Ramcharan-Crowley

Schnébelin Family of Bantzenheim
ALSACE, FRANCE, AND PEORIA, IL., U.S.A.

Frangais ne puis-je,
Allemand ne daigne,
Alsacien suis-je. French I cannot be,
German I disdain to be,
Alsatian am I.
-- Motto of the Rohans,
Cardinal-Princes of Alsace

Alsace-Lorraine (pop. 4,000,000), region in northeast France occupying 5,608 sq mi (14,525 sq km) west of the Rhine. It produces grains and grapes; timber, coal, potash, and salt (Vosges Mts.); iron ore; and textiles. Metz, Nancy, Strasbourg, and Verdun are the chief cities. The people are of French and German origin. France and Germany have long disputed control of the area. In medieval times both Alsace and Lorraine were part of the Holy Roman Empire. France took Alsace after 1648 and Lorraine in 1766. Germany seized most of the region in 1871 in the Franco-Prussian War, lost it to France after World War I, regained control in World War II, then lost it again.

The ancient province of Alsace, about 120 miles long and 20 miles wide, is the western half of the upper Rhine Valley stretching from the river to the nearby Vosges Mountains. We know now that the Strauels have lived in Grussenheim, 10 miles northeast of Colmar, since at least 1635, and that the first Alsatian Schnébelin was born in Bantzenheim northeast of Mulhouse, the largest city in southern Alsace, in 1685. The agriculturally-rich upper Rhine Valley has always been a crossroads. Since the beginning of recorded history, it has been inhabited by Celtic Gauls and Alemmanic tribesmen who have given their name to the Alsatian German dialect, Low Alemmanic, similar to Swiss German. After the Roman occupation of the valley in the lst Century AD, the area became a Frankish duchy in the 5th Century, from which rose the great Frankish Empire of Charlemagne, whose Carolingian Dynasty first united France, "land of the Franks." Later from the 10th Century until 1648, this area of Lotharingia became a part of that political anomaly, the Holy Roman Empire, a loose and ever-changing confederacy of petty kingdoms, feudal principalities, duchies, and city-states dominated by Prince-bishops or hereditary families, and at one time or another encompassing what is now Germany, Austria, western Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, eastern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and north and central Italy. Voltaire commented that is was "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." By the 15th Century, it was dominated by the Austrian Habsburg Dynasty and in 1806 it became the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was the "First Reich" of which Hilter's government was the "Third Reich."

Understandably, the French kings opposed this Habsburg power, and with the outbreak of the Reformation, sided with the German Protestant princes, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the Dutch Republic against the Austrian Habsburgs and their Spanish cousins. In the resultant bloody "Thirty Years War" (1618-1648), Protestant Swedish and Mansfeldish troops devastated Catholic Alsace, killing or chasing away all but four families in Grussenheim. At the war's end in the Peace of Westphalia, Louis XIV took formal control of Alsace, and to reassert the Catholic presence, encouraged Swiss Catholics with grants of land and subventions to move into the rich but empty farmlands. Father Seemann believes that our Schnébelin ancestors came to Bantzenheim with considerable wealth and position, because they were immediately accepted and soon married into the wealthiest families of the area.

Although preserving its Germanic language and culture, southern Alsace became officially part of France in the early 18th Century and retained its Catholicism while 'its neighboring city of Basel became Swiss and Protestant. Farther north in Alsace, the Alsatian-German dialect predominated but French became the predominate language of Mulhouse, which explains why our Grandmother spoke no French, but our Grandfather and his family usually wrote to each other in French.

Central Alsace around Colmar is the fountainhead of Germanic Medieval art led by Matthias Nithardt, called Grunewald, and of the greatest of the Alsatian wines. Still farther north in Alsace, the ancient Cathedral city of Strasbourg, "the Capital of Europe," is recognized as the transitional point between Western and Central European traditions. Over 10% of the French today have non-French linguistic traditions, the Flemish, the Bretons, the Basques, the Provenç als, the Italians of Menton, and the Alsatians, to say nothing of the Russians, Poles, Moroccans, and others who have immigrated there. Suffice it to say that our German-speaking ancestors were born in France and migrated here on French passports. After they left, their valley was occupied by Germany from 1870 to 1918 and for a few years in the 1940's. Today schools are taught in French, newspapers are in Standard German, the Church preaches in both languages, and most Alsatians are bilingual.

