Little Boy Lost

Charles Chalmers "Charlie" Shanower Hinman.

Sometimes family stories preserve only a hint of truth while shedding pertinent details as the years pass. That was the case with the story of Charles Chalmers "Charlie" Shanower Hinman, my great-great-uncle.

My great-great-grandfather Benjamin Franklin Shanower (1845-1928) married his first wife Sophia King Shanower (1841-1877) in 1870. I wrote an earlier post here about Sophia’s family, and how although I’m not her direct descendant, she and I are connected through other members of her family. Sophia died young, but not before she and her husband Benjamin had four children: William Benton Shanower (1871-aft 1930), Mary Elizabeth “Mollie” Shanower (1873-1951), Jennie M. “Jane” Shanower (1875-1942), and Charles Chalmers Shanower (1877-1965).

The story as it has come down to me was that when Sophia died, some of her children were adopted by other families. There were so many children and the family was so poor that childless neighbors took in some of them. Although the dispersed children took the last names of their foster parents, there was no indication that their Shanower origin was forgotten. Photographs of Benjamin Franklin Shanower’s adult children include those that were adopted by others—none of the children went missing.

But those photos are misleading. That’s not quite the real story.

It’s true that Benjamin Franklin Shanower had a lot of children, eleven in all—not unusual in families of the late nineteenth century. But eleven is still a lot of mouths to feed. It might seem sensible to farm out a few of the kids. However, there were only four children when Sophia, their mother, died. So the idea that the family was overcrowded doesn’t stand up.

Still, four motherless kids on an Ohio farm with a father who probably had to work from dawn till dusk was probably a strain on resources. So at least two of the children went elsewhere.

I believe the children in these three photographs from the Shanower Family Bible are the four children of Sophia King Shanower. I'm fairly certain the two children above are Mary Elizabeth "Mollie" Shanower Benner Hostetler (1873-1951) and William Benton Shanower (1871-aft 1930). I'm guessing that the child below left is Charles Chalmers "Charlie" Shanower Hinman (1877-1965) and that the child below right is Jennie M. "Jane" Shanower (1875-1942), but those two identifications are tentative. These photographs are circa mid-to-late 1870s.

I have no indication that William, the first child, and Jennie, the third child, left their Shanower home as youngsters. But the second child, Mary, who was four years old when her mother died, was adopted by Samuel Benner (unknown-1906) and his wife Lydia Wenger Benner (1842-1916). The Benners lived near Smithville in Wayne County, Ohio, immediately west of Stark County where the Shanower family lived. There Mary Shanower was known as Mollie Benner.

The Benners were Mennonites and Mollie became a Mennonite, too, a religious sect her earlier Schonauer ancestors from Switzerland had belonged to. In 1894 she married another Mennonite, Christian K. Hostetler (1865-1935), in Orrville, Wayne County, Ohio. About 1895 they moved to Elkhart, Elkhart County, Indiana, where they had the first three of their four daughters. Christian was employed at the Elkhart Institute, a Mennonite institution and forerunner of Goshen College.

The younger brother of Mary “Mollie” Shanower Benner Hostetler, Charles Chalmers Shanower, was three months old when their mother Sophia died. Little Charles was placed into an orphans’ home in Massillon, Stark County, Ohio. Before long he was adopted by Methodist minister Rev. Chester W. Hinman (1825-abt 1904) and his wife Louisa Whittle Hinman (abt 1825-bef 1900), and taken to live in Black Brook, Polk County, Wisconsin, with the rest of the Hinman family. Rev. Hinman was minister of the Congregational Church in nearby Clear Lake, Wisconsin.

The Hinmans worried that young Charlie might be taken away from them by his birth family, so they insisted that the matron of the Massillon orphans’ home keep their identities secret. They concealed from Charles that they’d adopted him and claimed he’d been born in Michigan instead of Ohio. For a dozen years Charles believed the Hinmans were his biological parents.

Charles was three when the 1880 US Federal Census taker noted his adoption, so clearly the secret wasn’t kept all that well. When Charles turned thirteen he somehow accidentally learned that the Hinmans were not his biological parents. Maybe he overheard someone admitting the adoption to the 1890 US Census taker, as someone obviously did ten years before in 1880. In any case, Charles now knew that Chester and Louisa Hinman weren’t his real parents. But they wouldn’t tell him who his real parents were.

