♂John F. Schneck Sr

John F. Schneck (24 August 1812 – 3 June 1857) was a German-born carpenter and farmer who settled at New Harmony, Indiana, in 1843. He was the great-great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Jacob Schneck (1843–1906), Jacob’s son Sereno Watson Schneck (1875–1953) and Sereno’s daughter Mary Esther Schneck (1900–1968).

Life

He was born on 24 August 1812 in Württemberg^W, then a kingdom in southern Germany. In the 1880 census his son Jacob gave his father’s birthplace as “Wittenberg”, the enumerator’s spelling of Württemberg. His parents are not known. The indexed German Lutheran baptism collections on FamilySearch hold no John or Johann Schneck born in August 1812, and the two Schneck baptisms of 1813 in them, both in Baden, belong to other children.

According to a county history, he came to America in 1839 and settled at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he stayed until 1843. On 26 January 1843, at Lancaster, he married Elizabeth Burkhart (1821–1876), a native of Alsace who had come to Pennsylvania as a child with her parents. The same year the couple moved west to New Harmony, in Posey County, Indiana; the county history says he was drawn there by relatives of his wife. His son Jacob stated under oath in 1903 that his father had become a naturalized citizen of the United States.

In the census of August 1850 the family was living in Harmony Township, Posey County. The enumerator wrote his name as Frederick Schnäck, which suggests that the F. stood for Frederick and that Frederick was the name he went by. He was listed as a carpenter, aged 37, with real estate worth $600, and the household held his wife and three young children. The county history adds that he later farmed. The couple had six children, born between 1843 and 1855: Jacob, Barbara Catherine, Mary Louise, Charles, John and Henry. Jacob, the eldest, became a physician and botanist at Mount Carmel, Illinois.

He died on 3 June 1857, aged 44, leaving his widow with six children. He is buried in Bethsaida Cemetery, Posey County, where his gravestone reads “John F. Schneck, Aug. 24, 1812, died June 3, 1857, aged 44 years 9 months 9 days”. His youngest son, Henry, was buried at Bethsaida in 1934.

Notes

The gravestone and a family chart compiled in 1994 give his birth as 24 August 1812; the county history gives 23 August. The family chart names his birthplace as “Breidenholz, Esslingen, Wurtemberg”, a place name that matches no known village. One online family tree gives Breitenholz, a village in the Tübingen district, with a birth date of 22 April 1812 and parents named Friedrich Schneck and Katharina Barbara Schick, but no record confirms any of it, and its birth date disagrees with the gravestone. The county history’s account of the family’s earlier origins, that the Schnecks came from Westphalia and later settled at Stuttgart, is known from that history alone.