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Samuel Koenig
Samuel Koenig
(formerly referred to in these pages with the designation "Pekin"
to distinguish him from the other Sam Kings in our family tree), son of Christian
King and Magdalena Yoder, was born in 1808 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and died
on August
15, 1895 at his home in the township of Elm Grove, Tazewell County, Illinois. He
was married twice, first to Magdalena Kurtz, by whom he had 6 children.
Magdalena was born on February 14, 1803 and married Sam on January 1, 1830 in
Holmes County, Ohio. His second wife was Mary Gerber, whom he married December 27, 1846 in
Tazewell County. Mary was born in Lancaster County,
PA. The signature shown above is that of his own hand as
he signed his will in 1878.
In his remarkable biography
of his grandfather Samuel King, Walter Ropp indicates the first immigrant came
to the colonies in 1744 and lived in a stone house in Lancaster County, a house
still standing in 1943. (Don Yoder, a faculty member of Temple University and
editor of the PENNSYLVANIA GENEALOGICAL MAGAZINE, has done research indicating
the Kings too came from Steffisburg, Switzerland. Samuel told Walter his
grandfather (name unknown) was born in that house. In 1805, his father Christian
King married Magdalena Yoder.
By 1815, Pennsylvania was filling up with new settlers so in 1824, when Samuel
was 16, the Kings moved to a new home in the south end of Wayne County, Ohio
near the Holmes County line. Here is the event recalled in Walter's biographical
sketch:
"We were several families together in a number of wagons. All had big
covers, widened out for more sleeping room and to hold a lot of boxes and our
other stuff. That 400 miles would be on a two weeks road not counting the up and
down and around the hills...The next six years were pioneer days for Grandpa,
long hard days, many of them a continuing repetition, hack, cut, saw, dig, grub,
burn trees and trees and trees, an actual making of a farm and its log cabin
home for the family.
In 1830, SAMUEL married MAGDALENA KURTZ, a neighbor's daughter "over across
the county line." Her parents were ABRAHAM KURTZ and his first wife,
ELIZABETH FISHER.
MAGDALENA and SAMUEL KING lived in Holmes county about four years where their
sons, JOE and DAVID were born; at last they came to Illinois from Holmes County.
(Walter Ropp remembered that his grandfather had an old bureau in his possession
made for him by a cabinet-maker uncle, named Plank, when he was 15. It was solid
black walnut, dovetailed and pinned with wooden pins. Ropp lamented the family's
stupidity in letting it be sold at an estate auction for $.50) His description
of their little Holmes County farm is vivid:
A small clearing with a cabin of logs that seemed to be trying to hide away in a
wilderness of trees. Towering old oak and beech, chestnuts and stately elms with
sycamore and poplar going higher and higher, their roots fed in the rich deep
earth of the ravine where streams......as clear as the sunbeams of their
shadow-land world were singing harmonies....since the beginning of time.
Everywhere that wonderful forest... It seems now it must have been those trees.
Each one said work, work, work and Grandpa and other adventurous souls turned
westward in 1835 toward the land of Illinois.
He goes on to describe the terror of the trip on the swampy places in the road
with fills built "corduroy" -split wood planks laid end to end with
dirt thrown on top. When the rains had washed the ground, the springless wagons
bumped along. Often the women walked, carrying the babies. Things went better
once they reached Illinois prairie land. Then one afternoon they made a poor
decision which was to have dire consequences. They intended to travel north to
rich farmland, but according to Earl and Florence Yeackly's GLEANINGS AND
MUSINGS OF THE JOHN YORDY FAMILY, they chose the wrong fork in the road near
Bloomington, Illinois, which took them south into what Ropp calls "that
miserable and erratic part of the state" near Salem in Marion County.
(Later this "miserable" farmland turned out to contain valuable oil
deposits - long after it had gone out of the family, of course!).
Here Barbara, Elizabeth, Sam, Martha and two babies that died in infancy were
born. They had begun to make some headway in establishing their farm when the
horses died, a calamity. Although neighbors were kind, this financial blow and
the fact there were few Mennonites in Marion County made them decide to move,
this time to a farm three miles south of Pekin in Sand Prairie Township.
Approximately three years later in 1846, Magdalena died, perhaps in childbirth
with little Magdalena, she is buried in Rankin Cemetery.
