52 Ancestors, #41 Caroline Limback Bair

Caroline Limback, 1855-1936

My husband Ken, as I have mentioned before, has always thought that he was 100% Swiss.  His paternal line–Badertscher-Amstutz-Tschantz, Baumgardner et al, all emigrated from Switzerland. However, he and his sister knew less about their maternal line–Bair-Limbach-Manbeck et al. In fact, although he knew that his family included Amstutz’s and Tschantz’s, he had never heard the names Limbach and Manbeck. As I mentioned when I wrote about the Bair family, research that started with Ken’s grandfather’s mother suddenly shook up the “Made in Switzerland” assumption. Aided and abetted by a New Philadelphia Ohio church celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

Far from being “colorful”–the suggested theme for this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge, Caroline Limback was the typical second generation immigrant farm wife.  She was a pretty woman in some pictures I have seen. The Limback family seems to have mostly stayed very close as adults. A descendant has many pictures of Caroline and other Limbacks ahd Bairs, but keeps them private. If I get permission, I will share them at a later date. For now, here is a picture of Adam and Caroline with some of Caroline’s sisters and brothers. (See the surreys in the background? They date the picture at about 1910.)

Caroline Limback and Adam Bair

Caroline Limback Bair and Daniel Bair in top right.

1st Row: Rachel [Murphy] & William Limbach; Anna Eliza [Kuhn] & David Limbach; Mary [Limbach] Schwartz (widow of Andrew); August Kuhn and Catherine [Limbach] Kuhn. 2nd Row: Elizabeth [Limbach] & William Beaber, Caroline [Limbach] & Daniel Bair. ( This photo was posted by several people on Ancestry.com, including one identified as hanabanana78 and captioning corrected by abair2.) Missing Limbach siblings are  George Limbach, Adam Limbach Jr., and Simon Limbach.

Caroline Limback, Ken’s great grandmother was born in Ohio. However when I looked at the census report from 1860, when she was five, I noticed that it said that both her parents were born in Germany. Of course, that could be a mistake, I thought, since sometimes census takers did not discriminate between German-Swiss and German.  As I went plowing through more and more records, it became clear–her parents both were born in Germany–Bavaria, according to at least one of the reports.

Caroline had two older sisters and four older brothers, and when she was one year old, a younger brother was born. Her family lived on a farm in York Township, Tuscarawas County, Ohio in most of the records, although her birth was recorded in Jefferson Township, Tuscarawas County.

When she was twenty, Caroline married Daniel Manbeck Bair. Caroline gave birth every two or three years between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five when Ken’s grandfather Adam Daniel Bair was born. Her last child, Clara, must have come as somewhat of a surprise, since Caroline was forty-one when Clara was born in 1895–a year after her oldest daughter was married. For more details on their children, see what I wrote about Daniel here.

By 1915, when Clara married, Daniel and Caroline were living alone on the farm.In 1919 they suffered one of the saddest losses parents can know when their son Adam Daniel Bair died before he was 30 years old.

In  January 1920, Daniel was listed on the census as retired. He may have been ill by then, because he died in August that year.

As so many widows did at that time, Caroline moved in with one of her children.  She probably was a popular figure in the Dover, Ohio home of Clara and Charles Wiegand, particularly among their three small children.  She probably lived with her youngest daughter’s family for at least ten years, before she died in November 1936. Caroline was buried beside her husband Daniel in the New Philadelphia, Jerusalem Church cemetery.

New Jerusalem Church

New Jerusalem Church, New Phil with historic buildings. Photo by Jon Baker, New Philadelphia Times.

The Jerusalem Church, described as High German Reformed and Evangelical Lutheran was founded in 1815, so is celebrating a centennial this year. You can read details of the founding here. These congregations preached in German until the 1900s,  and in the early days provided education for families. It would certainly have been the center of social life for the family, and a refuge for Caroline’s parents, who were also buried there, before they were fluent in English.

I can even speculate that Caroline may have met her husband Daniel Manbeck Bair at the church, since dozens of Bairs are buried in the churchyard, and must have been members. This also gives us another clue as to the origins of the Bair family. Surely they were German rather than Swiss, since they were attending this German church.

This video from You Tube shows the present day church and the cemetery where so many of Ken’s ancestors, particularly Bairs, are buried.

How Ken is Related

 

  • Kenneth Ross Badertscher is the son of
  • Agnes Bair Badertscher, who is the daughter of
  • Adam Daniel Bair, who is the son of
  • Caroline Limbach Bair

Notes on Research

  • United States Census reports 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920,  (York Township, Tuscarawas County, Ohio); 1930,  (Dover, Ohio)
  • Ohio, Deaths, 1908-1932, 1938-2007, Ancestry.com and Ohio Department of Health, Daniel Manbeck Bair.
  • Web: Ohio, Find A Grave Index, 1787-2012, Ancestry.com, Daniel Manbeck Bair, Caroline Limback Bair
  • Ohio, Births and Christenings Index, 1800-1962, Cora Estella Bair, Ancestry.com, William Elmer Bair, Clara C. Bair Weigand

 

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