A section in a booklet written for this year’s 150th anniversary and thoroughly researched by parishioner and genealogist Anne Burgstaller Benston tells the stories of early church members who donated the windows.
Brewers and carpenters, watchmen and grocers; wheelmen and cabinet makers, musicians and bar owners — the majority were born in Germany, and most of the rest were children of immigrants who had settled in Cincinnati.
All came to Springfield’s German enclave in search of two life-sustaining elements: the work to be found in a growing town, and the sense of community they created in a growing parish that could sustain them in a new land and through a time in which so many died at such a tender age.
From the old country
If Ronaedus and Eva Flath Schmidt were looking for a man from the old country and a good provider for daughter, Elizabeth Louise, 22-year-old John Singer gave them both.
Their 1878 marriage came three years after Singer arrived from Wertemmberg with a useful trade in Springfield’s German enclave: He was a brewer.
First the owner of a wine and beer saloon at Washington and Market streets, he later was president of Springfield Breweries.
The Singers surely sought solace at St. Bernard when two of their five children died before reaching adulthood. And when her beloved Carrie died at age 36 — a blow that compounded the loss of her husband — Elizabeth kept Carrie’s name alive on a stained glass window.
Keeping watch
Born Feb. 10, 1853, in Hanover, Germany, Frank Lubbers was 16 when he landed in Louisiana and became a watchman or security guard on his arrival in Springfield.
He would leave his mark, however, as a grocer who kept watch over the people of the St. Bernard community — an immigrant who always made others feel at home in his store.
He started in business on Lagonda Avenue, but perhaps to better support their nine children, he and wife Anna Rheinhardt relocated to 702 Sherman Ave., in a neighborhood where parishioners were well represented.
When Frank died of apoplexy after dinner on Saturday, Feb. 23, 1921, the church history notes, it wasn’t just parishioners who grieved. “The entire community mourned.”
A fitting gift
Two in 1863 when his parents, Herman and Wilomena Willenborg, moved from Cincinnati to Springfield, George Willenborg followed his father into the trade that would support the family for 60 years.
“By 1880,” the St. Bernard 150th anniversary history reports, “the family had a well-established merchant tailoring business at 33 E. High St.”
In 1894, George — with the help of his wife, the former Catherine Buettner and in partnership with brothers Louis and Joseph — continued to serve the city’s best dressed people at 22 W. High St. And with the family finally feeling secure in their finances, they helped to dress up their church.
Appolonia’s sorrow
Ernest and Appolonia Abele Haberkern left Karlsruhe, Germany, in the late 1870s for the promise of a new life.
Ernest worked as a machinist in Springfield for a decade or so, but in 1886 opened a tavern at 343 E. Pleasant St. It was a prime location near Springfield’s massive East Street Shops. At the turn of the century, he smartly relocated beside the railroad tracks next to the Arcade Hotel.
Of the eight Haberkern children, just three lived to adulthood. One, Ernest Jr., would continue the family business after his father died at age 66 in 1921.
The son’s death in December of 1935 heaped more sorrow on his mother, who was 90-and-a-half in 1946 when she joined her family in St. Bernard Cemetery.
A marrying sort
Clemens Schuer was the marrying sort.
Born in Hanover, Germany, on Aug. 15, 1851, he made his way to Springfield and sold groceries in the heart of the St. Bernard parish.
Two years after son Edward’s 1884 birth — and one year after their son, Louis, died of cholera at age 10 months — Schuer’s first wife, Agnes, died at 29.
The next Sept. 11, he married widow Barbara Engbert Koch, and with her and his son continued the grocery business another 17 years.
In 1906, again widowed, he married Lena Nuss Lauer, from another St. Bernard family. With Clemens in his mid-50s, a daughter they named for his first wife arrived.
She was 5 months old when he succumbed to what the obituary called “heart failure superinduced by diabetes,” dying a married man.
Overpassed
Link Avenue disappeared when the U.S. 40 overpass was built in the 1950s. But the Link name lives on in the real estate company founded by the family’s amazing and multitalented scion.
Born April 5, 1846, in Baden, Germany, Joseph studied music, then migrated to Teutopolis, Ill., a town formed by German Catholics, to finish his education.
In 1869, he married Mary Schwing at Springfield, Ill.
They moved to Springfield, Ohio, the following August, where he taught second grade at St. Bernard School, played the organ and directed the choir at St. Bernard parish. He also brought the sounds of high German culture to Springfield as a charter member and director of the well-respected Maennerchor.
Perhaps to support a family of 10 children, he set up a grocery and later established Link & Sons insurance and real estate in the Bookwalter Block.
Joseph’s active and varied 59-year life ended March 13, 1905, after gallstone surgery at Cincinnati’s Good Samaritan Hospital.
Other donors or people memorialized by the donations include:
John C. Enxing
— Originally a coffin trimmer, this son of German immigrants was the longtime shipping foreman at Robbins & Myers. After losing their firstborn, William, at 5 months, John and wife Elizabeth Wobbe sent six children through St. Bernard School. Her “kind and generous devotion to her family and church” made the community feel a heavy loss when she died of infection after a thumb injury Feb. 8, 1926.
Henry Nuss: For 45 years, Nuss and his brother, Lawrence, operated a cabinet- and wagon- making shop at 735 E. Main St. For decades, Henry also was a fixture with wife Mary at St. Bernard Parish.
William Voeckell: Born Sept. 7, 1867, in Cincinnati, he came to Springfield to work for the Bettendeorf Wheel Company, forerunner of French & Hecht, at Larch and Wheel streets. He met and married Agnes Horstman, born in Springfield on Sept. 19, 1866, and made their home at 930 Lagonda Ave.
John Kampman: A son of early Prussian immigrant George Kampman, who came north from Cincinnati, John worked at Springfield's Whitely-Fassler implements, eventually as a manager. On Nov. 4, 1873, he married Mary Haas, and they became the parents of nine children. John died at 86 on Feb. 10, 1933, outliving Mary by 29 years.
Mary Devert: A daughter of German-born John A. and Bernadina Schutte, Mary was 11 when they came to Springfield to operate a grocery near St. Bernard. Mary's husband, George Grevenstedt, continued the business with her after her father's passing in 1876. George died four years later at 31, and tuberculosis claimed Mary's next husband, Charles S. Devert, on Sept. 11, 1883.
Fr. John H. Metzdorf: Arriving in Cincinnati from Treves, Germany, at 19, he was ordained for the priesthood at St. Mary's Seminary in Cincinnati in June 1900. On Feb. 2, 1912, he was assigned to St. Bernard and oversaw its golden age (see related story) in which it grew from 210 to 410 families. Reassigned to St. Martin Church in Cheviot and later honored as the diocese's Domestic Prelate, Metzdorf felt a special enough connection with St. Bernard to donate a window and be buried in the priest's mound in the parish cemetery.
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