Catherina Anna Walter Kaiser Füßer (Fuesser), 1817–1870s, and Charles Füßer (Fuesser), 1821–1880s

Catherina Anna Walter, daughter of Johann Philipp Walther and Anna Catharina Herzog, was born on 12 December 1817 in Edenkoben, Rheinland-Pfalz. She was baptized and confirmed at the Evangelisch-Reformierte Church.

At the same church, on 11 April 1844, Catherina Walter married Philipp Jakob Kaiser, son of Nikolaus Kaiser and Friederika Flach. Philipp Jakob Kaiser and Catharina had two children—Christoph and Caroline Sibÿlla. Christoph died the day after Caroline’s birth in March 1848. Husband Philipp Jakob died before the end of that year, leaving Catharina a widow with an infant daughter to support.

Wilhelm Karl (Charles) Füßer, son of Georg Wilhelm Füßer and Anna Katharina Andrä, was born on 8 July 1821 in Edenkoben, Rheinland-Pfalz. He was also baptized and confirmed at the Evangelisch-Reformierte Church. He worked as a vine dresser or wine grower.

On 6 December 1849, Catherina Walter Kaiser remarried to Charles Füßer, also at the Evangelical-Reformed Church in Edenkoben. Charles and Catharina Füßer had four more children—Karl Wilhelm, Maria Barbara, Anna Katharina, and Wilhelm—half-siblings of Caroline Kaiser.

The Füßer family, including daughter Caroline Kaiser, emigrated from Edenkoben via Hamburg on the SS Saxonia, arriving at New York on 28 December 1865. From there they traveled to St. Louis. Daughter Caroline married in April 1868 at the Webster Groves Presbyterian Church.

Charles and Catharina farmed eighteen acres near Jackson and Rock Hill Roads in Webster Groves in 1870. Although relatively small, their farm was valued at $8,000. That year they produced one hundred bushels of Indian corn, twenty bushels of oats, 200 bushels of Irish potatoes, and three tons of hay. They also had two mules, two milk cows, and two swine, valued at $200, and $100 worth of farm implements.

Catharina may have sponsored the baptism of their first grandchild, Katharine Ann Yaeger, born in 1870, who appears to have been named for her. But this baptism likely occurred at Webster Presbyterian, whose records before 1890 were burned in a fire. In 1874, Charles sponsored the baptism of grandson Karl William Yaeger at St. John’s Evangelical Church, Mehlville.

Nothing more was found on Catharina; she’s not with Charles in Nebraska in 1880. She probably died between 1870 and 1880, but no record has been found. Perhaps the record was at Webster Presbyterian and burned. She would have been fifty-three to sixty-two years old at the time. We do know, however, that a little later, her daughter Katie Füßer (1857–1881) died with burial in the Yaeger plot at Oak Hill Cemetery, Kirkwood.

By 1877, Charles Füßer farmed near Arlington, Westfield Township, Bureau County, Illinois, where he appeared in a directory. Daughter, Barbara, and son-in-law, William Lintz, also lived in Illinois at that time. Then before 1880, Charles, son William, and Barbara and William Lintz all moved to Lincoln Precinct, Johnson County, Nebraska, where the Lintzes remained.

The Füßers were not in Nebraska in 1900. Did they move yet again? Or did Charles, sixty–eighty years old, die between 1880 and 1900? No record of his death has yet been found.

Written by Carol Whitton
April 2017

© 2017, St. Louis Genealogical Society