Dora Heitman Bauer

BAUER HEITMAN

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 4/2/2010 at 16:47:09

Woodbury County History 1982

Dora Heitman Bauer

By Emma M Barth

My grandmother, Dora Hietman was born in Germany in 1830. She married Fritz Bauer in Germany. They came to Walnut, Iowa when their children, a son Christian was 18 years old and daughter Doris was 15 years old. They arrived at Walnut, Iowa, on Thanksgiving Day where they had some relatives. She said when they got there they had a big table cloth on and the table was all set. She said she never saw so much food.

They farmed near Mineola, Iowa, for awhile, but her husband was de-horning cattle one day and he cut an artery in his wrist and bled to death. He was buried in the Mineola Cemetery. My grandma and her two children came to Pierson, Iowa, where she purchased an 80-acre farm which her son farmed with her help. Her daughter married Ernest Meyer from Davenport. They lived on a farm near Pierson where four children were born: Emielie (Meyer) Utecht, Carl Meyer, Edward Meyer, and Otto Meyer. They later moved to Lawton, Iowa where two more children were born: Emma (Meyer) Barth, and Anna (Meyer) Lane.

My grandmother worked in the hotel that used to be in Lawton and run by a friend of hers, Mrs Cook. My grandmother traded her 80-acre farm at Pierson in on a 160-acre farm five and one-half miles north of Lawton. My parents moved on the farm in 1905. My Grandma Bauer lived with us, but my parents both passed away shortly after we moved there. They were buried in the Lawton Cemetery and my grandmother raised us children there on the farm. We attended Sunny Side School in Banner Township. When my oldest brother Carl came home from the Navy after the Armistice was signed in 1918 he said we would do some building in the spring. They got a new International Truck and started hauling out lumber and built a big barn, corn crib and a granary and also a hog shed. That was a busy summer as my brothers were farming the place then.

My grandmother raised us children up there on the farm. She was the oldest lady in Woodbury County when she passed away. She was almost 98 years old, still doing work inside and out. She loved to make garden. I will never forget the good bread she used to bake and the butter she made.