Donna Sattley, 66, of Hillsboro has been studying her family history for more than 40 years, but when she found her great-grandfather’s homestead in High Ridge about 10 years ago, she said she felt a bond to her family she hadn’t experienced before.
“It just gave me a closer attachment to my grandfather and great-grandfather,” she said. “I’m very thankful to them. I’m sure it wasn’t easy coming over here.”
Johann Martin Hauser, Sattley’s great-grandfather, was born July 11, 1826, and arrived in America in 1847 from Tuningen, Wuettemberg, Germany. He was part of the great emigration from Europe just before the revolutions of 1848, sometimes called the Spring of Nations, that affected more than 50 countries across the continent, according to Wikipedia.
Like thousands of others, he arrived in New Orleans and came upriver, stopping in St. Louis and then heading west. He finally settled in High Ridge.
Sattley, originally from St. Louis, along with her cousin, both part of the fourth generation since Johann Hauser’s arrival, shared a passion for family history and pursued it, beginning the research on Hauser in about 1970.
Sattley found her great-grandfather on the 1860 census in High Ridge and Rock Township, but with no address. Her cousin found the location of his home on an old map and by superimposing a current map onto the historic map, they found the homestead’s exact location, Sattley said.
“He (the cousin) said it was on Hunning Road and he’d seen it,” Sattley said.
By the time Sattley set out to visit the old homestead, her cousin had moved to New York, she said.
“My son and I drove Hunning Road, back and forth, until we got sick and we didn’t find it,” she said.
Sattley did, however, discover that the original property had been sold to a family by the name of Clement, and in about 2005, after Sattley became a real estate agent, she saw the property come up for sale.
“When I became a real estate agent, I became better acquainted with Jefferson County, but at that time, wasn’t assertive enough just to ask if I could see the house,” Sattley said.
Instead she reached out to the listing agent who told her that only a portion of the property was for sale and not the original house, but she thought the family would allow her to see it.
“I just thought it was an important part of the family history. I thought it would be neat to see where they lived and where my grandfather was born,” Sattley said.
The only thing she definitely knew about the house was that it was next to a bubbling spring.
“My grandfather (Charles Hauser) was born there and lived there until he was 12, when they moved to Hornsby, Ill., “Sattley said.
Later, Sattley’s aunt told her in a letter that when Charles Hauser “had a chance, he loved to go to his old home and sit by the spring and meditate,” Sattley said.
The real estate agent arranged the visit and as Sattley circled the house, she was warned not to step in the spring.
“I saw the spring, and I thought, ‘Yep, this is it,” she said.
The owner, who knew Sattley’s grandfather, let her tour the house and she said there were exposed logs in the kitchen.
“He was very nice and he told me he remembered my grandfather coming to dinner,” Sattley said.
The location of Hauser’s homestead was found at 4748 Hunning Road. When he lived there, Hauser sold plants and trees from a cart throughout the area. He fought in the Civil War and helped to found a church – St. Martin’s United Church of Christ in High Ridge, Sattley said.
“It’s believed Hauser came to the U.S. to avoid conscription into the German Army. Ironically, once in the U.S., he joined the Union Army and served in the cavalry,” Sattley wrote in a story about her family in Jefferson County, Missouri: History and Families. “It’s been told that with the cavalry he spent more time looking for Jesse James than Confederate troops,” she wrote.
After the war, in 1868, Hauser organized families in the area, and he and 18 other men signed the charter establishing the “Protestant Evangelical Independent Congregation of Jefferson County (St. Martin’s UCC in High Ridge).”
“He was not an ordained minister, but a devout layman member who remained a faithful member until 1892, when he moved with his family to Litchfield, Illinois, where he helped with the organizing of still another church, now called Trinity Lutheran Church,” according to the history of the church written for its 100th anniversary, on St. Martin’s website.
Some say the church may have been named for Hauser, but others say Martin Luther. Early records simply call the church Martin’s Church, according to the history.
In Litchfield, Ill., the family had a farm and raised cattle. Sattley believes, however, that her grandfather, Charles, didn’t care much for farming. He went to work at the Litchfield creamery in 1915. Hauser and a man named William Hartke incorporated the company and built a new plant in 1916 at its current Litchfield location. Hauser eventually became president of the firm known as the Milnot Co.
Two of Hauser’s sisters also immigrated to the St. Louis area and settled in High Ridge – Anna Marie Hauser with husband Christian Werner and Marie Magdalena Hauser, who first married Karl Scharf and later August Friederich Vornberg.
As for Sattley, she said piecing the history of her family together gives her a better sense of her identity.
“I know who I am and where I come from,” she said.
