Rachel Sauermann was born near Gottingen in the Hannover, Lower Saxony region of Germany. She immigrated in June 1841 with her parents and siblings, stepping off the boat Leontine in Baltimore, Maryland. She would spend the next thirty years of her life not far from there in the Fredericktown area.

She married James William Shelton 18 Feb 1847 in Frederick County, Maryland where they resided and had nine children; Thomas H, Christina Wilhelmina, Mary Margaret, Melvina, Charles, James William Jr, Earnest Erwin, John Calvin, Emma Jane, and Joseph Hooker. That same year her father passed away. Her mother would pass two years later when she was six months pregnant with Christina. It was during these years that two brothers and a sister migrated to Louisville, Kentucky, one brother moved to Scott County in Iowa, one sister went south to Virginia and another west to Ohio. The families were expanding onward and outward. Rachel and her husband decided to stay put but the Civil War had other ideas.

Rachel's husband was killed in the Civil War 1 Apr 1865 at Battletown, Five Forks, in Virginia fighting for the Union army. Left with seven kids to raise, Rachel waited for her widow's pension for several months after James's death. When waiting proved fruitless, she decided to take matters into her own hands and traveled to Washington D.C. to knock on the White House door. She requested to see President Johnson and appeal to him about her pension checks. As her great grandson Glenn Chrisman relates "We don't know if she got to see the President but her checks finally started to arrive after she applied a second time. The monthly stipend was $12.00." At the urging, most likely, of her oldest brother William (married to Sarah A Kirshaw and living in Buffalo Township in Scott County IA at the time) of the free farmland the Iowa government was giving away, Rachel decided in 1871 to resettle in Iowa and brought seven of her children with her; Thomas, already married and with a family, stayed in Maryland. She settled in the Marshalltown area and raised her family there. Belonging to the Church of the Bretheren, she and her family had a parcel of land that sat directly east from the current church on Wallace Avenue where her and most of her family are interred.

Three weeks after an abdominal operation, while living with her youngest daughter Emma, Rachel had an attack of gallstones and subsequently died. At the time of her passing Rachel was survived by seven children and twenty seven grandchildren. In death she joined her parents, her husband, a daughter and two sons.