Anna and August

Anna was a beauty. She was the only daughter of Friedrich and Francisca Wocker (see earlier post).
She grew up on the same block as Mother of God Church, living at times with her mother and father at 218 W. 6th Street and at times next door at 216 W. 6th Street with her grandparents. August was living down the street in a house that has since been torn down.

Anna was born on September 23, 1876 in Covington, KY to Friedrich and Francisca Moser. She was baptized on October 1, 1876 at St. Aloysius Church.

I am confused by the marriage record for Anna and August. I have a very clear record for their marriage that states that they were married by a judge on March 2, 1897. I have record from Mother of God Church, written in Latin that is difficult to read.



I know they were married at Mother of God, but I can't read the month, the day is the 9th, and the "dispensation" column to the right says something in Latin that is quite blurry. I know the witnesses were John Casper Deye and Joseph Vonderheide.

Both children, Virginia and Val, were born in Covington. They lived on Holman Street. I know I've posted this picture of Virginia before, but as it is one of my favorites, I'm posting it again.


I'm hoping to get a picture of Val Vonderheide as a child that I can add to this post.

A Tale of Two Houses

I realized when I got ready to write about Anna Moser Vonderheide, my great-grandmother, that I knew quite a bit about her as an adult and very little about her as a child. I knew from Aunt Evelyn that she had been raised by her grandparents, the Wockers, and that she is even buried in a plot owned by her grandparents at Mother of God. But what of her parents? I knew very little.

My search took me over to the Kenton County Library to research many clues I had from scanning their data base online. But I had no idea how interesting it was all going to be.Anna's parents were Charles (Karl) Moser and Francisca Wocker. I've now found "Wocker" spelled six different ways in documents. Charles Moser and Francisca "Wacker" (an example of the multiple spellings) were married August 8, 1867 at Holy Trinity Church in Cincinnati. They moved to Kentucky early on where Charles' occupation was most often listed as "cabinet maker."

They had eight children:
Frederick - 1868
Karl - 1869
Joseph - 1873
Geroge - 1875
Anna Catherine - 1876
Henry - 1879
Stillborn Girl - 1880
Adolf - 1881 (lived four weeks)


The majority of their married life, they lived in this home at 218 W. 6th Street in Covington. It was a two-family and they lived in the unit pictured on the right. It is located just down the street from Mother of God Church. Interestingly, Anna's maternal grandparents, Frederick and Catharine Wocker lived right next door at 216 W. 6th Street.






It appears as if all was not well in the Moser household. Anna's mother, Francisca, died at the age of 39 years old. I was able to find a Death Certificate that listed her cause of death on July 14, 1885 as "cirrhosis of the liver." Note that her last two children really didn't survive very long.






Charles remarried and Anna now had a stepmother, Elizabeth. Note that Anna was the only girl among her siblings, and according to Aunt Evelyn, all was not well. Anna's bedroom was in the uninsulated attic. Her stepmother insisted that she wash her "long johns" daily. By the next morning they would not be dry, but Anna was required to put them on anyway. This practice led to Anna becoming quite ill and her grandparents, living next door, agreeing to let Anna move in with them. Thus Anna, following the death of her mother, was largely raised by her grandparents.

As if knowing that was not enough, I found more evidence of "trouble in paradise". I will discuss that in the next post.

The German Connection

Virginia Vonderheide Ryan was the first-born child of August Henry Vonderheide and Anna Catherine Moser. August (great-grandfather to me) emigrated to the United States from Holdorf, Germany in 1881. He was only eight years old. August had two older twin brothers, Joseph and Henry, who were born in Holdorf in 1870. One sister, Elizabeth, was born about 1872 and died in infancy. I've not been able to find a record of her baptism.

The von der Heides, as the name was written in Germany, were part of a large migration of Germans from northwest Germany to the United States. Germans from this area started leaving around 1830 and continued to leave in great numbers through 1880. In a lecture delivered by Franz-Josef Tegenkamp before the Oldenburg Genealogical Society in 1997, one reads that ". . . if one is to take the three parishes of Damme, Neuenkirchen, and Holdorf, which together made up about 10,000 people, about 8000 left." Of this number, 95% of the emigrants went to the United States. You can read the entire lecture by clicking on http://www.heimatbund-om.de/om-english/tegen.htm

What would prompt people to leave the land of their birth, parents and siblings for a new country with a different language and customs? Actually, there wasn't much of a choice. All of the villages in the southern part of Oldenburg were overpopulated. There was "scanty soil and no fertilizer, little farms on which every farmer had four to six hireling-families. Forty or fifty people lived on one farm, and the farm had to feed them all. People needed to have a second job for having a little income."

The main reasons for emigration were:

1. The pressure from the farmer

• the hireling had to help any time the farmer wanted him to
• the hire-rent was too high
• the hireling had no chance to have fertile soil

2. Bad harvests because of strong, cold winters
3. Six years of military service required, especially for the hireling-sons
4. The wish of independence and the hope for a better future

http://www.heimatverein-steinfeld.de/history/emigration.html

Our von der Heides, typical of the time, came to Cincinnati because of "chain migration". Other von der Heides and friends had already emigrated to Cincinnati. They came by way of Baltimore, landing in Maryland on June 30, 1881. From here they made their way to Cincinnati (probably by train) and settled in the Cincinnati area, living on both sides of the river.

Unfortunately, within 8 years of their arrival in Cincinnati, Herman Heinrich VDH, known as "Henry" in the United States, was dead. His funeral was held at St. Paul Church in Cincinnati. For whatever reason, his widow relocated to Covington, Kentucky. There our family history really took shape as my g-grandfather August met and married Anna Catherine Moser. The next several posts will tell the story of Anna and her family.