Mary E. "Mollie" Shanower Benner Hostetler and Jennie M. "Jane" Shanower.

Meanwhile back in Ohio, Charles’s birth father, Benjamin Franklin Shanower, had remarried and had a slew of younger children. At some point, possibly in the late 1890s, Benjamin learned that a minister and his wife in Wisconsin had been the ones to adopt Charles. Benjamin informed his daughters Mary Shanower Hostetler and Jennie “Jane” Shanower, Charles’s sisters. They were both living in Elkhart, Indiana.

I imagine that Mary especially would have wanted to seek out her brother, since she had experienced adoption, too. In late 1900 Mary’s husband Christian Hostetler took a trip to Wisconsin in connection with his job at the Elkhart Institute. I expect that Mary urged her husband to make inquiries in Wisconsin about her missing brother Charles. Christian did and learned that a certain Charles C. Hinman, a young man who clearly fit the particulars, lived near Clear Lake, Wisconsin.

Christian Hostetler must have had some specific information—maybe the name "Hinman" or a geographic location or both—to be able to narrow his search for Charlie so successfully. But the newspaper accounts I've gotten most of this story's details from don't supply that information.

However Christian did it, he put the pieces together and went to Charlie’s home, but Charlie wasn’t there. Christian couldn’t wait around for Charlie, but he was sure he’d discovered the right man. So afterward he wrote Charlie a letter, explaining that the Shanowers were looking for their son and brother.

Before Christian could return home to Elkhart, Indiana, from his Wisconsin trip, Charles received Christian’s letter and mailed a joyful reply to Mary and Jane, his sisters in Elkhart. They read Charlie’s letter in late November or early December of 1900, devouring the news of Charlie’s life. Finally, after twenty-three years, the long lost brother had been found!

They learned that Charles was a photographer by training, but at that time he was employed on the farm of his soon-to-be father-in-law, David W. Salsbury (abt 1839-1904). David Salsbury's wife, Ellen Louisa Goodwin Salsbury (1842-1893), was dead, but their daughter, Nellie Maude Salsbury (1873-1955), would be marrying Charlie Hinman in just a few days, on December 12, 1900.

Adopted Shanowers reunited with their father. Charles and Mary with Benjamin Franklin Shanower, circa 1910.

After his wedding Charles C. Shanower Hinman reunited with his siblings and father. He met his father’s second wife, my great-great-grandmother Louisa “Lucy” Leifer Shanower, and her seven children, who were Charlie’s half-brothers and half-sisters.  Afterward he made sure to stay in touch with the Shanowers through letters and visits.

Charles and Nellie Hinman, circa 1945.

Charlie and Nellie Hinman seem to have had a child in 1909, but I have no name for it and I don’t know how long it lived. They moved to Saint Paul, Ramsey County, Minnesota, before 1910, and lived there for the rest of their lives. Charles was a car clerk and he and Nellie took in lodgers. Nellie died in 1955. Charles followed ten years later. They are both buried in Clear Lake Cemetery in Polk County, Wisconsin, where Charles had spent most of his Hinman childhood, unaware of his Shanower origin.

Just as Charles was missing from his birth family for many years, the story of what happened to him has also been missing, only for a much longer time. I can’t actually bring Charles back into the family fold like he was brought in 1900. But at least I can bring his story back again.

Like the Cheese

Swiss cheese. It has holes. Like my Shanower ancestral line. Or should I spell it Schonauer? That’s how they spelled it back in Grosshochstetten, Canton Bern, Switzerland, where my possible ancestor Andreas Schonauer was born about 1560.

There’s a huge hole in the line of descent from Andreas Schonauer and his wife Elsbeth Krahenbuhl Schonauer (1558-?). Here, in a previous blog post about my five times great-grandfather Henry Shanower, I pointed out that hole between the Schonauers and their purported Shanower descendants. There’s no definite connection between them, no proof that my oldest direct Shanower ancestor, my five times great-grandfather Henry, descended from the Schonauers of Switzerland.

Two factors support the idea that he didn’t. The first is a discontinuity of names—the lack of earlier Henrys. I’ve found no Henrys among earlier Schonauers, a family that tended to reuse names through the generations.

