The Reising-O'Tool Family History

by Dan O'Tool

The stories on this page are excerpts of The Reising O'Tool Family: A History and Genealogy by Daniel Lee O'Tool—a fascinating collection of history, family stories, and photographs. These direct quotes from the book are reprinted here with the author's permission. You may contact Mr. O'Tool directly to obtain a copy of his book.

Maria Anna Nieland and Gerhard Boes

— from The Reising-O'Tool Family: A History and Genealogy by Dan O'Tool

Maria Anna Nieland was born in Südlohn, Prussia on January 16, 1843. Her parents had five children. As was customary for some families, each of the bays had the same first name, John. The daughters also shared their first name, Maria. Each child was known by his or her second name. The family moved to Ramsdorf, Prussia while she was a child. Gerhard Boes was born in Ramsdorf, Prussia on September 20, 1837. The two natives of the annexed province of Westphalia came of age during a tumultuous age of German history.

The many independent principalities and city-states of the region were being drawn together by a common culture, language and national aspirations. At nearly the same time they were being pulled into two opposing orbits by the two most powerful German monarchies. The most apparent difference between the two powers was religion. However, the real point of conflict seemed to be the ambitions of two royal families.

Prussia consisted of the original land holdings of the Hohenzollern family along the Baltic Sea and those states which they absorbed during and after the war of liberation from France. Frederick the elector, a prominent member of the ruling family, built the foundations of the Prussian military traditions in the 17th Century. He created a standing army to defend the expansive land holdings of the Hohenzollern family.

In 1814, Prussia enacted the Universal Service Law, which required every Prussian male to serve two years of active military duty. The law also created a militia of veteran soldiers, which could be mobilized in times of conflict. In effect, every Prussian male over the age of eighteen was a soldier for life. The German historian, Baron van Hoerst, once described the militaristic society of Prussia. "The Prussian monarchy was not a country that had an army, but rather an army that had a country which it used as a billeting area." It was this military might and tradition that enabled Prussia to wield much of its influence over the other states of northern Germany.

Austria to the south was ruled by the Hapsburg Dynasty. It led a confederation of German states, which included Baden, Wurtenburg and Bavaria. This monarchy had once controlled most of the German principalities when they were united as the Holy Roman Empire. The Protestant Reformation, and the political changes of the revolutionary
era splintered the Hapsburg influence over all but the southern states. The Austrians also governed an empire consisting of the southern Slavic people and the independent kingdom of Hungary. They aspired to govern a united German nation.

The two centers of German power initially worked in concert to occupy a contested area of land at the base of the Danish peninsula. The duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, then part of Denmark, had a large German population in whose interest the two German powers claimed to be acting. Denmark declared war on the two German states and was defeated in 1864. The Prussian ruler, Kaiser William I, greatly influenced by his Prime Minister, Count Otto von Bismark, began a series of diplomatic and military ventures to unite the German states under a constitutional monarchy headed by himself. This drew Prussia into direct conflict with Austria, which had similar ambitions.

In 1866, Prussia sent troops to occupy Hanover and Saxony, two of the states aligned with Austria. A war ensured in which Prussia was able to defeat the allied troops from Southern Germany within two weeks. Austria relinquished any claims of influence in German politics. The remaining states were either annexed directly or had governments subordinate to the Prussian hierarchy within a federation.

Gerhard Boes, as a Prussian soldier from the district of Westphalia, served in both the Danish and Austrian Wars, receiving a wound during one or the other. The second conflict must have been distasteful to him, as he was a Catholic who could be expected to feel sympathy toward the Germans he was sent to fight. Within one year of Austria's defeat, he and Anna Nieland would both flee Prussia for the United States.

Family lore tells of Anna earning passage for herself and her fiancée by working as a nanny for a family named Jasper. One story contends that while Anna was a passenger, Gerhard stowed away. Records reveal that a family from Ramsdorf, named Jasper, did arrive in American in 1866. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Jasper with their five children settled in Dyersville, Iowa. Their home was known as a haven for many newly arrived immigrants from Germany, who where sheltered until they were able to arrange for permanent homesteads of their own. Anna and Gerhard arrived in 1867. They probably arrived in New York then traveled by train to Dyersville.

Anna may have lived and worked with the Jaspers for the first two years that she and Gerhard lived in Dyersville. Rosina Reising-O'Tool, a granddaughter of the couple, was told as a child that Anna worked as a live-in nanny one year to pay for her passage and another to pay for the passage of Gerhard. On February 1, 1870, presumably free of debt, the couple married in Dyersville.

Anna was very exited about America. They may be surmised by the letter she wrote to her family in Prussia. According to her, "when meat was placed on the table… a person could eat all he wanted." This was a vast improvement over conditions in Europe at the time. One immigrant of the era said that meat was eaten only twice a year by the average wage earner of Germany. Anna's letter convinced a sister and one brother to join her in America.

Anna and Gerhard moved to Wheatland township in Carroll County, where their two eldest children, Henry and Elizabeth (AKA Lizzie) were born. They bought a farm in Sac County, six and a half miles northeast of Breda in 1874 where the rest of their children were born: John, Theodore, Mary Dorothy, Clara, Mary Ida, Joseph and Catherine. The eldest son would die in 1888 from an injury received when he was kicked by a horse.

