This 66-page book is now out of print.

A Brief History of the Descendents of Jakob and Margarethe Mueller Zeisset

Descendants:

Louise M. Zeisset Swart

Bertha Zeisset Nanninga

Elizabeth Zeisset Weller

Jacob Zeisset

Bettie Zeisset Hoerman

Henry Zeisset

Map: Places of Zeisset significance in Germany
Appendix: Information from church records in Germany (in German)

Some German vowels are modified with an umlaut (two dots above the letter). Throughout this book, umlauted vowels are followed by the letter "e".

In the family tree pages, the six Zeisset brothers and sisters who came to America are identified by Roman numerals of the order of their birth. Their children are identified by capital letters. Subsequent generations are identified by Arabic numbers, Arabic numbers in parentheses, small letters in parentheses and capital letters in parentheses. A hypothetical person in the sixth generation might be identified by the following numbers and letters: I. A. 1. (1) (a) (A). These would indicate this person is descended from the first child in each of the generations and is the first child in his or her own family.

This book has been in the making for more than 20 years, and there have been many helpers who contributed the information. We owe a debt of gratitude to all of them!

Ray and Carolyn Zeisset helped with an understanding of where the family came from by initiating and guiding the 1970 trip to Germany for Merton and Ina along with themselves.

Ray and Paul had a part in the composition of the book by providing the computer and the Personal Ancestral File program for it. It was possible to gain a much more accurate and complete book this way.

Lee Swart has been the historian of the Swart branch of the family and has proofread the material twice. Hence, the Swart branch statistics are likely the most accurate and up-to-date of the six branches.

Then, there were dozens of persons who served as historians for their immediate families, gathering the names and addresses that appear in these pages. Thank you for your contributions!

After our first century in this country, our numbers have increased from 6 to more than 1100. By our count, we have here the names of 349 in the Swart branch, 406 in the Nanninga branch, 172 in the Weller branch, 142 in the Jacob Zeisset branch, 42 in the Hoerman branch, and 31 in the Henry Zeisset branch. That totals 1081.

Jakob Zeisset was born May 30, 1837 at Menzingen, Baden, Germany, and died Oct. 6, 1884 at Schwaebisch Hall, with burial at Menzingen.

Margarethe Mueller Zeisset was born Nov. 8, 1842 at Semd, Hessen, Germany and died Feb. 20, 1881 at Kreuzfeld, Wurttemberg, Germany with burial in the churchyard cemetery of the village about a mile to the east.

It is not possible to see their graves as this has not been according to the German custom. "Perpetual Care" means to them "for a 25-year period." It is possible to renew a burial plot for an additional 25 years for an additional fee, but it seems that when your peers don't do it, you don't either.

The children of this marriage were:

1. Georg, b. Nov. 2, 1864; he lived only five hours.
2. An unnamed son, b. July 6, 1865, who lived but half an hour.
3. Johanna Louise, b. July 20, 1866 at Kreuzfeld, Germany, d. May 31, 1946 in Texas following an auto accident.
4. Emma, b. June 13, 1867, d. July 2, 1867.
5. Bertha, b. June 20, 1868 at Kreuzfeld, Germany, d. Oct. 16, 1924 at Leonardville, KS.
6. An unnamed, still-born child, b. May 11, 1869.
7. Elisabeth (Lizzie), b. Mar. 12, 1870 at Kreuzfeld, Germany, d. Nov. 27, 1938 at Riley, KS.
8. An unnamed, still-born child, b. Sept. 10, 1871.
9. Georg Jakob, b. Dec. 31, 1873 at Kreuzfeld, Germany, d. July 28, 1952 at Riley, KS.
10. Barbara, b. Apr. 19, 1875 at Kreuzfeld, Germany, d. Jan. 2, 1970 at Hutchinson, KS. (Her name, according to birth and baptismal records, was Barbara, but she was known to the family as Bettie.)
11. Heinrich (Henry), b. Feb. 6, 1878 at Kreuzfeld, Germany, d. Jan. 23, 1961 at Junction City, KS.
12. A pre-mature son, b. and d. Feb. 19, 1881 at Kreuzfeld, Germany.

