John Frederick Biography

In August of 1822 Johannes Frederick was born when his mother was thirty-seven and his father thirty-eight. He was no doubt one of the youngest children in the family, and may not have known his grandparents. The Friedrich grandparents died shortly before he was born; his Speck grandfather had died fifteen years earlier. Perhaps he knew his maternal grandmother; her death date isn't known. His father, died when he was nine years old.
He, his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were "drovers", wagon drivers. He, however, is listed in the church record as a farmer.
He did not marry until his twenty-ninth year.
He met Anna Catherine who lived in the village of Frankershausen, some five miles to the east, and on 20 Oct 1851 they were married. The marriage record is found in the records of both villages. Anna Catherine was twenty-four. Johannes' mother, Anna Margarethe Speck, was still alive at that date.
The story of John Frederick has long fascinated his descendants, and provoked much speculation. The story was that he had left Germany (then-Prussia) quickly and could not return. John Frederick's grandson, Fred Kline, said he knew the reason John Frederick had to leave, but wouldn't tell it, so to his mind it was a serious infraction. The area was in upheaval at the time, a confrontation with Austria developing. He and Anna may have already planned to emigrate, and he was simply draft-dodging. The older houses in both Frankershausen and Hitzerode are three-part: the family living space, an equipment and feed storage space and finally the animal quarters. Another descendant through the Etzel line said that as their story went, "he excaped through the dung hole", so someone was at the door. Even though the farm fields were outlying, the farm houses were built in town, in three parts: the living quarters, the hay & feed storage section, and the animal quarters. This latter included a low doorway out which the manure was shoveled to the outside. If John Frederick felt compelled to run through the barn and out the dung hole, someone was actually at the door to draft or arrest him.
He successfully made his escape and left Germany, but without Anna Catherine. He sailed for America, and the apparent suddenness of his leaving suggests he had surplus funds sufficient for ship passage readily at hand.
Subsequently, he returned for Anna Catherine, but couldn't return to Germany, so met her in England, and they sailed for America together. Anna Catherine was pregnant with their first child at the time. One, possibly two siblings accompanied her, Conrad who was 10 years younger than Anna Catherine and Anna Elizabeth, a younger sister. They landed shortly before the birth of John and Anna Catherine's first child. Mary was born 13 August, 1852, nine months and two weeks after the wedding in October the previous year.The saying was that "Aunt Mary", crossed the ocean but never saw it.
>It is significant to note that two other families from Hitzerode immigrated to Ashalnd Twp., Clarion County PA. The Diederich family, whose children Will and Louisa would marry into the Frederick family, were in PA by 1851, when son Will was born. Will Dietrich's grandmother, Anna Catherina Jung was born in Hitzerode, and a gravestone for at least one member of the Young family is in the Lieberum cemetery, Ashland Twp. PA with the Frederick and Dietrich stones.
Five years later Anna Catherine's parents and most of her siblings left for America as well. It is said that John Frederick paid for all of these Kuhnemuth passages. Whatever his earlier transgressions, he managed later to be solvent, and generous.
The original Frederick farm, near Fern, consisted of 86 acres. An additional 56 acres was purchased from a neighbor, Leu Liebrum, a parcel that became known as "the Liebrum" to the family. John and Anna Catherine raised a family of seven children, six of whom survived to adulthood. Their first daughter, Mary, and their oldest son, Frank, both married children of the Dietrich family from Hitzerode. Their youngest son Jacob died at age twenty, before marrying, and their youngest daughter, Josephine, died in infancy or early childhood. The three remaining children also married from among the German community there, either from other newly immigrated families like themselves, or as their daughter Elizabeth Anna Frederick did, married into the older established German families migrating westward from eastern Pennsylvania. The second son, John Valentine Frederick, married Leu Liebrum's daughter, Dena.
John Frederick and daughter Mary would walk to Pittsburgh, about 75 miles through woods and old Indian trails, in the fall. John worked in the steel mills till spring and Mary would keep house for him. This winter trip was made more than once, and Mary Frederick also found work in Pittsburgh. After she married, she and husband Will Deitrich settled in Pittsburgh and their children became "the Pittsburgh cousins" to the rest fo the family.
John Frederick never learned more than a few phrases of English. Ella Beals Wilson was his great-granddaughter. She remembers him keeping hard candy, pink peppermints, for the children, in the same pocket where he kept his loose pipe tobacco. He'd say "Bissel candy, Huh?", and they'd have to pick the tobacco off of it. He said he was from "Hesse Kassel", and it took deciphering the Frederick family Bible in the 1990's to find that Anna Catherine was from Frankershausen, a tiny town near Kassel. Further searches in the records of churches in the area around Frankershausen located John Frederick and earlier Frederick generations in Hitzerode and Kammerbach. Once those locations were known, Hitzerode could also be deciphered in the family Bible record.
The Bible is now in the possession of a descendant of John V. & Dena Liebrum Frederick. The original Frederick homestead still stands, owned by another descendant of John V. and Dena Frederick. "The Liebrum" section is across the road. In the Liebrum Cemetery are buried various Frederick, Dietrich, Liebrum, and Young family members, including John Frederick and Anna Catherine Kenemuth.

Biography written by Elizabeth Wilson Williams, g-g-granddaughter of John Frederick and Anna Catherine Kuhnemuth.