AMERICA THE GREAT MELTING POT

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Direct descendant is highlighted in red

FATHER

Johann Friedrich Gröninger

MOTHER

Anna Margaretha Rumlin

WIFE

Margaretha Veiock

CHILDREN

1. Barbara Groeninger b. 1830

2. Apolonia Groeninger b. 1832

3. Fredrick Groeninger b. 1834

4.  Anna Maria Groeninger b. 1837

5. Henry Groeninger b.1839

6. Catherine Groeninger b. 1843

7. Johannes Wilhelm Groeninger b. 1846

Biography of Friedrich Groeninger
by Susan Brooke
June 2015

Friedrich Gröninger was born about 1804 in Vorderweidenthal in the Rhineland which was under Napoleonic rule at the time. Under French rule the class distinctions were blurred and the peasants found they had more rights.  When Friedrich was nine, Napoleon was defeated. However, in the Rhineland they kept the Napoleonic Code even though they had been annexed into Bavaria as a separate state. There were demonstrations and riots from the lowers classes. The young men were getting conscripted into the army. Also, taxes were high and in the 1820's farm production was down.  There was talk of America.
Friedrich Gröninger was the first to leave.  He was the youngest of at least eight children.  In February of 1832 when he was twenty-seven years old, he married Margaretha Veiock who had an illegitimate child born two years earlier.  He may have been the father of this child as his brother, Andreas, had served as her sponsor.  Possibly Friedrich was off serving in the army and could not get home in time to marry Margareta.  She was pregnant with her second child when they married and they left shortly thereafter for America.  Friedrich's sister, Anna Maria Gröninger married to Conrad Zimmerle, probably travelled with them.  Both families are attending the Smithfield United Church of Christ in Pittsburgh by January of 1833. 
Their next four children were born in Pittsburgh. Another two of his siblings, Mathias Gröninger and Christina Gröninger Helfer, came over in 1837 and attended the Smithfield church.  A baby daughter of Friedrich Gröninger  died there in 1838.  Then in 1839 he, under the name of Fredrick Craninger, got a Federal land grant for 80 acres of land in southern Indiana.
So, with four young children, their son Henry having just been born in September of 1839, they moved to Vanderburgh County in Indiana onto their new farm.  They did well and they prospered. They had two more children in Indiana. In 1850 he purchased an additional 20 acres for $150.00.  After that purchase, the value of their real estate was listed at $1000.  Margaret Veiock, his wife, died in 1857.  She was fifty years old.  But Friedrich continued on farming with the help of his three sons. By1860 his land was valued at $2000 and his personal wealth at $800.  Two of his daughters, Appolonia and Katherine, married sons of his new neighbor, William Henze.  Their farms were adjoining and over the next few years there was much intermarriage with the Henze family.  Another daughter, Barbara, married Jacob Dausmann who became a prosperous farmer over in Posey County, Indiana. One son, the youngest, died when he was twenty four.  In the 1880 land map of Vanderburgh County, Friedrich Gröninger owns 140 1/2 acres of land.

Friedrich Gröninger's other two sons, Fred and Henry, married sisters, daughters of Henry Fink who farmed just to the west of them.  Fred married when he was about twenty-five and had four children. He had remained on his father's farm but he died when he was forty-four.  His widow, Elizabeth Fink Gröninger, stayed on the farm with her father-in-law, Friedrich Gröninger.  Henry married Katherine Fink when he was thirty.  He seems to have moved off the farm around that same time, living between 5th and 6th in Independence (the historic part of downtown Evansville).  He worked as a laborer until the 1870's.  By 1880 he had 40 acres of land back in German township. He and Katherine Fink had five children who lived to maturity.  Friedrich Gröninger, the father, continued farming and died in 1886 at the age of eight-two.

In the mid 1850's another sibling of Friedrich Gröninger, Andreas Gröninger, left Vorderweidenthal.  He also settled in Vanderburgh County, Indiana.  However, he and his family lived in Evansville while Friedrich's family were out in German township on farms.