRISTIANA GEBRING. The place was Gechingen in Wuertemberg.
The first children, Regina and Frederick, were born in Gechingen.

The father took up the trade of locksmith, and in time built himself a shop, but hard times came, promise of hoped for expansion failed away, and ever before hint was the ogre of an increased burden of taxation, due possibly to the disturbed political condition of Europe, known in history as the "Wars of 1848."

Sadly no doubt, but feeling it would be all for the best, the father and mother decided to leave it all behind and go forth and seek a home in a land of greater opportunity. So they started on the great family adventure to the New World. Bundling the family into a wagon, they left their old home, June 3, 1852, driving to Oestelsheim, three miles distant, where they stopped over night with the old folks. In the morning came the heart-rending farewells, then they journeyed on through France - - passing the cities of Heidelberg and the Rhineland - - up the Rhine to Strasburg, then across country, through the Alsace-Lorraine that was destined to become the battleground of nations some sixty years later, and so on to Paris and at length to Havre, the place of their embarking on a sailing vessel. They were fifty-two days at sea, but finally sailed into the harbor of New York and set foot on land at Castle Garden.

Then by degrees they worked their way westward, to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Greenville, and by covered wagon to Flat Rock and Fremont, Ohio. On a farm near there they came to rest for a spell, 1852-55, then pressed on to Indiana, to South Bend, Plymouth, and the vicinity of Leiters Ford and Delong.

They settled on the "Doctor Durr place" about 1858, where the father cleared a tract of land in about three years. They remained there, near Delong, six years, then Father STAHL purchased a place in Union Township, about four miles from the Doctor DURR place in Fulton County. The final place of residence for the family consisted of eighty acres, about equally divided between uncultivatable land and land cultivatable. The house was built in 1858, and in October that year; the family began to occupy it. This was a frame house, quite a change from the old log house on the river bank, from which they had moved. This, at last, was "home." For full ten years, father, mother and children had been wanderers afar over land and sea.

JACOB FREDERICK STAHL, while on a trip to Plymouth, January 14, 1874, a cold and bitter day, took a severe cold, which speedily developed into a case of typhoid pneumonia, baffling the skill of the family physician, Dr. G. A. Durr . He died January 24, 1874. His wife, Christiana, or "Grandma STAHL," as she was known in her later years, died May 2, 1903. She lacked about two months of being eighty-two. The children were seven in number

One died at birth
Lewis Frederick born in Gechingen, Germany
Regina Barbara born in Gechingen, Germany
Charles Henry born in Gechingen, Germany
Sophia Margeretha born in Gecchingen, Germany
Louisa Christiana, born in Sandusky County, Ohio
Jacob Peter, born in Fulton County, Indiana.

The STAHL lands in the 'seventies were located west of Lake Maxinkuckee. Approximately forty acres then belonged to F. STAHL's estate and were located on the east side of old Manatau Lake in Section 19. Nearer Marmont southwest of town on the west side of the Doll Road in Section 20, L. F. STAHL had eighty acres. Along the outlet of Lake Maxinkuckee F. STAHL had eighty acres.