By Larry: Too weathered to read.
By JBrown: This Jacobs stone is an old "obelisk"style, taller than ordinary stones nearby. Each of an obelisk's multiple sides would hold multiple names, so more than one Jacobs here. A space-saver, the obelisk was popular 1850-1890, when people still had large families, or thought they might.
Lettering is now illegible. Yet, we can narrow who might be listed. Which Jacobs locally had death records, yet, no stone obvious elsewhere? especially with an 1850-1890 timing (the obelisk's heyday).
A rare surname, very few families called Jacobs/Jacob were in Winona County for the 1880 US Census. Candidates were VanRensselaer Jacobs and first wife Marcia/Marsha, not local to Whitewater Twp., but instead in Elba. Her married sisters were buried with stones standing in the obelisk's cemetery. Not ruled out would be a different man, Claus D Jacobs and daughter Adelia, also not specifically in Whitewater Twp.. They had Utica neighbors who are buried in Whitewater Twp., at Hoosier Ridge. Claus' son (William) died very close-by, at Minnieska, up at the county line with Wabasha.
Given the stone no longer cites any one individually, given no old record says who used to be named there, it serves as a group cenotaph for area Jacobs?
Old-time maps and records showed the following places with the Whitewater name: First, the winding Whitewater River, its cold water turning white at rough spots, with enough force downstream, to run water-powered mills. These mills were nearby, where streams joined together to make a larger flow, with rapids, first Elba, then Beaver. Second with the name is Whitewater Township, in the far northwest corner of Winona County, almost in Wabasha County, crossed by the Whitewater River after it left Elba Twp. Third, a Post Office town that's now extinct. It was called Whitewater Falls (WW Falls), downstream of Elba, upstream of another now extinct place, Beaver. Fourth, this cemetery, long abandoned, inside what used to be WW Falls, this obelisk a remnant.
WW Township actually holds two "ghost-town cemeteries". Earlier to turn extinct was Beaver, that place with a long-closed post office and its own cemetery located maybe three miles away, following the WW River downstream, so northwest of WW Falls.
Winona County's seat was and is at the city of Winona, some distance southward teh extinct places. It lays right on the Miss. R., below the bluffs, on a spit built of sawdust. Beginning with a lumber mill, it became a busy steamboat and barge town. Its count of millionaires was said to be high, steamboats and the lumber business making money early, before most settlers arrived. More modest circumstances were seen, later, up hill, further away, amidst farmers and lumber people and millers instead locating on the tributary rivers, not down on the main river.
The earlier Metis and French and native populations had traveled the streams. Early names included Grignon and Chief Wapashaw. After their era, the order of settlers was this: The federal land office was open for the first land claims mid-1850s. New Englanders came then, plus New Yorkers bringing town names like Rochester and Utica. The Germanics came later, 1870s, 1880s, buying from the first set, from those either retiring or moving on, many worn out by wheat rust and other troubles. The Jacobs name was often of the second set, Germanic.
In 1870, the local US Census interviewer allowed the newly arrived Germanics to name, as birthplaces, the "little Germanies" they were "really from" (Baden? Stettin? Mecklenburg? Holstein? Or?). Later, for the 1880 US Census, changed international politics meant glorified "empires", many German-speakers were now "lumped together". "Prussia" (Prussian Empire) was the national identity chosen for many, not by themselves, never asked in elections by the latest unelected nobility, the regions affected along the North Sea and key rivers, varied nobilities fighting over them and conquering by force. Prussia included some Polish-speaking territory back then. If not from Prussia, other Germanic speakers in that northish end of Winona County tended to come from Luxembourg. (The merging of Prussia with Bavaria came later.)
The name of a key river "back home" was the Elbe, pronounced as Elba.
Somebody from the varied Germanies thought the scenery south of Whitewater Falls looked similar? So, the next town southward of Whitewater Falls became "Elba"?
As noted above, Beaver was the first of the two hamlets to go extinct, once its original reason for existing was lost. Its sawmill was placed at a joining of waters (where Beaver Creek, flowing eastish, joined the Whitewater River, which flowed northish. The merged waters crossed into Wabasha County, before emptying into the bigger Mississippi. The cold water of the Whitewater is still noted for trout fishing.)
Complimenting the one at Beaver, another sawmill was started at Elba, begun by New Englanders, the Todds, who also farmed.
Each township was to be divided, if possible, into 36 same-sized squares, each a square mile, any township itself, then, ideally, a 6x6 mile square. This is called a "rectangular survey system". Exceptions resulted mainly when un-square rivers and streams were boundaries. Before places were given names, surveyors measured and marked the townships, numbering the sections, 1 to 36 in the same serpentine order, top NE, to bottom SE. When locations were named, inside Whitewater Township, Beaver would get one square mile; Whitewater Falls, further south, would be allocated double that .
An old 1897 book, by a very early resident of Winona County named Bunnell, went township by township, describing the old-time towns, the section numbers and waterways of each. He wrote of a letter he'd requested from a Grignon descended of a La Bath, from the fur trader days, hoping to learn about the distant past. The reply? Not enough was remembered, too many papers taken elsewhere by other La Bath heirs. Mr. Bunnell, however, found enough material to cover very well later times, going township by township. These were created out of only six political precincts inside the County at the beginning,, multiple townships then created from each. The mother precinct for Whitewater Twp. was called Elba, so the name was early.
By his book's writing (1897), he noted Beaver was, already, mainly of the past, little left inside. Bunnell's "History of Winona County" said the Whitewater River flowed mainly north, a bit east, across Whitewater Twp., mainly stuck to one side, entering at the southeast end (Section 35), leaving at the far northeast corner (Section 1). Whitewater Falls was allocated two sections (just north of Section 35) . He believed they were 23 and 24 . (The easternmost one, 24, bordered modern Mt. Vernon Twp, with Norton Twp. below it, home to the farm-and-church town of Altura.) .
The River meandered some, meaning it wandered snake-like, not enough slope to rush anywhere if it wasn't flood time . Its wanders put Beaver, not directly north, but instead at Section 15, where Beaver Creek flowed into the Whitewater, he said, thus, focused on the best location for a water-powered sawmill. The two towns were maybe two to three miles apart at their closest corners, maybe five at their most distant corners. Together, the two towns occupied 3 square miles. (Beaver's single square, 15, thus, was located one section north and then two sections west of Whitewater Falls' Section 23. )
Describing the hamlet of Elba, he said "Elba village is situated on sections 9 and 10, at the Junction of the three branches of the Whitewater there".
Elba survived. Beaver and WW Falls did not. It helped to have three branches meet? The cemetery of Elba's mill-founding Todds was called Fairwater. One of the Todds would be, not just a neighbor, but also the interviewer of the Ohio-born Mr. Jacobs for the 1880 US Census. Two of the Todds' farms were on the same road?.
Note that farms were inside each village or hamlet, not just outside.
People nearby (six to 12 miles away from WW. Falls?) could have a town's post office as their address, or attend church there, or have a burial there, without living right in the town. However, when the towns de-populated, the neighboring farms might do so, too, especially along the lower Whitewater River. Those leaving were tired of flooding, appalled when huge banks of sand ultimately appeared where crops and roads used to be.
If wanting to stay near, those leaving could go to surviving places. One direction, north into Wabasha County, and then west to Plainview, was seen in an obituary for a descendant of Marcia/Marsha's sister, who'd married a Graves .
A different direction? In Winona County, they could go south to Elba, further south to St. Charles. They could also go east to Altura, if beyond that, then southeast to Lewiston, northeast to Minneiska.
Some of these still "safety places" might have flooding issues, as well, but were not as destroyed by the "outwash". Picture collapsing sandstone sliding down from bluff tops, not a few bushel baskets, but tons.
Before leaving? The dead still had to be buried. Later, some graves might be moved elsewhere, if people had the means. Otherwise, no one was there to pick up a fallen stone, to re-carve a worn one, or to dig out one buried in deep mud.
At Beaver, the wood produced by the sawmill most likely had been used to make buildings for the new settlers. Once the buildings were done, the mill could be used to grind grain. If something deadly, such as wheat rust, came through and made wheat ungrowable, permanently, or if the soil washed away, with the same result, then there was nothing to grind.
If there was nothing to grind, the mill was not needed. Any church might remain as long as a minister could come, but then would close later. Eventually, Beaver was not needed for church or mill or mail.
A final nail in the coffin? Railroads replaced steamboats, could take people to more new places, alongside routes less married to rivers, with less flooding. Instead of moving a town or county away, some would try the Dakotas or the Pacific coast.
First Sets Several families called Jacobs in the 1880 US Census in Winona County have graves found. One set lived right in Whitewater Twp., the family of Herman Jacob/Jacobs, from the Pomerania region of Prussia. Their daughter Caroline married a Nash. Their way of leaving, Herman and wife Caroline retired by 1930 to Plainview in Wabasha County. They would be buried in 1938 at Whitewater Township's Hoosier Ridge Cem. A more distant set of Jacobs were found in Nodine's Lutheran cemetery. Probably Lutheran, in that era they would all be German speakers, able to learn some English gradually if working outside the home or while at school, not true for the older women and others instead working at home. They might take an English speaking child with them in order to go shopping?
Second and Third Sets Two more sets to consider? the families of Claus D. Jacobs, also German-speaking, and Sabathial/Salathial V. Jacobs, who had New York Dutchness embedded in his middle name. He was multi-lingual? The Dutch language is considered Germanic. His mother, a New Englander, had her Boston-influenced twang. His wife was born a Nash, her parents both New Englanders.
By the end of that Mr. Jacob's life, he'd switched to using his middle name, Van Rensselaer. (He was suggested in May 2023 by user Carol Thompson, as maybe a better candidate for the stone than Claus.)
No easily found records show either Mr. Jacobs in Whitewater Township. One Mr. Jacobs' family was at least six miles away, in Elba, the other maybe ten-to-twelve miles away in Utica/Lewiston. Looking for a church nearby as a reason for either family to use this cemetery, the religion of German-speaking Claus is unclear. In-laws named Zander, related to Claus' wife, the former Marie Zander, when not buried in a public cemetery, are buried at St. John's Evangelical Lutheran church, in Utica Twp. On the other hand, Claus' son William died in another flooded place nearby, Minnieska. William and maybe his mother appear to have had burial sites moved to safety, to Lewiston (to be by William's sister? Check the stone of Marie Zander Jacobs, newish-looking, so it's a replacement for a too-damaged one? She was was said to be the wife of C.D. Jacobs.
No need would be seen to move his stone, if it still stood and was still readable in the 1940s? A lot of erosion happened in the several lifetimes since the death date of Claus D. There were other Germanic churches nearer to WW Falls,, the tinier one of the Timms, who lived down by Utica, yet are buried northward
The religion of Van Rensselaer Jacobs? He was not Lutheran or Moravian. His father was United Brethren. Their church was Methodist-connected, the United Brethren to merge in the 1960s with what had been the Methodist Episcopal, their union to become United Methodist. Locally , the Methodists had a church up in Beaver, a congregation formed in 1858, a building up in 1868. It's presumed to have struggled by the time the Beaver Post Office closed in 1906, but continued in varied forms, implied as church services were still held for the State Park at Whitewater in 1945. Then in 1946, it was sold by the larger church's "Abandoned Property Committee"
IN UTICA. For Claus Dietrich Jacobs, his 1870 Census (viewable at FamilySearch.org) found him a wagon-maker living in Utica Twp., immediately south of Norton and Altura, so southeast of Whitewater Falls. Utica did not yet have its own PO, the P.O named at top left was St Charles. Their Census interviewer of 1870 wrote that Claus came from Holstein; his wife Nancy, from Mecklenburg. They were in their 20s then, one tiny child, born in MN. If in some other part of the US first, they weren't outside Minnesota for long. By 1880, they were farming and their family was larger, mostly girls.
AT ELBA. Salathial VanRenssaeler Jacobs and first wife Marcia/Marsha Nash were born and married in Ohio, before living in MN, at Elba. He was remarried, called S. V. R. Jacobs at his death, on Dec 13, 1896. He used the Salathial spelling several times in his birth state, married as that, a mis-spell or mis-reading causing Talathiel once. That was in 1850, while at his father's Ohio house, when he was listed as a "lumberman". He was named last in the house, as if he were boarding, not always at home. His father, Aaron Jacobs, stated that he was a Rev. of the United Brethren.
Coming with the family of brother Philander, to Minnesota, they brought their two Ohio-born Jacobs families to Elba Township, locating in 1870 and 1880 near the farms of the Todds (miller-farmers). They were thus immediately south of Whitewater Township, with the town of Elba midway inside Elba Township's top tier of sections. (The Todds' mills were further west, four miles west, to be precise, then two or three miles south of WW. Falls, so 6-7 miles away total, if checking the closest corners of section squares. in Section 6, then 7 )
The closest local mention of United Brethren was for one of the sons of neighbor Dexter Todd. That son was training to be a minister after the 1890 death of his father.
LIST OF DEATHS. Again, we looked for deaths known to have occurred locally, yet with no recognizable stone remaining at this date.
If the Jacobs obelisk at WW. Falls belonged to Claus, it was maybe still readable when his wife's stone was re-done and his son's and wife's stones put in/moved to Lewiston's town cemetery, near the newer burial of a later-dying daughter.
