The Peters Family

The Peters Family

The Peters Family

as written by Michael Peters in 1992

The Peters family ancestral home was in Schwarzenborn, Hesse, Germany. Schwarzenborn is a very small village, which explains why it is difficult to locate on a map. It is located in an agricultural area between Frankfurt and Kassel, some 20 miles northeast of Marburg. The family home consisted of a main house and several surrounding buildings, forming a courtyard. It was built in approximately 1600, and is still in use today. This architecture is common in central Germany, and contrasts with the long houses found in Saxon northern Germany, where farm animals and farmers lived under the same roof.

The first traceable ancestral record is of Johann Henrich Peter, who was born in the family home in Schwarzenborn in 1720. It is unknown how many children he had, but the house passed down to his son (our ancestor), Christian (born in 1745.) Christian married twice, the first wife was Anna Margaretha Schmittin, who was from Bernsdorf. Their son Johann Jakob Peter was born in 1782. After Anna passed away, Christian remarried a woman named Francoise Allioud (Franziska Alliaud), a French Huguenot. Her family had originally emigrated from southern France seeking religious freedom. These two marriages led to split in the family tree. Christian and Franziska produced several children, including another Johann Henrich Peter, born in 1802. This Johann Henrich married Elizabeth Theis, and they lived in Wohra. They had five children, the last being named Christian Peter. He was said to have deserted the Army and to have fled to America. He later ended up marrying his second (half) cousin, Margaretha Peter, who had come to America with her family. Evidently, Christian added the ‘s’ to the name shortly after arriving in America in the late 1860s.

But for our branch of the family, we must return to Johann Jakob Peter, who inherited the house in Schwarzenborn after the death of his father. He married Gertraud Feusner, a young woman seventeen years his junior. (It seems a strangely consistent occurrence that Peters men married much younger women.) Gertraud was from the nearby village of Bracht. It is not known how many children they had, but one child born in 1817 was again named Christian. This Christian, in turn, married one Gertrude Henseling in 1847, and they eventually immigrated to America in 1868. In June of 1868, Christian and Gertrude settled in Tonica, Illinois. Little is known of their early years in America. What is known is that they were farmers in Germany, and continued farming in America. In 1871, they moved to Ottawa, Illinois. Christian died in 1874, and may be buried in Ottawa (though no one has been able to confirm this.) In 1884, Gertrude moved to Buena Vista County, Iowa, with her five children: Conrad, John Peter, Jacob, Margaretha, and Gertrude. As previously stated, Margaretha married her second half cousin, Christian, who had fled Germany. They lived on a farm near Hanover, Iowa, and all their children were farmers or married to farmers. They may have selected this area because of the high concentration of German Lutheran families. John Peter married late in life. He was in his mid-40s when he married an 18-year old German girl (Anna) who was visiting her Aunt in Iowa. Her family owned a bakery in Karlsruhe, Germany, a town on the edge of the Black Forest (near the modern French border.) It appears that she was sent to America to live with an aunt until she reached her majority, or about 1895. John evidently fell in love with her immediately, and courted her vigorously until she agreed to marry him about two years later. It is said that her parents were strongly opposed to the union and wanted her to return to Germany. After the marriage, all contact with her family was broken off with the possible exception of a brother that she may have remained in contact with through WWII. This union produced twelve children, one of which is our ancestor Henry John.

Anna’s mother, Rosina Sroka, may have been Polish or Slavic, though according to a family rumor she was Polish. This is supported by the fact that Anna was taught to count in Polish as a child. How or why the Sroka family moved to Germany is unknown. However, at the time, Poland had been partitioned and former Polish territories came under Prussian rule.

It is difficult to determine the exact cause or reason for our family’s immigration to America. There is little evidence of the economic necessity of it, as the buildings from the old farm indicate a certain economic status in Hesse. And it would be difficult to argue that the United States held much promise of economic gain during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. So perhaps the reasoning was political.

John Peter lived with his family until he was well into his 40s. There seems to be a strong family loyalty and a commitment of caring for the elderly. John, along with his brothers and sisters, was born in Schwarzenborn, Germany. German was the language of choice at home, even though the children were young when they came to America. After he married, his mother came to live with him and his new bride. She may have actually been the one who ran the family, perhaps due to the young age of John’s wife and her strong personality. There have been a number of stories regarding her rather harsh discipline of her grandchildren. One grandchild, Henry John, told stories of the children climbing to the top of the hay stack to escape her wrath. After John passed away, Anna lost the property during the Depression due to her inability to pay the property taxes.

Although born in America, John Henry attended a German school in Iowa. At one time these schools were numerous throughout the Midwest, as German was still spoken at home in the early 1900s. Thus he learned English as a second language. Perhaps because of this obstacle, it is said that he was not a very good student. He continued through eighth grade, and then dropped out to stay at home and work on the farm. He was known as Henry John Peters, however, a confirmation book from 1913 lists him as Heinrich Johann Peter. Additionally, the last name on his parent’s marriage certificate is listed as ‘Peters.’ The family name was anglicized at some point. The ‘s’ had been added by the other Christian when he came to America in the late 1860s, but it unclear when our branch of the family added the ‘s.’ As Peter is an Anglo first name, it was most likely changed to avoid confusion. It is clear though that the Anglo version of the name and the German version were being used simultaneously by the family, depending upon with which group they were associating.

Among the first and second generations of our family in the United States, education was not emphasized, and most ancestors of those generations (John Henry included) did not even finish high school. Most of John Henry’s siblings remained in farming, though some of his sisters did marry men not involved in farming but instead in a variety of other occupations. However, subsequent generations produced many college graduates. Also, although John Henry was a little too young for WWI, his sons Lavern Henry and Michael served in the U.S. military during WWII and Vietnam, respectively.