Anna Barbara (Ruckdäschel) Poesch was forty-two years old before she saw something of the world. Born on 14 November 1811 in the village of Schönlind near what is now Weißenstadt, Bavaria, Germany, she was said to have been the daughter of Johann Georg Ruckdäschel and Eva Margaretha Brodmerkel. Nothing is known of her early years, but Barbara, as she was known, married shoemaker Wolfgang Poesch on 22 April 1833 when she was twenty-one years old. Five known children would be born to the couple in the years to come, the first that same year: Johann (1833), Catharina (1835), Anna Margaretha (1838), Lorenz (1847), and Paulus (1850).

In 1852, Barbara bade farewell to her eldest son when he departed in the company of another local family, that of Paulus and Elisabeth (Schmidt) Thoma, to seek a better life in America. Young Johann, nineteen at the time of his passage, must have sent a favorable report to his parents of his new home in northeastern Iowa; in 1854, Barbara, Wolfgang, and their four remaining children packed a trunk and left the village of Weißenstadt behind forever.

After making the trek to Bremen and then stepping aboard the Heinrich Von Gagern, the family was at sea for what may have been as long as two months. Barbara must have struggled to keep her family clean and fed in cramped conditions, but surely took solace in the companionship of others from their home village who traveled with them. Her eldest daughters, Catharina, eighteen, and Anna Margaretha, fifteen, would have been a great help to her in caring for the two little boys, Lorenz, seven, and Paulus, just four.

Barbara and her family disembarked in New Orleans on 27 Apr 1854. They may have been wary of lingering long in this bustling port; a devastating yellow fever epidemic had swept through the city the previous summer, and as April turned to May, the weather would likely have become increasingly hot, humid, and inhospitable. A steamboat would have provided the family relatively quick and reliable passage north, at the very least to St. Louis if not all the way to Iowa.

After an arduous journey across the Atlantic and through the Gulf of Mexico, then up the Mississippi River, Barbara was no doubt thrilled to finally be reunited with her eldest son upon their arrival in Clayton County, Iowa; in fact, numerous familiar faces from their home village would have greeted the Poesch family.

However, tragedy would soon strike—if indeed it hadn’t already. Four-year-old Paulus, listed as the youngest member of the family on the 1854 ship manifest, was not present at the time the family was recorded in the 1856 Iowa State Census, which suggests that he had died at some point in the intervening years, either in Iowa or en route there. Then, most likely within a year of that same census, Wolfgang succumbed to sunstroke. In his early fifties at the time, the physical demands of farming in the heat of an Iowa summer were apparently too much for him.

Although Wolfgang did not live to commemorate his silver wedding anniversary with Barbara, the couple was able to celebrate the marriages of their two eldest children: son Johann to fellow immigrant Catharina Weiss, and, in 1855, daughter Catharina to Friederich Thoma. Then, in 1857, Anna Margaretha married Wilhelm Heinrich Thoma. The Poesch sisters had, in fact, married two brothers, members of the same family with whom their brother Johann had emigrated from Weißenstadt in 1852. This made their children—nineteen between them—double first cousins.

Barbara survived Wolfgang by approximately twenty years. The year 1860 found her living with the family of her daughter Catharina; a few years later, her son Lorenz would serve with the 12th Iowa Infantry in the Civil War, surely an anxious time for Barbara. Lorenz survived the war and married Wilhelmina Best in 1868. In 1870, Barbara lived with the family of her son Johann, and was perhaps still a member of his household during a bitter cold snap in early March of 1873 when her fourteen-year-old granddaughter, her namesake, sadly perished. Young Barbara, who had been ill, had entered an unheated room one night where she fell and lay undetected until morning, by which time her arms and legs were said to have frozen and she was too weakened to recover. Later that same year, Barbara’s son Johann died at the age of fifty.

By 1885, Barbara resided in the town of Garnavillo with her daughter Anna Margaretha, who was by that point also widowed. Barbara’s occupation was recorded as “Old Mother.” Having raised four children of her own to adulthood, and having likely had a hand in raising a total of twenty-five grandchildren as well, Barbara certainly earned her title.

Anna Barbara (Ruckdäschel) Poesch died at the home of her daughter in Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa, on 07 September 1887, when she was seventy-five years old. Her obituary, printed in a local newspaper, stated, “Her remains were conveyed to their last resting place on Saturday, followed by a large concourse of sorrowing relatives and friends. Rev. F. Sommerlad conducted the ceremony in his usual impressive manner.”

Copyright © 2024 Melanie Frick. All Rights Reserved.

SOURCES

1856 Iowa State Census, Read, Clayton County, Iowa, B. Bousch; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 March 2024).

1860 U.S. census, Clayton County, Iowa, population schedule, Read, p. 128 (penned), dwelling 926, family 934, Barbara Besht; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 March 2024), citing National Archives microfilm M653, roll 315.

1870 U.S. census, Clayton County, Iowa, population schedule, Read, p. 17 (penned), dwelling 130, family 128, Barbara Poesch; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 March 2024), citing National Archives microfilm M593.

1885 Iowa State Census, Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa, Barbara Paesch; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 March 2024), citing State Historical Society of Iowa.

“A Sad Case of Freezing,” The Des Moines Register, 12 March 1873; digital images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 25 March 2024).

Find A Grave, Inc., Find A Grave, digital image (www.findagrave.com : accessed 25 March 2024), photograph, Barbera Poesch (1811-1887), Memorial No. 148724753, Garnavillo Community Cemetery, Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa; photograph by Ken Johnson, 2016.

“Garnavillo,” Elkader Register, 15 September 1887; digital images, Elkader Public Library Community History Archive (http://claytoncounty.advantage-preservation.com : accessed 25 March 2024).

“Iowa, U.S., Death Records, 1880-1972,” digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 July 2020), John Peosch, 08 September 1883, Clayton County, Iowa; citing State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines.

“New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813-1945” digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 March 2024), manifest, Uhland, Bremen, Germany to New Orleans, arriving 18 June 1852, Johann Posch; citing National Archives microfilm M259, roll 36.

“New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813-1945” digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 March 2024), manifest, Heinrich Von Gagern, Bremen, Germany to New Orleans, arriving 27 April 1854, Barbara Polch; citing National Archives microfilm M259, roll 39.

“Public Member Trees,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 March 2024), “Poesch Family Tree” family tree by J. M. Poesch, profiles of Anna Barbara Ruckdäschel, Johann Georg Ruckdäschel, and Eva Margaretha Brodmerkel.