Aeschliman Family History
The Aeschliman family roots are in the Langnau im Emmental region of Canton Bern in central Switzerland. The Swiss keep meticulous records and the family can be traced directly back to Uli Aeschlimann who was born in Langnau about 1546. When Napoleon took over the country in 1792, he required a census of all the adult males. Our ancestor Hans Aeschlimann is listed in that census as a dairy farmer in Langnau.
Our great grandfather, Christian Peter, was born in Langnau in April 1819. He married Elisabeth Gerber in 1849. They had a son, Christian Jr., born in 1850 and a daughter Louise born in 1852. Elisabeth died in October 1853. Shortly after her death, Christian moved with his two young children to le Locle, Canton Neuchatel in the western part of Switzerland near the border with France.
Why did Christian Peter leave his ancestral home and land and move away to a French speaking part of the country? After the Reformation in the 1500’s, the Swiss Confederation became divided over the issue of religion. The area around Langnau was Roman Catholic and there was strong pressure on non-Catholics to convert or leave. We know that many of the Aeschlimann ancestors were baptized in the German Reformed Church and grew up to be strong Christians. Because of persecution in Switzerland, as well as other parts of Europe, the Mennonites and other Reformed Church members began moving to more friendly areas. By the 1700’s they began moving from parts of Switzerland to the Jura Mountain area in Canton Neuchatel where they settled on land at higher altitudes that was rough and rocky. Even though the local Catholic Bishop was more tolerant of their religious beliefs, there were social restrictions. It was difficult for them to own land, and they maintained a low profile by worshipping in homes rather than building a church building. It is likely that one of the reasons Christian Peter moved to le Locle following the death of his wife was because he needed the support of people of the Reformed Faith. Eventually, he and his family joined the Mennonite church, probably while in le Locle as his second wife Julia Roulet was a Mennonite. However, we know they joined the Mennonite church after they arrived in Iowa.
Within a year of arriving in le Locle, Christian Peter married 22 year old Julia Roulet in May 1854. She was born in December 1832 in La Sagne, Neuchatel. The Roulet family was Mennonites and had lived in this area for generations. There were ten children of this marriage, seven who survived to adulthood. Julia died in March 1874, at age 42 when her youngest son, Earnest, was three years old. Christian Peter married a third time to a widow, Mrs. Ummel. There were no children of that marriage. Christian Peter died in December 1881 at age 62. He, Julia and their three minor children are interred in the village of le Brenets, Canton Neuchatel.
THE MOVE TO THE US
Rev. Philip Roulet, who was a Mennonite pastor and the brother of great grandmother Julia, led a group of fourteen families, including Schlunegar cousins, to Butler, Ohio in 1867. In 1873 they moved and settled near Pulaski in Davis County, Iowa, where there was a Mennonite settlement. There were letters back and forth about the freedom they had to worship as Mennonites and the good farmland that was available. In 1880, nineteen year-old Sam Aeschliman sailed to the U.S. to be with his Uncle Roulet in Iowa. He sent letters back to the family about the opportunities in the U.S. and encouraged his younger brother Paul and sister Rose to come to the U.S. to be with him. They wanted to take ten year old Earnest with them as he wasn’t getting along well with his stepmother. However, the Swiss government declared that teen age Paul and Rose were too young to be Earnest’s guardian for the trip. Consequently, Sam returned to Switzerland and accompanied them on the trip to the U.S. In later years he often mentioned that he crossed the Atlantic three times before he was twenty-one. Fortunately a family photo was taken in 1881 before he left again for the U.S. with Paul, Rose and Earnest.
The remaining family members came later. According to the official records, Grandpa Fred married Rosina Rubin in December, 1882 in le Brenet, Canton Nuechatel. She had been born in August 1861 in the Reichenbach area about fifty miles south of Bern in Frutigen district. It is probable that their marriage took place in the church at an earlier date, perhaps 1880, and was registered with the State in December, 1882. Part of the pressure placed on people of other faiths to convert to the Roman Catholic Church involved the sacrament of marriage. If a Priest did not perform the marriage, the State did not recognize the marriage and the children were illegitimate.
According to the family history written by Stella Aeschliman, Fred and Rosina’s first child, a son, died as an infant, probably in 1881. Their second son, Arnold, was born in March 1883. The next year they left for the U.S. aboard the French ship St Laurent arriving in New York City on 28 May 1884. They listed Iowa as their destination. Accompanying them was Fred’s youngest sister Sophia, who was 17 years old at the time.