Claus D. Jacobs, was known to have died in Winona County, his address Lewiston, on May 1, in 1900. Note that Lewiston P.O. addresses extended well outside the town. He had been ill as of his last Census, the state one in 1895, unable to do his usual farming, five years to pass before his death. His stone is missing from Winona County burials.
The same is true of his daughter, Delia/Adelia, seen with him in the 1895 Minn. State Census record. She died in 1903, also with a Lewiston address. Was her name another that rain and snow eroded off of the obelisk?
Looking at swath of dates, events begin with, first, the "pioneers" arriving and wanting mail, then depopulation, as water-threatened land gradually caused homes and cemeteries to be sold to "new people", with a second abandonment, as even the new people saw no point in staying ("love of place", because they loved the people once inside, no longer enough):
1857 OPTIMISM decades, opening of P.O. at Beaver. NE of Elba, NW of Lewiston.
1860 Census, the Todds' farms in Elba cited as assigned Whitewater Falls PO, to their north,
1870 Census, the Todd farms in Elba reassigned to the St Charles PO, to the south.
Deaths of record, no stone still bearing their names:
1888 (Marcia/Marsha Jacobs, of Elba, wife of Salathial/Sabathial VanRensselaer Jacobs)
1896 (Salathial/Sabathial Jacobs , of Elba. NOTE: 1) The similar-seeming "Sabathiel", with a B, is a Germanic surname found, for example, in old Prussia. 2) Fitting the son of a Reverend, "Salathial", with an L, was biblical. A Greek translation of a Hebrew ruler's name, the father of Zerubabel, who emerged after the Hebrews' Babylon captivity, to re-build the Jewish temple. The name Zerubabel was used early in the colonies, by a Puritan family named Hoyt, who left early Mass. for what became Windsor, Conn., their Rev. called Warham.)
1900 (Claus Dietrich/Diedrick Jacobs),
1903 (Adelia Jacobs, daughter of Claus).
1906 PESSIMISM wins, closing of Beaver P.O.
Later deaths in family of Claus
1916 (wife Marie Zander, d. Lewiston, stone found but not old enough style, remade),
1926 (son William, d. Minneiska, old stone moved to Lewiston?),
1947 (daughter Anna Romanesko, d. Wabasha County), modern stone style similar to Marie's, Lewiston picked for burial),
1952 (son John Simon, d. city of Winona, modern stone, cemetery where he died)
LAND RUINED AND REDEEMED--PATTERNS. The areas at the downstream end of the Whitewater River, where Winona and Wabasha Counties border each other, had, many decades ago, severe flooding and erosion problems. Hamlets affected were not just Beaver and WW. Falls, but Crystal Springs and Minneiska, the last the only one existing today.
Some think the causes first appeared with steamboats coming up the Mississippi R. very early (1820s-1840s), well before settlers came (1850s). They anchored near easy-to-use landings, then ordered crews ashore to find wood, chopping enough trees to re-fire the steam engines, going further uphill to cut, as downhill woodsides were depleted. The chopping, done repeatedly, for decades, "de-nuded" both bluff tops and hill sides. (An early geographer describing the causes and effects of de-nuding in Britain and Italy was George Perkins Marsh? "De-nuding" means taking too many trees, too fast, no opportunity for natural re-growth, without re-planting. What's left looks bare, or nude. With tree roots previously holding the soil in place in big rains gone, so soils once held by tree roots began to wash away.)
Others ignore how the problem began, with wood-chopping steamboat crews on land over sandstone, not stronger limestone or shale. They focus on how it ended, early farmers rushing to put crops and sheep on the bluff tops in a careless manner. Not only were the trees gone, but, now, any also long-rooted grasses that had held soil tightly in place between groves of trees.
Either way, once enough soil was gone, a layer of sandstone formerly underneath the now exposed soil also became exposed, chunks collapsed, crumbled into sand, the washed sand covering good soil downhill.
Old photos of a site by officials of the Whitewater Watershed show barns and cars inundated by washed soil that moved massively downhill. Banks of grassed-over soil that once held back the streams were at photo time said to be over- flooded 20 times a year. Some cemeteries were inundated.
The places made extinct are remembered as Beaver, Whitewater Falls, and Crystal Springs. Two others, Weaver and Minneiska, were hurt, but survived.
This writer remembers riding a school bus, going past very old wooden signs remaining in the late 1960s, each pointing the way to some hamlet, seeing "Crystal Springs", wondering "What place was that?". On the other side of US Hwy 14, south, the hamlets names were recognized, Fremont, Troy, Clyde, Saratoga, all still had buildings-- a brick corner store here, a dance hall there, a town hall or two and a small church still standing. North of Hwy 14, Crystal Springs had only its sign. My father spoke of Beaver, but our school bus did not go that far.
Some families with threatened graves would have had time and means to move them. Maybe that accounts for why William Jacobs' grave is not (any longer?) at Minneiska, where he died. (Again, his mother's is now in Lewiston, stone too modern to be the original.)
Redeeming the land?
A lot of the ruined land was put to new use by creating the Memorial Hardwood Forest, letting trees grow back. Looking at it on a map will give an idea of where ruined cemeteries had been.
A Richard Doer had a lot to do with the forest's creation. A geography classmate was writing a paper on him in the early 1970s. We went to visit him at his house. My observant father had earlier taken us children on drives though the forest in the 1960s, pointed out gullies where trees were growing back. We did not know it had a name, that a forest was being was newly created, that a modest and humble Richard Doer was the moral force behind it. We went to see the fishery, without knowing the place for hatching "new baby trout" used to be called Crystal Springs. Elderly Mr Doer thought I'd know more, but nothing had been in the papers.
Kids riding that end of the St Charles school bus route did not yet have anything to say. They would do "show and tell" later, hence the photos at the watershed website.
Some of the forest is in public ownership. The vast majority is private, governed by "easements", signed by families promising in perpetuity to let natural things grow, camping and fishing and hunting still possible, where allowed.
One cemetery largely abandoned as people left the eroding sites was thought to be this Whitewater Falls Cemetery. Findagrave member Tom Mauer photographed this stone. He could make out "Jacobs", nothing more.
THE FOLLOWING MAY SOON BE MOVED OFFPAGE:
OTHER CHILDREN OF CLAUS and MARIE. Claus and Marie had more children seen with them in censuses, the 1880 US, the 1895 State, and with Clause deceased, Marie in her 1900 US:
1880 FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT3-RHG
Maria, Martha, Emma* ages 12,6,3
Address Lewiston, occupation of Claus: farmer
1895 FamilySearch.org//ark:/61903/1:1:MPRR-MHJ
Emma*, Ella, Walter ages 18*,7,3
(*Emma in both Censuses)
Claus rated as an invalid.
The census-taker of 1895 did not write that the rest were working on the farm. However, that would be how they paid their bills and fed themselves. If the living was poor, the temptation of the adult children to move away for better work would be high.
Thus, son John Simon Jacobs went to Winona. Son Walter stayed for his WW I registration, helping a Radatz/Radaatz family with their farming, before he was off to Milwaukee.
By her 1900 US Census, their widowed mother was residing in Utica Twp., so just outside Lewiston, William now listed.. She reported having had 12 children, only 9 still living, some names given above. Three would match birth records, 1873-1882., with child unnamed, often done if the child died prematurely.
Four still at home in 1900 were William, Delia, Ella and Walter. A granddaughter Violet, age 9, was visiting. The widowed mother gave her immigration year as 1857. She married Claus here, so would have immigrated with parents or siblings.
Delia died in 1903 as Adelia E. J. Jacobs, middle initials standing for Eliza Josephine, death address Lewiston.
William Christian Jacobs died in 1926, in Minneiska, in Wabasha County.
STONES' AGES AS CLUES.
(1) The married daughter who stayed local, called Anna Romanesko would have had the newest of their family's stones in the county, outside John's in Winona proper.
Her stone's style and mother Mary's are similar, though their death dates are 30 years apart. That suggests Mary's was replaced by Anna's family when Anna was buried.
(2) Claus's wife, Marie/Mary Jacobs, maiden name Zander or Sander. Mother of the above children, she has a modern stone with an old date, 1916, so it's clearly a replacement.
Her stone says "wife of Claus". It does not say he is buried with her. No need for a replacement stone for him in 1946 if...?
(3) The missing stones of Claus and Delia would have been about 20-25 years older than William's. Marie's death preceded William's. Yet, William's theoretically younger stone was highly worn, seen here, confirming hers was replaced: William Christian Jacobs.
If his was that worn, any of Claus and Delia would have been far worse. His is readable now, theirs readable then, but not now, not readable at all, not receiving a re-carving while letters were still visible.
=====Material above revised by JB, July, 2021, and June, 2023==================
More on Elba Set. At Elba, from 1875 to 1896, maybe earlier, the third set would have been west of Crystal Springs, whereas Lewiston postal addresses of the second set were east. From a contributor, quoting Carol Thompson 48022670 message of May 3 2023:
" Sabathial Van Rensselaer Jacobs, (the eldest son of Aaron C. and Lucy [Trask] Jacobs who lived in Pierpont Township, Ashtabula County, Ohio for many years), settled in Elba Township, Winona County, Minnesota as early as (possibly earlier) 1875, with his first wife, Marsha Lyde [Nash] Jacobs. Mr. Jacobs and Marsha were married in Pierpont Township on 7 February 1858. After Marsha died in Winona County on 21 September 1888, Sabathial married the widow Harriet [nee Burnham] (Nichols) in Elba on 30 October 1890. She and her first husband had been residents of Elba. The 1895 Minnesota Census shows Marsha's nephew, Dennis Graves, residing with Sabathial and Harriet, attending school. The 1870 Census shows Philander Jacobs living in Elba also, however he and his family returned to Ohio where Philander died in 1908. The only land record found for the family in Winona County was land owned by Marsha, and that was not probated until 1907! Sabathiel and Marsha had no children who grew to adulthood. Sabathiel died in Elba on 13 December 1896. Harriet, his second wife, died of consumption in Elba on 15 February 1902. Although the cemetery records for the Whitewater Cemetery have long since disappeared, it would be more apt that Sabathiel and Marsha were the Jacobs who are buried in the Whitewater Cemetery than some other Jacobs family. Marsha's parents and two married sisters and their husbands are also buried in the Whitewater Cemetery also. No stones have been found for them, however other records have proved that to be where they were buried. "
COMMENTS,
1) Marriage town of Pierpont was in Ashtabula County, so on Lake Erie, well west of Oberlin and Cleveland. That county was "on the way" to Toledo and Detroit, then, via Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, WI, then through Madison's Dane County. to Lacrosse WI, then across the Miss. R. to Winona . Proving the popularity of obelisks in Ohio was widespread, the Rockefeller family erected one for their family at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, the beautiful and walkable.
2) Mr Jacobs (d.1896) and first wife (d.1888) had death records back then, but no recognizable stone now. Her parents, surnamed Nash, mother Chloe, and the sisters of Mrs. Jacobs have Findagrave pages, death dates 1863-1895. The two sisters, surnames Graves and Nichols, were thus gone by Mr. Jacobs' 1896 death.
The two sisters have stones, not the Nash parents. The parents might be elsewhere, given in-law Philander Jacobs returned to Ohio. Nash-connected families remaining in Winona County with their readable stones went into the 1930s and the 1950s:
In-law Graves surname 1882-1935
In-law Nichols surname 1912-1954
3) "Consumption" , aka TB/Tuberculosis, is now curable. Back then, it could take decades to kill new victims, often spread by contagion among many who lived/worked in crowded surroundings, the ill coughing on the well before "sanatoriums" in sunny locations offered hope of survival until cure was found, and also quarantining, to let healthy loved ones stay safe.
If someone was the last to die in an infected family , they might have no stone. Not only was the family purse depleted, but no one was left to raise money. The grave might be left unmarked, at best, on a "paupers list" .
Mothers could also give TB to their young, a doctor telling me that the death rate among infants in TB families was very high. One ray of hope, pre-antibiotics, someone who had the bacterium might not be infectious, their bacterium inactive, a test able to detect that widespread by 1909. With no way of knowing when or if they might turn active, positive testers might not marry. Or, they might marry only other positive testers, the couple then careful to to stay isolated, any earlier young given to negative testers among the relatives for rearing.
Most sources at FamilySearch.org. Other key sources have these sddresses:
Covering Winona County through 1897, Bunnell, Archive.org/stream/cu31924028913353/cu31924028913353_djvu.txt
Covering Methodists and United Brethren in MN, through 2018, by Thelma Ballinger Boeder:
MinnesotaUMC.org/files/websites/www/Planting+UM+roots+in+MN.pdf
Soil Map , showing Townships with surviving towns, colors green and white to separate valleys from hilltops:
Co.Winona.MN.us/DocumentCenter/View/1601/Land-Capability-Soils-PDF?bidId=m
NOTE: Whitewater Twp. is "highly dissected", while most of Utica Township is relatively flat. Yet, contour plowing and pasture grass terraces are used anyway, to reduce soil loss and erosion, with earthen berms in modern times around sinkholes to stop agricultural runoff from contaminating groundwater
By JBrown: This Jacobs stone is an old "obelisk"style, taller than ordinary stones nearby. Each of an obelisk's multiple sides would hold multiple names, so more than one Jacobs here. A space-saver, the obelisk was popular 1850-1890, when people still had large families, or thought they might.
