My brick wall

HEINZE, HINES, SEFFERON, HOEFLEN, EFFMARIN

Posted By: Jo Phillips (email)
Date: 3/9/2011 at 18:17:29

I apologize in advance for the length of this query. I've been working on this brick wall for many years and have made no real progress and thought I'd put it all out here, hoping maybe someone will read it and have another idea for me to try. (And, of course, with a little tiny dab of hope that this will ring a bell with someone.) Thanks in advance for any help.

My husband's great-great-grandparents were Charles Heinze, which was changed to Hines, and Barbara.

Family records indicate that Barbara's maiden name was Sefferon, Efnarin, Efmarison and Effmaison. Family records indicate that Barbara and Charles Hines (Heinze) were married 5 Mar 1857. A gentleman from Germany told me that very few Bavarian surnames begin with the letter E so I use Sefferon as her name.

Barbara was born in Bavaria, ca 1830; she died in Muscatine 8 Jul 1871 by suicide, leaving 7 small children. Although she has a gravestone, Greenwood has no record of her burial. The family was very poor so I'm sure the marker was put there at a later date.

I find nothing for any of the surnames above. I don't know when she came to the US.

The 1850 census has a woman named Barbara Hoeflen, born Germany, right birth year to be my Barbara. Also in that household are Anna Hoeflen, Urban Kuffenheim and Lannock Metzinger. Urban subsequently married a woman named Anna. I can't find a marriage record so I don't know who he married but maybe it was Anna Hoeflen and maybe she was Barbara's sister. I've corresponded with a Hoeflen family researcher and he can't find a Barbara in his records.

Barbara's son Fred's marriage application lists his mother as Barbara Affrend. I checked the other kids' marriage and death records. I also checked the 1925 census for all of them and again, nothing.

In the 1870 census, Barbara gives her name as Margaret.

There is a marriage record at Muscatine County Courthouse for a Margaret Effmarin to "J.K. Sproat" in June 1856 by K.F. Oberman, Referent of the German Protestant Church. Small Record B, page 82 and also in Record A, page 35. I was very excited when I found this! At the moment, I can't remember why I ruled it out but the church that has those records (I'm sorry I've forgotten the name but it's out by the funeral home and city cemetery) checked it for me and said the names are correct. They also checked all of the marriage records from 1853-1857 and there are no Heinze or Hines. The Heinze name is accurate (I have their birth records from Germany and have been to their village) and although Heinze/Hines was misspelled in many cases, J.K. Sproat is too far off to be Charles Heinze.

Charles was born in Saxony, Germany in 1829 and died in Muscatine in 1909. He came over with his father, Frederick, who was killed by a train in Muscatine in 1867; his brother, George, who died by drowning in the Mississippi River at age 14, probably about 1855; and his sister, Sophia, who married John Ponbeck and had no children who lived. Barbara is buried in the Ponbeck plot. Charles is buried elsewhere in Greenwood and has a stone; Frederick and George are probably also in Greenwood but there are no records of them and if they had markers, they're gone now. But my husband's grandmother told me where they were back in the early '70's.

Someone left a piece of property in Omaha, Nebraska to the children and Charles had to go to court to get permission to sign off for the 2 youngest because they weren't of age, giving the property to their oldest brother who lived in Omaha. I tried like crazy to find out who owned the property and left it to them but the description in the court records is too vague.

So there I am - just feeling like I've run out of options but then thinking I'm overlooking something obvious so if anyone has any idea, no matter how trivial it might sound, please holler.

I believe Charles and Barbara probably met in the US because his village is pretty far north of Bavaria.

My email address is JMPerL47@aol.com. I have a public tree on ancestry.com - if you search for Barbara Sefferon, it'll come up as Phillips public tree.

I live in Ohio so I don't get much chance to dig around in the records in Muscatine so any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Jo Phillips