Rubin Genealogy
The Rubin family roots are located in central Switzerland in Canton Oberland, primarily in the districts of Aeschl and Frutigen in a region called Reichenbach. This is in the hilly, agricultural, dairy area south of Lake Thun about thirty miles south of Bern.
The earliest ancestor I could find was Jakob Rubin who was born about 1750. His wife was Margaretha Zurbrugg. Both of them were born in the Reichenbach region, but I could not find the date of their marriage or when they died. Eleven children were born of their marriage, six sons and five daughters. Their first child, Elisabeth, was born in July 1775 and died a month later. Their next children were Jakob, born 1776, Johannes, 1778, Margaretha, 1779, Gile, 1782, Christian, 1784, Elisabetha, 1787, Anton, 1789, Maria, 1792, Samuel, 1795 and Sussana, 1797. (For the sake of clarity because three consecutive Rubin generations used the name Jakob, I have distinguished them as , and .)
I found our ancestor Jakoblisted in the record of registrations of 1798 when Napoleon, Emperor of France, decided to take the Swiss Confederation into his growing empire. Napoleon had prepared a constitution for Switzerland the year before the invasion. It had required all males between the ages of 20 and 70 to register and swear allegiance to the new constitution in a public ceremony in each canton in August 1798. The record of that registration is available today. Jakob was a common given name for the Rubin family in Canton Oberland at that time and I found many in the record. However, I identified our ancestor, Jakob by his age that was listed. He would have been age 22 at that time. Another ancestor, Hans Aeschlimann, was also listed in that registration in Canton OberEmmental in the Langnau district east of Bern.
Jakob. married Magdalena Heimann in about 1806. She was born 15 July 1782. They had nine children, six daughters and three sons. Susanna, born in 1808, Jakob, 1810, Magdalena, 1812, Elisabetha, 1815, Johannes, 1816, Gottleib, 1819, Maria, 1821, Elisabetha, 1824 and Katharina, 1827. Elisabetha died as an infant and a later daughter was named for her. Jakob. died 8 December 1833 and his wife Magdalena on 2 June 1846.
Jakob. and Magdalena’s second child, Jakob, married Magdalena (shortened to Mattie) Von Kanel in 1849 in Reichenbach. She was born 3 October 1822. They married later in life, as he was 39 and she 27. Perhaps they had prior marriages and their spouses had died, but I cannot find any record of that. They had three children: Edward, born September 1855, Marie Rosina (Rose, my paternal grandmother), August 1861 and William, May 1863.
Jakob died April 1868 in Reichenbach. In the 1880’s, his widow, Mattie, came to the U.S. to be with two of her three children who lived in Whitman County, Washington. She is listed in the 1900 census as a widow living with her daughter Rose Aeschliman (nee Rubin) in Onecho. She is recorded as one of the charter members of the Mennonite Church in Onecho in 1893. She died 3 July 1901 at age 78 and is buried in Onecho Cemetery with her two sons, Edward and William.
I do not have much information about the religious faith of the Rubin family in the Reichenbach area. I found records that some of the Rubin families began moving west to the French speaking area around La Chaux de Fonds in Canton Neuchatel in the 1860’s. This would indicate that they were probably of the Mennonite or German Reformed Faith and were no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic area in Canton Oberland. As was the case of the Aeschliman family from Langnau, many moved to the area around La Chaux de Fonds and Le Brenet where the people were more tolerant even though there were still severe restrictions on them.
Mattie Rubin and her two sons lived in Reichenbach until they emigrated to the U.S. It appears, however, that her daughter Rosina moved to Le Brenet prior to 1880. She is in a photo of the Christian Peter Aeschliman family taken there in 1881. It was in the Mennonite community there where she met and married Fred Aeschlimann in 1880. Her mother Mattie was a charter member of the Mennonite Church at Onecho near Colfax, Washington when it was chartered in 1893.
Jakob and Mattie’s oldest son, Edward, married his first wife Rosina Kaempf in 1877 in Sigriswil, Thun. She was born in Sigriswil in June 1854 and died in April 1884 after six years of marriage. They had one son, Louis, born in 1877.
Edward married his second wife, Magdalena Benz (shortened to Lena) in 1885 in Reichenbach. Lena was born in November 1867. Their first child, Emma, was born in Reichenbach in 1886. In December 1886, Edward, Lena and the two children, Louis and Emma left for the US, arriving in NY on 20 Jan 1887 aboard the French liner La Bourgogne. They first lived in New Jersey where Edward made and repaired harness for the horses pulling the wagons that moved goods in and out of New York City. They lived there for about two years before moving to Canton, Ohio in 1888, where he continued to work as a harness maker. They may have moved to Ohio because there were Rubin family members living there. Two Rubin’s are listed in the 1870 and 1880 Ohio census. Edward’s younger brother, William, lived there for about six years before he moved to Almota in the Washington Territory in 1888. Edward and Lena had three daughters born in Canton: Paulina, born in 1889, Bertha in 1894 and Louisa in 1896. They lived on the same street as the soon-to-be President McKinley family. The children waved to him as they walked to school and later put up campaign posters for him.
