Parents of Five; One Child Living

The Spiller Family
Peter, Mary Alma, Ernest, Barbara (Haitz)
circa 1901-1903

     Peter Paul Spiller married Barbara Bertha Haitz on April 8, 1891 at St. Michael Catholic Church in Ripley, Ohio. They were twenty-five years old; both having been born in 1865.  The witnesses for their marriage were Barbara's twin brother, Frank and Peter's younger sister, Magdalena. 

     Peter was the son of John and Elizabeth Spiller. Barbara was the daughter of Franziskus (Frank) Xavier Heitz/Haitz and Elizabeth Germann. In the first ten years of their marriage, Peter and Barbara would become the parents of five children, but tragically they would only see one of their children live to adulthood.

22 December 1903, Daily Public Ledger, Maysville, Kentucky; page 1

     Walter John Francis, their first son, was born January 8, 1892 in Ripley and was baptized by Father John B. Dickhaus of St. Michael Catholic Church on the same day. His godparents were John Spiller and Anna Elizabeth Heitz. On July 20, 1896 Walter died at the age of four years, 6 months, and 12 days from typhus. He was buried five days later in Maplewood Cemetery.

     The second child of Peter and Barbara was born August 21, 1893. Her name was Mary Alma and she was baptized a week after birth on August 27 at St. Michael Catholic Church in Ripley. Charles Spiller and Mary Haitz were her godparents. Mary Alma would live just a short ten years before she contracted typhoid fever and died on December 17, 1903. Her burial was December 19 and it is not known if Maplewood Cemetery is her final resting place as the church record did not contain that information. 

     Barbara's third pregnancy resulted in fraternal twins, Emma Elizabeth and Carl George, who were born July 5, 1896.  Carl George would live only three hours before his death and the records from St. Michael Catholic Church state he had a private baptism. There is no information on his burial. His sister, Emma, was baptized at one week old on July 12 at St. Michael. Her godparents are not known as there is only a transcription available of the record which does not have them listed. Once again, Peter and Barbara would bury a child. At the age of four, Emma Elizabeth died from pneumonia on November 17, 1900. Her burial record is not available.

     The only child of Peter and Barbara who lived to adulthood was Ernest Xavier. He was born April 5, 1898. He would be only five when the last of his siblings were lost. 

     The above photograph of the family is labeled on the back as "The Spiller Family". Using birth and death dates and the fact that there are only two children in the photo, it is certain that the children are Mary Alma and Ernest Xavier. 

Henry Koewler's Obituary

Maplewood Cemetery, Ripley, Ohio

Henry Koewler was an older brother of my great-great grandfather, Anthony Koewler. His obituary was published in The Ripley (Ohio) Bee on March 28, 1906. It read

"Mr. Henry Koewler died last Wednesday evening at 6 o'clock at the home of his son John in the country, after an illness of several months duration. 

He was born in Schoenau, Germany, in 1832, and had he lived until May he would have been 74 years of age. The funeral was held Friday morning from St. Michael's Church, Rev. Father Theodosius officiating, burial in Maplewood.
His wife preceded him to the great beyond just three years ago, and the youngest son, Frank just two months ago. He leaves eight sons and one daughter to mourn the loss of a kind and indulgent father.

 Mr. Koewler came from Germany to Ripley in 1852. He obtained work here and later engaged in flatboating produce to New Orleans, making a number of trips. He afterwards went to Kentucky where he was engaged on the construction of the Kentucky Central Railroad. He again returned to Ripley where he formed a partnership with the late J. P. Helbling in the butcher business which lasted for over thirty years. He always maintained the confidence and respect of his fellow citizens as an upright and honorable business man. 

The later years of his life have been spent on a farm, but failing health prevented his taking any active part in that life.

The sympathy of the community is extended the relatives."  

Obituary of Franziskus Xavier Haitz

The death of Franziskus Xavier Haitz occurred on November 24, 1886.  His passing did not seem to give cause for a long and flattering obituary, but he was remembered in the Ripley, Ohio newspaper of the time, The Bee & Times. 

"Frank X Haitz, a German aged about 50 years, died at his home in this township, on Eagle Creek, Thursday, of heart trouble, and was buried in Maplewood Cemetery, from the Catholic Church, Saturday morning. He leaves a wife and several children."

"Untitled obituary for Frank Haitz," obituary, (Ripley, Ohio) Bee and Times, 1 December 1886, Frank Haitz, page 3, column 3.