All the children of Jakob and Margarethe Zeisset were born in Kreuzfeld, part of the Schrozberg parish, in the Gerabronn district and baptized in Schrozberg. We see from this listing that Grandmother Margarethe Zeisset died following childbirth as she was bearing her 12th child and that her age at the time was 39. Isn't it marvelous that the six children who lived were all well, strong, and intelligent?

Kreuzfeld. The home at Kreuzfeld was a large farm home at the south edge of the town of about 200 people, and it was named Hofgut Kreuzfeld. Kreuzfeld is about 60 miles east of Heidelberg, and about midway between Heidelberg and Nuremberg. It is about seven miles west from the walled city of Rothenberg (Rothenberg ob der Tauber). (See map.) The meaning of the word Kreuzfeld is "cross field." Jakob and Margarethe settled there upon their marriage, Mar. 25, 1864.

Marriage. We have no details on the marriage of Jakob and Margarethe, but we know from records in Germany that they were married at Adelsheim, Baden, on Mar. 25, 1864. We know that Semd is considerably north from Menzingen (at least 50 miles)--a long distance for that time. Since Adelsheim is about midway between Menzingen and Kreuzfeld, we can wonder if perhaps Jakob went to Semd to get his bride and that they were married at Adelsheim which happened to be conveniently on the way from there to Kreuzfeld. We can imagine theirs was a simple wedding since neither of Margarethe's parents were living, nor Jakob's father.

Jakob. According to a Dr. Frhr. von Ruepprecht, whom Ray Zeisset consulted about the family in 1970, Jakob was the second of a family of five children of Jakob and Johanna Zeisset. The five were Johannes, Jakob, Isaak, Daniel, and Iona. One source says Johanna's maiden name was Wagner. Records from Germany found by Dr. von Ruepprecht say it was Epp. Jakob Zeisset, the father, was a tenant on the Hohenstein farm at Hohenstadt in the Buchen district. However, the son Jakob Zeisset was born in Menzingen May 30, 1837. Records list this Jakob Zeisset as a middle-class citizen of Menzingen and as a tenant overseer in Kreuzfeld from 1864 on.

Margarethe. Margarethe was the 7th child and 5th daughter of Johann Georg Mueller III and Anna Marie Schneider Mueller. She was born November 8, 1842 in Semd in the Dieburg district of Hessen and baptized five days later. Her father, Johann, was born in Ueberau in the Dieburg district September 15, 1806 to Heinrich Mueller and Elisabeth Jaeger Mueller and baptized September 20, 1806. He was confirmed in Semd on Pentecost Sunday, 1820, having gone from Ueberau to Semd in 1816. In Semd Johann was a farmer and shepherd. His father was also a shepherd, at least during the years he lived in Ueberau before 1816. Johann's mother, Anna Marie Schneider Mueller, was from Lengfeld, another village in the Dieburg district.

The home. Hofgut Kreuzfeld was not owned by Jakob and Margarethe but rather by a baron who lived outside the community. Jakob was the tenant-manager who employed several farm workers full time and dozens more part time in major work seasons. It was a large farm operation. George Swart provided the information that it contained 520 acres and employed as many as 72 men. We have no information as to how the growing family fit into this, but the boys were too young to help with farm work.

Jakob's brother, Isaak Zeisset, had a similar operation at Niedersteinach (about 15 miles to the southwest). It was in his home that Bettie stayed for a brief time after her father's death and until she left for America with Bertha in 1885 and also where Henry lived for nine years from the time of his father's death until his departure for America at age 15 in March of 1893. We know that Uncle Isaak was Henry's god-father, possibly also Bettie's, maybe even of all the children. In that case, he was discharging his vows taken at the time of their baptism, and so he took them into his own home after they were left orphans.

Jakob and Margarethe's home was a Christian home, all of the children being baptized in the state church (Lutheran) at Schrozberg, about two miles away. It is possible that there was still a chapel at Kreuzfeld at the time of the Zeisset baptisms; Kreuzfeld is part of the Schrozberg parish, and baptismal records simply indicate Schrozberg.

We believe that the father and children continued to make a home together for some time after Margarethe's death, but later Jakob was taken to the prison at Schwaebisch Hall (the county seat, so to speak) where he died of typhoid fever on Oct. 6, 1884. The incarceration may have been for only a short time--days or weeks.