I’ve come across several Henry Shoners and Heinrich Schoners while researching alternate spellings, but so far I haven’t found any family connections among Shoners or Schoners to my five times great-grandfather Henry Shanower.

There is, however, a Henry Schannauer (1859-1860) descended from the Swiss Schonauers in another line. But this Henry, who died before he was a year old, was born several decades after my five times great-grandfather Henry Shanower probably died. So the existence of this infant Henry probably doesn’t signal a continuity of names.

There are Jacobs and Johns, Abrahams and Magdalenas on both sides of the hole, though, so maybe those names show continuity. And Henry’s son Jacob Shanower (1785-1829) had his last name spelled variously as Shoenauer and Schöenhauer. Those spellings might indicate a link to the Swiss Schonauers, too.

The second factor indicating that Henry Shanower might not be descended from the Swiss Schonauers is the possible German origin of Henry’s ancestors. My father has long believed the received information that the Shanowers came from Germany, not Switzerland. An early twentieth century report of a Shanower family reunion mentions the German origin of the family. So maybe my Shanower line wasn’t Swiss, but German.

However, I can explain how a Swiss family line might come to be considered German. The Swiss Hans Schonauer (1644-aft. 1711) and his wife Elisabeth Aebersold Schonauer (abt. 1647-aft. 1711), of Grosshochstetten, Canton Bern, Switzerland, were persecuted for their religious beliefs. In 1710 they were imprisoned at the Upper Hospital in Bern because they were Anabaptists. They managed to buy their way out of jail, but in 1711 they were exiled from Switzerland and put onto a ship bound for Holland. They escaped at Mannheim, Germany, the main city of the Palatinate.

Karl Ludwig I von der Pfalz by Gerrit van Honthorst.

Germany’s Palatinate in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was a province in southern Germany between the Swiss and French borders along the headwaters of the Rhine. It was known for being an area of religious tolerance by direction of Karl Ludwig I von der Pfalz, Elector Palatinate (1617-1680), known at the English court as Charles Louis I. He wanted people to move into the area, which had been depopulated by the Thirty Years’ War. (Incidentally, Karl Ludwig I is related to David by being the fifteen times great-nephew of Euphemia Bruce of the Scottish royal family, David’s many times great-grandmother.) Many Anabaptist Swiss emigres spent years in the Palatinate before renewed religious persecution from France caused them to emigrate again. This time they settled in North America, primarily in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where William Penn’s Quaker views were a good fit with the beliefs of such Anabaptist sects as the Mennonites and the Amish.

In 1729 one of Hans and Elizabeth Schonauer’s sons, also named Hans (1688-1749), was living in the town of Perry in the Palatinate. Hans Jr. left Germany about 1744 and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where his name Hans was Americanized to John. It’s possible—maybe even probable—that one of the younger Hans’s grandsons is my five times great-grandfather Henry Shanower. If that’s true, then the Swiss Schonauers’ sojourn in the German Palatinate could explain the story of a German origin for the Shanowers.

My research on other family lines has many holes, too, but I suspect that some of these lines may have come from Switzerland. My suspicions find support in the seventeenth and eighteenth century pattern of migration from Switzerland to the Palatinate to North America, most often Pennsylvania.

Frederick Roush grave, Massillon, Ohio.

My five times great-grandfather Philip Roush is said to be from Bavaria in Germany. The border between Bavaria and the neighboring Palatinate fluctuated in the seventeenth century, so although I have no proof, this could suggest that Philip Roush was, like the Schonauers, a Palatinate settler originally from Switzerland. While I don’t have any direct confirmation that Philip immigrated to Pennsylvania, his son Frederick Roush (1789-1844) is reported to have been born there before moving to Stark County, Ohio.

