Ancestors

Christina Meyer

Christina Meyer was born on 13 November 1827 at Frille, a village of Petershagen in Kreis Minden, in the Prussian province of Westphalia. Frille lies two miles from Bierde and Lahde, the villages the Thiele family of Fort Wayne came from. Her maiden name comes from the death certificate of her eldest son, which names his mother as Christina Meyer. A Find a Grave memorial calls her Christina B. Schaefer and gives no source for the initial.

She married J. H. Kramer by about 1849, when she was about twenty-one. Their son was born in Germany on 17 January 1850. He carried the names Johann Heinrich Anton and went by Anthony, and his death certificate gives his father as Anton Kramer. A daughter, Mary Christine, followed on 8 November 1853. In 1854 the family came to America and settled at Fort Wayne, Indiana. Kramer died in 1856, two years after they landed.

In 1860 she married Frederick William Schaefer, a widower thirteen years older than she was. He had come over in 1846, worked on the Wabash and Erie Canal, and bought a farm in Wayne township. His first wife, Caroline Vonderau, had died in 1858, leaving him with children of his own. Christina and Frederick had four more: Christian, Ferdinand, Charles and Minnie, the youngest, born in March 1868.

Two of those children married into the Thiele family of Washington township. Minnie married Louis Thiele at Fort Wayne on 11 October 1888, and Christian married Louis's sister Minnie. In June 1900 the census taker found Minnie in Louis Thiele's house in Washington township, the mother of four. Asked where her parents were born, she answered Germany for both.

Frederick William died at the farm in Lake township on 29 December 1902. Christina lived six more years. She died on Monday morning, 26 October 1908, at the house of her daughter Mrs. Fred Schaphorst, 730 West Third Street, Fort Wayne. The Fort Wayne Weekly Journal-Gazette wrote: "She was born in Frille, Preuss-Minden, Germany, and came to this country in 1854 with her husband, J. H. Kramer. The husband died in 1856 and in 1860 she was united in marriage to F. W. Schafer."

The notice named six surviving children: "Anthony Kramer, of St. Joe, Mich.; Mrs. Fred Schaphorst, of this city; Christ Schafer, of Lake township; Ferdinand and Charles Schafer, of Fort Wayne, and Mrs. Louise Thiele, of Washington township." It listed her husband's children separately as stepchildren. She was buried beside him at Bethlehem Lutheran under the stone they share.

Her son Anthony had married Catherine Elizabeth Ehrman at Fort Wayne in 1871, by a compiled family tree, and had moved north into Michigan. He was living at St. Joseph, Berrien County, in 1900, the "St. Joe" of her obituary. He later lived at Grand Rapids. He died a widower at East Grand Rapids on 31 October 1937, at eighty-seven. His death certificate, as indexed, names his parents as Anton Kramer and Christina Meyer.

Her eldest daughter outlived her by thirty-two years. Mary Christine Schaphorst died at her home on Barthold Street on 29 November 1940, at eighty-seven. Her obituary in the Fort Wayne News Sentinel named, among her survivors, "a sister, Mrs. Minnie Thiele, of Lake Township, and two brothers, Christ Schaefer, of Washington Township, and Charles Schaefer, of this city." Mary was a Kramer and Minnie a Schaefer, so the parent they shared was Christina.

If Christina Meyer is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Christina Meyer (1827-1908)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/christina-meyer-1827-1908-f603ee.