We cannot be certain whether he was taken there with mental problems or to quarantine him or as a punishment. There is a story that puts him there as punishment for implication in the burning of the barn on the Hofgut. It had burned once before, and this time Jakob was in the tavern in Kreuzfeld when the cry was sounded that the barn was afire. He is said to have made a careless comment, something like "Let it burn; it's covered by insurance!" This comment was serious because insurance was handled by the government rather than by private companies, so insurance fraud would have been a criminal rather than a civil offense. An additional story has it that the village brickmaker later was accused of setting the fire because he was short of work and hoped for the job of making brick for rebuilding. Louise is reported to have seen him from a window of the house adding fuel to the fire to get it well started. We cannot now establish whether the barn was of wood, but we assume so. We do know that the present barn is a brick structure. A still different possibility is that Jakob contracted typhoid and was put into the prison to isolate him.

Immigration. The oldest in the family, Louise, came to America in 1884, so, since the father's death did not occur until Oct. 6 of that year, we assume that she came prior to that. One source says that she arrived on Oct. 4. She stopped for a time in Philadelphia, working at 50 cents a week, before continuing on to Kansas. The other children all came to their new land within the next nine years. Bertha and Bettie came together in May 1885. Jacob may have come alone in 1890 when he was 17. Lillian Carlson says that her mother, Elizabeth, age 20, came with Jacob. Henry came alone, at 15, in March of 1893. The boys may have looked toward the United States partly because they wanted to escape the two years of military training which was then the rule in Germany. If the father's death was humiliating to the family, there was that incentive, too.

While there may have been several other reasons for leaving Germany, such as better employment promised in the United States and the opportunity to forget the past by emigrating, there were other families who had come from Germany to Kansas who were an influence through their letters. There were the Baers and the Bletschers, for example. The Zeissets and the Bletschers have a slight relationship, and the Baers and the Bletschers are related to each other. All these families knew each other in Germany, and the first two to emigrate influenced the third.

The contacts with the Baers and the Bletschers helped the Zeissets come to Kansas. Bertha and Bettie came to Kansas in 1885--a little ahead of Louise who had stopped for a time in Philadelphia. Bettie's 10th birthday occurred on board ship. She could come for half fare because she was only nine when the journey began and because she was accompanied by one paying the full fare. Bertha and Bettie came first to the Baers at Alida. The Baers met them at the train in Leonardville. It may be that they made the trip with members of the Baer or Bletscher families.

Bertha came to Leonardville when she secured housework at the Berk home across the street west from the Evangelical Church, a German congregation. Later, she was employed by one of the Winkler families at Winkler's mill. Bertha met Juergen Nanninga in connection with her work at Berk's. There was no water on the church premises. The Berks had a dug well with a bucket on a rope. One day when water was wanted at the church, Juergen was sent for it. He was not acquainted with the operation of the well bucket (or was Bertha over-anxious to be helpful to a nice young man?). Anyway, that was the beginning of their romance; they were married in 1886.

All six of the Zeisset children came to the Leonardville community and lived here for a time. Louise and her family moved to Nemaha County, but the other five lived out their lives near Leonardville or Riley. They were all members of the Evangelical Church, most of them to the time of their death. Most of their children were also members of that church, now the United Methodist Church.

Louise married John M. Swart who was also a member of this church. Bertha married Juergen Nanninga on Mar. 26, 1886; he was likewise an early member of this congregation. Lizzie married George Weller at Riley, but her family kept its membership in the Leonardville Church. Jacob married Christina Bohnenblust in 1896; she was of an early Evangelical family, and they retained membership here. Bettie married Ludwig Hoerman who was also of this church family. Henry came to this country at the age of 15 to live with the Nanninga family, who provided the $88 for his passage. He worked a year for them on the farm to repay his debt. During the winter, he attended Fairview school (A. J. Swingle, teacher) for six weeks--the only English schooling he received. He had finished the 8th grade and received Confirmation when he was 14. He had planned to come to America at that time, but a cholorea outbreak in the port of Bremen, from which he planned to leave, caused him to stay a year longer. How he managed, even at 15, is a mystery, for he knew no English, and after he reached New York there were places where no persons understood any German. Henry married Perseda Schreiber in 1908; she was the daughter of the Rev. J. F. Schreiber, a pioneer Evangelical circuit rider who retired on a farm southeast of Leonardville in 1895.