Lettering is now illegible. Yet, we can narrow who might be listed. Which Jacobs locally had death records, yet, no stone obvious elsewhere? especially with an 1850-1890 timing (the obelisk's heyday).
A rare surname, very few families called Jacobs/Jacob were in Winona County for the 1880 US Census. Candidates were VanRensselaer Jacobs and first wife Marcia/Marsha, not local to Whitewater Twp., but instead in Elba. Her married sisters were buried with stones standing in the obelisk's cemetery. Not ruled out would be a different man, Claus D Jacobs and daughter Adelia, also not specifically in Whitewater Twp.. They had Utica neighbors who are buried in Whitewater Twp., at Hoosier Ridge. Claus' son (William) died very close-by, at Minnieska, up at the county line with Wabasha.
Given the stone no longer cites any one individually, given no old record says who used to be named there, it serves as a group cenotaph for area Jacobs?
Old-time maps and records showed the following places with the Whitewater name: First, the winding Whitewater River, its cold water turning white at rough spots, with enough force downstream, to run water-powered mills. These mills were nearby, where streams joined together to make a larger flow, with rapids, first Elba, then Beaver. Second with the name is Whitewater Township, in the far northwest corner of Winona County, almost in Wabasha County, crossed by the Whitewater River after it left Elba Twp. Third, a Post Office town that's now extinct. It was called Whitewater Falls (WW Falls), downstream of Elba, upstream of another now extinct place, Beaver. Fourth, this cemetery, long abandoned, inside what used to be WW Falls, this obelisk a remnant.
WW Township actually holds two "ghost-town cemeteries". Earlier to turn extinct was Beaver, that place with a long-closed post office and its own cemetery located maybe three miles away, following the WW River downstream, so northwest of WW Falls.
Winona County's seat was and is at the city of Winona, some distance southward teh extinct places. It lays right on the Miss. R., below the bluffs, on a spit built of sawdust. Beginning with a lumber mill, it became a busy steamboat and barge town. Its count of millionaires was said to be high, steamboats and the lumber business making money early, before most settlers arrived. More modest circumstances were seen, later, up hill, further away, amidst farmers and lumber people and millers instead locating on the tributary rivers, not down on the main river.
The earlier Metis and French and native populations had traveled the streams. Early names included Grignon and Chief Wapashaw. After their era, the order of settlers was this: The federal land office was open for the first land claims mid-1850s. New Englanders came then, plus New Yorkers bringing town names like Rochester and Utica. The Germanics came later, 1870s, 1880s, buying from the first set, from those either retiring or moving on, many worn out by wheat rust and other troubles. The Jacobs name was often of the second set, Germanic.
In 1870, the local US Census interviewer allowed the newly arrived Germanics to name, as birthplaces, the "little Germanies" they were "really from" (Baden? Stettin? Mecklenburg? Holstein? Or?). Later, for the 1880 US Census, changed international politics meant glorified "empires", many German-speakers were now "lumped together". "Prussia" (Prussian Empire) was the national identity chosen for many, not by themselves, never asked in elections by the latest unelected nobility, the regions affected along the North Sea and key rivers, varied nobilities fighting over them and conquering by force. Prussia included some Polish-speaking territory back then. If not from Prussia, other Germanic speakers in that northish end of Winona County tended to come from Luxembourg. (The merging of Prussia with Bavaria came later.)
The name of a key river "back home" was the Elbe, pronounced as Elba.
Somebody from the varied Germanies thought the scenery south of Whitewater Falls looked similar? So, the next town southward of Whitewater Falls became "Elba"?
As noted above, Beaver was the first of the two hamlets to go extinct, once its original reason for existing was lost. Its sawmill was placed at a joining of waters (where Beaver Creek, flowing eastish, joined the Whitewater River, which flowed northish. The merged waters crossed into Wabasha County, before emptying into the bigger Mississippi. The cold water of the Whitewater is still noted for trout fishing.)
Complimenting the one at Beaver, another sawmill was started at Elba, begun by New Englanders, the Todds, who also farmed.
Each township was to be divided, if possible, into 36 same-sized squares, each a square mile, any township itself, then, ideally, a 6x6 mile square. This is called a "rectangular survey system". Exceptions resulted mainly when un-square rivers and streams were boundaries. Before places were given names, surveyors measured and marked the townships, numbering the sections, 1 to 36 in the same serpentine order, top NE, to bottom SE. When locations were named, inside Whitewater Township, Beaver would get one square mile; Whitewater Falls, further south, would be allocated double that .
An old 1897 book, by a very early resident of Winona County named Bunnell, went township by township, describing the old-time towns, the section numbers and waterways of each. He wrote of a letter he'd requested from a Grignon descended of a La Bath, from the fur trader days, hoping to learn about the distant past. The reply? Not enough was remembered, too many papers taken elsewhere by other La Bath heirs. Mr. Bunnell, however, found enough material to cover very well later times, going township by township. These were created out of only six political precincts inside the County at the beginning,, multiple townships then created from each. The mother precinct for Whitewater Twp. was called Elba, so the name was early.
By his book's writing (1897), he noted Beaver was, already, mainly of the past, little left inside. Bunnell's "History of Winona County" said the Whitewater River flowed mainly north, a bit east, across Whitewater Twp., mainly stuck to one side, entering at the southeast end (Section 35), leaving at the far northeast corner (Section 1). Whitewater Falls was allocated two sections (just north of Section 35) . He believed they were 23 and 24 . (The easternmost one, 24, bordered modern Mt. Vernon Twp, with Norton Twp. below it, home to the farm-and-church town of Altura.) .
The River meandered some, meaning it wandered snake-like, not enough slope to rush anywhere if it wasn't flood time . Its wanders put Beaver, not directly north, but instead at Section 15, where Beaver Creek flowed into the Whitewater, he said, thus, focused on the best location for a water-powered sawmill. The two towns were maybe two to three miles apart at their closest corners, maybe five at their most distant corners. Together, the two towns occupied 3 square miles. (Beaver's single square, 15, thus, was located one section north and then two sections west of Whitewater Falls' Section 23. )
Describing the hamlet of Elba, he said "Elba village is situated on sections 9 and 10, at the Junction of the three branches of the Whitewater there".
Elba survived. Beaver and WW Falls did not. It helped to have three branches meet? The cemetery of Elba's mill-founding Todds was called Fairwater. One of the Todds would be, not just a neighbor, but also the interviewer of the Ohio-born Mr. Jacobs for the 1880 US Census. Two of the Todds' farms were on the same road?.
Note that farms were inside each village or hamlet, not just outside.
People nearby (six to 12 miles away from WW. Falls?) could have a town's post office as their address, or attend church there, or have a burial there, without living right in the town. However, when the towns de-populated, the neighboring farms might do so, too, especially along the lower Whitewater River. Those leaving were tired of flooding, appalled when huge banks of sand ultimately appeared where crops and roads used to be.
If wanting to stay near, those leaving could go to surviving places. One direction, north into Wabasha County, and then west to Plainview, was seen in an obituary for a descendant of Marcia/Marsha's sister, who'd married a Graves .
A different direction? In Winona County, they could go south to Elba, further south to St. Charles. They could also go east to Altura, if beyond that, then southeast to Lewiston, northeast to Minneiska.
Some of these still "safety places" might have flooding issues, as well, but were not as destroyed by the "outwash". Picture collapsing sandstone sliding down from bluff tops, not a few bushel baskets, but tons.
Before leaving? The dead still had to be buried. Later, some graves might be moved elsewhere, if people had the means. Otherwise, no one was there to pick up a fallen stone, to re-carve a worn one, or to dig out one buried in deep mud.
At Beaver, the wood produced by the sawmill most likely had been used to make buildings for the new settlers. Once the buildings were done, the mill could be used to grind grain. If something deadly, such as wheat rust, came through and made wheat ungrowable, permanently, or if the soil washed away, with the same result, then there was nothing to grind.
If there was nothing to grind, the mill was not needed. Any church might remain as long as a minister could come, but then would close later. Eventually, Beaver was not needed for church or mill or mail.
A final nail in the coffin? Railroads replaced steamboats, could take people to more new places, alongside routes less married to rivers, with less flooding. Instead of moving a town or county away, some would try the Dakotas or the Pacific coast.
First Sets Several families called Jacobs in the 1880 US Census in Winona County have graves found. One set lived right in Whitewater Twp., the family of Herman Jacob/Jacobs, from the Pomerania region of Prussia. Their daughter Caroline married a Nash. Their way of leaving, Herman and wife Caroline retired by 1930 to Plainview in Wabasha County. They would be buried in 1938 at Whitewater Township's Hoosier Ridge Cem. A more distant set of Jacobs were found in Nodine's Lutheran cemetery. Probably Lutheran, in that era they would all be German speakers, able to learn some English gradually if working outside the home or while at school, not true for the older women and others instead working at home. They might take an English speaking child with them in order to go shopping?
Second and Third Sets Two more sets to consider? the families of Claus D. Jacobs, also German-speaking, and Sabathial/Salathial V. Jacobs, who had New York Dutchness embedded in his middle name. He was multi-lingual? The Dutch language is considered Germanic. His mother, a New Englander, had her Boston-influenced twang. His wife was born a Nash, her parents both New Englanders.
By the end of that Mr. Jacob's life, he'd switched to using his middle name, Van Rensselaer. (He was suggested in May 2023 by user Carol Thompson, as maybe a better candidate for the stone than Claus.)
No easily found records show either Mr. Jacobs in Whitewater Township. One Mr. Jacobs' family was at least six miles away, in Elba, the other maybe ten-to-twelve miles away in Utica/Lewiston. Looking for a church nearby as a reason for either family to use this cemetery, the religion of German-speaking Claus is unclear. In-laws named Zander, related to Claus' wife, the former Marie Zander, when not buried in a public cemetery, are buried at St. John's Evangelical Lutheran church, in Utica Twp. On the other hand, Claus' son William died in another flooded place nearby, Minnieska. William and maybe his mother appear to have had burial sites moved to safety, to Lewiston (to be by William's sister? Check the stone of Marie Zander Jacobs, newish-looking, so it's a replacement for a too-damaged one? She was was said to be the wife of C.D. Jacobs.
No need would be seen to move his stone, if it still stood and was still readable in the 1940s? A lot of erosion happened in the several lifetimes since the death date of Claus D. There were other Germanic churches nearer to WW Falls,, the tinier one of the Timms, who lived down by Utica, yet are buried northward
The religion of Van Rensselaer Jacobs? He was not Lutheran or Moravian. His father was United Brethren. Their church was Methodist-connected, the United Brethren to merge in the 1960s with what had been the Methodist Episcopal, their union to become United Methodist. Locally , the Methodists had a church up in Beaver, a congregation formed in 1858, a building up in 1868. It's presumed to have struggled by the time the Beaver Post Office closed in 1906, but continued in varied forms, implied as church services were still held for the State Park at Whitewater in 1945. Then in 1946, it was sold by the larger church's "Abandoned Property Committee"
IN UTICA. For Claus Dietrich Jacobs, his 1870 Census (viewable at FamilySearch.org) found him a wagon-maker living in Utica Twp., immediately south of Norton and Altura, so southeast of Whitewater Falls. Utica did not yet have its own PO, the P.O named at top left was St Charles. Their Census interviewer of 1870 wrote that Claus came from Holstein; his wife Nancy, from Mecklenburg. They were in their 20s then, one tiny child, born in MN. If in some other part of the US first, they weren't outside Minnesota for long. By 1880, they were farming and their family was larger, mostly girls.
AT ELBA. Salathial VanRenssaeler Jacobs and first wife Marcia/Marsha Nash were born and married in Ohio, before living in MN, at Elba. He was remarried, called S. V. R. Jacobs at his death, on Dec 13, 1896. He used the Salathial spelling several times in his birth state, married as that, a mis-spell or mis-reading causing Talathiel once. That was in 1850, while at his father's Ohio house, when he was listed as a "lumberman". He was named last in the house, as if he were boarding, not always at home. His father, Aaron Jacobs, stated that he was a Rev. of the United Brethren.
Coming with the family of brother Philander, to Minnesota, they brought their two Ohio-born Jacobs families to Elba Township, locating in 1870 and 1880 near the farms of the Todds (miller-farmers). They were thus immediately south of Whitewater Township, with the town of Elba midway inside Elba Township's top tier of sections. (The Todds' mills were further west, four miles west, to be precise, then two or three miles south of WW. Falls, so 6-7 miles away total, if checking the closest corners of section squares. in Section 6, then 7 )
The closest local mention of United Brethren was for one of the sons of neighbor Dexter Todd. That son was training to be a minister after the 1890 death of his father.
LIST OF DEATHS. Again, we looked for deaths known to have occurred locally, yet with no recognizable stone remaining at this date.
If the Jacobs obelisk at WW. Falls belonged to Claus, it was maybe still readable when his wife's stone was re-done and his son's and wife's stones put in/moved to Lewiston's town cemetery, near the newer burial of a later-dying daughter.
