Gifts to the Colony 2012
2012 Donations Enrich the Collection
Gifts to the Colony is our annual year-end exhibit that recognizes artifact contributions made to ACHS during the current year of operations. Each year descendants or others approach ACHS with an offer to contribute artifacts to our collection. While we cannot take everything offered we do accept items that enhance our total understanding of life within the Aurora Colony. And as we learn more about the lives of some of our nearby pioneer families we have become increasingly interested in including their stories in our educational program. 2012’s exhibit “We Were Here First: The French Prairie Connection to the Aurora Colony” was the first such exhibit and others are being planned for the coming years.
More about this exhibit and photosWe Were Here First
“The French Prairie Connection to the Aurora Colony”
“You know, we were here before the colony,” we often hear from descendants of the families that settled in the French Prairie of Marion County, Oregon before Dr. Wilhelm Keil in 1856.
More about this exhibit and photosThe Ehlen Family
"Many Lives - Many Ties"
Musicality and craftsmanship are themes that run through the Ehlen family in their relationship with the Bethel and Aurora Colony’s.
John Diedrich Ehlen was born in Hanover Germany on October 4, 1799. He died on February 9, 1882. About 1825 he married Maria Charlotta Boning and the couple had four children between 1826 and 1835. We do not know if Maria was alive when the family immigrated to America but all of the children were born in Hanover. Evidence strongly suggests that the Ehlen’s first settled in Ohio before J.D. brought their four children, ranging from nine to nineteen, to Bethel in 1845.
Gifts to the Colony 2011
2011 Donations Enrich the Collection
Gifts to the Colony is our annual recognition of artifact contributions made to ACHS during the current year of operations. Each year descendants or others approach ACHS with an offer to contribute artifacts to our collection. While we cannot take everything offered we do accept items that enhance our total understanding of life within the Aurora Colony. Additionally we have become increasingly interested in the lives of the colony descendants and now often incorporate portions of their stories into our annual family exhibits which we have held since 2006.
More about this exhibit and photosThe Giesy Family
We Were All One Family
Our summer 2011 exhibit on the Giesy family is our latest with a focus on the lives of the Colony family members. Andrew Giesy Sr. was one of Dr. Wilhelm Keil’s earliest and devoted followers near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He and he wife Barbara and their fourteen children all played important parts in the Colony story.
Three of Andrew Sr.’s sons were evangelists for Keil and brought spiritual enthusiasm to his mission. The Giesy’s were also active in Colony business enterprises and they were always interested in politics. As much as the Giesy’s may have been responsible for the formation of the Colony they were also leaders in the decision to bring it to an end.
More about this exhibit and photosThe Zimmerman Family
With Faith and Dedication
David Zimmerman Sr. and Maria Stauffer, who married in 1830, were members of two Swiss families who met in Pittsburg and forged strong relationships that eventually led some of them to join Dr. Wilhelm Keil’s Bethel Colony in 1845. This alliance continued as well in Aurora. Since Dr. Keil originally managed a drug store in Pittsburg, and also first started to preach with the Methodist church there, we are now exploring the important influence of the Swiss heritage in the formation of Dr. Keil’s colony in and around that city. These first Swiss supporters, including the Giesy’s, provided some of the most fervent support for Dr. Keil. Without their enthusiasm it seems unlikely that the communal society could have been formed and then later maintained.
More about this exhibit and photosThe Miller Family
The Lord Has Blessed Us All
George and Mary Ann Miller were the parents of eleven children born in Pennsylvania and Mahoning County, Ohio between 1801 and 1821. Nine of these children were sons and two were daughters. Of those eleven children only Isaac did not participate in some manner in the life of Dr. Keil’s colony and that is because he died in 1839. A namesake of his, Isaac Hewitt, played a very poignant role that illustrates the sacrifices often made by people who commit themselves to an ideal. George, the patriarch, did not live to see the colony either but Mary Ann Miller lived a long life and went all of the way to Aurora with those of her children who also made that decision.
More about this exhibit and photosThe Kraus Family
We Have Everything Plenty
The family of Michael and Elizabeth Kraus and their descendants will be featured in the museum’s first exhibit for 2010. This continues our recent trend of focusing on one colony family so as to discover their broader connections to the total colony story.
Michael, born in 1801 and Elizabeth, born in 1808 were married near Pittsburg in 1829. In the early 1840’s Michael became particularly impressed with Dr. Keil and we have evidence that suggests that the vote taken to form a Christian communal society was cast at Michael’s house. Michael and Elizabeth brought their growing family to Bethel, Missouri, in 1845 where he contributed $2132.18 to the common treasury, the largest portion committed by any individual or family group.
While little is known of Michael’s life at Bethel, we do know that he and his wife had nine children, the last being a boy named William in 1854. The first four children were girls, followed by two boys, two more girls and finally, William. Mary Kraus, the eldest child, married Sebastian Giesy in 1855 and left with him for Willapa in the Peter Klein wagon Train, the migration that preceded Dr. Keil’s by one month. The people that arrived at Willapa in 1855 were greeted by the ten scouts who had selected Willapa as the site for Dr. Keil’s new “Eden”.
Gifts to the Colony
2009 Donations Enrich the Collection
Gifts to the Colony is our annual recognition of artifact contributions made to ACHS during the current year of operations. Each year descendants or others approach ACHS with an offer to contribute artifacts to our collection. While we cannot take everything offered we do accept items that enhance our total understanding of life within the Aurora Colony. Additionally we have become increasingly interested in the lives of the colony descendants and now often incorporate portions of their stories into our annual family exhibits which we have held since 2006.
More about this exhibit and photosThe Will Family
Commitment to Community
Based on the heritage of the John Will Sr. and Wolfgang Will families
When thirty individuals of the Will family, made up from the families of five brothers, arrived in Muscatine County, Iowa in late 1839 they did not anticipate that some of them would soon be committing their lives and fortunes to a Christian communal society. New emigrants from Bavaria, they first settled with other Germans who had gathered at Bloomington.
More about this exhibit and photos
