John Schnellbacher

ALLEN, GENTRY, HAXTON, JESSUP, KINSINGER, KLEATSCH, KOCH, SCHNELLBACHER, MOON, MOYER, MYERS, POST, TORODE, WILKENS

Posted By: Kent Transier
Date: 9/21/2004 at 23:04:57

John Schnellbacher was born in Höchst, Hesse Darmstadt, Germany on July 28, 1821 and came to America with his parents as a young man of 23, arriving in Philadelphia on 15 Aug 1842. On April 13, 1845, in Ross County, Ohio, he married Frederica D. Myers, born December 15, 1827 in Saxony, Germany and daughter of Godfrey and Frederica Myers. To this union were born 10 children; Caroline who married Henry Kinsinger; Elizabeth who married Lebbeous Moyer; Anna Christina who married Gottfried Kleatsch; Mary A. who married George Koch and later, John Gentry; John H. who married Louisa Moon and later, Matilda Caroline Allen; Theodore who married Ida Florence Wilkens; Louis who died about age 4; Frederica who married Finley Peter Torode; George who never married; and Rosa May who married three times, to Oliver Perry Haxton, Daniel Harberson Jessup, and Warren C. Post.

Licensed to preach in the Evangelical Association in 1846, he became an Evangelical minister in 1850, being admitted into the itinerancy on May 15, 1850 at the Ohio Conference meeting in North Lima, Ohio. In 1852, John was promoted to "Deacon" at the May 12th Ohio Conference meeting in Bristol. In late 1854, he was asked to lead a mission to Madison County, Iowa. Taking with him, a group of friends and relatives, they settled in Webster Township. There, he farmed 240 acres, held various township offices, and preached until his death on May 16, 1886. He died from a series of strokes, the first about five weeks before his death. Both John and Frederica, who died on January 17, 1912, are buried in the Welty Cemetery.

John Schnellbacher’s original stone house still stands in Webster Township, about a quarter mile directly east of the Oak Grove Community Church. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. In the late 1920s, son George renovated the house and opened it for fee bearing public tours as an example of an early Madison county abode. He called it “Home Park.” George lived there until his death in 1945.

Sources: county, state, and federal records, newpaper articles, obituaries, and records of the Evangelical Association.