ANNE M (YOUNG) STAMPFER, b 21 Sep 1848

STAMPFER, YOUNG, BEAR

Posted By: Donna Moldt Walker (email)
Date: 12/26/2004 at 18:43:07

Mrs. Anne M. Stampfer, widow of the late Theodore Stampfer, of Bellevue, is a lady greatly respected in her community, and occupies a neat and pleasant home in the centre part of town. She, like her husband, was born in Germany, her birth occurring Sept. 21, 1848. Her parents Laurens and Agnes Young, were of pure German stock and spent their entire lives on their native soil.

The subject of this notice spent her childhood and youth in her native place, and when a young lady of eighteen years accompanied her two brothers to America, arriving in New York City in the month of December, 1866. They made the passage from Hamburg on an ocean steamer, setting foot upon American soil ten days from the time of starting. Soon leaving the metropolis they made their way to northern Illinois and took up their residence in Galena. Miss Young resided there about one year, then came to Bellevue, this county, where she made the acquaintance of her future husband and married May 13, 1869.

Mr. and Mrs. Stampfer began their wedded life at a modest home in Bellevue and Mr. Stampfer for a short time engaged in business as a jeweler, at which he had previously served an apprenticeship, but finally embarked in mercantile pursuits in company with Mr. Frank Hanske. They continued together three years and Mr. Stampfer then associated himself with his brother-in-law, J.G. Young in the hardware trade and was thus occupied up to the time of his death. The circumstances surrounding this event were peculiarly painful, Mr. Stampfer having been drowned in the Mississippi River above Bellevue, July 15, 1886. He had gone into the water to bathe and finally swam out into deep water, where it is supposed he was taken with cramps and soon sank to rise no more. His body was recovered on July 17, 1886.

Theodore Stampfer, also a native of Germany, was born Dec. 25, 1833, and was reared to manhood in his native province, receiving a good education in the mother tongue. He emigrated to America in his youth, a number of years prior to the arrival of his future wife, and going to the Far West, spent about eleven years in the mountains engaged in mining and the jewelry business. He was a good man in the broadest sense of the term, upright and honorable in his dealing with his fellow citizens, public-spirited and liberal, and in his family, kind and indulgent. Mr. and Mrs. Stampfer had no children of their own but adopted a little girl, Ida, who bears their name and who was born in Lyons, Iowa, May 19, 1869. She is now the wife of Mr. Charles Bear, of Dubuque, Iowa. Mrs. Stampfer is a member in good standing of the Catholic Church and enjoys the esteem of a large number of friends and acquaintances.

("Portrait and Biographical Album of Jackson County, Iowa", originally published in 1889, by the Chapman Brothers, of Chicago, Illinois.)