Francizkus Xavier Heitz
Maplewood Cemetery
Ripley, Ohio

Franziskus is buried in Maplewood Cemetery in Ripley. The epitaph on his headstone is written in German, his native language. 

Franziskus Xavier Heitz

Born 3 September 1824

Died 24 November 1886  

Here sleeps in this grave until on the last day when God calls you. The trumpet of mercy calls you. Out of your grave He calls you into the land where death is not to separate, where no one knows pain and sorrow.

Frank X Haitz

Frank X Haitz
Maplewood Cemetery, Ripley, Ohio

Frank was the son of Frank and Elizabeth (Germann) Haitz. A requiem high mass was intoned at St. Michael's Catholic Church in Ripley, Ohio on August 26, 1950. The Reverend Father Gregory Sturm officiated. 

Frank's wife, the former Lottie Sullivan, preceded him in death five years earlier. She is buried next to him. He was survived by two brothers, George and Joseph, both of Ripley and by two sisters, Anna Serwna of Ripley and Barbara Spiller of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Frank Haitz Rites Held Saturday
The Ripley Bee, 31 August 1950
Page 1, Column 7

Obituary of George Haitz, brother of Joseph

It's been a while since my last post and a lot of things have happened since.  I am happy to announce that my youngest son and daughter-in-law are expecting a little girl in early March. This will be a very special birth as their daughter, Caroline Grace, was born prematurely in the summer of 2013 and lived only a day.  While we still grieve for Caroline, our family has prayed for this baby for a long time and continue to pray for a healthy pregnancy and successful birth.  This little girl will be my eighth grandchild!

Also since my last post, this state experienced a record rainfall resulting in flooding that devastated parts of Columbia and the surrounding area. It was so nice to see people pulling together, providing clothes, food, water, and other supplies to those who needed them.  After eleven days of being under a boil advisory, all of Columbia now has clean water to drink.  It will be a long while until all the roads are fixed and a full recovery is made for those who lost belongings, houses, and businesses. 

Maplewood Cemetery
Ripley, Ohio

Today's obituary is for George Haitz, Sr. who was born in 1867.  He was the brother of Anna Serwna, who lived to be one hundred, and my great grandfather, Joseph Haitz. 

George was 85 years old when he died March 3, 1953 at the home of his son, Leon, who lived on Bradyville Pike near Ripley.  He was a widower and a retired farmer.  Two other sons survived him, George Russell and Nick both of whom lived in Ripley.

A requiem high mass was intoned by Father Gregory Sturm in St. Michael Catholic Church on Friday, March 6 with burial in Maplewood Cemetery.

Find A Grave Memorial 

"Requiem High Mass for George Haitz, Sr.," obituary, The Ripley (Ohio) Bee, 12 March 1953, page 6, column 5, George Haitz, death, 3 March 1953, Ripley, Ohio. 

Anna Haitz Serwna, a Haitz Family Centenarian

I saw on the Geneablogger's Facebook page that today is National Centenarian's Day, and it just so happens that the obituary information I recently entered into my Roots Magic software is that of Anna Haitz Serwna who lived to be just a month over 100 years old so this post is in her honor.  

Maplewood Cemetery
Ripley, Ohio

Anna was the sister of my great grandfather, Joseph Haitz.  She was the second of ten children of her parents, Francizkus Xavier (Frank) and Elizabeth (Germann) Haitz and the first to be born in Ohio.  Her older sister, Elizabeth, had been born several years earlier, 1859, in Boston, Massachusetts.   

Anna lived all but two years of her life in and near Ripley, Ohio.  Her marriage to Joseph Serwna was performed at St. Michael Catholic Church on October 24, 1891 by Father John B Dickham.  She and Joseph, a Huntington Township farmer, would eventually have a family with five children.  Joseph preceded her in death in 1959.

For her 100th birthday, September 9, 1963, just about one month shy of her death, she attended a party in her honor complete with family, festivities, and a birthday dinner.   

Her death occurred at 5:00 AM on October 13, 1963 in Norwood, Ohio at the home of her daughter, Anna Roebel with whom she lived.  In addition to Anna, she was survived by another daughter, Mrs. John Helbling (Mary) of Aberdeen and three sons, Joseph and Frank of Ripley, and Martin of Norwood.  She also left a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

A requiem high mass took place in St. Michael Catholic Church on Tuesday, October 15 with the Reverend Father Paul Cornwell officiating.  Burial was in Maplewood Cemetery.

