The mystery of Verena began with a letter from my GGrandmother Dellablanche Fausch Williams. Several years ago Little GM (as we called Dellablanche) sent my dad a letter prior to a visit to Norway outlining our Norwegian family and mentioning a few places he might want to visit while there. Verena is Swiss but her son (David Fausch) married Anna Urdahl who was Norwegian so she was included in the tree. Little GM actually mentioned her as "Veronica" Neuenschwander. I searched for this Veronica Neuenschwander for years never finding a clue to explain who she could have been.
As the popularity of Ancestry.com increased and more people had searchable tree's online I kept finding David Fausch listed as the son of Mary Sherer. Everyone had the correct father as John Christian Fausch but almost all of them listed Mary as the mother. I couldn't understand why Little GM listed her as Veronica Neuenschwander.
The answer came as the result of two discoveries. One, Verena was a fairly popular name for Scandinavian people at that time and most of them liked to use multiple nicknames. Veronica was one of those nicknames.
The second discovery was figuring out why and how people associated Mary Sherer with Verena's children. It turns out that Verena had a bunch of kids in a pretty short amount of time. Her first child Anna Fausch was born in 1866 (Verena was 23). Within 11 years Verena gave birth to 7 children (Anna, Clara, John, David, Rose, Edward and Vrena). This poor exhausted woman unfortunately died due to complications with the birth of her 7th child. As you can imagine the children were very young when she died. Her widow, John C Fausch, quickly married another woman to help raise them. That woman was Mary Sherer.
If you've never seen a census report this is what they look like:
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| 1880 Census report for John C. Fausch and family living in Polk County Iowa. |
The head of the house is listed first followed by the spouse and children. Once John C. Fausch remarried, Mary was listed as his wife and everyone assumed she was the mother of all the children.
Note on Mary Sherer: This is from the webpage http://www.timpefamily.com/Scherer_and_Sherer.htm about her family.
"Mary Sherer married John C. Fausch. Mary Zeman writes "They had five children, and lost them all on the same day to black diptheria. He took her on a trip around the world, which was not commonly done in those days, and they did have three more children." Their three children were Lydia (married Arnold Riedesel), Lenoir (married Weis) and Mae (married Dickinson)."
Once the mystery of her name and her children was solved I could focus on who her parents were. The tricky nickname thing played a hand in my struggles with this as well. Evidently another nickname for Verena is "Fanny." I found a Fanny Neuenschwander in a census report but didn't connect the two until I knew that. I was then able to find out that her fathers name was John B. Neuenschwander.
This is were it gets very interesting. Digging through the books in the KEO-MAH Genealogical Society in Oskaloosa, Iowa I found a book that looked like this:
I figured I'd give it a glance out of curiosity and guess what I found.
The Mennonites in Iowa by Melvin Gingerich, Chapter XIII Mennonites In Polk And Page Counties,
Page 146-147
"Preacher Joseph Schroeder of Polk County has been referred to several times. He was the preacher in charge of a small Mennonite church organized in 1858, at the home of John B. Neuenschwander of Polk City, Iowa. [...]
First to come to the Polk City community were the Neuenschwanders and Nussbaums, who moved there from Putnam County, Ohio, in 1849. [...]
These families spoke the German language, having emigrated to Ohio from Switzerland about twenty years earlier. John B. Neuenschwander had come to Ohio in 1823 and married there eleven years later. By 1856 he had twelve children and two more were born later. His family was prominent in the affairs of the community, he being the deacon of the church and the father-in-law of Preacher Joseph Schroeder. [...] In 1868 Neuenschwander moved to Moniteau County, Missouri, and from that place his descendants scattered to other counties of Missouri and other States."
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| John B. and Anna Neuenschwander |
That was a major breakthrough in my research. Mennonites!? What?! I had no idea although after speaking to my Aunt Ann I guess she had always heard there was a Mennonite connection but didn't know how it all fit in. Those few pages in that book really opened up a flood gate of information about the Neuenschwanders. I then found a website (http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/N483ME.html) that gave even more information.
"Neuenschwander, a family name, means a man from Neuenschwand, a place near Langnau, canton of Bern, Switzerland. The word Neuenschwand means a place where the forest was recently cleared. The first person of this family known to have been an Anabaptist was Uli Neuenschwander from Eggiwil, who appeared at the Bern disputation March 11-18, 1538. In 1551 Mathis Neuenschwander fled from his Emmental home because of his Anabaptist faith. Peter Neuenschwander and family left their home in Langnau in 1729 and settled at Cortébert in the Jura. A son Michael lived on the Münsterberg. The latter's son Michael moved to the Normanvillars settlement in France and in 1823 migrated to Wayne County, Ohio, becoming one of the first settlers in the Chippewa settlement. In 1833 the family moved to Putnam County, Ohio, to become the first Mennonite settlers there. A son, John B. Neuenschwander, founded the Mennonite settlement in Polk County, Iowa, by settling there in 1849. This family moved to Moniteau Co., Missouri, USA), in 1868, becoming one of the pioneer families in that settlement. Peter M. Neuenschwander was a bishop at Berne, IN. The Dutch Naamlijst of 1802 lists Ulrich Neuenschwander as an elder of the congregation at Boliou (?) in the county of Limousin, France; he was ordained in 1782.Another family that some claim were originally Neuenschwanders are the Newschwangers who first appeared in Lancaster County, PA, in the 18th century. Of this family Emmanual Newschwanger (1758-1846) ministered to the Diller congregation (Mennonite Church) near Newville, PA for many years. In Virginia, Abraham Nisewander (1774-1846) served in the Rockingham County Mennonite ministry for a number of years. In later generations the name became common in the Church of the Brethren. Other families of this name have been located in Ontario, Kansas and Oregon.A Neuschwander family immigrated to Oregon from Switzerland in the 1880s, eventually settling near Silverton."
As you can imagine I totally nerded out when I found this information.
I'm still digging through and organizing everything we found on our trip to Iowa. It was a hot, dusty week be we found great stuff that I know we wouldn't have found had we not gone. Thanks to my dad and Aunt Ann for coming along and helping me dig.
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