My father claimed that a man, thinking Grandpa Schnébelin was German, sought to compliment him by telling him he looked like the Kaiser. He was so furious, he had his muttom-chop whiskers shaved off, but when he got home, Grandma said, "Now you look even worse. You look like an Irishman."

The discovery of the early history of the Schnébelins we owe to that indefatigable genealogical detective, Abbé Raymond Seemann, the pastor of the Strauels' ancestral village of Grussenheim. By going through 10,000 passport applications from between 1830 and 1860 in the Archives of Colmar, he found the Schnébelin name and traced it to Bantzenheim, then followed up with visits to the church and court house there. An ancient village, Bantzenheim lies only 3 kilometers from the Rhine crossing of Chalampé, and 10 miles northeast of Mulhouse, and has a church originally built in 795 dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, explaining why so many Schnébelins in early days were named Michael.

Nearby are the forest of Harth, and in the village of Ottmarshein 3 kilometers south, an ancient octagonal church built by the Benedictines about the middle of the llth Century, and consecrated by the Alsatian Pope, Leo IX. Originally belonging to the Benedictive Abbey of Murbach, the richest monastery in Alsace during the Middle Ages, Bantzenheim passed to the control of Austrian Habsburg counts. Ecclesiastically under the Bishops of Basel, it is now part of the Diocese of Strasbourg. By 1895, Bantzenheim had a population of 1,057, only 11 of whom were Protestants.



Our Schnébelin Ancestors

The earliest known Alsatian Schnébelin, according to the records of the Catholic Parish of Bantzenheim, was:

I. Johannes-Michael Schnébelin, born in 1685 in Bantzenheim. Father Seemann believes he may be the child of Swiss Catholic migrants from nearby Lucerne or Solothurn brought into the Rhine Valley by Louis XIV.

Johannes married Elisabeth Gottstein, by whom he had six children. He died in 1735 at the age of 50. His brother Christian, b. 1690, married Apollonia Schwäger, and had two children: Anna-Catharina, b. September 17, 1721, and Sebastian, b. August 21, 1725. After his wife's death, Christian married Catharina Cronenberger from Reiden, near Lucerne, Switzerland, on September 30, 1726. Christian died July 22, 1738. His and Johannes-Michael's sister Anna-Maria married Joseph Muck in 1727. The children of Johannes-Michael and Elisabeth were:

1. Sebastian, b. March 5, 1716, d. 1724.
2. Elisabeth, b. April 12, 1718.
3. Johannes, b. February 10, 1721, d. Sept. 24, 1723.
4. Johannes-Michael, b. February 3, 1723, d. April 27, 1745.
5. Franz-Joseph, b. July 1, 1725.
6. Maria-Anna, b. March 4, 1727.

II. Franz-Joseph Schnébelin, No. 5 above, married Maria Anna Onimus on May 4, 1755. They were related "in the third degree of kindred," i.e., she was the daughter of his first cousin. They had ten children:

1. Magdalene, b. July 22, 1756.
2. Maria-Anna, b. July 20, 1757, married Joseph Cronenberger in 1778, teacher, organist of the church, and choirmaster. He may have established the violin playing tradition in the family.
3. Franziska, b. February 27, 1759.
4. Anton, b. December 22, 1760.
5. Catharina, b. April 23, 1762.
6. Stephan, b. July 27, 1763.
7. Maria-Theresia, b. April 11, 1766.
8. Theresia, b. October 29, 1767.
9. Anna-Maria, b. May 24, 1769.
10. Johannes-Michael, b. February 11, 1771, ancestor to Henry, Tony, and Willis Schnébelin and Mary Marcussen of Peoria.

Franz-Joseph became a widower, then married a second wife named Elisabeth Seyller or Seiller, and started a second family of five children ten years later:

1. Franz-Joseph, b. Aug. 9, 1781.
2. Franz-Joseph, b. October 20, 1782.
3. Anton, b. October 28, 1784.
4. Maria-Anna, b. August 7, 1786.
5. Theresia, b. April 8, 1789 (the year the French Revolution broke out. From this time on, names are recorded in French.)

