Glandorf, Minster and Sharpsburg, Ohio

The Kaisers: canal work and a family farm

An 1836 arrival leads through Minster and Sharpsburg to the Kaiser branch connected to Mary Barga.

The 1978 county history traces Henry Edward Kaiser’s grandparents to Germany. Theodore Johann Kaiser reached Glandorf in August 1836 and moved to the Minster area a little over a year later. The account records his work digging the Miami and Erie Canal.

Anna Elizabeth Stegemann also arrived in 1836. The history recalls that she and a sister initially remained in Cincinnati doing housework because the family could not afford to move everyone to Minster together. Theodore and Elizabeth married at Minster in 1840.

Their son Bernard ran a farm-implement business in Minster. His son Henry married Emma Huber in 1907 and later farmed near Sharpsburg. The account credits Henry with more than twenty years as a Gibson Township trustee.

Henry and Emma’s son Bernard, born in 1916, married Mary Barga in 1944. That named marriage establishes the connection to the Barga tree. The migration and work details come from the published family account; precise old-country birthplaces have not been converted into guessed map pins.

Sources and further reading

• Mercer County, Ohio History (1978), printed page 274; complete book preserved on the linked cards