In the spring of 1843, the family again moved, three miles east to a farm in
the old Railroad School District, almost entirely settled by Amish. Because Sam
was now a widower with six children, he needed household help, so he hired
a neighbor girl, MARY GERBER, from across the road, back in a field. As Ropp
so quaintly writes: "How to keep her was simple. She was eighteen, he
was thirty-nine, it was almost 1847, the bishop was only a quarter of a mile away, so
they were married and got busy and had ten more kinglets, sixteen in all".
Wishing to expand, Samuel purchased land in Elm Grove Township, four miles
due east of Pekin, where he lived until his death, a poor investment Walter
thought because of its rough lie, cut by a deep ravine which at some times was
bone-dry and at others, a raging river. As Walter states:
Another piece of farming misfortune when thousands of acres of the best prairie
land in Illinois could be bought for $1.25 an acre...Their new home was one of
the poorest in the neighborhood and almost completely covered with timber. Of
course, Grandpa being a woodsman, didn't think much about that. Wood was used in
their buildings and fences and kept the home fires burning; the better trees
made lumber that had a ready sale in the growing city of Pekin, at least you
could make good wages cutting and hauling them, and then a few years of pasture
gave you virgin soil for crops....they could get along the way folks did at that
time with enough left over for livable improvements for themselves and for their
stock.
Ropp goes on to describe the layout of the farm. He begins with the various
rooms of the cabin, including the roomy pantry, "a safe place for the
cookies and doughnuts needed to round out a boy's life and his tummy." and
spacious enough to hold all of the hunting and fishing equipment. He calls the
KING family, a hunting family who could enjoy the abundant fish in the Illinois
River. Walter heard his father comment many times that "der Sam
Koenig" and some of his older boys would come home from Pekin distributing
fish to the neighbors. Sam also shot many deer before 1856.
ELIZABETH and MAGDALENA'S other children grew up, got married and left home. But
the story doesn't end there. Altogether, 92 grandchildren came literally to fill
Samuel's house with laughter.
In 1870, the Santa Fe Railroad built its branch out of Pekin through Groveland,
Morton, and Pekin ultimately to connect with the main line to Chicago.
Interestingly enough it ran right through Samuel's property just twenty rods
south of the house. Because the seven mile stretch to Groveland seemed long, a
station was built at the south end of the orchard -KING'S FLAG STATION. Other
than providing some excitement for the grandchildren and a footpath to Pekin, it
was of little use since it went past only once a day and in the wrong direction!
Mary Huette had vivid memories of her King great-aunts and uncles:
They all used to come...Grandma's name was Elizabeth and then there was Barb and
Martha. Them three was full sisters. She had only three right brothers. Uncle
Dave was one of her right brothers and I think the other one was Uncle Joe. (He
had a stell arm.) They lived in Hesston, Kansas. Once when we lived on East
Jackson, someone came to the door and embraced us girls and we were afraid. He
said, " You don't know me." And then he told us he was one of our
relatives from way out west. Uncle John King (Elizabeth's half-brother) lived at
Gridley. Uncle Sam King lived up around Fairbury... Uncle Adam lived in Pekin.
He used to come and stay with us three, or four days at a time and he had such
bad open legs. We had to change (dress) them. Uncle Chris lived in Tremont.
Uncle Dave would drive through from Hesston, Kansas, and he'd stop at our house.
Once, when we were in church and we got home, Dad unhitched the horses and came
in and said, "There's somebody who's stole two halters today from the
barn." Mother said, "Oh, don't be funny, Dad. Who'd want two
halters?" "Well, they're gone. Somebody took the horses' bridles off
and the halters are gone!" you know years ago you had a summer kitchen
outside and you moved in the summertime and you didn't cook in your winter
kitchen. So when Mom went outside to get supper one time she said, "Well, I
guess somebody was here. Here's a skillet they fried ham and eggs in and had a
meal. That was all right." Nobody showed up until next year, Uncle Dave
came through. He said, "Well John, did you ever miss any halters?"
"I sure did." "Well, it was me that took 'em. I needed 'em, so I
took 'em."
And then he'd come every couple years and we always had a good time. The last
time he was there we was butchering. He walked around that house and he just
sang like a bird! I don't know what tune he sang it on, but he kept singing.
"Ich bin doch so freude, ich so frohe bin." he was so happy because he
was so happy. He had a red handkerchief around his neck and he'd come in and
ask whether he could shave when he was close to ninety years old.