Claus D. Jacobs, was known to have died in Winona County, his address Lewiston, on May 1, in 1900. Note that Lewiston P.O. addresses extended well outside the town. He had been ill as of his last Census, the state one in 1895, unable to do his usual farming, five years to pass before his death. His stone is missing from Winona County burials.
The same is true of his daughter, Delia/Adelia, seen with him in the 1895 Minn. State Census record. She died in 1903, also with a Lewiston address. Was her name another that rain and snow eroded off of the obelisk?
Looking at swath of dates, events begin with, first, the "pioneers" arriving and wanting mail, then depopulation, as water-threatened land gradually caused homes and cemeteries to be sold to "new people", with a second abandonment, as even the new people saw no point in staying ("love of place", because they loved the people once inside, no longer enough):
1857 OPTIMISM decades, opening of P.O. at Beaver. NE of Elba, NW of Lewiston.
1860 Census, the Todds' farms in Elba cited as assigned Whitewater Falls PO, to their north,
1870 Census, the Todd farms in Elba reassigned to the St Charles PO, to the south.
Deaths of record, no stone still bearing their names:
1888 (Marcia/Marsha Jacobs, of Elba, wife of Salathial/Sabathial VanRensselaer Jacobs)
1896 (Salathial/Sabathial Jacobs , of Elba. NOTE: 1) The similar-seeming "Sabathiel", with a B, is a Germanic surname found, for example, in old Prussia. 2) Fitting the son of a Reverend, "Salathial", with an L, was biblical. A Greek translation of a Hebrew ruler's name, the father of Zerubabel, who emerged after the Hebrews' Babylon captivity, to re-build the Jewish temple. The name Zerubabel was used early in the colonies, by a Puritan family named Hoyt, who left early Mass. for what became Windsor, Conn., their Rev. called Warham.)
1900 (Claus Dietrich/Diedrick Jacobs),
1903 (Adelia Jacobs, daughter of Claus).
1906 PESSIMISM wins, closing of Beaver P.O.
Later deaths in family of Claus
1916 (wife Marie Zander, d. Lewiston, stone found but not old enough style, remade),
1926 (son William, d. Minneiska, old stone moved to Lewiston?),
1947 (daughter Anna Romanesko, d. Wabasha County), modern stone style similar to Marie's, Lewiston picked for burial),
1952 (son John Simon, d. city of Winona, modern stone, cemetery where he died)
LAND RUINED AND REDEEMED--PATTERNS. The areas at the downstream end of the Whitewater River, where Winona and Wabasha Counties border each other, had, many decades ago, severe flooding and erosion problems. Hamlets affected were not just Beaver and WW. Falls, but Crystal Springs and Minneiska, the last the only one existing today.
Some think the causes first appeared with steamboats coming up the Mississippi R. very early (1820s-1840s), well before settlers came (1850s). They anchored near easy-to-use landings, then ordered crews ashore to find wood, chopping enough trees to re-fire the steam engines, going further uphill to cut, as downhill woodsides were depleted. The chopping, done repeatedly, for decades, "de-nuded" both bluff tops and hill sides. (An early geographer describing the causes and effects of de-nuding in Britain and Italy was George Perkins Marsh? "De-nuding" means taking too many trees, too fast, no opportunity for natural re-growth, without re-planting. What's left looks bare, or nude. With tree roots previously holding the soil in place in big rains gone, so soils once held by tree roots began to wash away.)
Others ignore how the problem began, with wood-chopping steamboat crews on land over sandstone, not stronger limestone or shale. They focus on how it ended, early farmers rushing to put crops and sheep on the bluff tops in a careless manner. Not only were the trees gone, but, now, any also long-rooted grasses that had held soil tightly in place between groves of trees.
Either way, once enough soil was gone, a layer of sandstone formerly underneath the now exposed soil also became exposed, chunks collapsed, crumbled into sand, the washed sand covering good soil downhill.
Old photos of a site by officials of the Whitewater Watershed show barns and cars inundated by washed soil that moved massively downhill. Banks of grassed-over soil that once held back the streams were at photo time said to be over- flooded 20 times a year. Some cemeteries were inundated.
The places made extinct are remembered as Beaver, Whitewater Falls, and Crystal Springs. Two others, Weaver and Minneiska, were hurt, but survived.
This writer remembers riding a school bus, going past very old wooden signs remaining in the late 1960s, each pointing the way to some hamlet, seeing "Crystal Springs", wondering "What place was that?". On the other side of US Hwy 14, south, the hamlets names were recognized, Fremont, Troy, Clyde, Saratoga, all still had buildings-- a brick corner store here, a dance hall there, a town hall or two and a small church still standing. North of Hwy 14, Crystal Springs had only its sign. My father spoke of Beaver, but our school bus did not go that far.
Some families with threatened graves would have had time and means to move them. Maybe that accounts for why William Jacobs' grave is not (any longer?) at Minneiska, where he died. (Again, his mother's is now in Lewiston, stone too modern to be the original.)
Redeeming the land?
A lot of the ruined land was put to new use by creating the Memorial Hardwood Forest, letting trees grow back. Looking at it on a map will give an idea of where ruined cemeteries had been.
A Richard Doer had a lot to do with the forest's creation. A geography classmate was writing a paper on him in the early 1970s. We went to visit him at his house. My observant father had earlier taken us children on drives though the forest in the 1960s, pointed out gullies where trees were growing back. We did not know it had a name, that a forest was being was newly created, that a modest and humble Richard Doer was the moral force behind it. We went to see the fishery, without knowing the place for hatching "new baby trout" used to be called Crystal Springs. Elderly Mr Doer thought I'd know more, but nothing had been in the papers.
Kids riding that end of the St Charles school bus route did not yet have anything to say. They would do "show and tell" later, hence the photos at the watershed website.
Some of the forest is in public ownership. The vast majority is private, governed by "easements", signed by families promising in perpetuity to let natural things grow, camping and fishing and hunting still possible, where allowed.
One cemetery largely abandoned as people left the eroding sites was thought to be this Whitewater Falls Cemetery. Findagrave member Tom Mauer photographed this stone. He could make out "Jacobs", nothing more.
THE FOLLOWING MAY SOON BE MOVED OFFPAGE:
OTHER CHILDREN OF CLAUS and MARIE. Claus and Marie had more children seen with them in censuses, the 1880 US, the 1895 State, and with Clause deceased, Marie in her 1900 US:
1880 FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT3-RHG
Maria, Martha, Emma* ages 12,6,3
Address Lewiston, occupation of Claus: farmer
1895 FamilySearch.org//ark:/61903/1:1:MPRR-MHJ
Emma*, Ella, Walter ages 18*,7,3
(*Emma in both Censuses)
Claus rated as an invalid.
The census-taker of 1895 did not write that the rest were working on the farm. However, that would be how they paid their bills and fed themselves. If the living was poor, the temptation of the adult children to move away for better work would be high.
Thus, son John Simon Jacobs went to Winona. Son Walter stayed for his WW I registration, helping a Radatz/Radaatz family with their farming, before he was off to Milwaukee.
By her 1900 US Census, their widowed mother was residing in Utica Twp., so just outside Lewiston, William now listed.. She reported having had 12 children, only 9 still living, some names given above. Three would match birth records, 1873-1882., with child unnamed, often done if the child died prematurely.
Four still at home in 1900 were William, Delia, Ella and Walter. A granddaughter Violet, age 9, was visiting. The widowed mother gave her immigration year as 1857. She married Claus here, so would have immigrated with parents or siblings.
Delia died in 1903 as Adelia E. J. Jacobs, middle initials standing for Eliza Josephine, death address Lewiston.
William Christian Jacobs died in 1926, in Minneiska, in Wabasha County.
STONES' AGES AS CLUES.
(1) The married daughter who stayed local, called Anna Romanesko would have had the newest of their family's stones in the county, outside John's in Winona proper.
Her stone's style and mother Mary's are similar, though their death dates are 30 years apart. That suggests Mary's was replaced by Anna's family when Anna was buried.
(2) Claus's wife, Marie/Mary Jacobs, maiden name Zander or Sander. Mother of the above children, she has a modern stone with an old date, 1916, so it's clearly a replacement.
Her stone says "wife of Claus". It does not say he is buried with her. No need for a replacement stone for him in 1946 if...?
(3) The missing stones of Claus and Delia would have been about 20-25 years older than William's. Marie's death preceded William's. Yet, William's theoretically younger stone was highly worn, seen here, confirming hers was replaced: William Christian Jacobs.
If his was that worn, any of Claus and Delia would have been far worse. His is readable now, theirs readable then, but not now, not readable at all, not receiving a re-carving while letters were still visible.
=====Material above revised by JB, July, 2021, and June, 2023==================
More on Elba Set. At Elba, from 1875 to 1896, maybe earlier, the third set would have been west of Crystal Springs, whereas Lewiston postal addresses of the second set were east. From a contributor, quoting Carol Thompson 48022670 message of May 3 2023:
" Sabathial Van Rensselaer Jacobs, (the eldest son of Aaron C. and Lucy [Trask] Jacobs who lived in Pierpont Township, Ashtabula County, Ohio for many years), settled in Elba Township, Winona County, Minnesota as early as (possibly earlier) 1875, with his first wife, Marsha Lyde [Nash] Jacobs. Mr. Jacobs and Marsha were married in Pierpont Township on 7 February 1858. After Marsha died in Winona County on 21 September 1888, Sabathial married the widow Harriet [nee Burnham] (Nichols) in Elba on 30 October 1890. She and her first husband had been residents of Elba. The 1895 Minnesota Census shows Marsha's nephew, Dennis Graves, residing with Sabathial and Harriet, attending school. The 1870 Census shows Philander Jacobs living in Elba also, however he and his family returned to Ohio where Philander died in 1908. The only land record found for the family in Winona County was land owned by Marsha, and that was not probated until 1907! Sabathiel and Marsha had no children who grew to adulthood. Sabathiel died in Elba on 13 December 1896. Harriet, his second wife, died of consumption in Elba on 15 February 1902. Although the cemetery records for the Whitewater Cemetery have long since disappeared, it would be more apt that Sabathiel and Marsha were the Jacobs who are buried in the Whitewater Cemetery than some other Jacobs family. Marsha's parents and two married sisters and their husbands are also buried in the Whitewater Cemetery also. No stones have been found for them, however other records have proved that to be where they were buried. "
COMMENTS,
1) Marriage town of Pierpont was in Ashtabula County, so on Lake Erie, well west of Oberlin and Cleveland. That county was "on the way" to Toledo and Detroit, then, via Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, WI, then through Madison's Dane County. to Lacrosse WI, then across the Miss. R. to Winona . Proving the popularity of obelisks in Ohio was widespread, the Rockefeller family erected one for their family at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, the beautiful and walkable.
2) Mr Jacobs (d.1896) and first wife (d.1888) had death records back then, but no recognizable stone now. Her parents, surnamed Nash, mother Chloe, and the sisters of Mrs. Jacobs have Findagrave pages, death dates 1863-1895. The two sisters, surnames Graves and Nichols, were thus gone by Mr. Jacobs' 1896 death.
The two sisters have stones, not the Nash parents. The parents might be elsewhere, given in-law Philander Jacobs returned to Ohio. Nash-connected families remaining in Winona County with their readable stones went into the 1930s and the 1950s:
In-law Graves surname 1882-1935
In-law Nichols surname 1912-1954
3) "Consumption" , aka TB/Tuberculosis, is now curable. Back then, it could take decades to kill new victims, often spread by contagion among many who lived/worked in crowded surroundings, the ill coughing on the well before "sanatoriums" in sunny locations offered hope of survival until cure was found, and also quarantining, to let healthy loved ones stay safe.
If someone was the last to die in an infected family , they might have no stone. Not only was the family purse depleted, but no one was left to raise money. The grave might be left unmarked, at best, on a "paupers list" .
Mothers could also give TB to their young, a doctor telling me that the death rate among infants in TB families was very high. One ray of hope, pre-antibiotics, someone who had the bacterium might not be infectious, their bacterium inactive, a test able to detect that widespread by 1909. With no way of knowing when or if they might turn active, positive testers might not marry. Or, they might marry only other positive testers, the couple then careful to to stay isolated, any earlier young given to negative testers among the relatives for rearing.
Most sources at FamilySearch.org. Other key sources have these sddresses:
Covering Winona County through 1897, Bunnell, Archive.org/stream/cu31924028913353/cu31924028913353_djvu.txt
Covering Methodists and United Brethren in MN, through 2018, by Thelma Ballinger Boeder:
MinnesotaUMC.org/files/websites/www/Planting+UM+roots+in+MN.pdf
Soil Map , showing Townships with surviving towns, colors green and white to separate valleys from hilltops:
Co.Winona.MN.us/DocumentCenter/View/1601/Land-Capability-Soils-PDF?bidId=m
NOTE: Whitewater Twp. is "highly dissected", while most of Utica Township is relatively flat. Yet, contour plowing and pasture grass terraces are used anyway, to reduce soil loss and erosion, with earthen berms in modern times around sinkholes to stop agricultural runoff from contaminating groundwater
By Larry: Too weathered to read.
By JBrown: This Jacobs stone is an old "obelisk"style, taller than ordinary stones nearby. Each of an obelisk's multiple sides would hold multiple names, so more than one Jacobs here. A space-saver, the obelisk was popular 1850-1890, when people still had large families, or thought they might.