My six times great-grandfather Johann Michael Haflich (abt. 1720-abt. 1770) seems to have a similar story. He was born in the Palatinate region—in Mutterstadt, Pfalz, Bavaria, as were his American immigrant parents Johann Karl Hoefflich (abt. 1699-aft. 1760) and Eva Kern Hoefflich (abt. 1700-abt. 1760). So was his grandfather Franz Hoefflich (1677-abt. 1730), as well as his great-grandparents Franz Hoefflich (abt. 1644-abt. 1694) and Elizabetha Hoefflich (abt. 1650-abt. 1690). Could this line have been from Switzerland originally? The Haflichs followed the pattern of moving from the Palatinate area to Pennsylvania, specifically Richmond in Berks County, before 1756. But since they’d been in Pfalz as early as 1644—before the end of the Thirty Years' War—maybe they’re simply German after all.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the French region of Alsace bordered the Palatinate. Between 1671 and 1711 immigrants flooded into Alsace, too, many of them Anabaptist refugees from Canton Bern in Switzerland, where the Schonauers had lived. My six times great-grandmother Eva Catharina Startzmann Haflich (1722-1770), wife of Johann Michael Haflich, was born in Rexingen, Alsace, France. Both of Eva Haflich’s grandfathers were born there, too: her paternal grandfather Hans Martin Startzmann about 1660 and her maternal grandfather Heinrich Arneth about 1670. Like the Haflichs, the Startzmanns also ended up in Richmond, Berks County, Pennsylvania, in the mid-1700s. And none of their names sound French.

If any of my older Roush, Haflich, Startzmann, or Arneth ancestors were Swiss, my genealogical research, like the cheese, is too full of holes to show it. But the Reitenauers, who I’ll discuss next, are a different case. They must be the part between the holes.

My eleven times great-grandfather Antony “Anton” Reitenauer (abt. 1586-?) was definitely Swiss. He came from the area of Gondiswil in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland, possibly from the small municipality of Reitnau in Canton Aargau about ten miles from Gondiswil.

His grandson Nicolaus “Claus” Reitenauer (1650-1717) ended up in Alsace, France, following the migration pattern. Continuing that pattern, several of Claus’s grandsons, including Nicholas Reutenauer (1711-1795) and Henry Reutenauer (1713-1781), emigrated with their father Johann "Hans" Nicholas Reitenauer from Alsace, France, to Maryland in the USA.

Immigrant passenger list of the ship Robert and Alice, September 3, 1739. The third name, marked with the dot, supposedly reads Hans Nicholas Reitenauer, who was son of Claus and father of Nicholas and Henry. I can't make out the writing, but other records show that this Hans Nicholas Reitenauer immigrated to the USA, so I'll accept this reading.

The eldest of those grandsons, Nicholas Reutenauer, had a granddaughter, Anna Elizabeth Ridenour Hawk (1774-abt. 1840), my five times great-grandmother. Anna Ridenour Hawk was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. About 1824-25 she was, with her husband Conrad and their crowd of children, one of the earliest settlers of Green Creek Township in Sandusky County, Ohio.

And—what do you know?—my Hawk line, originally spelled Haag, came from Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, which used to be part of—you guessed it—the Palatinate. Baden-Wurttemberg is right next to—quelle surprise!—Alsace, France. And after the Hawks left Germany they settled in—wait for it—Pennsylvania.

Noah Jacob Huss grave, Clyde, Ohio.

Mary Burkholder Huss grave, Clyde, Ohio.

Conrad and Anna Hawk’s son David Hawk (1805-1855), my great-great-great-great grandfather, married Eleanor “Ellen” Huss Hawk (1812-1889), who was born in York, York County, Pennsylvania. The family of Ellen’s father, Noah Jacob Huss (1790-1843), came from Germany, but I don’t know the region or whether they reached Germany from Switzerland. So far I’ve failed to find the ancestors of Ellen’s mother, Mary Burkholder (1789-1849), my six times great-grandmother, but I know that some Burkholders came to Pennsylvania from Germany. It's probable that Mary’s forebears did, too. And if they did, there’s a chance they came from Switzerland before that.

But enough speculation—back to the Reitenauers. The second immigrant grandson of Claus Reitenauer, Henry Reutenauer, married, as his second wife, a woman I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, my six times great-grandmother Eva Catharina Startzmann Haflich, widow of Johann Michael Haflich. Through Eva’s second marriage to Henry Reutenauer, she became my eight times great-aunt as well as being my six times great-grandmother already. To complicate the connections even further, Eva’s mother, Christina Arneth Startzmann was the sister of Henry’s mother, Anna Margaretha Arneth Reutenauer. So Eva’s second husband, Henry, was also her first cousin.

