Frederick William Schaefer
Frederick William Schaefer was born in Germany on 10 September 1814. He is Friedrich W. Schaefer on his death certificate and William Schaefer on his gravestone. His son, who gave the details at his death, named his parents as Friedrich Wm. Schaefer and Christine Meyer, both born in Germany. His second wife, Christina, was also born a Meyer, by her own son's death certificate of 1937. So the 1902 entry may be true, or it may hold her maiden name in the box meant for his mother's.
He married his first wife, Caroline Vonderau, in Germany. In 1846 he emigrated to America and settled first at Defiance, Ohio. A year later he moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to work on the Wabash and Erie Canal. The canal ran from Toledo on Lake Erie through Fort Wayne and down the Wabash valley toward the Ohio River, and it was the longest canal built in North America. Fort Wayne sat at its summit.
Soon afterward he bought a farm in Wayne township, Allen County. Caroline died in 1858. Their children included Caroline, later Mrs Gallmeier; Louise Christina, later Mrs Henry Thiele of Milan township; Mary, later Mrs Koopman of Bluffton; and Frederick.
In 1860 he married Christina, born Christina Meyer, the widow of J. H. Kramer. She was thirteen years younger than he was. She had come from Frille in Kreis Minden in 1854 and had lost her first husband in 1856, so she brought two Kramer children with her, Mary Christine and Anthony. Together they had Christian, Ferdinand, Charles and Minnie, the youngest, born in March 1868.
The two families stayed close to another Kreis Minden family, the Thieles of Washington township. Minnie married Louis Thiele at Fort Wayne in 1888, and her brother Christian married Louis's sister. Frederick's daughter Louise Christina, from his first marriage, also married a Thiele, Henry of Milan township.
He spent his last years on a farm in Lake township. He died there at a quarter past two on the morning of 29 December 1902, of apoplexy, at eighty-eight years, three months and nineteen days. The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette called him "a pioneer farmer of Allen county" the next day. It said: "He was born in Germany, emigrated to America in 1846 and located at Defiance, Ohio. A year later, he came to Fort Wayne, working upon the construction of the old Wabash and Erie canal. Soon after this date, Mr Schaefer purchased a farm in Wayne township."
The notice counted nine surviving children, two stepchildren, fifty-one grandchildren and twenty-one great-grandchildren. Among the children it named "Mrs Minnie Thiele of Washington township". He was buried at Bethlehem Lutheran in Fort Wayne. Christina was buried beside him six years later, and they share one stone.
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Cite: Heirology, "Frederick William Schaefer (1814-1902)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/frederick-william-schaefer-1814-1902-6aee58.