Barbara Bauer Young Wenser

Barbara Bauer was born about 1816 somewhere in Bavaria, Germany. She arrived in this country before 1843 which is the year her first daughter, Elizabeth, was born in Cincinnati.

Whether Barbara was married when she came to this country is still a mystery. I believe her husband's last name was Young. They had three daughters, Elizabeth, Anna M., and Mary. In 1850, he was not counted with the family in the census. I am assuming he was dead by that summer as Barbara and the girls could be found living in Ripley, Ohio in the household of Thomas and Anna Mariah Shafer. Their last name is recorded as Young. Next door was, who I believe to be Barbara's brother, Albert Bower, his wife, Elizabeth, and their son, Albert. I also believe that Anna Mariah Shafer was a Bauer/Bower by birth and this is possibly for whom Barbara named her second daughter.

By the 1860 census, Barbara's last name is Winzer and she has two additional children, Eva (8yrs. old) and William (6 yrs. old). There is no adult male living with the family and Elizabeth, Anna, and Mary are all listed as Winzer's. They are still located in Ripley, Ohio.

By 1870, Elizabeth had married Michael Beyersdoerfer. They and their children were living in Ripley. Barbara can be found in the same household along with another daughter, Minnie. Their last name is spelled Wensor in this census and Minnie appears to be 19 years old. It is possible that Minnie is the same daughter who was listed as Eva in the 1860 census. In addition to the Beyersdoerfer's and Wensor's, a sixteen year old boy, William Bauer, is also living in the house. He is apprenticed to Michael Beyersdoerfer as a cigar maker and I assume he is also related to Barbara in some way.

Barbara and Mena (Minnie) continue to live with Elizabeth and Michael through 1880 and that is the last record I can find about Barbara. Her gravestone in Ripley's Maplewood Cemetery shows her death was in 1898.

One can speculate about her husbands and name changes. There is a 35 year old George Young listed in the 1850 Hamilton County, Ohio mortality census as having died in August of 1849 from cholera. He was from Germany and his birth year makes him a possibility of having been Barbara's husband. Hopefully, one day I might be able to determine if he is connected or not. As for William Wenser, the only records of his existence are the notations on the death certificates of his daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and Minnie as having been their father. I cannot explain why they do not name a Young as their father. I can find nothing else other than a listing in the IGI on www.familysearch.org that shows a William Wenser marrying a Barbara Bender in Cincinnati in 1850. The IGI source is named as Hamilton County, Ohio marriage records. Maybe Barbara Bender is my Barbara and her name was misunderstood. Again, maybe time will tell. Until then, I just keep on doing what I know to do - search, search, search.

The Thill's - Dealers of Hats

I have been finding a lot of information about my newly discovered Thill family. In all my findings, which for now are mostly censuses, Nikolaus, my 4-greats-grandfather, and his sons are listed as dealers of hats. One indication of the influence the Thill family had on Cincinnati can be found in the Cincinnati City Directories. The page on the left is from 1878-79. The one on the right is from 1888 - 89.

The Thill occupation of dealing with hats did not come as a surprise to me as I had known all along that his daughter, Catharine Thill Becker, had been a milliner. My mother had told me how Catharine had a hat shop on Second Street in Ripley and thanks to a cousin in Texas, I even have some pictures of the shop and Catharine. I'll be posting them later.

The Thill Connection - At Last!

For many years I have been trying to find proof that Catharine Thill Becker's parents were Nicholas and Mary (Matz) Thill. Catharine's death certificate said so, but I wanted something other than a death certificate. The problem with a death certificate is that who knows who gave the information and, maybe, just maybe, they really had no idea the names of parents or where they were born, or anything! A genealogist would never use a death certificate for proof of anything other than the actual death of a person so for years, I looked and looked with no luck.

About a year and a half ago, I stumbled on a website that had a family tree which included a Josephine Thill Kleiman. Josephine's parents were Nicholas and Barbara (Matz) Thill. They even lived in Cincinnati. Very excited, I emailed the owner of the page asking about his Josephine. I mean, how much closer could you get? Sure, the mother's name was Barbara, not Mary, but I really felt as if I had found a vital clue. A return email was very nice, but did not have any information that tied my Catharine to his Josephine. I still had to find proof.

Then, lo and behold, I found the Hamilton County Probate Court web site that I wrote about in a previous post. I quickly read how the wills were organized and made my way to the T's...and there he was! A Nicholas Thill was right there in the index! Back on the Wills main page, I entered the Volume and Page Number in the boxes, hit my Enter key, and in a few seconds, there was the will, all four pages, in very small cursive writing.

Thank goodness for a zoom button because I would not have been able to read the screen without it! I scanned through the first page which was legal probate information and made my way to the second page where the word "Will" was written. The first name I noticed was a daughter Mary Ann Miller who received the majority of Nicholas's property including real estate and furniture. Further down the page was the name of his son, George, and then I read Josephine Kleimann's name. I made a mental note to contact the aforementioned fellow as I was sure he would want to see this will.

Next came a son, Joseph, then a son, Nicholas. At this point, my fingers were crossed, and I was saying a little prayer when there she appeared! Catharine Becker, nee Thill! Her father had requested that a promissory note for the $1400 that was owed to him by her, be destroyed. I found her! After all those years, she had been hiding on a piece of paper in a courthouse.

I had the proof I needed to connect Catharine not only to her father, Nicholas, but also to siblings. True, I still don't know her mother's rightful name, although with the information in the will, I was able to locate the family in the 1860 census, where her mother is listed as Barbara. I'm not sure why Mary is on the death certificate. Maybe Barbara went by the name of Mary or maybe Catharine's son thought his grandmother's name was Mary. I don't know, but I intend to try and find out. As for her last name being Matz, Nicholas's will also mentions a Nicholas Matz as receiving money so maybe there is a connection there. I don't know yet, but with my finding this one will, I now have so much more to research and discover.

Marriage Record of Nicholas Becker and Catherine Thill

Some days you just get lucky! Hamilton County, Ohio put a lot of records on their probate court web site. There are wills, births, marriages, deaths, and other goodies to explore. I haven't had time to really dig yet, but I did find the marriage record for Nicholas Becker and Catharine Thill. They were married in Cincinnati at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church on September 16, 1860.