Lettering is now illegible. Yet, we can narrow who might be listed. Which Jacobs locally had death records, yet, no stone obvious elsewhere? especially with an 1850-1890 timing (the obelisk's heyday).
A rare surname, very few families called Jacobs/Jacob were in Winona County for the 1880 US Census. Candidates were VanRensselaer Jacobs and first wife Marcia/Marsha, not local to Whitewater Twp., but instead in Elba. Her married sisters were buried with stones standing in the obelisk's cemetery. Not ruled out would be a different man, Claus D Jacobs and daughter Adelia, also not specifically in Whitewater Twp.. They had Utica neighbors who are buried in Whitewater Twp., at Hoosier Ridge. Claus' son (William) died very close-by, at Minnieska, up at the county line with Wabasha.
Given the stone no longer cites any one individually, given no old record says who used to be named there, it serves as a group cenotaph for area Jacobs?
Old-time maps and records showed the following places with the Whitewater name: First, the winding Whitewater River, its cold water turning white at rough spots, with enough force downstream, to run water-powered mills. These mills were nearby, where streams joined together to make a larger flow, with rapids, first Elba, then Beaver. Second with the name is Whitewater Township, in the far northwest corner of Winona County, almost in Wabasha County, crossed by the Whitewater River after it left Elba Twp. Third, a Post Office town that's now extinct. It was called Whitewater Falls (WW Falls), downstream of Elba, upstream of another now extinct place, Beaver. Fourth, this cemetery, long abandoned, inside what used to be WW Falls, this obelisk a remnant.
WW Township actually holds two "ghost-town cemeteries". Earlier to turn extinct was Beaver, that place with a long-closed post office and its own cemetery located maybe three miles away, following the WW River downstream, so northwest of WW Falls.
Winona County's seat was and is at the city of Winona, some distance southward teh extinct places. It lays right on the Miss. R., below the bluffs, on a spit built of sawdust. Beginning with a lumber mill, it became a busy steamboat and barge town. Its count of millionaires was said to be high, steamboats and the lumber business making money early, before most settlers arrived. More modest circumstances were seen, later, up hill, further away, amidst farmers and lumber people and millers instead locating on the tributary rivers, not down on the main river.
The earlier Metis and French and native populations had traveled the streams. Early names included Grignon and Chief Wapashaw. After their era, the order of settlers was this: The federal land office was open for the first land claims mid-1850s. New Englanders came then, plus New Yorkers bringing town names like Rochester and Utica. The Germanics came later, 1870s, 1880s, buying from the first set, from those either retiring or moving on, many worn out by wheat rust and other troubles. The Jacobs name was often of the second set, Germanic.
In 1870, the local US Census interviewer allowed the newly arrived Germanics to name, as birthplaces, the "little Germanies" they were "really from" (Baden? Stettin? Mecklenburg? Holstein? Or?). Later, for the 1880 US Census, changed international politics meant glorified "empires", many German-speakers were now "lumped together". "Prussia" (Prussian Empire) was the national identity chosen for many, not by themselves, never asked in elections by the latest unelected nobility, the regions affected along the North Sea and key rivers, varied nobilities fighting over them and conquering by force. Prussia included some Polish-speaking territory back then. If not from Prussia, other Germanic speakers in that northish end of Winona County tended to come from Luxembourg. (The merging of Prussia with Bavaria came later.)
The name of a key river "back home" was the Elbe, pronounced as Elba.
Somebody from the varied Germanies thought the scenery south of Whitewater Falls looked similar? So, the next town southward of Whitewater Falls became "Elba"?
As noted above, Beaver was the first of the two hamlets to go extinct, once its original reason for existing was lost. Its sawmill was placed at a joining of waters (where Beaver Creek, flowing eastish, joined the Whitewater River, which flowed northish. The merged waters crossed into Wabasha County, before emptying into the bigger Mississippi. The cold water of the Whitewater is still noted for trout fishing.)
Complimenting the one at Beaver, another sawmill was started at Elba, begun by New Englanders, the Todds, who also farmed.
Each township was to be divided, if possible, into 36 same-sized squares, each a square mile, any township itself, then, ideally, a 6x6 mile square. This is called a "rectangular survey system". Exceptions resulted mainly when un-square rivers and streams were boundaries. Before places were given names, surveyors measured and marked the townships, numbering the sections, 1 to 36 in the same serpentine order, top NE, to bottom SE. When locations were named, inside Whitewater Township, Beaver would get one square mile; Whitewater Falls, further south, would be allocated double that .
An old 1897 book, by a very early resident of Winona County named Bunnell, went township by township, describing the old-time towns, the section numbers and waterways of each. He wrote of a letter he'd requested from a Grignon descended of a La Bath, from the fur trader days, hoping to learn about the distant past. The reply? Not enough was remembered, too many papers taken elsewhere by other La Bath heirs. Mr. Bunnell, however, found enough material to cover very well later times, going township by township. These were created out of only six political precincts inside the County at the beginning,, multiple townships then created from each. The mother precinct for Whitewater Twp. was called Elba, so the name was early.
By his book's writing (1897), he noted Beaver was, already, mainly of the past, little left inside. Bunnell's "History of Winona County" said the Whitewater River flowed mainly north, a bit east, across Whitewater Twp., mainly stuck to one side, entering at the southeast end (Section 35), leaving at the far northeast corner (Section 1). Whitewater Falls was allocated two sections (just north of Section 35) . He believed they were 23 and 24 . (The easternmost one, 24, bordered modern Mt. Vernon Twp, with Norton Twp. below it, home to the farm-and-church town of Altura.) .
The River meandered some, meaning it wandered snake-like, not enough slope to rush anywhere if it wasn't flood time . Its wanders put Beaver, not directly north, but instead at Section 15, where Beaver Creek flowed into the Whitewater, he said, thus, focused on the best location for a water-powered sawmill. The two towns were maybe two to three miles apart at their closest corners, maybe five at their most distant corners. Together, the two towns occupied 3 square miles. (Beaver's single square, 15, thus, was located one section north and then two sections west of Whitewater Falls' Section 23. )
Describing the hamlet of Elba, he said "Elba village is situated on sections 9 and 10, at the Junction of the three branches of the Whitewater there".
Elba survived. Beaver and WW Falls did not. It helped to have three branches meet? The cemetery of Elba's mill-founding Todds was called Fairwater. One of the Todds would be, not just a neighbor, but also the interviewer of the Ohio-born Mr. Jacobs for the 1880 US Census. Two of the Todds' farms were on the same road?.
Note that farms were inside each village or hamlet, not just outside.
People nearby (six to 12 miles away from WW. Falls?) could have a town's post office as their address, or attend church there, or have a burial there, without living right in the town. However, when the towns de-populated, the neighboring farms might do so, too, especially along the lower Whitewater River. Those leaving were tired of flooding, appalled when huge banks of sand ultimately appeared where crops and roads used to be.
If wanting to stay near, those leaving could go to surviving places. One direction, north into Wabasha County, and then west to Plainview, was seen in an obituary for a descendant of Marcia/Marsha's sister, who'd married a Graves .
A different direction? In Winona County, they could go south to Elba, further south to St. Charles. They could also go east to Altura, if beyond that, then southeast to Lewiston, northeast to Minneiska.
Some of these still "safety places" might have flooding issues, as well, but were not as destroyed by the "outwash". Picture collapsing sandstone sliding down from bluff tops, not a few bushel baskets, but tons.
Before leaving? The dead still had to be buried. Later, some graves might be moved elsewhere, if people had the means. Otherwise, no one was there to pick up a fallen stone, to re-carve a worn one, or to dig out one buried in deep mud.
At Beaver, the wood produced by the sawmill most likely had been used to make buildings for the new settlers. Once the buildings were done, the mill could be used to grind grain. If something deadly, such as wheat rust, came through and made wheat ungrowable, permanently, or if the soil washed away, with the same result, then there was nothing to grind.
If there was nothing to grind, the mill was not needed. Any church might remain as long as a minister could come, but then would close later. Eventually, Beaver was not needed for church or mill or mail.
A final nail in the coffin? Railroads replaced steamboats, could take people to more new places, alongside routes less married to rivers, with less flooding. Instead of moving a town or county away, some would try the Dakotas or the Pacific coast.
First Sets Several families called Jacobs in the 1880 US Census in Winona County have graves found. One set lived right in Whitewater Twp., the family of Herman Jacob/Jacobs, from the Pomerania region of Prussia. Their daughter Caroline married a Nash. Their way of leaving, Herman and wife Caroline retired by 1930 to Plainview in Wabasha County. They would be buried in 1938 at Whitewater Township's Hoosier Ridge Cem. A more distant set of Jacobs were found in Nodine's Lutheran cemetery. Probably Lutheran, in that era they would all be German speakers, able to learn some English gradually if working outside the home or while at school, not true for the older women and others instead working at home. They might take an English speaking child with them in order to go shopping?
Second and Third Sets Two more sets to consider? the families of Claus D. Jacobs, also German-speaking, and Sabathial/Salathial V. Jacobs, who had New York Dutchness embedded in his middle name. He was multi-lingual? The Dutch language is considered Germanic. His mother, a New Englander, had her Boston-influenced twang. His wife was born a Nash, her parents both New Englanders.
By the end of that Mr. Jacob's life, he'd switched to using his middle name, Van Rensselaer. (He was suggested in May 2023 by user Carol Thompson, as maybe a better candidate for the stone than Claus.)
No easily found records show either Mr. Jacobs in Whitewater Township. One Mr. Jacobs' family was at least six miles away, in Elba, the other maybe ten-to-twelve miles away in Utica/Lewiston. Looking for a church nearby as a reason for either family to use this cemetery, the religion of German-speaking Claus is unclear. In-laws named Zander, related to Claus' wife, the former Marie Zander, when not buried in a public cemetery, are buried at St. John's Evangelical Lutheran church, in Utica Twp. On the other hand, Claus' son William died in another flooded place nearby, Minnieska. William and maybe his mother appear to have had burial sites moved to safety, to Lewiston (to be by William's sister? Check the stone of Marie Zander Jacobs, newish-looking, so it's a replacement for a too-damaged one? She was was said to be the wife of C.D. Jacobs.
No need would be seen to move his stone, if it still stood and was still readable in the 1940s? A lot of erosion happened in the several lifetimes since the death date of Claus D. There were other Germanic churches nearer to WW Falls,, the tinier one of the Timms, who lived down by Utica, yet are buried northward
The religion of Van Rensselaer Jacobs? He was not Lutheran or Moravian. His father was United Brethren. Their church was Methodist-connected, the United Brethren to merge in the 1960s with what had been the Methodist Episcopal, their union to become United Methodist. Locally , the Methodists had a church up in Beaver, a congregation formed in 1858, a building up in 1868. It's presumed to have struggled by the time the Beaver Post Office closed in 1906, but continued in varied forms, implied as church services were still held for the State Park at Whitewater in 1945. Then in 1946, it was sold by the larger church's "Abandoned Property Committee"
IN UTICA. For Claus Dietrich Jacobs, his 1870 Census (viewable at FamilySearch.org) found him a wagon-maker living in Utica Twp., immediately south of Norton and Altura, so southeast of Whitewater Falls. Utica did not yet have its own PO, the P.O named at top left was St Charles. Their Census interviewer of 1870 wrote that Claus came from Holstein; his wife Nancy, from Mecklenburg. They were in their 20s then, one tiny child, born in MN. If in some other part of the US first, they weren't outside Minnesota for long. By 1880, they were farming and their family was larger, mostly girls.
AT ELBA. Salathial VanRenssaeler Jacobs and first wife Marcia/Marsha Nash were born and married in Ohio, before living in MN, at Elba. He was remarried, called S. V. R. Jacobs at his death, on Dec 13, 1896. He used the Salathial spelling several times in his birth state, married as that, a mis-spell or mis-reading causing Talathiel once. That was in 1850, while at his father's Ohio house, when he was listed as a "lumberman". He was named last in the house, as if he were boarding, not always at home. His father, Aaron Jacobs, stated that he was a Rev. of the United Brethren.
Coming with the family of brother Philander, to Minnesota, they brought their two Ohio-born Jacobs families to Elba Township, locating in 1870 and 1880 near the farms of the Todds (miller-farmers). They were thus immediately south of Whitewater Township, with the town of Elba midway inside Elba Township's top tier of sections. (The Todds' mills were further west, four miles west, to be precise, then two or three miles south of WW. Falls, so 6-7 miles away total, if checking the closest corners of section squares. in Section 6, then 7 )
The closest local mention of United Brethren was for one of the sons of neighbor Dexter Todd. That son was training to be a minister after the 1890 death of his father.
LIST OF DEATHS. Again, we looked for deaths known to have occurred locally, yet with no recognizable stone remaining at this date.
If the Jacobs obelisk at WW. Falls belonged to Claus, it was maybe still readable when his wife's stone was re-done and his son's and wife's stones put in/moved to Lewiston's town cemetery, near the newer burial of a later-dying daughter.
