Many thanks to Molly Rosa Fitzpatrick for portraying her great-great-great-grandmother, Anna Margaret Redlingshafer Rosa-Wulf, during Sunday's 19th annual Chariton Cemetery Heritage Tour. Our presenters appeared alphabetically, so Molly was last on the program. Here's the script that she used:
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Guten Tag, meine Damen und Herren. Ich heise --- or I should say, “my name is” --- Anna Margaret Redlingshafer Rosa-Wulf. My first 24 years were spent in the kingdom of Bavaria, so native German slips out sometimes.
I was born and raised a farmer --- in the Germanies and not according to the Iowa pattern. But as soon as I could afford an Iowa farm, I bought one for myself.
My parents, George and Doratha Redlingshafer, lived in the tiny hamlet of Heinersdorf, west of Nuremberg, with their children and livestock. But our fields and pastures were scattered widely in the surrounding countryside.
My birth occurred on the 28th of February 1824 in Heinersdorf. I was baptized the next day in the Lutheran parish church at Langenzen, just down the road, the eldest of my father’s second family. There were two older brothers and a sister from his first marriage; and when all was said and done, eight by his second. Eleven children in all, all of whom eventually became proud citizens of the United States of America.
My parents were cousins, both Redlingshafers, but then everyone was related in our small cluster of farms and villages, settled first in the 17th century when the family was deported from Austria because we were Lutheran and not Catholic.
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I attended school in our village until I was 13, then was confirmed on the 12th of May 1837 in the church at Langenzen. I had a “sufficient” knowledge of religion,” the pastor wrote, a “good” knowledge of reading, “sufficient” knowledge of writing but only a “sketchy” understanding of mathematics. I think he may have been overly pessimistic about mathematics as I developed later into an astute businesswoman.
As the years passed, the political situation in the Germanies became more and more unsettled as Prussia moved to dominate her sister states. In addition, there was no more land in our crowded villages for my brothers to farm.
These circumstances caused my parents to look to America. The eldest children, James and Barbara, were sent first to establish a home base, then in April of 1848 after all our property in Bavaria had been sold and converted to gold, we boarded ship at Hamburg for the trip. There were 11 in the party, the youngest of whom was my baby sister, Anna Elizabeth, just a year old. I was 24 --- and left behind in Germany the young man who had been courting me --- John W. Rosa.
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We were welcomed to America and brought from Baltimore to southwestern Pennsylvania by our brother, James, then spent the winter with our sister, Barbara Fisher, until our new home was ready.
John Rosa arrived from Germany the next year and we were married on the 12 of June 1850 at Aunt Barbara’s home.
Soon after our marriage, John and I moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he worked as a tailor until 1855. We then moved to Pekin, Illinois, where John opened a tailor shop; in 1857 we established a cigar store in Peoria; and in 1860, we moved again --- this time to Bureau County, Illinois, where we established a grocery store at DePue.
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In the meantime, a majority of my siblings had moved west, too. My parents joined my sister and brother-in-law, Mary Anna and John Dittmer, in Guttenberg, Iowa, during 1854. My father died there two years, later during January of 1856, age 69.
My brother, John G. Redlingshafer, was the first of the family to settle in Lucas County, during 1857; and he was joined there as the years passed by my brother, George; and sister and brother-in-law, Margaret Anna and Aaron Hupp. In 1859, my widowed mother and youngest siblings, John Lot and Elizabeth Anna, also moved to rural Chariton --- to make their home with George.
John and I and our four children, John Jr., Adam, Anna Margaret and Lot, left Illinois behind during 1864 and joined the family in Lucas County, traveling by rail to Eddyville, where we crossed the Des Moines River on a ferry, and came the rest of the way to Chariton by stage coach.
I was 40 when we arrived in Chariton and my child-bearing years were past. Our children’s arrivals had brought us much joy --- but considerable sorrow, too. Out of 10 I gave birth to, six had died young in Illinois and little Lot died soon after we arrived in Lucas County at the age of 18 months.
But we are a persistent family. All of Lucas County’s Rosas, and there are several of them, descend from John Jr. and Adam. Many Schrecks descend from daughter Anna Margaret.
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Our first home in Chariton was in the southwest part of town, on the lots now occupied by the Woodlawn Apartments. But in 1866, we purchased a log house just off the northeast corner of the square in Chariton, immediately north of where the Charitone Hotel now stands.
In addition to our home, this building served as John’s tailor shop and we opened a small cigar shop here, too.
But tragedy struck on the 23rd of October 1867 when John died at age 45 of typhoid fever, most likely caused by contaminated drinking water.
I was left a widow at 43 with children ages 5, 7 and 10 to support, but was not without resources. Both John and I had been careful with our money.
I turned our log home just off the square into a boarding house and invested my cash in a 120-acre farm adjoining that of my brother, John G., south of Chariton in Benton Township. This was an investment for our children --- and for my old age.
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One of my boarders in Chariton after John’s death was Joachim Wulf, a native of Prussia who had found work building the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad west from Chariton to the Missouri River.
Joachim was of similar age, had just arrived from Germany via Quebec and was not yet fluent in English --- and we became fond of each other. So we were married on the 28th of November 1868.
I kept my home in Chariton as an investment property, but we moved to the farm in Benton Township, which Joachim took charge of. He was a hard worker and we prospered.
Joachim farmed with my sons until he died at age 71 on Aug. 2, 1893. I buried him near John and Lot here in the Chariton Cemetery.
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I continued to live on the home farm for so long as I was able. John had married Sarah Minerva Chynoweth in 1891 and their home was less than a mile east. Adam had married Catharine Stockman in 1887 and they lived just northeast of the home place. So I was well taken care of and they took care of the farm.
When it became impractical for me to live alone, I moved in with my daughter and son-in-law, Margaret Anna and William Schreck, a few miles southeast, where I died on the 7th of February, 1906, age 82.
Funeral services were held on February 9 at Otterbein United Brethren in Christ Church, just west of my home. This was the congregation of my children and most of their Redlingshafer kinfolk, but I was baptized a German Lutheran, confirmed a German Lutheran and I died a German Lutheran.
One of the only disappointments we experienced in Lucas County was the fact that the only Lutheran church in Chariton was full of Swedes and we could not understand the language their services were conducted in. But I persevered in my Lutheran faith, other than my mother the only family member to do so.
We all are buried here in Chariton now --- my two husbands, little Lot, myself and my children, John, Adam and Margaret Anna and their families.
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