III. Anton Schnébelin, No. 4 above in first set of children. On July 31, 1786, he married his first cousin, Theresia Seyller, b. 1765, daughter of Anton Seyller and Elisabeth Schnébelin, his.father's sister, No. 2 of Johannes-Michael's children above. They had an astonishing 12 children. It must be remembered that many children died in childhood, and that the new baby was often named after a recently-deceased older child.

1. Michael, b. July 15, 1786, two weeks before his parents' marriage. He was legitimized. Later he became the High Mayor of Bantzenheim.
2. Marie-Anne, b. February 8, 1791.
3. Ann-Marie, b. 23 Ventose An III (French Republican Calendar), February 22, 1795.
4. Franz-Joseph, b. 6 Nivose An V, December 26, 1796.
5. Francoise b. 19 Messidor An VI, June 19, 1798.
6. Xavier, b. 5 Germinal An VIII, March 26, 1800.
7. Elisabeth, b. 29 Frimaire An X, Nov. 28, 1801.
8. Antoine, b. 3 Messidor An XI, June 22, 1803.
9. Brigitte, b. 13 Pluvoise An XIII, February 1, 1805.
10. Jeanne, b. May 8, 1806.
11. Cathari.ne, b. February 10, 1808.
12. Francoise, b. June 1, 1810.

IV. Franz-Joseph Schnébelin, No. 4 above, an innkeeper in Bantzenheim, married to Katharina Schmitt, by whom he had 10 children. They were:

1. Georges, b. January 5, 1824. Died in Bartonville, IL, at age 97, ancestor of the Wolschlags through his daughter Mary.
2. Etienne b. May 19, 1825.
3. Seraphin, b. October 29, 1826. Killed by a streetcar in St. Louis, MO.
4. Catharine, b. September 26, 1828.
5. Louis, b. December 1, 1830, died in St. Louis, MO at age 87, father of Paul and other St. Louis Schnébelins.
6. Andre, b. December 1, 1832.
7. Amand, b. October 22, 1834, birth certificate winessed by Jacques Wild, 35 yr. old day laborer and Michel Schnébelin, 37 yr. old farmer. Secretary spelled name wrong, "Amann.
8. Maximin, b. September 27, 1836.
9. Marie-Anne, b. November 24, 1839.
10. Benjamin, b. February 26, 1841.



The Henry and Tony Schnéblin Line

The discovery of the earliest part of our family story in America I owe to that late Grande Dame, Louise de Lent Straesser, who put me onto her husband's cousin, Mary Schnéblin Marcussen of Bartonville, whose father Henry J. Schnéblin wrote a short family history in 1954. (note: link to document) But to begin at the beginning:

Although the constantly repeated first and last names are confusing, Amand's grandfather Anton, b. 1760, had a younger brother Johannes-Michael, No. 10 in Section II above, b. 1771. This brother married Catharina Muller, and they had eight children:

1. Franz-Joseph, b. 5 Fructidor An II, August 20, 1794.
2. Michael, b. 2 Nivoise An VI, December 21, 1797 (other children may have been born between these two, but records were disrupted during the French Revolution).
3. Xavier, b. 22 Frimaire An VIII, December 13, 1799.
4. Joseph, b. 8 Vendemiaire An X, September 30, 1801.
5. Sebastian, b. 23 Fructidor An XI, September 11, 1803.
6. Theresia, b. April 22, 1808.
7. Elisabeth, b. June 30, 1810.
8. Stephan, b. March 12, 1813.

Franz-Joseph Schnébelin, No. 1 above, married Franziska Onimus, and had four children:

1. Ignaz, b. May 23, 1822.
2. Barthelemy, b. October 29, 1824.
3. Caroline, b. December 15, 1826.
4. Alexandre, b. March 10, 1830.

According to the Archive of Colmar, Barthelemy, 20 years old and a baker, requested a passport on September 13, 1844, heading to New Orleans. His father Franz-Joseph, then 53 years old and a postman, requested a passport on January 14, 1848, for travel possibly with his wife and children, to "Belleville." This may be the town in southern Illinois near St. Louis, or merely a misspelling of Bartonville. In any case, Ms. Marcussen's father's history tells how his unnamed grandfather emigrating with his wife and five children in 1847 to Bartonville, IL, where his wife soon died of fever. Although we don't know the names of the parents, we do know the names of four of the children. Assuming that Henry Schnébelin's grandparents were Franz-Joseph and Franziska Onimus Schnébelin, the ages of the known children fit:

5. Antoine "Tony," b. 1835. - (father of Henry who wrote the letter in 1954)
6. Theresa, b. 1837 (later Ms. Joseph Burger).
7. Anne, b. 1840 (later Ms. John Thome).

