Franz Anton (Anthony) and Cresentia Sohn Stimmler

Charcoal drawing of a portrait, done by their granddaughter, Marie Dingmann Mullally about 1920, while a student at the Chicago Art Institute. Image courtesy Cindy M. Reed.

Crescentia was the daughter of Johannes Sohn (born abt. 1803 in Baden, Germany and died 12 Sept. 1865 in Philadelphia PA) and his first wife Gertraud "Brick" (per transcript of her death record, but her name may have been Brabb or Bribb), who was born in 1799 in Germany and died 24 July 1850 in Altwieslochen, Baden, Germany. Crescentia had four siblings - Maria (b. 1834), Wilhelm (1837), Gertrud (1839) and Maximillian (1841), all of whom emigrated with her to Philadelphia, arriving 14 Jan. 1854. Their father, who had remarried - to Catherine Spor (or Spoehr) - had come earlier, before 1855, when his first child of the new marriage was born in PA. The family reunited and lived together at the time of the 1860 census. Crescentia had four half-siblings: Mary C (b. 1855), John (abt. 1856), Anna (abt. 1857), and Catherine (ab.t 1858).

Crescentia is called "Christianna" by error in the 1860 census. On 21 Aug. 1865, three weeks before her father's death, she married, at St. John the Baptist Church in Manayunk, François Antoine (as his birth record from Wilwisheim, Alsace calls him) - also known as Franz Anton or Anthony John) Stimmler(1838-1906). About 1866, they moved from PA to Carver Co. MN to homestead. Anthony's father Johann came with him & they settled in Carver County where some of his siblings had come as early as 1857. Between 1870 and 1880 Anthony and Crescentia moved from Laketown to Clear Lake, Sherburne Co. Crescentia is not living with Anthony at the time of the 1900 census. He lives with their son George and lists himself as "divorced," but the couple later reconciled and lived together again in later records in Minneapolis, where Crescentia calls herself Grace (NOTE: Grace is NOT a second wife of Anthony's; records clearly show she is his only wife, Crescentia, using the name Grace).

Crescentia and Anthony had eleven children, naming most of them after her own family members (and a few after his): Johann (1866), Franciska (1868), Bertha Gertrude (1869), Sophia Theresa (1870), Anthony Valentine (1872), John Maximillian (1874), George Aloysius (1875), Anna Maria (1878), Paul William (1880), Daniel N. (1882), and Anna Crescentia (1883).

Judy Schaaf/May 2017

Franz Anton (Anthony) and Crescentia (Sohn) Stimmler Family

1889

Clear Lake, Sherburne, Minnesota, USA

Left to right, standing in back: William Paul, George L., John Max, Sophia Theresa, Bertha Gertrude, Anthony Valentine, Daniel N., and Anna Maria "Mary" Stimmler. Left to right, seated: Franz Anton, Anna Crescentia, and Crescentia Stimmler.