Death Takes Albert J "Jerry" Steele

From The Ripley Bee      

25 July 1996

Page 3, Column 1

Albert J. "Jerry" Steele was the only child of Albert Francis and Elizabeth (Haitz) Steele.  He was born in Ripley, Ohio on October 23, 1936.  He died July 20, 1996 at his home in Mansfield, Ohio where he lived with his wife, Wanda Sue (Reeves) Steele who survived him.

Jerry was an application engineer at Barnes Pumps in Mansfield.  He belonged to the Resurrection Parish in the same city and was a long time member of the Knights of Columbus.  He served in the Army Reserve.

Maplewood Cemetery
Ripley, Ohio

Mass of Christian Burial was held on Wednesday, July 24, 1996 at St. Michael Catholic Church in his hometown of Ripley, Ohio with Father William Kennedy officiating.  Burial was in Maplewood Cemetery, Ripley.  

Link to Find A Grave Memorial

The Death of Frank A Haitz

The death of Frank A Haitz was the first of the sixteen children of Joseph and Henrietta (Koewler) Haitz.  His father had died two years earlier on Valentine's Day, 1960.  

Frank, a 51 year old farmer, had been last seen late on the night of April 15, 1962.  His younger brother, Albert, found his body the next morning in a ravine between his house and the house of Henrietta with whom Frank had been living.  The coroner ruled the death as a result of a heart attack which occurred, it was believed, while Frank was walking through a field on his way home.  

A requiem high mass was intoned at St. Michael Catholic Church in Ripley, Ohio on Wednesday, April 18, 1962 by the Reverend Father Paul Cornwell.  Burial was in Maplewood Cemetery in Ripley.

The original obituary can be found in The Ripley Bee, 19 April 1962, page 1, column 2.

Find a Grave Memorial Page

A Headstone for Frank A Haitz

Honorably discharged veterans of the United States military are entitled to a government gravestone marker with no charge to the family.  An application must be completed and approved for each veteran and the family must pay the cost to have it placed if burial is in a private cemetery.  

Frank Haitz

Frank A Haitz served in the United States Navy during World War II.  Upon his death in 1962, his sister, Elizabeth Haitz Steele, requested a headstone for Frank's final resting place in Maplewood Cemetery, Ripley, Ohio.  

I do not have a personal photograph of Frank's headstone, however, there is a picture of it on his Find A Grave memorial page.  Click here to visit his memorial.  

I bet you can guess what is going to be added to my To-Do list for our next visit to Ripley!

"U.S., Headstone Applications for Military Veterans, 1925-1963." Database. Ancestry.com. http://www.ancestry.com : 2015.  

Death of Joseph Haitz

The Ripley Bee

Joseph, or Joe as he referred to himself, died on Valentine's Day in 1960.  He was 82 years old while I was three and half months shy of being just 3 years old.  I have no memory of him.  At the time of his death, his sixteen children had given him 37 grandchildren, and I was just one of his 10 great grandchildren!  He was the patriarch of a very large family and, in fact, they had been photographed and featured in local newspapers as one of the largest in the area.    

Joe was no stranger to large families.  He was one of ten children born to Frank Haitz and his wife, Elizabeth Germann.  A devout Catholic family, they attended St. Michael Catholic Church in Ripley, Ohio where Joe would later become a member of the Holy Name Society and the Ripley Council of the Knights of Columbus.  Of his siblings, there remained only one sister, Anna Serwna, to mourn his passing.  She would live three more years reaching the grand age of 100!

A requiem high mass was intoned on February 17 in St, Michael's by the Reverend Father Charles Moore.  Joseph was  buried in Maplewood Cemetery, Ripley, Ohio.  He lays to rest with his wife who followed him just three years later.

Maplewood Cemetery, Ripley, Ohio

2015 - copyright Lynn Ann Wayson Koehler.  All rights reserved.

Evidentia and the Obituary of Joseph Haitz

My Genealogy Do-Over is going to take me forever!  I decided to concentrate on my maternal grandfather’s Haitz family in hopes that I will have a lot of it correctly cited, proven, and entered into Family Tree Maker Mac 3 before the reunion in the fall.  I would really like to be able to take a large chart of some sort, possibly a descendent chart, to show all the relationships between the children and grandchildren of Joseph and Henrietta (Koewler) Haitz, my great grandparents.  They were the parents of sixteen children so it gets a little confusing to someone like me who did not grow up in Ripley, Ohio where they lived all of their lives!  As an Army Brat, my family only visited Ripley about once a year when we were stateside and, even then, I don’t remember getting together with any of my great aunts, great uncles, and their children or grandchildren.  With the exception of my Great-Aunt Elizabeth, I only knew some of their names and I had no faces to go with most of those until pretty recently.  In the past couple of years, I have been fortunate to connect with some of my Haitz family members through social media and my husband and I have enjoyed going to a couple of the annual Haitz family reunions where I met some of them in person.  It’s a huge family to try and get to know!

