My husband’s 3rd great grandmother – in Scotland
John Edward Tracy Tombstone
Tombstone for John Edward Tracy in Council Cemetery, York County, Nebraska. Tombstone is located in the middle of a bush near the middle of the cemetery which holds many of John Edward Tracy’s descendants and neighbors. John Edward Tracy was my great great grandfather, Nebraska pioneer and patriarch of the Tracy family.
John Edward Tracy
The tombstone says:
John Edward husband of Maria Artlysia Tracy died Apr. 28, 1896 aged 64 Y 8M 12D “A precious one from us is gone, a voice we loved is stilled. A place is vacant in our home which never can be filled. God in His wisdom has recalled the boon His love has given. And though the body slumber here, the soul is safe in heaven.”
Car wreck kills father, wife no where to be found.
Car Hits Viaduct Pier
Gotcher, 3217 Franklin Street, died at St. Joseph’s hospital at 10:10 o’clock last night from a fractured skull received when a car in which he was riding with Carl Carlson, 3215 Franklin street, crashed into the center pier of the Burlington viaduct on Thirteenth street at 9 o’clock last night. Carlson’s auto was going north on Thirteenth street at the time of the accident.
Both men were extricated from the wreckage by Lawrence Scabio, 1814 North Eighteenth Street, who reported the accident and had the men taken to St. Joseph’s hospital. Carlson was severely cut and bruised.
At the hospital last night Carlson was too dazed to tell how the accident happened.
According to Mrs. Carlson, Gotcher is survived by a widow and four children, but police were unable to find Mrs. Gotcher last night to tell her of the accident. Neither did Mrs. Carlson know where Mrs. Gotcher could be found.
Gotcher’s body was taken to Heafey & Heafey undertaking parlors pending arrangements for the funeral.
Before I move on to Michael Anthony and Augusta Wilhemina (Erxleben) Ruslers’ children I must do a post on Augusta’s siblings. This is hard for me because I like to be fairly sure of my facts and the Erxleben’s have been kind of elusive. The best information I have for them is from Samuel (Frederick’s) will. So here goes with what I have and I am hoping that someday I will have some better information on these ancestors.
Carl Erxleben was born June 7, 1834 in Prussia, probably in the parish of Schermen. He married Anna there and they immigrated to America with their children in about 1869 as all of their children were born in Prussia. William (1852), Albert (1855), Charles (1859), Carl (1860), Alvina (1862), Bertha (1864), Anna (1866), and Alma (1868). Carl Erxleben was a farmer in Ogle County, Illinois and he died there December 5, 1907.
August Adolph Erxleben was born in Moeser, Schermen, Prussia July 6, 1837. He stayed in Prussia after his family emigrated. The reason I know that much about him is that he had to proved his relationship to Samuel (Frederick), his father in probate to receive his inheritance.
Passenger list
Herman C Erxleben was born September 3, 1848 in Prussia. He immigrated with the family January 7, 1859 and lived with them in Ogle County, Illinois where he grew up and married Rosina P June 7, 1877. Their children were born there; William F (1879), Edward J (1880), George F (1886), Albert R (1888), Clara R (1894). Herman was a farmer and inherited 80 acres from his father along with his watch and clothes. He died June 5, 1924 in Rockford, Winnebago, Illinois.
Mary Wilhemina Erxleben was born July 31, 1851 in Prussia. She 
immigrated with the family and grew up in Ogle County, Illinois. She married William G Erffmeyer in 1877. Their children were Oliver (1873) and Emma (1876) who may have had a different mom. Ida (1879), Frank (1880), and Ruth I (1894).
Augusta Wilhemina I have already written about in a previous post. And that is what I know so far. There are other children listed on the passenger list but I have been told that those were Frederick’s second wife’s children from her first marriage.
I am so happy to announce that my sister just delivered her 5th daughter and named her Melody Rosanna. My beautiful little namesake follows in a line of many Rosannas. I am honored and enthralled with her. She was named not only for her Aunt Rosanna (me) but also for her great grandma Mabel Rosanna. Grandma Mabel also had a niece named Bernadine Rosanna and Grandma Mabel Rosanna was named after her aunt, Rachel Rosanna who
in turn was named after her aunt, Rosanna Kelly. These are the Rosanna’s on Melody Rosanna’s mother’s paternal side. There are also Rosanna’s on her mother’s maternal line. She has a 4th and a 5th Great Grand Aunt on that side. And there is even a Rosanna on her father’s tree; a 3rd great grand aunt was named Rosanna. Rosanna means “Rose of Grace”.
Augusta
Augusta Wilhemina Erxleben 1854-1927
Augusta Wilhemina Erxleben was born December 7 1854 in Berlin, Germany. She was the youngest child of Samuel “Frederick” and Johanne Christian Dorthea Wilke Erxleben. Her mother died soon after her birth and her father soon married a widow with children of her own, Maria Kegel Hemmerling. On January 1, 1859 the family immigrated to America. Augusta was four years old. They settle in Ogle County, Illinois. In the 1870 census Augusta was enumerated as a domestic servant in a neighbor’s household. She married Michael Anthony Rusler, October 4, 1873 in Ogle County. He had also emigrated from Germany as a child. They moved to a farm in Brown Township, York County, Nebraska in 1877.
Augusta was the mother of ten children, eight of whom lived to adulthood. Mary Sophia
Augusta with some of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren
(1874) and Frank E (1876) were born in Illinois. The rest were born in Nebraska: Charles A. (1879), Joseph M (1881), George D (1882-1892), Bertha Mabel (1885), William W (1887), Earl E (1891-1891), Pearl E (1891), and Liol Otto (1895). Mary Sophia was my great great grandmother.
In the Spring of 1903, Michael and Augusta moved to Custer Co., Nebraska.
Augusta’s Bradshaw house
Michael died that same year in June. Augusta moved back to York County, settling in Bradshaw until 1925 when she moved in with her daughter Pearl (Wagner). She died on Tuesday, March 29, 1927 after a two week bout with influenza. She was 72 years old. Augusta was a faithful member of the Lutheran church. She was buried in Council Cemetery.
From looking at pictures I can tell Augusta was a tiny woman with a pioneer spirit. As a child she came to a foreign land. As a young mother she carved a home out of the Nebraska prairie, had ten children (and watched two of them die). And then as an older woman she once again moved to a new farm where her husband soon died, then she moved to a house in town. At the time of her husband’s death in 1903 she was 49 and still had children at home, her youngest was eight. There are many of her descendants spread all over America today and we are all proud to call her our ancestor.
Augusta with Grandson’s Frank and Joe
Lloyd, Ivan, Mary S., Augusta
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