Their married sister Mary and her husband George Blank (Georges Blanc) followed some time later. The crossing by sailing ship took six to eight weeks. Although we can't be sure, the dates and ages of the children are exactly right. Barthelemy had gone on ahead, and from New Orleans may have gone up the Mississippi and perhaps was the first to settle in Bartonville. Of the five children, Ignaz and Alexandre could be the two unnamed boys, and perhaps Caroline is the "Mary" who married George Blank. Note that most of the first names are the common ones in the other lists, suggesting a certain origin in or near Bantzenheim, even if not the exact family. But to continue this epic of the Old West, after moving on to the French community of Carondelet near St. Louis, the widower Schnébelin caught gold fever and decided to take his family west to join the '49ers of California. The nuns who were caring for his youngest daughter Anne persuaded him to leave her with a woman in Booneville, MO, when he set out for Independence, MO, with the four older children to join his wagon train. On arrival, they discovered that the first section of the wagon train had already left, and as they waited for the second section to leave, cholera broke out in the camp and the father and two sons soon succumbed. The surviving boy, Antoine or "Tony," age 14,.took his sister Theresa to their little sister in Booneville, then borrowed a pony from a doctor with which to catch up to the wagon train in which his father had bought five passages. Within a few days he succeeded, and as instructed, set the pony free to find its way home. Twenty years later, he discovered that the pony had returned a few days after he had freed it.

Apparently Tony went west, but by 1852 he was back in Bartonville to marry Mary Straesser, whose father Johan had walked from Pennsylvania and established a farm where the present State Hospital now stands. Tony and Mary moved to Oregon where they had five children, but once again tragedy struck and Mary died. When the family returned to Peoria, the Straesser family raised the four girls, while Tony raised his son Henry, who was the father of Mary Marcussen of Bartonville and the late Willis Schnéblin of St. Louis, father of Eugene. Once when I was arriving at Aunt Mandy Broyhill's house on Marquette St. in the '30s, an old man was leaving, and she told me he was "Henry Schnéblin, one of Pa's cousins." Actually, Henry's father Tony was Grandpa's second cousin, born one year after him.



The Origin of the Schnéblin Family

But before we go on to the following generation, this may be the place to take a glance farther back into our past.

From the widow of a distant cousin of ours, Mme. Paul Schnébelin of 1 rue du Nordfeld, Mulhouse, Father Seemann obtained a copy of a 56 page booklet entitled, Die Herren von Lunkhofen genannt Snewli und ihre Nachkommenschaft im Toggenburg (The Knights of Lunkhofen named Snewli and their Ancestry in Toggenburg.) This good lady also presented our branch of the family with a photograph of a plate decorated with one of the three known Schnébelin coat-of-arms. It was her husband, the proprietor of an electrical-supply store, with whom we exchanged letters in 1948, who first told us about the existence of the ancient Schnébelin knights.

In the early 13th Century, a knightly family named Snewli lived in the area of Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Duchy of Baden, Germany, about 20 miles east across the Rhine from Grussenheim, the Strauel village. Their name derives either from Old German snë l meaning "courageous" or "brave," or from Snewes, the genitive of Schnee meaning "of the snow." When this family died out about 1280, two brothers named Johannes and Heinrich of another family named Lunkhofen, probably related to the Snewlis by ancestry or marriage, adopted their name. This family originated with the first knight, Lord Rudolph von Lunchunft about 1163 in the Canton of Aargau, Switzerland, and later moved to nearby Zurich, where some of the descendants still live. Curiously enough, many centuries ago, the Lunchunft / Lunkhofen name was dropped in favor of the borrowed Snewli. The Castle of Lunkhofen was on top of a hill on the right bank of the Reuss River near Bremgarten, 10 miles west of Zurich, and the property was first recorded in 694 as belonging to a priest named Wichardus. Now a ruin, the castle was built in the form of a trapezium, and was probably destroyed in the battle of Sempach in 1386. Today it belongs to a descendant, Dr. Gustave Schneeli of Zurich.