Claus D. Jacobs, was known to have died in Winona County, his address Lewiston, on May 1, in 1900. Note that Lewiston P.O. addresses extended well outside the town. He had been ill as of his last Census, the state one in 1895, unable to do his usual farming, five years to pass before his death. His stone is missing from Winona County burials.
The same is true of his daughter, Delia/Adelia, seen with him in the 1895 Minn. State Census record. She died in 1903, also with a Lewiston address. Was her name another that rain and snow eroded off of the obelisk?
Looking at swath of dates, events begin with, first, the "pioneers" arriving and wanting mail, then depopulation, as water-threatened land gradually caused homes and cemeteries to be sold to "new people", with a second abandonment, as even the new people saw no point in staying ("love of place", because they loved the people once inside, no longer enough):
1857 OPTIMISM decades, opening of P.O. at Beaver. NE of Elba, NW of Lewiston.
1860 Census, the Todds' farms in Elba cited as assigned Whitewater Falls PO, to their north,
1870 Census, the Todd farms in Elba reassigned to the St Charles PO, to the south.
Deaths of record, no stone still bearing their names:
1888 (Marcia/Marsha Jacobs, of Elba, wife of Salathial/Sabathial VanRensselaer Jacobs)
1896 (Salathial/Sabathial Jacobs , of Elba. NOTE: 1) The similar-seeming "Sabathiel", with a B, is a Germanic surname found, for example, in old Prussia. 2) Fitting the son of a Reverend, "Salathial", with an L, was biblical. A Greek translation of a Hebrew ruler's name, the father of Zerubabel, who emerged after the Hebrews' Babylon captivity, to re-build the Jewish temple. The name Zerubabel was used early in the colonies, by a Puritan family named Hoyt, who left early Mass. for what became Windsor, Conn., their Rev. called Warham.)
1900 (Claus Dietrich/Diedrick Jacobs),
1903 (Adelia Jacobs, daughter of Claus).
1906 PESSIMISM wins, closing of Beaver P.O.
Later deaths in family of Claus
1916 (wife Marie Zander, d. Lewiston, stone found but not old enough style, remade),
1926 (son William, d. Minneiska, old stone moved to Lewiston?),
1947 (daughter Anna Romanesko, d. Wabasha County), modern stone style similar to Marie's, Lewiston picked for burial),
1952 (son John Simon, d. city of Winona, modern stone, cemetery where he died)
LAND RUINED AND REDEEMED--PATTERNS. The areas at the downstream end of the Whitewater River, where Winona and Wabasha Counties border each other, had, many decades ago, severe flooding and erosion problems. Hamlets affected were not just Beaver and WW. Falls, but Crystal Springs and Minneiska, the last the only one existing today.
Some think the causes first appeared with steamboats coming up the Mississippi R. very early (1820s-1840s), well before settlers came (1850s). They anchored near easy-to-use landings, then ordered crews ashore to find wood, chopping enough trees to re-fire the steam engines, going further uphill to cut, as downhill woodsides were depleted. The chopping, done repeatedly, for decades, "de-nuded" both bluff tops and hill sides. (An early geographer describing the causes and effects of de-nuding in Britain and Italy was George Perkins Marsh? "De-nuding" means taking too many trees, too fast, no opportunity for natural re-growth, without re-planting. What's left looks bare, or nude. With tree roots previously holding the soil in place in big rains gone, so soils once held by tree roots began to wash away.)
Others ignore how the problem began, with wood-chopping steamboat crews on land over sandstone, not stronger limestone or shale. They focus on how it ended, early farmers rushing to put crops and sheep on the bluff tops in a careless manner. Not only were the trees gone, but, now, any also long-rooted grasses that had held soil tightly in place between groves of trees.
Either way, once enough soil was gone, a layer of sandstone formerly underneath the now exposed soil also became exposed, chunks collapsed, crumbled into sand, the washed sand covering good soil downhill.
Old photos of a site by officials of the Whitewater Watershed show barns and cars inundated by washed soil that moved massively downhill. Banks of grassed-over soil that once held back the streams were at photo time said to be over- flooded 20 times a year. Some cemeteries were inundated.
The places made extinct are remembered as Beaver, Whitewater Falls, and Crystal Springs. Two others, Weaver and Minneiska, were hurt, but survived.
This writer remembers riding a school bus, going past very old wooden signs remaining in the late 1960s, each pointing the way to some hamlet, seeing "Crystal Springs", wondering "What place was that?". On the other side of US Hwy 14, south, the hamlets names were recognized, Fremont, Troy, Clyde, Saratoga, all still had buildings-- a brick corner store here, a dance hall there, a town hall or two and a small church still standing. North of Hwy 14, Crystal Springs had only its sign. My father spoke of Beaver, but our school bus did not go that far.
Some families with threatened graves would have had time and means to move them. Maybe that accounts for why William Jacobs' grave is not (any longer?) at Minneiska, where he died. (Again, his mother's is now in Lewiston, stone too modern to be the original.)
Redeeming the land?
A lot of the ruined land was put to new use by creating the Memorial Hardwood Forest, letting trees grow back. Looking at it on a map will give an idea of where ruined cemeteries had been.
A Richard Doer had a lot to do with the forest's creation. A geography classmate was writing a paper on him in the early 1970s. We went to visit him at his house. My observant father had earlier taken us children on drives though the forest in the 1960s, pointed out gullies where trees were growing back. We did not know it had a name, that a forest was being was newly created, that a modest and humble Richard Doer was the moral force behind it. We went to see the fishery, without knowing the place for hatching "new baby trout" used to be called Crystal Springs. Elderly Mr Doer thought I'd know more, but nothing had been in the papers.
Kids riding that end of the St Charles school bus route did not yet have anything to say. They would do "show and tell" later, hence the photos at the watershed website.
Some of the forest is in public ownership. The vast majority is private, governed by "easements", signed by families promising in perpetuity to let natural things grow, camping and fishing and hunting still possible, where allowed.
One cemetery largely abandoned as people left the eroding sites was thought to be this Whitewater Falls Cemetery. Findagrave member Tom Mauer photographed this stone. He could make out "Jacobs", nothing more.
THE FOLLOWING MAY SOON BE MOVED OFFPAGE:
OTHER CHILDREN OF CLAUS and MARIE. Claus and Marie had more children seen with them in censuses, the 1880 US, the 1895 State, and with Clause deceased, Marie in her 1900 US:
1880 FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT3-RHG
Maria, Martha, Emma* ages 12,6,3
Address Lewiston, occupation of Claus: farmer
1895 FamilySearch.org//ark:/61903/1:1:MPRR-MHJ
Emma*, Ella, Walter ages 18*,7,3
(*Emma in both Censuses)
Claus rated as an invalid.
The census-taker of 1895 did not write that the rest were working on the farm. However, that would be how they paid their bills and fed themselves. If the living was poor, the temptation of the adult children to move away for better work would be high.
Thus, son John Simon Jacobs went to Winona. Son Walter stayed for his WW I registration, helping a Radatz/Radaatz family with their farming, before he was off to Milwaukee.
By her 1900 US Census, their widowed mother was residing in Utica Twp., so just outside Lewiston, William now listed.. She reported having had 12 children, only 9 still living, some names given above. Three would match birth records, 1873-1882., with child unnamed, often done if the child died prematurely.
Four still at home in 1900 were William, Delia, Ella and Walter. A granddaughter Violet, age 9, was visiting. The widowed mother gave her immigration year as 1857. She married Claus here, so would have immigrated with parents or siblings.
Delia died in 1903 as Adelia E. J. Jacobs, middle initials standing for Eliza Josephine, death address Lewiston.
William Christian Jacobs died in 1926, in Minneiska, in Wabasha County.
STONES' AGES AS CLUES.
(1) The married daughter who stayed local, called Anna Romanesko would have had the newest of their family's stones in the county, outside John's in Winona proper.
Her stone's style and mother Mary's are similar, though their death dates are 30 years apart. That suggests Mary's was replaced by Anna's family when Anna was buried.
(2) Claus's wife, Marie/Mary Jacobs, maiden name Zander or Sander. Mother of the above children, she has a modern stone with an old date, 1916, so it's clearly a replacement.
Her stone says "wife of Claus". It does not say he is buried with her. No need for a replacement stone for him in 1946 if...?
(3) The missing stones of Claus and Delia would have been about 20-25 years older than William's. Marie's death preceded William's. Yet, William's theoretically younger stone was highly worn, seen here, confirming hers was replaced: William Christian Jacobs.
If his was that worn, any of Claus and Delia would have been far worse. His is readable now, theirs readable then, but not now, not readable at all, not receiving a re-carving while letters were still visible.
=====Material above revised by JB, July, 2021, and June, 2023==================
More on Elba Set. At Elba, from 1875 to 1896, maybe earlier, the third set would have been west of Crystal Springs, whereas Lewiston postal addresses of the second set were east. From a contributor, quoting Carol Thompson 48022670 message of May 3 2023:
" Sabathial Van Rensselaer Jacobs, (the eldest son of Aaron C. and Lucy [Trask] Jacobs who lived in Pierpont Township, Ashtabula County, Ohio for many years), settled in Elba Township, Winona County, Minnesota as early as (possibly earlier) 1875, with his first wife, Marsha Lyde [Nash] Jacobs. Mr. Jacobs and Marsha were married in Pierpont Township on 7 February 1858. After Marsha died in Winona County on 21 September 1888, Sabathial married the widow Harriet [nee Burnham] (Nichols) in Elba on 30 October 1890. She and her first husband had been residents of Elba. The 1895 Minnesota Census shows Marsha's nephew, Dennis Graves, residing with Sabathial and Harriet, attending school. The 1870 Census shows Philander Jacobs living in Elba also, however he and his family returned to Ohio where Philander died in 1908. The only land record found for the family in Winona County was land owned by Marsha, and that was not probated until 1907! Sabathiel and Marsha had no children who grew to adulthood. Sabathiel died in Elba on 13 December 1896. Harriet, his second wife, died of consumption in Elba on 15 February 1902. Although the cemetery records for the Whitewater Cemetery have long since disappeared, it would be more apt that Sabathiel and Marsha were the Jacobs who are buried in the Whitewater Cemetery than some other Jacobs family. Marsha's parents and two married sisters and their husbands are also buried in the Whitewater Cemetery also. No stones have been found for them, however other records have proved that to be where they were buried. "
COMMENTS,
1) Marriage town of Pierpont was in Ashtabula County, so on Lake Erie, well west of Oberlin and Cleveland. That county was "on the way" to Toledo and Detroit, then, via Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, WI, then through Madison's Dane County. to Lacrosse WI, then across the Miss. R. to Winona . Proving the popularity of obelisks in Ohio was widespread, the Rockefeller family erected one for their family at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, the beautiful and walkable.
2) Mr Jacobs (d.1896) and first wife (d.1888) had death records back then, but no recognizable stone now. Her parents, surnamed Nash, mother Chloe, and the sisters of Mrs. Jacobs have Findagrave pages, death dates 1863-1895. The two sisters, surnames Graves and Nichols, were thus gone by Mr. Jacobs' 1896 death.
The two sisters have stones, not the Nash parents. The parents might be elsewhere, given in-law Philander Jacobs returned to Ohio. Nash-connected families remaining in Winona County with their readable stones went into the 1930s and the 1950s:
In-law Graves surname 1882-1935
In-law Nichols surname 1912-1954
3) "Consumption" , aka TB/Tuberculosis, is now curable. Back then, it could take decades to kill new victims, often spread by contagion among many who lived/worked in crowded surroundings, the ill coughing on the well before "sanatoriums" in sunny locations offered hope of survival until cure was found, and also quarantining, to let healthy loved ones stay safe.
If someone was the last to die in an infected family , they might have no stone. Not only was the family purse depleted, but no one was left to raise money. The grave might be left unmarked, at best, on a "paupers list" .
Mothers could also give TB to their young, a doctor telling me that the death rate among infants in TB families was very high. One ray of hope, pre-antibiotics, someone who had the bacterium might not be infectious, their bacterium inactive, a test able to detect that widespread by 1909. With no way of knowing when or if they might turn active, positive testers might not marry. Or, they might marry only other positive testers, the couple then careful to to stay isolated, any earlier young given to negative testers among the relatives for rearing.
Most sources at FamilySearch.org. Other key sources have these sddresses:
Covering Winona County through 1897, Bunnell, Archive.org/stream/cu31924028913353/cu31924028913353_djvu.txt
Covering Methodists and United Brethren in MN, through 2018, by Thelma Ballinger Boeder:
MinnesotaUMC.org/files/websites/www/Planting+UM+roots+in+MN.pdf
Soil Map , showing Townships with surviving towns, colors green and white to separate valleys from hilltops:
Co.Winona.MN.us/DocumentCenter/View/1601/Land-Capability-Soils-PDF?bidId=m
NOTE: Whitewater Twp. is "highly dissected", while most of Utica Township is relatively flat. Yet, contour plowing and pasture grass terraces are used anyway, to reduce soil loss and erosion, with earthen berms in modern times around sinkholes to stop agricultural runoff from contaminating groundwater
By JBrown: This Jacobs stone is an old "obelisk"style, taller than ordinary stones nearby. Each of an obelisk's multiple sides would hold multiple names, so more than one Jacobs here. A space-saver, the obelisk was popular 1850-1890, when people still had large families, or thought they might.
