♀Mary Beal

Mary Beal (7 August 1824 – 9 November 1890) was a German-born woman who came to America in 1839 and married John Hartman in February 1840, when she was fifteen; she spent nearly half a century at Mount Carmel in Wabash County, Illinois. She was the great-great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Mary Hartman (1850–1920), Mary’s son Sereno Watson Schneck (1875–1953) and his daughter Mary Esther Schneck (1900–1968).

Origins and marriage

Her obituary of 1890 states that she was born at “Bockenheim City, Germany” on 7 August 1824. The word “city” fits Bockenheim west of Frankfurt, a self-governing town until it was absorbed into Frankfurt in 1895, rather than the village of the same name in the Palatinate; the obituary does not say which was meant. Her parents are not known.

The obituary says that she came to America in 1839 and married John Hartman (1813–1896) on 22 February 1840. By the birth date in her obituary she was then fifteen years and six months old, and she had been in America for little more than a year at most. Where the couple married is not recorded. The index of the 1850 census gives their eldest daughter, Caroline, a birthplace in Pennsylvania about 1844, and the obituary records that Mary became a resident of Mount Carmel on 27 April 1844.

Mount Carmel

The censuses of 1850 and 1860 find the family at Mount Carmel, where her husband worked as a blacksmith. The 1860 census, taken on 27 June, lists her as Mary, aged 37, with five children, all born in Wabash County. By 1880 her husband had become a grocer; the census of 1 June 1880 lists her, aged 55, with him, their daughter Elisa, aged 20, and a thirteen-year-old niece, Ollie Smith. The family record names eight children, born between 1844 and 1860.

She was a member of the Lutheran church. She died at Mount Carmel in November 1890; her obituary gives her age as 66 years, 3 months and 2 days, which places her death on 9 November, and records that she was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery. It names among her survivors daughters then living at Mount Carmel and at Pittsburgh. Her husband outlived her by six years.

Notes

The records do not agree on where she was born. Her obituary gives Bockenheim; the census of 1860 gives Bavaria, and the census of 1880 gives France. A family lineage chart compiled in 1994, which agrees with the obituary on her dates, gives Brackenheim, in Württemberg, a town about 130 km from Bockenheim near Frankfurt. The index of her daughter Lydia’s death record of 1934 names her as Mary Bell, born on the Rhine, and the index of Lydia’s marriage in 1880 also gives her surname as Bell. None of these has been preferred over the others.