One can wonder what these immigrants to Kansas thought of the place when they arrived, for this was undeveloped territory in the 1880s and 1890s, while Germany, on the other hand, was well-developed and is a beautiful country--so many trees, green hills, well-built houses with red tile roofs, etc.

Life in the New World must have seemed rigorous and drab to the Zeissets at first. Leonardville was about 10 years old. The railroad had come through in 1881 and had pulled the town to its present location from the earlier Alembic, about half a mile to the northwest. There was a variety of small stores, and people no longer needed to drive horses, or oxen, to Junction City, Waterville, or even Atchison.

The farm land was just being "broken" for farming and there were few trees. The houses were small. When Henry arrived to live with the Juergen Nanningas, they had a frame home of two rooms with a loft overhead. There were already four Nanninga children by that time. Mostly, they slept in the loft which was reached by a stairs near its center and with no railing around. It was easy to fall down the stairs, even in one's sleep. The loft had only sheathing and shingles over it, and when it snowed, with wind, in the winter time, one could awaken in the morning with an extra blanket for cover--a blanket of snow. Such living was in stark contrast to the settled living in Germany.

There was a strong sense of family fellowship among the families of the six Zeisset brothers and sisters. Until 1906, when he began to farm for himself, Henry, the youngest and the only unmarried one, kept some of his belongings with the Nanningas and the Wellers. He visited in their homes often.

It won't be long until there are no more people living in Riley County by the name of Zeisset. Though there are over 1100 descendants of the six children of Jakob and Margarethe Zeisset, only four descendents or spouses with the Zeisset name lived in Riley County at the end of 1991. They are Merton and his wife, Ina, of Leonardville; Earl of Riley; and Fern (widow of Jacob, Jr.) in Manhattan.

Of the original brothers, Jacob had four sons--George, Earl, Roman, and Jacob Jr.--but there were no sons in their families. Henry had but one son, Merton, and while he has two sons--Ray and Paul--and each of them has a son (Timothy and Jonathan, respectively), none is likely to live in Riley County.

Baer. Magdalena Zeisset Baer was born at Menzingen, Germany in 1819. Upon her marriage to Matthaus Baer, they lived at Niedersteinach (a village of four or five farm homes) where they operated a sizeable farm with many hired servants. This may have been across the road south from the farm of Isaak Zeisset, where Henry spent nine years of his life. Magdalena Zeisset Baer was likely an aunt of Jakob and Isaak Zeisset.

Matthaus Baer died at Niedersteinach in 1860 at the age of 43, leaving a widow and five children (one son and four daughters) of whom Anna Baer Bletscher was one. Magdalena married again two years later to a Jacob Buhler, and farm life continued at Niedersteinach until his death in 1881 and hers in 1883.

Bletcher. David Bletscher was a Mennonite and Anna was baptized according to the Mennonite faith and joined that church in 1871. They were married at Niedersteinach Jan. 8, 1882.

About this time, there was much discussion about moving to America, especially because of tax burdens and compulsory military training in Germany. Henry Baer (a brother of Anna Bletscher) left Germany in 1879 and came to Alida, 9 miles northwest of Junction City. In 1883 Peter Baer, Sr. (b. Jan. 24, 1839, d. May 28, 1900) and his son Peter came to the same community. These men wrote inviting letters to their loved ones in the Fatherland, telling them what a wonderful land America was. Here in America a man could take a gun, walk over the prairie, get his venison, all he wanted. Such a thing was against the law in Germany. They told of the great things to be had here in America, just for the taking.

The Bletschers arrived in Junction City on Sept. 14, 1884, bringing with them the other sons of Peter Baer, Sr.: Chris, Rudolph, and John. It is believed that the Baer and Bletscher families had a strong influence upon the orphaned Zeisset children in 1884 and following, persuading them to come to America and to the Leonardville vicinity.