Lettering is now illegible. Yet, we can narrow who might be listed. Which Jacobs locally had death records, yet, no stone obvious elsewhere? especially with an 1850-1890 timing (the obelisk's heyday).
A rare surname, very few families called Jacobs/Jacob were in Winona County for the 1880 US Census. Candidates were VanRensselaer Jacobs and first wife Marcia/Marsha, not local to Whitewater Twp., but instead in Elba. Her married sisters were buried with stones standing in the obelisk's cemetery. Not ruled out would be a different man, Claus D Jacobs and daughter Adelia, also not specifically in Whitewater Twp.. They had Utica neighbors who are buried in Whitewater Twp., at Hoosier Ridge. Claus' son (William) died very close-by, at Minnieska, up at the county line with Wabasha.
Given the stone no longer cites any one individually, given no old record says who used to be named there, it serves as a group cenotaph for area Jacobs?
Old-time maps and records showed the following places with the Whitewater name: First, the winding Whitewater River, its cold water turning white at rough spots, with enough force downstream, to run water-powered mills. These mills were nearby, where streams joined together to make a larger flow, with rapids, first Elba, then Beaver. Second with the name is Whitewater Township, in the far northwest corner of Winona County, almost in Wabasha County, crossed by the Whitewater River after it left Elba Twp. Third, a Post Office town that's now extinct. It was called Whitewater Falls (WW Falls), downstream of Elba, upstream of another now extinct place, Beaver. Fourth, this cemetery, long abandoned, inside what used to be WW Falls, this obelisk a remnant.
WW Township actually holds two "ghost-town cemeteries". Earlier to turn extinct was Beaver, that place with a long-closed post office and its own cemetery located maybe three miles away, following the WW River downstream, so northwest of WW Falls.
Winona County's seat was and is at the city of Winona, some distance southward teh extinct places. It lays right on the Miss. R., below the bluffs, on a spit built of sawdust. Beginning with a lumber mill, it became a busy steamboat and barge town. Its count of millionaires was said to be high, steamboats and the lumber business making money early, before most settlers arrived. More modest circumstances were seen, later, up hill, further away, amidst farmers and lumber people and millers instead locating on the tributary rivers, not down on the main river.
The earlier Metis and French and native populations had traveled the streams. Early names included Grignon and Chief Wapashaw. After their era, the order of settlers was this: The federal land office was open for the first land claims mid-1850s. New Englanders came then, plus New Yorkers bringing town names like Rochester and Utica. The Germanics came later, 1870s, 1880s, buying from the first set, from those either retiring or moving on, many worn out by wheat rust and other troubles. The Jacobs name was often of the second set, Germanic.
In 1870, the local US Census interviewer allowed the newly arrived Germanics to name, as birthplaces, the "little Germanies" they were "really from" (Baden? Stettin? Mecklenburg? Holstein? Or?). Later, for the 1880 US Census, changed international politics meant glorified "empires", many German-speakers were now "lumped together". "Prussia" (Prussian Empire) was the national identity chosen for many, not by themselves, never asked in elections by the latest unelected nobility, the regions affected along the North Sea and key rivers, varied nobilities fighting over them and conquering by force. Prussia included some Polish-speaking territory back then. If not from Prussia, other Germanic speakers in that northish end of Winona County tended to come from Luxembourg. (The merging of Prussia with Bavaria came later.)
The name of a key river "back home" was the Elbe, pronounced as Elba.
Somebody from the varied Germanies thought the scenery south of Whitewater Falls looked similar? So, the next town southward of Whitewater Falls became "Elba"?
As noted above, Beaver was the first of the two hamlets to go extinct, once its original reason for existing was lost. Its sawmill was placed at a joining of waters (where Beaver Creek, flowing eastish, joined the Whitewater River, which flowed northish. The merged waters crossed into Wabasha County, before emptying into the bigger Mississippi. The cold water of the Whitewater is still noted for trout fishing.)
Complimenting the one at Beaver, another sawmill was started at Elba, begun by New Englanders, the Todds, who also farmed.
Each township was to be divided, if possible, into 36 same-sized squares, each a square mile, any township itself, then, ideally, a 6x6 mile square. This is called a "rectangular survey system". Exceptions resulted mainly when un-square rivers and streams were boundaries. Before places were given names, surveyors measured and marked the townships, numbering the sections, 1 to 36 in the same serpentine order, top NE, to bottom SE. When locations were named, inside Whitewater Township, Beaver would get one square mile; Whitewater Falls, further south, would be allocated double that .
An old 1897 book, by a very early resident of Winona County named Bunnell, went township by township, describing the old-time towns, the section numbers and waterways of each. He wrote of a letter he'd requested from a Grignon descended of a La Bath, from the fur trader days, hoping to learn about the distant past. The reply? Not enough was remembered, too many papers taken elsewhere by other La Bath heirs. Mr. Bunnell, however, found enough material to cover very well later times, going township by township. These were created out of only six political precincts inside the County at the beginning,, multiple townships then created from each. The mother precinct for Whitewater Twp. was called Elba, so the name was early.
By his book's writing (1897), he noted Beaver was, already, mainly of the past, little left inside. Bunnell's "History of Winona County" said the Whitewater River flowed mainly north, a bit east, across Whitewater Twp., mainly stuck to one side, entering at the southeast end (Section 35), leaving at the far northeast corner (Section 1). Whitewater Falls was allocated two sections (just north of Section 35) . He believed they were 23 and 24 . (The easternmost one, 24, bordered modern Mt. Vernon Twp, with Norton Twp. below it, home to the farm-and-church town of Altura.) .
The River meandered some, meaning it wandered snake-like, not enough slope to rush anywhere if it wasn't flood time . Its wanders put Beaver, not directly north, but instead at Section 15, where Beaver Creek flowed into the Whitewater, he said, thus, focused on the best location for a water-powered sawmill. The two towns were maybe two to three miles apart at their closest corners, maybe five at their most distant corners. Together, the two towns occupied 3 square miles. (Beaver's single square, 15, thus, was located one section north and then two sections west of Whitewater Falls' Section 23. )
Describing the hamlet of Elba, he said "Elba village is situated on sections 9 and 10, at the Junction of the three branches of the Whitewater there".
Elba survived. Beaver and WW Falls did not. It helped to have three branches meet? The cemetery of Elba's mill-founding Todds was called Fairwater. One of the Todds would be, not just a neighbor, but also the interviewer of the Ohio-born Mr. Jacobs for the 1880 US Census. Two of the Todds' farms were on the same road?.
Note that farms were inside each village or hamlet, not just outside.
People nearby (six to 12 miles away from WW. Falls?) could have a town's post office as their address, or attend church there, or have a burial there, without living right in the town. However, when the towns de-populated, the neighboring farms might do so, too, especially along the lower Whitewater River. Those leaving were tired of flooding, appalled when huge banks of sand ultimately appeared where crops and roads used to be.
If wanting to stay near, those leaving could go to surviving places. One direction, north into Wabasha County, and then west to Plainview, was seen in an obituary for a descendant of Marcia/Marsha's sister, who'd married a Graves .
A different direction? In Winona County, they could go south to Elba, further south to St. Charles. They could also go east to Altura, if beyond that, then southeast to Lewiston, northeast to Minneiska.
Some of these still "safety places" might have flooding issues, as well, but were not as destroyed by the "outwash". Picture collapsing sandstone sliding down from bluff tops, not a few bushel baskets, but tons.
Before leaving? The dead still had to be buried. Later, some graves might be moved elsewhere, if people had the means. Otherwise, no one was there to pick up a fallen stone, to re-carve a worn one, or to dig out one buried in deep mud.
At Beaver, the wood produced by the sawmill most likely had been used to make buildings for the new settlers. Once the buildings were done, the mill could be used to grind grain. If something deadly, such as wheat rust, came through and made wheat ungrowable, permanently, or if the soil washed away, with the same result, then there was nothing to grind.
If there was nothing to grind, the mill was not needed. Any church might remain as long as a minister could come, but then would close later. Eventually, Beaver was not needed for church or mill or mail.
A final nail in the coffin? Railroads replaced steamboats, could take people to more new places, alongside routes less married to rivers, with less flooding. Instead of moving a town or county away, some would try the Dakotas or the Pacific coast.
First Sets Several families called Jacobs in the 1880 US Census in Winona County have graves found. One set lived right in Whitewater Twp., the family of Herman Jacob/Jacobs, from the Pomerania region of Prussia. Their daughter Caroline married a Nash. Their way of leaving, Herman and wife Caroline retired by 1930 to Plainview in Wabasha County. They would be buried in 1938 at Whitewater Township's Hoosier Ridge Cem. A more distant set of Jacobs were found in Nodine's Lutheran cemetery. Probably Lutheran, in that era they would all be German speakers, able to learn some English gradually if working outside the home or while at school, not true for the older women and others instead working at home. They might take an English speaking child with them in order to go shopping?
Second and Third Sets Two more sets to consider? the families of Claus D. Jacobs, also German-speaking, and Sabathial/Salathial V. Jacobs, who had New York Dutchness embedded in his middle name. He was multi-lingual? The Dutch language is considered Germanic. His mother, a New Englander, had her Boston-influenced twang. His wife was born a Nash, her parents both New Englanders.
By the end of that Mr. Jacob's life, he'd switched to using his middle name, Van Rensselaer. (He was suggested in May 2023 by user Carol Thompson, as maybe a better candidate for the stone than Claus.)
No easily found records show either Mr. Jacobs in Whitewater Township. One Mr. Jacobs' family was at least six miles away, in Elba, the other maybe ten-to-twelve miles away in Utica/Lewiston. Looking for a church nearby as a reason for either family to use this cemetery, the religion of German-speaking Claus is unclear. In-laws named Zander, related to Claus' wife, the former Marie Zander, when not buried in a public cemetery, are buried at St. John's Evangelical Lutheran church, in Utica Twp. On the other hand, Claus' son William died in another flooded place nearby, Minnieska. William and maybe his mother appear to have had burial sites moved to safety, to Lewiston (to be by William's sister? Check the stone of Marie Zander Jacobs, newish-looking, so it's a replacement for a too-damaged one? She was was said to be the wife of C.D. Jacobs.
No need would be seen to move his stone, if it still stood and was still readable in the 1940s? A lot of erosion happened in the several lifetimes since the death date of Claus D. There were other Germanic churches nearer to WW Falls,, the tinier one of the Timms, who lived down by Utica, yet are buried northward
The religion of Van Rensselaer Jacobs? He was not Lutheran or Moravian. His father was United Brethren. Their church was Methodist-connected, the United Brethren to merge in the 1960s with what had been the Methodist Episcopal, their union to become United Methodist. Locally , the Methodists had a church up in Beaver, a congregation formed in 1858, a building up in 1868. It's presumed to have struggled by the time the Beaver Post Office closed in 1906, but continued in varied forms, implied as church services were still held for the State Park at Whitewater in 1945. Then in 1946, it was sold by the larger church's "Abandoned Property Committee"
IN UTICA. For Claus Dietrich Jacobs, his 1870 Census (viewable at FamilySearch.org) found him a wagon-maker living in Utica Twp., immediately south of Norton and Altura, so southeast of Whitewater Falls. Utica did not yet have its own PO, the P.O named at top left was St Charles. Their Census interviewer of 1870 wrote that Claus came from Holstein; his wife Nancy, from Mecklenburg. They were in their 20s then, one tiny child, born in MN. If in some other part of the US first, they weren't outside Minnesota for long. By 1880, they were farming and their family was larger, mostly girls.
AT ELBA. Salathial VanRenssaeler Jacobs and first wife Marcia/Marsha Nash were born and married in Ohio, before living in MN, at Elba. He was remarried, called S. V. R. Jacobs at his death, on Dec 13, 1896. He used the Salathial spelling several times in his birth state, married as that, a mis-spell or mis-reading causing Talathiel once. That was in 1850, while at his father's Ohio house, when he was listed as a "lumberman". He was named last in the house, as if he were boarding, not always at home. His father, Aaron Jacobs, stated that he was a Rev. of the United Brethren.
Coming with the family of brother Philander, to Minnesota, they brought their two Ohio-born Jacobs families to Elba Township, locating in 1870 and 1880 near the farms of the Todds (miller-farmers). They were thus immediately south of Whitewater Township, with the town of Elba midway inside Elba Township's top tier of sections. (The Todds' mills were further west, four miles west, to be precise, then two or three miles south of WW. Falls, so 6-7 miles away total, if checking the closest corners of section squares. in Section 6, then 7 )
The closest local mention of United Brethren was for one of the sons of neighbor Dexter Todd. That son was training to be a minister after the 1890 death of his father.
LIST OF DEATHS. Again, we looked for deaths known to have occurred locally, yet with no recognizable stone remaining at this date.
If the Jacobs obelisk at WW. Falls belonged to Claus, it was maybe still readable when his wife's stone was re-done and his son's and wife's stones put in/moved to Lewiston's town cemetery, near the newer burial of a later-dying daughter.
Claus D. Jacobs, was known to have died in Winona County, his address Lewiston, on May 1, in 1900. Note that Lewiston P.O. addresses extended well outside the town. He had been ill as of his last Census, the state one in 1895, unable to do his usual farming, five years to pass before his death. His stone is missing from Winona County burials.