Down through the centuries, the Snewli name took on many forms often derived from local dialects. Today there are at least three brances of the family besides our Alsatian line. Snewli was pronounced like Schneeli or Schnelli, still used by the Toggenburger line in the village of Gähwil near Zurich. In Affoltern am Albis (Affoltern on Albis Mountain), just southwest of Bremgarten and Zurich, the spelling is Schneebeli, as discovered by Steve Schneblin, Bob's son in San Jose, as well as by Father Seemann. This is by far the commonest spelling in Switzerland today.

A third spelling is Schnebeli or Schneble, used in the town of Baden, Canton of Aargau (not the German province of the same name), 50 miles northwest of Zurich. In spite of extensive published genealogies, we do not know if we Schnébelins are the same family as the Lunkhofen-Snewli, and if so, exactly where our Alsatian line branches off from these families still living near the original ancestral lands. In the same way, we do not know which of the three coats-of-arms we might claim. The name Schnebli of Baden, Aargau, is credited with one coat-of-arms and Schnäbelin is creditied with two coats-of-arms from the city of Basel (Bá le in French), all in Switzerland, by J. B. Rietstap in the basic heraldic authority, The Armorial General (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1965, reprint of 1884 ed., Vol. II, p. 117, and H. V. Rolland, Planches de l'Armorial Général de J. B. Rietstap. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1921, Vol. V P1 CCLXXI, nos. 22-23)

The Snewli or Schnebli coat-of-arms is red with the white cross of the Swiss flag in its center, and three horizontal "snowballs" across it.

Rietstap describes the Snewli line as becoming Schneiling. In any case, the two Basel coats-of-arms are in exactly our name, Schabelin, and seem. more likely to be ours, being both closer to Bantzenheim, and more recent in time than the ancient Snewlis. One coat-of-arms is divided into four quarters, top left and bottom right being silver with a black tree, the opposite quarters being blue with an upside-down five-pointed gold star. In the middle of the shield is a miniature silver shield showing a white dove facing left with red beek and feet. The crest is the same dove with a blue and silver twist under it.

The second coat-of-arms is blue but divided down the middle by a black arrow with gold point and feathers, and with silver doves facing each other on each side of the arrow. The doves and base of the arrow rest on three earth mounds across the bottom of the shield, and the crest is the same doves and arrow on a blue and silver twist. Obviously the two coats-of-arms are related, suggesting that an already knightly family had a descendant important enough to receive a second title.

Before you rush out to order new stationery or paint the shield on your car door, I should add that, while any use of heraldry is allowed in the U.S., only proven descendants of oldest sons may use coats-of-arms in most European countries. A further complication is that we have no record as to which country knighted our ancestors, though the Holy Roman Empire or its offshoot, Switzerland, are good bets since they controlled the area during the right period. Father Seemann reports that there is no record of a Schnébelin coat-of-arms in pre-Revolutionary France.

There is every reason to believe that we are indeed descendants of this ancient family. Grandpa always said his family had come from Switzerland, and Basel is less than 20 miles east of Mulhouse and they share the same airport. When we visited Mulhouse in 1948, the telephone book led us to a Paul Schnébelin, proprietor of a large electrical supply shop, who was away on vacation but later wrote us that a Schnébelin knight was listed among the warriors in a particular battle plaque in the Munster or Cathedral of Berne. We found the Munster in 1959, now a Protestant church, but could not find the plaque. Another possibility is the much nearer Munster of Basel which has a famous cloister lined with just such plaques. We need a week or two of research in Switzerland sometime.

As far as the name goes, Schnäbelin, pronounced Shnay-bel-een in standard German, is a typical Rhenish combining a Germanic root, (maybe from schnabel meaning "beek") with a Latin diminutive which the Swiss spell-li but the French nasalize and spell-lin. Meaning "little beek" or "beeky," Schnäbelin was changed to Schnébelin to better represent the French pronunciation Shnay-bel-on (as in " lingerie.") The second "e" was dropped in Peoria because, Mother said, the name was too long to fit on the side of Uncle Harry's drugstore on the corner of Lincoln and Western, but it was already shortened in Grandpa's obituary in 1921, and so used also by Henry and his heirs. In 1976, only one Schnébelin, Paul's widow, still remained in the Mulhouse phonebooks, and none in Paris. Father Seemann reports other Schnébelins in Mulhouse, the suburb of lllzach, and in Chalampé near Bantzenheim, altogether only four or five families all related directly to ours. Other spellings such as Schnoebelen and Schnebelen are also probably related to our name.