In 1899, Edward and his family moved to Onecho in Whitman County, Washington to join his mother Mattie, sister Rosina and brother William. They moved into a house in the Snake River canyon that had just been vacated by his sister Rosina and family. She and her husband Fred had lived and farmed there for six years before they bought a farm about two miles north of the church in the Onecho community. There must have been correspondence between the two families regarding the timing of the move, as a house was available for Edward and his family when they arrived and they rented the land that Fred had been farming. It must have been a huge adjustment to move from a relatively large city like Canton, Ohio to the small house in a remote canyon without visible neighbors. They lived in that house until Edward died in 1923 at age 68. He is buried in the Onecho Cemetery with his daughter Emma and wife Lena who died in 1952 age 85.
Edward’s son, Louis, came with the family to Washington State in 1899 and is listed with Edward’s family in Onecho in the 1900 federal census. However, he soon returned to Ohio, married and raised a family there. We have a copy of a letter Lena sent to her step grandson, Russell Rubin, in East Liverpool, Ohio on March 28, 1934. He had asked her about his ancestors in Switzerland. From her reply we can tell that his father was Louis the son of Edward and his first wife Rosina Kaempf. We can surmise that either his father Louis had died by that time or Louis told him to write to his grandmother Lena to get the family history.
Their oldest daughter, Emma, a schoolteacher, died of tuberculosis in 1907. Their remaining three daughters married and raised families in the Onecho community. Pauline married Roy Hickman, Bertha married Horace Rogers and Louisa married Arthur Payne.
Marie Rosina Rubin (Rose), the second child of Jakob married Fred Aeschlimann in 1880 in La Saignotte-Cret-Le-Locle in Canton Neuchatel. The official State record of the marriage was December 1882. Their first son died as an infant in 1881. Their second son, Arnold, was born there in March 1883 before they left for the U.S., arriving in New York in May 1884, aboard the French liner St Laurent. They lived in Iowa for three years where sons Louis and Will were born in 1885 and 1887, respectively. In 1887 they moved to Washington Territory settling in Almota on the Snake River in Whitman County where Fred worked as a blacksmith and carpenter, building and repairing the wagons that moved freight from the river boats inland throughout eastern Washington and northern Idaho. Two sons were born there: Ed in 1889 and Sam in 1892. In 1893, Fred was able to rent 160 acres of School Land a mile north of Almota. He built a house in the canyon and began farming. Two more sons: Ira, (my father) 1894, and John, 1897, were born there. In 1899, the family moved again to a farm he bought two miles north of the Onecho Church. Two daughters, Mary, 1901 and Martha, 1903, were born to complete the family. He built a large house for his growing family that is still occupied today by his grandson, John, and family.
Rose died in 1944 at age 83 and is buried in Colfax cemetery with her son Arnold who died in 1912 at age 29 and her husband, Fred, who died in March 1945, age 86.
William, the youngest child of Jakob and brother of Edward and Rosina, was the first one of the family to come to the US. He arrived in 1882 at age nineteen and apparently settled in Ohio. He may have had relatives living there as there are two Rubin families listed in the Federal census of 1870 and 1880 who were living in Stark County in Canton, Ohio. They were from the Reichenbach area and had children born in Switzerland who were about his age. In 1888, he and a friend, Paul Maurer, came west to Almota to visit his sister Rosina Rubin Aeschliman. They traveled by train on the Northern Pacific Railroad that had been completed in 1883 from St Paul, Minnesota to Portland via Spokane. While visiting his sister Rosina, William met Rose Aeschliman, her sister-in-law. In a few months a romance began and they agreed to marry. Will returned to the Midwest for a few months before coming back and marrying Rose in Pullman, Washington, on 12 November 1888.
The next year they bought land in partnership with Rose’s brother, Sam Aeschliman, a few miles north of Almota along Goose Creek in the Onecho community where they farmed together for some years. A log cabin had been built there and they lived in it while they built a barn and other buildings. They built a large home in 1895 that is still lived in by a granddaughter and her family.
Eight children were born to this marriage: William Jr. (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. Willy drowned in the Snake River in July 1914 at age 25.
William died in 1925 at age 62 and is buried in the Onecho cemetery with his sons Elmer and Willy and his wife Rose, who died in 1951, age 87.
