Do You Want to Be One of the Forgotten Ones?
This letter is dedicated to all of John Baptist Bauer’s living descendants, both present and future, including his ties to the St Marys and the other four men.
Dear Living Descendants,
I can’t explain why you would need your family history now and in the future. I have this intuition about people and events. It gives me hunches, impressions and warnings, but no blueprint explaining how and why. I follow its lead and it shows me where to go.
In the 1840s, St Mary’s was a religious commune. After the first wood shanties were set up, there was dissension and hostility amongst the settlers. Father Alexander from a Catholic Church in Baltimore came to the settlement and found a solution for them. This where Matthias Benzinger played a role in the creation of St Mary’s. His story will be told later. Father Alexander reminded them that their faith in God was the glue keeping them together. That glue prevented St Mary’s from becoming a ghost town,
Your family history is as vast as the space between Earth and the Moon. Learning about all of these people and events is the frontier of knowledge with new discoveries to be found every day. We have the same people in our family history and it should bring us together, not pull us apart.
John Baptist Bauer has been dead for over one hundred years. It took me nearly a month to find him. He was on George Bauer’s death certificate in the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission archives. No one remembers him either. I honestly wish they had the chance to see you and how far their legacy extends. Baptist, George, Leonard, Percy, Frank, Mattie, Joe and Schipper Bauer have been lost to time, these men are the reason you are alive today.
The times are changing, and our world is on a bumpy path of uncertainty now. If you met these men, you would see they aren’t much different from us today. Baptist had a treacherous voyage across a vast ocean landing in a foreign country malnourished, sick and with no money. Leonard lived through the Civil War, Spanish-American War, and World War 1. Mattie saw the evolution of transportation in America, from the horse and buggy, trains, cars, airplanes, jets, and finally a rocket landing a man on the moon. Frank, Joe, Mattie and their older sisters lived through five wars.
Wilhelm Gausman, Anton Evers, and John Mathias Meyer all travelled on the same voyage on the same ships as Baptist in the same conditions arriving in a foreign county broke, sick and starving. They are your ancestors too. All of these men, Baptist included, had an unwavering Catholic faith and were persecuted for it. Catholic Irish and Germans both traveled to America on the same ships and endured the same persecution. I am descended from both the same Catholic Germans and the Catholic Irish. Never be ashamed of your faith, because your ancestors were not ashamed. We have more in common than you think. These people may be dead, but they are the reason we are who we are.
Now, think of your story and how much life changed in the short time you have been on this Earth, from Hurricane Katrina to the War on Terror, the Iraq War through the COVID Pandemic. The communications world evolved from flip phones to smart phones to smart watches to a computer chip in your head (Elon Musk).
As much as I enjoy learning and writing about these men, this family history, the history of St Marys, isn’t just for me. It is not for me to hoard the facts and lives lived by these people. Their stories belong to the present and the future.
These stories belong to you. My invitation to you, so you can read these stories will always be open to you. If you are from Elk County or St Mary’s area or if you are related to the Evers, Gausman’s, Meyers or Bauers, these stories are for you. Your family history is a gift, and I want to share it with you. Don’t walk away without reading a few stories, John Baptist Bauer: Coming to America,John Baptist Bauer: Why Leave Germany, and John Baptist Bauer: His Legacy.
Keep reading because there are many more stories to come. This is just the beginning of a great adventure.
Happy Reading
Rainey Mitchell
All of these pictures are from St Mary’s Catholic cemetery. The gravestones and crosses are either unmarked, decaying, destroyed, or sinking into the ground. The pedestal without the monument on it belongs to the Walkers, one of the very earliest settlers in the area.
Wonderful post! You stated so eloquently the feeling I share about the importance of learning the stories of our ancestors. The daily, mundane, ordinary as well as milestones or significant events.
There is nothing like learning about our family history! I have so much gratitude for all that our ancestors went through. It is completely taken for granted by so many in this "instant gratification" world. Thank you for your passion for family history Rainey! ox