Amand Schnébelin's Forebears and Siblings

Through Aunt Nellie's perseverance in keeping old letters and Marg Finn's good sense in saving them, we have been able to identify, translate, and arrange consecutively some 15 letters, receipts, and other documents pertaining to the Schnébelin family. Although hardly reticent, Grandpa apparently didn't talk much about his family. Mom said that when she asked him how many children were in his family, he'd hold up his hand, fingers spread, and say, "Five brothers, and we each had a sister." When she'd exclaim, "Ten children!" he'd laugh because of course there was only one girl. We don't know anything about her except that she was named Catharine or Marie-Anne but suspect that she died young in France.

We do know five of the boys though, plus one male cousin, who among them account for all known American Schnébelins living today. At the funeral of Paul Schnébelin's wife in St. Louis about 1940, I met one Louis Schnébelin who said that he'd heard that our mutual great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather had married a Gypsy girl who had taught her son to be a fiddler. That squared with my Mother's story that her grandfather had kept a Gasthaus and was a wonderful violinist. But in my reading about Alsace, I got the idea Grandpa may have had a Jewish mother or grandmother. Considering Grandpa's outstanding liberalism, his insistence on the greatness of each nation ("Ach, you don't know what fine people they have over there"), his banning of ethnic epithets in his home, and his visiting the French Jews of Peoria every Sunday to practice his French and get a bit duschlich on wine, he may have known about a Jewish ancestress somewhere in his family, and the Jews are as much violinists as the Gypsies. Father Seemann points out that there were no Jews in Bantzenheim, and that miscegenation was extremely rare. Schmitt, Seyller, and Onimus sound Christian and local, but what about Elisabeth Gottstein who married Johannes-Michael Schnébelin about 1715?

The five brothers of Grandpa's generation were:

1. Georges, who lived in Bartonville until the age of 97, and whose daughter Mary was the ancestress of most of the Wolschlag family there. He wore a full beard in the picture I have of the three brothers, and was called "Uncle Shorsh" by his nieces and nephews. This was an approximation of the French pronunciation of his name, "Jorj" or "Zhorzh," in contrast to the German "Gay-org," suggesting that French was his first language. Because Uncle Georges didn't speak much English, Grandpa wanted his children to learn enough German at least to greet him, but "they couldn't get their tongues around it." Aunt Kate, after long practice, forgot everything she'd learned when Uncle Georges arrived unexpectedly one day, and greeted him with, "Geh alang disaway," a phrase she was never allowed to forget.
2. Seraphin, the main subject of Aunt Nellie's letters, was a wine merchant in the Paris working-class suburb of Montrouge, but was ruined by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 wherein France lost Alsace and Lorraine to Germany. After years of beseeching, he was brought to America by his three previously-migrated brothers aboard the "City of Liverpool" which sailed from Bristol on November 9, 1872. He left behind his wife, son Georges, and daughter Pauline who was already married to a man named Jacquel (Father Seemann says Jacquet is the correct spelling) and had a three-year-old child. Georges followed, and was working a farm in Quincy, Adams County, Iowa in 1881, with his wife Lizzie. At that time, Seraphin had returned to France, but was planning to come back to the States almost immediately. One gets the impression that he was something of a ne'er-do-well who never managed to repay his passage, so that there was bad blood between him and his brothers. I think he was run over and killed by a streetcar in St. Louis. There are no Jacquels in Paris phonebooks, and Quincy has disappeared off Iowa maps, but the phone book of Clinton, the county seat of Adams County, shows no Schnébelins there today. Pauline has by far the most impressive writing style in the letters, and comes through as an intense, dramatic sort of person who must have had some education. It was she Aunt Nellie tried to contact by mail, but never succeeded. When we went to their old address in Montrouge in 1948, an old woman told us the house had always been inhabited by Alsatians.
3. Louis, who once lived at the home of one Monsieur Gerbaurg, rue du List, Mulhouse, but migrated to St. Louis, MO. Father Seemann found M. Henri Gerbaut a businessman, requested a passport on August 29, 1855 for a trip to Brussels and Cologne. Louis wore a large moustache and Van Dyck goatee like Louis Napoleon, and was always called "Uncle Louie" in proper French. Like Grandpa, he lived to be 87, but had lost one eye while serving in the French army "in the bush," possibly in Africa, or Father Seemann suggests it was the Battle of Solferino in 1859 against the Austrians. He was also said to have had experience smuggling people across the Rhine, the frontier between France and Germany. He had at least two sons, Paul who lived in a beautiful brick rowhouse on Arsenal St. opposite Tower Park in St. Louis, and another son who fathered the Louis I met in 1940 plus several other children. Paul married an Irishwoman named Mulloy and had two children, Lucille, who was a crack accountant and C.P.A. for Price Waterhouse, a lover of music and the arts, a great friend of mine who died young about 1959; and Richard "Dick," who served in the Navy, married a woman who had a child by a previous marriage, was a mailman, and was still listed in the St. Louis telephone directory in 1975. The line was disconnected, so perhaps he retired elsewhere, or died. A family who spell their name Schnebelen, much more frequently found in Alsace today, may or may not be related to us in St. Louis, and the others probably descend from Paul's brother.
4. Amand, our grandfather, born about 1834 under the reign of Charles X, last Bourbon King of France, and named after the patrons saint of Alsace, an Irish monk who brought Christianity to the Rhine Valley. How Dad would have kidded Mom if he'd known that, especially since she was never shy about pointing out that, after all, St. Patrick is thought to have been French. Grandpa died at age 87 in August, 1921, just three months before I was born. He was a master maker of boots and shoes, "und a kindermacher too" as he once remarked to my Dad. In later years he specialized in orthopedic shoes, but felt he had too little education (three years) to go into business. As we know, he married Mary Magdalene Strauel, born in Grussenheim, Alsace, in 1870 when he was 36 and she 21, and they had nine children. Although she cried "for a week" when she discovered her new husband was ten years older than he had said, Grandma was not the young widow she feared to be. Grandpa loved the good life, kept a horse, forcefed geese for paté de fois gras, made "toddies" before dinner and drank wine with his meals, sometimes cooked the Sunday roast, and was proud of his artistry and his big healthy family. He was playing euchre at the corner saloon when my mother was born, and he took his wife dancing into his '70's.
5. Benjamin, the youngest brother and, according to Mom, Grandpa's favorite. Of all the family, only he wrote in German, and that heavily larded with French words and Alsatian patois expressions, idioms, and spellings. He was a concierge or door-keeper, either of a factory or of a luxurious home, and was on call night and day by a Comisaire or "Commissioner", either his term for his boss or the title of his master. He was married to a woman from Lorraine, and had two children, Charles who at 14 was already working in a draftsman's office, and a girl eight years younger. We know nothing of these cousins or Pauline Jacquel (Jacquet) who remained in France, but there must be descendants somewhere.

Benjamin mentions in one letter that he couldn't get married after his military service (in the 1870 war?) because he had to take care of Vatter, either a misspelling of Vater, German for "father," or a proper name. Although according to a receipt for shoemaker's supplies, Grandpa was apparently still in Mulhouse in 1866, he always said he had spent five years in Paris where he had had a woman for every finger of both hands. But he still managed to reach Peoria and get married by 1871. Did Louis and Georges emigrate directly from Alsace to their already-established cousins in Bartonville, or were they too living in Paris as were Grandpa, Seraphin, and Benjamin? Had they all been brought to Paris by their father, the innkeeper? In any case, we can assume that they came to Peoria because their cousins had already settled there, and that except for Benjamin, they all wrote to each other in standard French, and used it in all their family communications. Although Benjamin and Pauline had married non-Alsatian French, did Georges and Louis, in their '30's when they emigrated, bring Alsatian wives with them, or marry in the States as Grandpa did?

There are answers to these and all the other questions that have come to mind as you've read this. If you know or guess any more, or can spot errors in what I've put down, please let me know. Any leads, old pictures or letters or addresses, will be most useful, and I urge every member of the family to join in the search for our roots.