These multi-generational connections to the Reitenauers suggest to me that the Startzmanns and the Arneths were also Swiss at an earlier point, especially when considering their aforementioned pattern of migration from Alsace to Pennsylvania. But there are too many holes to be certain.

Catherine Easley Leifer, circa 1880s.

Finally, there are the Leifers. Frederick Leifer (1813-1865) and Catherine Easley Leifer (1818-1892), my great-great-great-grandparents, were born in Switzerland. They immigrated to Ohio in the early 1850s, probably in 1854, with no lengthy stops in Germany or Pennsylvania on the way. Their daughter, my great-great-grandmother, Louisa “Lucy” Leifer Shanower (1856-1916), was their first child born in the USA.

Louisa "Lucy" Leifer Shanower, circa 1900.

Lucy’s older brothers and sisters were all born in Switzerland. Her brother Jacob Leifer (1842-1922) was born in Sougenreed, Canton Bern, Switzerland. Jacob was living in Massillon, Ohio, in April 1907 when he made a month-long trip to Switzerland for a visit to the old Swiss hometown, taking along his son Daniel Webster Leifer (1869-1947), my first cousin three times removed. This 1907 return to Switzerland wasn’t the first; there seems to have been an earlier trip in the late 1860s.

Later, cousin Daniel Webster made at least one more trip to Switzerland, this time in 1937, taking his wife, Iva May “Ivy” Donant Leifer (1869-1956). A few years afterward, Ivy was pained to learn of the destruction World War II was causing to many of the European countries they’d visited on their trip.

The Leifer family, circa 1875. The only person I can positively identify is Lucy Leifer Shanower (1856-1917), my great-great-grandmother, the woman standing to the right of center. Compare her to the later photo of her above. The woman on the left could be Catherine Easley Leifer (1818-1892), Lucy's mother. Compare her to the later photo of her above. If that's Catherine, then the man her hand is resting on is likely her husband, Frederick Leifer (1813-1865). As usual, you can click on any photo to have it open larger in another window.

Those are all my Swiss ancestors, both certain and speculative—at least for now. I hadn’t been aware of my Swiss ancestry before my genealogical research revealed it. I was surprised—and happy—to find it. But I’d still like to fill in some of those holes.

Who is Henry Shanower?

Records show that my great-great-great-great-grandfather was Jacob Shanower (1785-1829), born near York, Adams County, Pennsylvania. But the only record of Jacob Shanower’s father, Henry Shanower, that I know of is a reference in the book Portrait & Biographical Album of Hillsdale County, Michigan, 1888. On page 413, in a short biography of William Shaneour (1842-1923), the text states:

"His father, David Shaneour, is a native of Adams Co., PA, where he was born Jan. 27, 1813, the son of Jacob Shaneour and the grandson of Henry Shaneour . . ."

Don’t be thrown by the alternate spelling of the last name Shanower as Shaneour. One branch of the family still retains that spelling, so it’s not unusual. But what’s frustrating is that this reference gives no other information about Henry Shanower. Who were his parents? Where and when was he born?

Members of the Schonauer (yes, another variant spelling) family immigrated to the USA from Europe in the middle of the eighteenth century. Hans Schonauer (1688-1749), also known under the Americanized name of John, immigrated about 1744-45 and settled in Cocalico township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Originally from Switzerland, his family had been persecuted for being Anabaptists. Hans “John” Schonauer’s particular sect seems to have been Mennonite.

Hans “John” Schonauer’s nephew, Jost Schonauer (1707-1777), sometimes known as Joseph, sailed from Germany on the ship Phoenix and arrived at the State House at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 1, 1754. He settled in in Cumru township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, the next county over from where his uncle Hans, already five years dead, had settled. Jost seems to have been Lutheran, not Mennonite.

Many of the descendants of these men are recorded. Jost Schonauer’s descendants are traced down to the present. There doesn’t seem to be room to fit Henry Shanower into Jost’s branch of the family tree.