The oldest sister, Marie, who was born in Sept. 1855, married Christian Ummel in 1878. They had six children and were the last of the family to leave Switzerland in 1889. They intended to join the rest of the family in Washington but stopped in Bloomington Illinois where Christian had three brothers. They worked for a year or two to pay off some debts and then decided to buy land and stay. Their oldest daughter, Mary, came to Onecho in the 1890’s as a teenager to help grandma Aeschliman with her growing family. She met Dwight Ensley the oldest son of early pioneers to Onecho. They married in 1903 and raised a family of four children in the community.
In 1919, Marie and Christian came to Onecho to visit her siblings and the rest of the family. It was the first time they had all been together since the photo was taken in Switzerland in 1881.
THE MOVE TO THE WASHINGTON TERRITORY
Grandpa and Grandma Aeschliman stayed three years in Iowa, working for local farmers. His siblings, Sam, Paul, Rose, Sophia and Earnest lived there also. However, most of the land had already been taken. In the Spring of 1886, Sam, Paul and Rose with their younger brother Earnest led the way to Eastern Washington where they heard land was available. They traveled by train to San Francisco, by ship to the Columbia River and then up the Columbia and Snake Rivers to Almota, arriving in December 1886. They rented some land and began farming the next spring. That same year, 1887, Grandpa and Grandma followed with their three sons, Arnold, Lou and Will. Grandpa’s youngest sister Sophia and her husband Christian Schlunegar accompanied them, a widower she had married in 1886 in Iowa, and his daughter Lavina. I understand they traveled with Mr. & Mrs. Fred Nauert. They followed the route of Sam and his siblings and arrived in Almota in November 1887. They lived the first winter in a four-room house owned by Henry Spaulding, the son of missionaries who came to the area in the 1830’s.
The next year, Sophia and her husband Chris Schlunegar moved to the community of Palouse and began farming. Grandpa built a house for his growing family and they lived in Almota for five years. During that time, Grandpa worked as a carpenter and blacksmith, building and repairing the wagons that moved freight from the riverboats inland throughout eastern Washington and northern Idaho. Two more sons, Ed and Sam, were born there.
In 1893 Grandpa rented 160 acres of school land a couple miles north of Almota and began farming. He built another house by a water spring in the canyon. Two more sons, Ira and John were born there.
In 1899 Grandpa bought 320 acres of land from John Wicks two miles north of the Onecho Church and built a large house for his growing family. Two daughters, Mary in 1900 and Martha in 1903, were born there to complete the family. His grandson, John Aeschliman, now farms the land.
Grandma Aeschliman died in Colfax in 1944 age 83 and is buried in Colfax cemetery with her husband Fred who died in March 1945 at age 86.
THE RUBIN CONNECTION
The Rubin family from the Reichenbach District of Canton Bern, Switzerland is linked to the Aeschliman Family through marriage. Grandma Rosina (Rose) Rubin Aeschliman was the second child of Jakob and Magdalena (Mattie) Rubin. In the 1860’s and 70’s some of the Rubin family moved west to Canton Neuchatel probably because of religious persecution. It appears Rose moved there prior to 1880 where she met and married Fred Aeschliman in le Brenet, Canton Neuchatel. In 1884, they sailed to the US, settling in Iowa for three years before moving west to the town of Almota on the Snake River in Washington Territory.
In 1888 while Grandpa and Grandma were living in Almota, her youngest brother, William, came to visit her. He had come to the U.S. in 1882 and had been living in Ohio where some of the Rubin family was living. While he was in Almota he met Grandpa’s sister, Rose Aeschliman. They married in November 1888.
Eight children were born of their marriage: Willy, born in 1889, Emma, 1891, John, 1892, Alvin, 1897, Leslie, 1898, Pearl, 1900 and Harvey, 1904. Another son, Elmer, was born in 1895 but died as an infant. Their oldest son, Willy, drowned in the Snake River in 1914. William died in 1925 and his wife Rose died in 1952.
The oldest brother, Edward and his wife Lena, came to the US in 1887. After living in Canton, Ohio for a few years, they and their four daughters moved to Onecho in 1889. They moved into the house on the school land in the canyon outside Almota that had recently been vacated by Grandpa and Grandma. Their oldest daughter died as a teen in 1907. The other three daughters married in the community and raised families. Lena acted as a midwife at the birth of many of the babies born in those early years in Onecho. Edward died in 1923 and his wife Lena in 1952.
After her husband Jakob died, great grandmother Mattie Rubin came to the US and joined her children in the Onecho community around 1890. She was a charter member of the Mennonite church in 1893. She died at her daughter Rosina Aeschliman’s home in Onecho in 1901.
-Wayne Aeschliman
May 2007