We have two kinds of information about the Zeisset-Bletscher relationship. "A History of the David Bletscher Family" was written by Chris Bletscher and Laura Llewelyn some years ago. That book gives the birthdate for Magdalena as 1819--too early to be the sister of Jakob Zeisset (b. 1837) and his younger brother Isaak. Neither is she named among the five children of Jakob and Johanna Zeisset which Dr. von Ruepprecht gives us. Mrs. Myrtle Myers' visit to relatives in Germany in the '60s under the guidance of Lt. Oura Lee Swart gave her the information, however, that Anna Baer Bletscher's mother was the aunt of Henry Zeisset and his brother and sisters. Great-aunt must have been a better answer.

There were eight children born to John M. and Louise Swart. John M. Swart grew up at Leonardville, and he and Louise were married there. They moved, with their four eldest children, to Nemaha County where they farmed and raised cattle. Their home was about 10 miles southeast of Seneca, about 8 miles south of Oneida, and about 7 miles north of Goff.

George Swart, one of the eight Swart children, left Nemaha County and moved to a rural area known as Campus about 7 miles southeast of Oakley, KS where he and his wife were engaged in wheat farming. There were 14 children in the George Swart family, most of whom still live in the vicinity. One son, Lee, spent 5 years in the military in Germany and visited Kreuzfeld twice. The children of George Swart sponsored a reunion in 1986 at Oakley in commemoration of George's centennial--100 years after his birth. About 120 persons attended.

The Lillie Swart Johnstone family moved to south Texas, in the valley west of Harlingen, where they raised citrus fruits.

There are several Zeiset families in Kansas. Whether they are relatives of ours, we don't know. That their ancestors had two ss's in their name is quite possible and somewhere one "s" was dropped. Paul Zeisset visited with an Alvin Zeiset who ran for Congress from Virginia in 1969. Paul learned this man was related to a Zeiset living in Hutchinson, KS at that time. Significantly, Alvin Zeiset was descended from a George Zeiset who immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1840 from the state of Baden in Germany, the same state Jakob Zeisset came from, so it is not unreasonable to imagine a relationship if one went more generations back.

In 1985 Floyd W. Zizert wrote from Clayton, OH, trying to connect our family names, which he had gotten from a Nina Zeisset in Oklahoma, with what he knew of others with our name. The father of Alvin Zeiset referred to above was named George. Floyd Zizert referred to a George B. Zeisset who was born in Wurttemberg, Germany, June 23, 1820; this could be Alvin's father. Mr. Zizert also has record of an Isaac Zeisset born in 1839 at Mensingen. This could be our Jakob Zeisset's younger brother Isaak with whom Henry lived from 1884 to 1893 at Neidersteinach. However, Mr. Zizert reports that Isaac Zeisset was a sharecropper in Rosshof, Eichenau, and Dasstadt and that he died in Dasstsadt in 1897.

In 1972 Paul saw a picture of a David Zeisett in the New York Times. He was an 8-year-old boy from Chatham, N.Y. who was awaiting a lung transplant (or something like that).

Anyway, while we're not able to trace our relationship very far, there are others who make this a lifelong study and may later be able to tell us of other relatives we have.

The name Zeiss is quite a common one in Germany and other nearby countries--Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland--wherever German influence extended throughout history. Zeiss opticals are still common in this country--camera, telescope, and microscope lenses, etc. In Germany there are various endings to the Zeiss name, such as Zeisser, Zeissen, Zeissig, and Zeisset.

We do not know of relatives in Germany today. Henry Zeisset corresponded with an Aunt Elise Zater and a cousin, William Zeisset, after World War I. Irene Bahr, a daughter of William Zeisset was still living in 1970, but has now passed away. There was also correspondence with the wife of the architect, Karl Woerner, who painted several pictures of the home of Isaak Zeisset at Niedersteinach. John and Gladys Llewelyn and Dwight and Carol Benninga have such pictures.

These persons were in extreme poverty after the collapse of the German money system after World War I. One of the letters written to Henry by an Aunt (probably Elise) told that the stamp for sending that letter required more German marks than the total of her estate had been when she was left a widow and had resources expected to carry through the rest of her life, but when the mark lost its value, the inflation was ridiculous, and she had to live on something like a dole.

Map: Places of Zeisset significance in Germany
Appendix: Information from church records in Germany (in German)