Jost’s uncle Hans “John” Schonauer seems a better candidate as a forefather of Henry Shanower. Could Henry be Hans’s grandson? Hans “John” and his wife Ursula had seven known children, three of them sons: Christian (1717-?), Abraham (1722-1762), and Jacob (1724-1764). I have found little trace of the eldest child Christian after his birth, although he was alive when his mother Ursula made her will in 1764. Second son Abraham’s will mentions two daughters, names unrecorded, but no sons. Hans’s third son Jacob, however, married Maria Magdalena Haldeman (1738-1820) and had two children, John Shonower (about 1760-?, yet another variant spelling) and Barbara Shonower (abt 1762-?), before he died in January 1764. Jacob’s wife, Maria Magdalena, is reported to have been pregnant at that time with a third child, whose name, gender, and birth date remain unknown. If this child survived birth and infancy, and if it was a boy, could this third child have been Henry Shanower?

That’s the theory that a couple other Shanower family researchers have developed. It’s an attractive theory. This child born after its father Jacob Schonauer died would have been born in 1764. That’s a perfectly reasonable birth year for the father of my great-great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Shanower (1785-1829), the one I began this post with.

Maria Magdalena Haldeman Schonauer re-married after the death of her husband Jacob. About 1764, not long after her first husband died, she wed Joseph Van Gundy (abt 1740-abt 1795) and had seven more children.

Court records show that Jacob and Maria Magdalena Schonauer’s son John Shonower inherited his father’s estate at the age of fourteen in 1774. But I can find no further mention of John or of his sister Barbara or of their unnamed sibling born after their father’s death. I had hoped to find mention of any of these three Shonower children with Maria Magdalena’s new family, the Van Gundys. But no luck.

There are other Schonauers in Pennsylvania at this time that are probably related, but don’t yet fit with certainty into either the Hans or Jost branches. One is Anna Schoenauer (another variant), who about 1755 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, married Christian Gehman as his second wife. There are indications that Anna Schoenauer is related to Hans “John” Schonauer and his nephew Jost Schonauer. Anna came from Hochstetten, Canton Bern, Switzerland, the area where Hans “John” and Jost were both born. Her soon-to-be-husband Christian Gehman arrived in the USA at the same time and on the same ship, Phoenix, as Jost. But I don’t know exactly how Anna is related to Hans and Jost. Her offspring wouldn’t have had the last name of Shanower anyway, so she’s not Henry Shanower’s mother, but Anna is an example of other Shanowers that don’t fit clearly into the known branches.

Two of these dangling Shanowers are Jacob Shanower, orphan, and his deceased father, John Shanower. In 1750 the Orphans Court of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, appointed John Bare as this Jacob’s guardian after his father’s death, since Jacob was still a minor. Who are these unknown Jacob and John Shanower? Could they somehow correspond to the Hans “John” Schonauer and his son Jacob that are already part of the family tree?

The answer to that seems to be “no.” It’s true that Hans “John” Shanower’s death date is recorded as 1749, so if he’d left any minor children as orphans, they could logically have had guardians appointed in 1750. But Hans “John” Schonauer didn’t leave his children orphans. His wife, Ursula (1690-1773), was still alive in 1750 and would remain so for twenty-three more years. Perhaps Ursula Schonauer married again, this time to John Bare, and her new husband was appointed guardian of her children. But I know of no record of a second marriage for Ursula. And even if such a second marriage did occur, Hans “John” and Ursula Shonauer’s son Jacob was born in 1724, so he was no longer a minor when his father died. The age of majority was then 14 years old, and the Jacob born in 1724 would have been 26 years old in 1750. In fact, none of Hans “John” and Ursula Schonauer’s seven children were minors in 1750. Their youngest, also an Ursula (1732-1766), was about seventeen when her father died, and the next year she married Abraham Hershberger. None of these Schonauer children would have needed a guardian because of minority.

So in any case, Henry Shanower springs upon the scene without any proven forebears. It’s reasonable to assume that he’s related to the Hans “John” and Jost Schonauer family. But how does he fit in? Maybe it’s true that he was the third child of Jacob and Maria, still waiting in the womb when his father died. Or maybe he was the son of Christian Schonauer, of whom so little is known. Or maybe someone introduced an inaccuracy into the records. Who knows? Errors are likely. But I hope that one day the puzzle piece that will solve the riddle of Henry’s origin will turn up.