The same is true of his daughter, Delia/Adelia, seen with him in the 1895 Minn. State Census record. She died in 1903, also with a Lewiston address. Was her name another that rain and snow eroded off of the obelisk?
Looking at swath of dates, events begin with, first, the "pioneers" arriving and wanting mail, then depopulation, as water-threatened land gradually caused homes and cemeteries to be sold to "new people", with a second abandonment, as even the new people saw no point in staying ("love of place", because they loved the people once inside, no longer enough):
1857 OPTIMISM decades, opening of P.O. at Beaver. NE of Elba, NW of Lewiston.
1860 Census, the Todds' farms in Elba cited as assigned Whitewater Falls PO, to their north,
1870 Census, the Todd farms in Elba reassigned to the St Charles PO, to the south.
Deaths of record, no stone still bearing their names:
1888 (Marcia/Marsha Jacobs, of Elba, wife of Salathial/Sabathial VanRensselaer Jacobs)
1896 (Salathial/Sabathial Jacobs , of Elba. NOTE: 1) The similar-seeming "Sabathiel", with a B, is a Germanic surname found, for example, in old Prussia. 2) Fitting the son of a Reverend, "Salathial", with an L, was biblical. A Greek translation of a Hebrew ruler's name, the father of Zerubabel, who emerged after the Hebrews' Babylon captivity, to re-build the Jewish temple. The name Zerubabel was used early in the colonies, by a Puritan family named Hoyt, who left early Mass. for what became Windsor, Conn., their Rev. called Warham.)
1900 (Claus Dietrich/Diedrick Jacobs),
1903 (Adelia Jacobs, daughter of Claus).
1906 PESSIMISM wins, closing of Beaver P.O.
Later deaths in family of Claus
1916 (wife Marie Zander, d. Lewiston, stone found but not old enough style, remade),
1926 (son William, d. Minneiska, old stone moved to Lewiston?),
1947 (daughter Anna Romanesko, d. Wabasha County), modern stone style similar to Marie's, Lewiston picked for burial),
1952 (son John Simon, d. city of Winona, modern stone, cemetery where he died)
LAND RUINED AND REDEEMED--PATTERNS. The areas at the downstream end of the Whitewater River, where Winona and Wabasha Counties border each other, had, many decades ago, severe flooding and erosion problems. Hamlets affected were not just Beaver and WW. Falls, but Crystal Springs and Minneiska, the last the only one existing today.
Some think the causes first appeared with steamboats coming up the Mississippi R. very early (1820s-1840s), well before settlers came (1850s). They anchored near easy-to-use landings, then ordered crews ashore to find wood, chopping enough trees to re-fire the steam engines, going further uphill to cut, as downhill woodsides were depleted. The chopping, done repeatedly, for decades, "de-nuded" both bluff tops and hill sides. (An early geographer describing the causes and effects of de-nuding in Britain and Italy was George Perkins Marsh? "De-nuding" means taking too many trees, too fast, no opportunity for natural re-growth, without re-planting. What's left looks bare, or nude. With tree roots previously holding the soil in place in big rains gone, so soils once held by tree roots began to wash away.)
Others ignore how the problem began, with wood-chopping steamboat crews on land over sandstone, not stronger limestone or shale. They focus on how it ended, early farmers rushing to put crops and sheep on the bluff tops in a careless manner. Not only were the trees gone, but, now, any also long-rooted grasses that had held soil tightly in place between groves of trees.
Either way, once enough soil was gone, a layer of sandstone formerly underneath the now exposed soil also became exposed, chunks collapsed, crumbled into sand, the washed sand covering good soil downhill.
Old photos of a site by officials of the Whitewater Watershed show barns and cars inundated by washed soil that moved massively downhill. Banks of grassed-over soil that once held back the streams were at photo time said to be over- flooded 20 times a year. Some cemeteries were inundated.
The places made extinct are remembered as Beaver, Whitewater Falls, and Crystal Springs. Two others, Weaver and Minneiska, were hurt, but survived.
This writer remembers riding a school bus, going past very old wooden signs remaining in the late 1960s, each pointing the way to some hamlet, seeing "Crystal Springs", wondering "What place was that?". On the other side of US Hwy 14, south, the hamlets names were recognized, Fremont, Troy, Clyde, Saratoga, all still had buildings-- a brick corner store here, a dance hall there, a town hall or two and a small church still standing. North of Hwy 14, Crystal Springs had only its sign. My father spoke of Beaver, but our school bus did not go that far.
Some families with threatened graves would have had time and means to move them. Maybe that accounts for why William Jacobs' grave is not (any longer?) at Minneiska, where he died. (Again, his mother's is now in Lewiston, stone too modern to be the original.)
Redeeming the land?
A lot of the ruined land was put to new use by creating the Memorial Hardwood Forest, letting trees grow back. Looking at it on a map will give an idea of where ruined cemeteries had been.
A Richard Doer had a lot to do with the forest's creation. A geography classmate was writing a paper on him in the early 1970s. We went to visit him at his house. My observant father had earlier taken us children on drives though the forest in the 1960s, pointed out gullies where trees were growing back. We did not know it had a name, that a forest was being was newly created, that a modest and humble Richard Doer was the moral force behind it. We went to see the fishery, without knowing the place for hatching "new baby trout" used to be called Crystal Springs. Elderly Mr Doer thought I'd know more, but nothing had been in the papers.
Kids riding that end of the St Charles school bus route did not yet have anything to say. They would do "show and tell" later, hence the photos at the watershed website.
Some of the forest is in public ownership. The vast majority is private, governed by "easements", signed by families promising in perpetuity to let natural things grow, camping and fishing and hunting still possible, where allowed.
One cemetery largely abandoned as people left the eroding sites was thought to be this Whitewater Falls Cemetery. Findagrave member Tom Mauer photographed this stone. He could make out "Jacobs", nothing more.
THE FOLLOWING MAY SOON BE MOVED OFFPAGE:
OTHER CHILDREN OF CLAUS and MARIE. Claus and Marie had more children seen with them in censuses, the 1880 US, the 1895 State, and with Clause deceased, Marie in her 1900 US:
1880 FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DBT3-RHG
Maria, Martha, Emma* ages 12,6,3
Address Lewiston, occupation of Claus: farmer
1895 FamilySearch.org//ark:/61903/1:1:MPRR-MHJ
Emma*, Ella, Walter ages 18*,7,3
(*Emma in both Censuses)
Claus rated as an invalid.
The census-taker of 1895 did not write that the rest were working on the farm. However, that would be how they paid their bills and fed themselves. If the living was poor, the temptation of the adult children to move away for better work would be high.
Thus, son John Simon Jacobs went to Winona. Son Walter stayed for his WW I registration, helping a Radatz/Radaatz family with their farming, before he was off to Milwaukee.
By her 1900 US Census, their widowed mother was residing in Utica Twp., so just outside Lewiston, William now listed.. She reported having had 12 children, only 9 still living, some names given above. Three would match birth records, 1873-1882., with child unnamed, often done if the child died prematurely.
Four still at home in 1900 were William, Delia, Ella and Walter. A granddaughter Violet, age 9, was visiting. The widowed mother gave her immigration year as 1857. She married Claus here, so would have immigrated with parents or siblings.
Delia died in 1903 as Adelia E. J. Jacobs, middle initials standing for Eliza Josephine, death address Lewiston.
William Christian Jacobs died in 1926, in Minneiska, in Wabasha County.
STONES' AGES AS CLUES.
(1) The married daughter who stayed local, called Anna Romanesko would have had the newest of their family's stones in the county, outside John's in Winona proper.
Her stone's style and mother Mary's are similar, though their death dates are 30 years apart. That suggests Mary's was replaced by Anna's family when Anna was buried.
(2) Claus's wife, Marie/Mary Jacobs, maiden name Zander or Sander. Mother of the above children, she has a modern stone with an old date, 1916, so it's clearly a replacement.
Her stone says "wife of Claus". It does not say he is buried with her. No need for a replacement stone for him in 1946 if...?
(3) The missing stones of Claus and Delia would have been about 20-25 years older than William's. Marie's death preceded William's. Yet, William's theoretically younger stone was highly worn, seen here, confirming hers was replaced: William Christian Jacobs.
If his was that worn, any of Claus and Delia would have been far worse. His is readable now, theirs readable then, but not now, not readable at all, not receiving a re-carving while letters were still visible.
=====Material above revised by JB, July, 2021, and June, 2023==================
More on Elba Set. At Elba, from 1875 to 1896, maybe earlier, the third set would have been west of Crystal Springs, whereas Lewiston postal addresses of the second set were east. From a contributor, quoting Carol Thompson 48022670 message of May 3 2023:
" Sabathial Van Rensselaer Jacobs, (the eldest son of Aaron C. and Lucy [Trask] Jacobs who lived in Pierpont Township, Ashtabula County, Ohio for many years), settled in Elba Township, Winona County, Minnesota as early as (possibly earlier) 1875, with his first wife, Marsha Lyde [Nash] Jacobs. Mr. Jacobs and Marsha were married in Pierpont Township on 7 February 1858. After Marsha died in Winona County on 21 September 1888, Sabathial married the widow Harriet [nee Burnham] (Nichols) in Elba on 30 October 1890. She and her first husband had been residents of Elba. The 1895 Minnesota Census shows Marsha's nephew, Dennis Graves, residing with Sabathial and Harriet, attending school. The 1870 Census shows Philander Jacobs living in Elba also, however he and his family returned to Ohio where Philander died in 1908. The only land record found for the family in Winona County was land owned by Marsha, and that was not probated until 1907! Sabathiel and Marsha had no children who grew to adulthood. Sabathiel died in Elba on 13 December 1896. Harriet, his second wife, died of consumption in Elba on 15 February 1902. Although the cemetery records for the Whitewater Cemetery have long since disappeared, it would be more apt that Sabathiel and Marsha were the Jacobs who are buried in the Whitewater Cemetery than some other Jacobs family. Marsha's parents and two married sisters and their husbands are also buried in the Whitewater Cemetery also. No stones have been found for them, however other records have proved that to be where they were buried. "
COMMENTS,
1) Marriage town of Pierpont was in Ashtabula County, so on Lake Erie, well west of Oberlin and Cleveland. That county was "on the way" to Toledo and Detroit, then, via Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, WI, then through Madison's Dane County. to Lacrosse WI, then across the Miss. R. to Winona . Proving the popularity of obelisks in Ohio was widespread, the Rockefeller family erected one for their family at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, the beautiful and walkable.
2) Mr Jacobs (d.1896) and first wife (d.1888) had death records back then, but no recognizable stone now. Her parents, surnamed Nash, mother Chloe, and the sisters of Mrs. Jacobs have Findagrave pages, death dates 1863-1895. The two sisters, surnames Graves and Nichols, were thus gone by Mr. Jacobs' 1896 death.
The two sisters have stones, not the Nash parents. The parents might be elsewhere, given in-law Philander Jacobs returned to Ohio. Nash-connected families remaining in Winona County with their readable stones went into the 1930s and the 1950s:
In-law Graves surname 1882-1935
In-law Nichols surname 1912-1954
3) "Consumption" , aka TB/Tuberculosis, is now curable. Back then, it could take decades to kill new victims, often spread by contagion among many who lived/worked in crowded surroundings, the ill coughing on the well before "sanatoriums" in sunny locations offered hope of survival until cure was found, and also quarantining, to let healthy loved ones stay safe.
If someone was the last to die in an infected family , they might have no stone. Not only was the family purse depleted, but no one was left to raise money. The grave might be left unmarked, at best, on a "paupers list" .
Mothers could also give TB to their young, a doctor telling me that the death rate among infants in TB families was very high. One ray of hope, pre-antibiotics, someone who had the bacterium might not be infectious, their bacterium inactive, a test able to detect that widespread by 1909. With no way of knowing when or if they might turn active, positive testers might not marry. Or, they might marry only other positive testers, the couple then careful to to stay isolated, any earlier young given to negative testers among the relatives for rearing.
Most sources at FamilySearch.org. Other key sources have these sddresses:
Covering Winona County through 1897, Bunnell, Archive.org/stream/cu31924028913353/cu31924028913353_djvu.txt
Covering Methodists and United Brethren in MN, through 2018, by Thelma Ballinger Boeder:
MinnesotaUMC.org/files/websites/www/Planting+UM+roots+in+MN.pdf
Soil Map , showing Townships with surviving towns, colors green and white to separate valleys from hilltops:
Co.Winona.MN.us/DocumentCenter/View/1601/Land-Capability-Soils-PDF?bidId=m
NOTE: Whitewater Twp. is "highly dissected", while most of Utica Township is relatively flat. Yet, contour plowing and pasture grass terraces are used anyway, to reduce soil loss and erosion, with earthen berms in modern times around sinkholes to stop agricultural runoff from contaminating groundwater
Inscription
Possibly Salathial Van Rensselaer Jacobs (as S. V. R. Jacobs, d. 13 Dec 1896, Elba, at least six miles away). Possibly Claus Dietrich Jacobs (d. May 1, 1900, Lewiston/Utica, maybe 10-15 miles away). Plus female relatives.
Advertisement
Explore more
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
