Maria Anna Betscher
Maria Anna Betscher was born in Baden about 1792 and was in her late fifties when the family crossed.
She appears in her own right on 5 November 1859, when the Dry Ridge farm was sold to her son. Ohio law would not let a wife's dower be signed away on her husband's say so, so after the deed was executed the notary Anthony Shonter took her into another room. The entry records it in the formula the statute required: that she was *examined by me separate and apart from her said husband*, that the contents of the deed were *made known and explained to her*, and that she declared she had signed it voluntarily and *is still satisfied therewith*. Then she signed, Maria Anna Betscher, beside her husband's name.
She outlived him. In 1880, aged eighty eight, she is still in Colerain Township, in the household of Louis Heis.
Her maiden name survives in two spellings, and neither is confirmed. Her son Melchior's marriage return of 1900 calls her Mary Faurs. A published family genealogy calls her Mary Ann Venes. Her son Amand's death certificate in 1913 simply says Anna, born in Germany, which is why the two Christian names in her signature matter: Mary and Anna were one woman, and a clerk who wrote down only one of them was not making a mistake.
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Cite: Heirology, "Maria Anna Betscher (b. 1792)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/maria-anna-betscher-1792-096453.