I ran into my husband's cousin, Mary Ann, at Mojos coffee shop in town and it was mentioned that we really needed to have a reunion of all the "Schlosser" cousins. A date was picked and we began to get to work planning!
I began to make a "book" for the siblings that included not only the Schlossers, but all 4 grandparents' sides. My table was covered with paperwork for a month!
For the reunion, however, I was concentrating in particular on Al's mother's family.
We find the Graber family back in the late 1600's in Switzerland. The name Graber comes from the word "graben", meaning to dig or excavate, hence the Graber name originates with those persons whose occupation was that of digging ditches, trenches or perhaps graves!
Our ancestors in Switzerland underwent intense persecution in the 1600's. It was after the Reformation period and our ancestors were Anabaptists. The state had a law that all babies must be baptized within 8 days, but they believed in believer's baptism, upon confession of one's faith. The state also decreed that special meetings for Bible studies must be discontinued and leaders of the Anabaptist movement must be banished. Anabaptists were punished by severe fines, confiscation of property, imprisonment, torture, burning at the stake, scourging, and exile, being sold as galley slaves, and death by drowning.
Our ancestors went to Alsace, France, then on to Montbeliard for a time. Then to Poland and eventually to Russia before coming to America in 1874. (I have a lot more details about the years that I typed out for the family. I also told the family story at the reunion.)
I scoured ship lists at Kaufman Museum and at Bethel College.
It was SO fun researching family lore!
Our great-great grandmother Maria Ries. Her first husband, our ancestor, Daniel Graber, died in Russia. She was left with 6 children, ages 2-15. A year later, she remarried Peter "Schlosser" Goering. (the Schlosser name stayed with Maria's son, Peter Graber, so we are the Schlosser Grabers. Schlosser means "locksmith". There are so many Grabers, they have to give nicknames to distinguish them.)
We wondered how Maria (Ries) Graber was listed as dying in Mexico. What was she doing in Mexico in 1907? So we looked into that and found out that she and her 2nd husband purchased a plantation in Mexico and great-great Grandma Maria died there at age 77. The following year Mexican revolutionaries came and chased him off his place and he ended up penniless but alive at the border and had to wire his family for a ticket back to Pretty Prairie!
Grandpa and Grandma "Schlosser" Graber
Grandpa grew up in this home in Arlington.
His brother was shot through the front window.
An unsolved murder.
We had the reunion at the First Mennonite Church.
Below was what it used to look like.
Sid and Gayle led us in singing this song that our great-grandfather
sang in Russia as they left for the new world.
We stood as family and introduced cousins to one another again.
Some we had not seen for many years.
And some, we met for the first time.
And we took family photos.
Kathern's children
Aunt Sis's son and family
Helen's girls (and one sister-in-law, since the one brother has passed on)
And there were many who couldn't come as several live out-of-state
We had lots of good German comfort food!
And many of us went out to the cemetary to see where our ancestors are buried.
And Al thought he'd be silly and lay where our plots are.
"One generation shall commend Your works to another,
and shall declare Your mighty acts."
Psalm 145:4
So very thankful for our ancestors who moved time and again, not willing to give up their right to worship God in freedom and wanting to protect their children from the influences of the world.