The family lived among a colony of German speaking settlers. They maintained many of the customs and values that they had brought with them from their homeland. Many of the old settlers continued to brew their own beer and Gerhard made wooden shoes for his children from cottonwood trees. Though Gerhard became an U.S. Citizen on the 3rd of April 1877, neither he nor Anna learned to speak English.

In 1900, the family moved to a farm just west of Breda. They resided there for the next fifteen years. Gerhard and Anna moved into Breda in 1913, where Gerhard died, two years later on February 18, 1915. Anna died in Wheatland Township on March 28, 1919. The couple was buried in Breda.

Clara Boes and Max Reising

— from The Reising-O'Tool Family: A History and Genealogy by Dan O'Tool

If he had time to read them, Max Reising would have enjoyed the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. As a child, however, he may not have taken the time. His passion was fishing; when he wasn't doing his chores, he was on the banks of the Boyer River fishing - barefoot. He was born on October 25, 1881. His parents, Michael Reising and Rosina Elsaesser-Geir, were both immigrants from Bavaria. The family farm was located on the ridge that separated the two great rivers of America. Rain falling on their land flowed either into the East Boyer then west into the Missouri, or east toward the Mississippi; not to meet again until the two mighty currents joined north of St. Louis, Missouri. Actually river is a rather pretentious title for the tiny creek which ran across the Reising farm.

Many years after he had grown to manhood, he would take his children fishing at the point where the river emptied into Black Hawk Lake. On those days he would again be barefoot; just as he was when he ran to this spot as a child. In fact, Max spent the greater portion of his days barefoot. His daughter, Rosina Reising O'Tool says that he was barefoot practically everyday except Sunday. This was confirmed by Lenus Schulte, who as an adolescent, marveled at the adult, and barefoot, Max Reising. When neighbors would gather to thrash, bale hay or perform some other community activity Max was always as shoeless as the farm boys who came to help.

Young Max mainly found friends in the neighborhood. County kids of the last decade of the Nineteenth Century knew few friends, other than those who lived in the vicinity of their farm. Clara Boes lived nearby and was one of Max's childhood friends. Thirteen months older than Max, Clara was the daughter of Gerhard Boes and Anna Nieland; born on September 14, 1880. Both the Boes and Nieland families had many relatives in the area. Clara was raised among a large extended family. As a young woman, she worked several years as a housekeeper for family members.

On the day that Max and Clara married in Mt. Carmel Church, November 17, 1903, they received the title to their first piece of land. It was the custom of early settlers to help set their children up with a small farm. At their wedding reception, Max found his plate turned upside down and underneath lay the title to eighty acres of land in Viola Township, Sac County. Max and Clara prospered. Over the years, Max was able to buy, sell, and trade several farms in the Wheatland, Viola and Kneist Townships. In 1909, the couple bought 160 acres. One-mile east and a mile and a half north of Breda, they built the home where they lived and raised their family. They had eleven children: Amelia, Andrew, Gregory, Zeno, Lawrence, Alvin, Michael, Conrad (AKA Connie), Rosina, Leona and Bernice.

Max and Clara raised their family thorough a world war, a farming crisis and a national depression. The era was one of great changes. Americans ere becoming more mobile with the arrival of the automobile. The next generation was becoming more worldly as radio, movies, and telephones invaded the German-American community of Northern Carroll/Southern Sac Counties. The Charleston was the rage; stock and commodities speculation was a temptation; and Prohibition was the widely ignored national law. This generation of parents faced unique challenges.

Rosina remembers her father as a stern man with a good sense of humor and a well-developed sense of justice. He allowed his children freedom, but was not hesitant to impart on them a sense of values and ethics. When the children disobeyed, he could be a strict disciplinarian. His sense of justice, on at least one occasion, was thwarted as the following story illustrates:

One evening, Greg and Andrew refused to stop rough housing in the double bed they shared. Max ascended the stairs with a belt, flailing at the boy lying on the side of the bed nearest the door. When he returned to hush the two, minutes later, he slapped in the dark at the boy lying on the other side of the bed. He did not know that between his trips upstairs, Andrew had convinced Greg, the recipient of the first beating that they should trade places - putting Greg in the position to receive Max's wrath a second time.

Max and Clara suffered the loss of one child in October of 1945. Their son, Alvin, who was married and had three children, died of complications from surgery for gallstones and a bleeding ulcer. His wife, Theresa, was pregnant with their fourth child.

Max was always prepared to adjust to changing times. He had bought two cars before some of his neighbors had bought their first. He began using tractors while many still depended on actual horsepower. Electricity, phones and indoor plumbing were all welcome in his home before they became standard for his neighbors.

Although Max understood the usefulness of modern inventions, he was not a blind disciple to fads and change. Before he died on May 17, 1952, of heart failure, he required that his family promise not to have an impersonal funeral, held in some public funeral home. This practice he felt was disrespectful He was among the last to have his wake and viewing held in the family's home. For two days, Max's body lay in his bedroom, attended by family prior to burial.

Clara died a decade later on July 15, 1963. Her will was simple but ripe for a long legal battle. It was the practice of Max and Clara to lend money to their children as they needed it. Clara's final testament asked that any outstanding debts be settled out of the estate. Records of these debts were never witnessed and a good lawyer could have received a sizable portion of the relatively large estate if any of the surviving children and grandchildren had contested it. Respectful of her wishes, no one did.

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