Surrounded by his many descendants, Samuel King died in 1895. Of his last visit
with his grandfather, who was 86 at the time, Walter wrote:
(I was) in the presence of a man who was never too old for an occasional joke
with a twinkle of good humor....a little "dumheit" he'd say in his
everyday Pennsylvania Dutch naturalness. He seemed to be a genial sort of a man
who enjoyed being with others more than being alone or given to much reading,
using both languages readily...with a story of some kind ready in either
language, many of them little personal experiences out of his long life in three
states. A country boy, woodsman, farmer and hunter, the tan of summer and storms
had written the life of the great outdoorsman on his face and hands and brought
a stoop to his back, but not as much as in many others of his age, in fact he
was a strong and vigorous man yet at seventy. Interested in life, alert and able
to go, he was several times heard to say that he would like to live to be
one-hundred....Rheumatism with its pains and stiffness laid a heavy hand on his
last years, so perhaps he didn't mind not to reach the century mark.
SOURCES: Thanks very much to Lissa Thompson, who wrote the self-published book,
"People of Conscience: The Samuel P. Yoder Family", from which
this is an excerpt (Chapter 3, "The Family of Samuel King").
Her sources were
(1) "My Grandfather, Samuel
King", p. 11, 13,14,18 and 44 by Walter Ropp.
(2) "The King-Gnagi Connection" by Don Yoder,
PENNSYLVANIA MENNONITE HERITAGE, January 1983, p.2.
(3) Interview by Lissa Thompson with Mary Huette who had vivid memories of
her King great-aunts and uncles.
(4) Collection of Kurtz material in the Bethel College
Historical Library, North Newton, Kansas.
(5) Amish & Amish Mennonite Genealogies by Hugh
Gingerich.
(6) Memorial History of Peter Bitsche by Samuel Peachy
1812.
(7) King Family History by H. Harold Hartzler.
(note: We have modified some of Lissa's text to reconcile it with newfound info contained in the Autobiography of David Henry King)
Children by Magdalena Kurtz:
Joseph, born June 24, 1832 in Ohio; lived in Pekin, IL in 1895.
David Henry (called Daniel in the 1860 Census), born April 28, 1834 in Ohio; lived
in Larnad, Kansas in 1895. Died November 26, 1926 in Newton,
Kansas.
Elizabeth, born July 20, 1835 in Ohio; married John B.Yoder
and lived in Morton, IL in 1895; died February 18, 1912.
Barbara
, born in 1837 in Ohio; married a man named Lund and was living in Decatur County, Kansas in
1895. Samuel, born August 4,
1841 in Ohio; lived near
Forrest, Illinois in 1895; died in 1900.
Martha, born in 1843 near Salem,
Illinois (a.k.a. Magdalena) married John Yordy in 1862 and was
living in Thurman, CO in 1895.
Two infants, born in
between 1835 and 1837 near Salem, Illinois died at an early age.
Children by Mary Gerber:
Mary Ann , born in 1848 in Tazewell County; married a Mr. Ropp and was
living in McLean County, IL in 1895.
Emanuel, born
November, 1849 in Tazewell County; apparently died before 1895, when his
children Franklin and
Daisy were living in Iowa.
Lydia, born March 22, 1852, died May
1, 1915; married Frederick Metz.
Eva, born May 1, 1854
in Tazewell County; married Joseph W. Waugler and was
living in Pekin, IL in 1895. Adam, born
September 1, 1856 in Tazewell County; died February 5, 1948; lived in
Pekin, IL in 1895.
Christian,
born January 12, 1859 in Tazewell County; lived in Tremont,
IL in 1895.
Simeon,
born in 1861 in Tazewell County; lived in Melvin, IL in
1895.
Jacobina,
born October 4, 1864 in Tazewell County; married a Mr. Oyer and was
apparently deceased in 1895, when her children Jacobina and Arthur were living in Groveland, IL. John, born
May 8, 1866 in Tazewell County; died May 26, 1946; married Mary D. Gerdes
in April, 1889 and
was living in Pekin, IL in 1895.
Adina, born
May 23, 1869 in Tazewell County; married a Mr. Heiser and was living in
Fisher, IL in 1895. Hannah,
born July 16, 1874 in Tazewell County; apparently died childless
before 1895. Note: The 1860 Census
lists an 18-year-old Nathan King living in Samuel's household in Tazewell
County, but he is presumed to be either a cousin or a hired hand as he is
not mentioned in any other document. |