Death Claims Father of 16, The Ripley Bee, 18 February 1960,
page and column unknown;
copy in possession of Lynn Ann Wayson Koehler.

Today, I entered the information from Joseph Haitz’s obituary into Evidentia.  I was able to enter 28 claims and 97 subjects!  With sixteen children to document, it got rather tedious and I will admit that I was never so happy to hear my washer and dryer go off periodically so that I could take short breaks from all the data entering.  Now, granted, a lot of people probably would not have used Evidentia for an obituary for their great-grandfather whose information is already well known, but I kind of like the idea that all my sources, their citations, and the facts that are in the documents will be located and organized so neatly in one place!  

These are just two screen shots of what I entered into Evidentia from the obituary of Joseph Haitz

One of my to-do list additions is to go back to the Union Township Public Library, find the correct microfilm, and write down the page number of The Ripley Bee where the obituary was published.  It really bugs me that my citation is incomplete!  Oh well, the things I didn’t know enough to do back in the day is why I am now doing this Do-Over!   

Louise Koewler and the Broken Promise

Following the church marriage of my grandparents, George Henry Haitz and Janet Linn Becker, the couple lived on Second Street in Ripley with Janet’s parents, Louis and Amy Becker.  While George had stated for the marriage license that he was a clerk, it is unclear just where he was employed.  It is possible that he worked for his father-in-law in the family clothing store, Becker’s, as he would report six years later in the 1940 census.  

His elopement with my grandmother resulted in a loss of what he had hoped would become a career in the business that he loved, baseball.  My grandfather absolutely loved baseball and he was an avid Cincinnati Reds fan all of his life. While I do not know all the details surrounding the loss of a hoped for career, the story is that his maternal Aunt Louise had promised to pay for her nephew’s education and training as an umpire for the Reds.  When she discovered that he had eloped, the promise was withdrawn and George was unable to follow his dream.  I do not know whether he knew of the promise before he eloped or Louise taunted him with it after the fact.  

This story leads to the question of just who was Louise Koewler, besides being the sister of George’s mother, Henrietta.  Her birth is listed in the Ohio, Births and Christenings Index, 1800 - 1962 database on Ancestry.com and Family Search.  She is recorded as Louisa, daughter of A Koehler and H Fisher born 14 June 1877 in Union Township, Brown, Ohio.  She is found as a three year old in the 1880 census of Ripley, Union Township, Brown County, Ohio.  Louise was the ninth born child of Anthony and Henrietta Koewler, although she was the fifth living child during that year as four siblings had died in infancy before her birth.  Her childhood was spent on the family farm in Union Township and at age 22, she was still living there with her then widowed mother.  

"Ohio, County Births, 1841-2003," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-267-11052-148025-41?cc=1932106 : accessed 26 May 2015), Brown > Birth index 1867-1878 vol 1 > image 236 of 238; county courthouses, Ohio.

The next year finds Louise as a special teacher with the Nelsonville, Ohio branch of the Work’s Dress Cutting School of Saint Louis, Missouri.  She is working with George F Henry who would, in two years, become her husband.  She and George F., who was also from Ripley, married November 25, 1903 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Her name is recorded on the marriage license/record as Louise Margaret Koewler. I wonder if it possible that my grandfather was named for Louise’s husband.  If that is the case, it might be that Louise felt a special bond with my grandfather which would explain the umpire school offer.  

• The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]), 12 Sept. 1901. 
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87075048/1901-09-12/ed-1/seq-3/>

  

"Pennsylvania, County Marriages, 1885-1950," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1951-21130-39052-44?cc=1589502 : accessed 26 May 2015), 004268836 > image 87 of 218; county courthouses, Pennsylvania.

Louise and George’s life after their marriage is still being researched.  There are several possible matches for them in the census for the years 1910 - 1940 in locations from Chicago to Indianapolis, although I haven’t been able to actually prove that those listings are the same people.  I haven’t found any possible children for them so it may be that they were childless. 

George F died in 1957 and Louise in 1961.  Both are buried in Maplewood Cemetery.