Clemens Stallmans from Bakum, Vechta, Oldenberg, Germany to Carroll County, Iowa

 The Berning Family

Submitted by Allen Koster of Carroll, Iowa     March 24, 2001

Direct line to Anna Mary Schelle Stallman in red.

    The BERNING family came to Carroll County, Iowa in the 1870s when John Gerhart Berning and his wife, Maria Anne HARTING, with their children moved from Bremen Township in Delaware County to a farmstead southwest of Breda in Wheatland Township.

    John Gerhart Berning, the son of Gerhart and Margaret (STEIN) Berning, was born Aug. 4, 1815, in (Salzberg Lingen) Hannover. Maria Anne Harting was born in Tuden, Hannover Province of Germany, in 1817. They immigrated to America in the 1840s, were married in Cincinnati, Ohio (?) before making their way west to New Vienna, Carroll County, Iowa. They settled in Bremen Township, Sections 10 and 11.

    John's time in Bremen Twp was in a partnership with John Henry Berning. On the 4th of December, 1848, John Gerhart and John Henry purchased 160 acres from the United States which, signed by President James K. Polk, had been a payment to a Donald W. Morgan for military service as Private in Capt. Bankhead's Company of the First Regiment of Virginia Volunteers.

    In the 1850 federal census it is noted that the land of John Gerhart was valued at $500. The farm, owned by John Henry  (Heinrich) Berning and his wife Efemua, which was on the north line fence of John Gerhart's farm, was also valued at $500 in the census. In the 1860 census, John Gerhart valued his land at $1,000 and John Henry valued his at $1,500. The 1860 census also showed that two girls were born to John  Henry and Efemua and that three girls and two boys lived with John Gerhart and Maria. All seven of the children have Iowa as place of birth, the oldest being 10 at the time of the census.

    The oldest daughter of John Gerhart and Anna Marie Harting Berning, Marie Anne, married Frank Joseph SCHELLE on March 1, 1873 and together they moved to two and one-half miles west of Breda, Carroll County, Iowa, that same year. Feb. 28, 1874, John and Marie sold their acreage to John Henry and Efemua Margaretha Berning for  $1,575 who sold it as a 125 acre package on Dec. 13, 1878,  for $5,000 to Joseph Bagge who was married to John Henry's daughter, Mary.

    After John Gerhart and Marie Ann moved west in 1874, their second daughter, Anne, would marry Henry NEILAND at Mt. Carmel June 15, 1875, and they settled eight miles northwest of Breda. The oldest son, Gerhart Jr., would return to Delaware County and marry Josephine KROGMAN at Petersburg, Iowa on Feb. 10, 1880. After bringing Josephine west to Wheatland Twp. in 1880, they would move to the Ashton, Iowa area in 1887, then permanently settle in Lismore, Minn., in 1899. Also moving west with Gerhart and Maria Ann were daughter Margaretha and son Herman. Another son, Simon, had died at an early age. Herman married Christina RICKELS in Breda May 22, 1882. Six weeks later Margaretha would marry a pioneer settler, William G. KOSTER, in Breda July 8, 1882.

    John Gerhart and Marie Ann purchased two homesteads in 1876; 80 acres in Section 22 and 160 acres in Section 23 of Wheatland Twp. The land originally was in the possession of the Iowa Railroad Land Company which had received the land from the United States Government as an inducement to build a railroad across Iowa. In 1870, Lambert KNIEST purchased 23,000 acres, almost all of the land in Wheatland Twp. from the IRLC. When Kniest purchased land from the IRLC in 1868 it was to establish a "colony of Germans" centered in Mt. Carmel just to the east of Wheatland Twp. However, for Wheatland Twp., he would "throw the land  open to the world with a guarantee to suit" to anyone who would want to homestead the land. However, the land sales had to be before June 1, 1871, and then the unsold land would revert back to the IRLC.

    To Wheatland Twp. many Germans moved. To this land that the Bernings would move to, it was described as "a vast body of first-class agricultural land consisting of rolling terrain, well watered and supplied with springs ... wild and tenantless and not a plow or spade had broken the turf with which nature had carpeted its thirty-six square miles."

    In the census of 1875, it lists that Gerhart Berning was farming in Section 23, lived with his wife Maria Ann, sons Gerhart Jr. and Herman and  daughters Anne and Margaretha. He had cultivated 100 acres in 1874 along with 50 acres of hay. Gerhart Sr. would purchase from the IRLC two contracts that had been issued to H. Kruse, each contract for 80 acres for $308 each in 1876 and 1878 in Section 22. In 1876, he also purchased 160 acres in Section 23, a contract originally owned by F. Hoogestraat. Since Kniest had not sold the land by mid-1871, the IRLC had sold it to Kruse and Hoogestraat who failed to fulfill their contracts, which made them available for Gerhart Sr. to acquire. The Berning family was working the Hoogestraat contract in Section 23 as a tenant-operator.

    Gerhart Sr. lived in Section 23  and Gerhard Jr., after marrying Josephine, lived in Section 22. Mar. 2, 1887, Gerhart Sr. sold the home place in Sec. 23 to his son Herman and an 80-acre farm to his son-in-law, Wm. G. Koster, who was married to his daughter Margaretha. After the death of Gerhart Sr, Oct. 2, 1887, Gerhart Jr., Josephine and their four children moved north to the Ashton, Iowa area where some of his relatives lived. In 1899, Gerhart Jr. and family settled in Lismore, Minn.

    Herman would purchase the acreage sold to Wm. KOSTER Sr. in 1901. However, in April of 1902, Herman died. With his passing, no member of the John Gerhart and Maria Ann Berning family would live in Carroll County who had moved west from Bremen Twp. in Delaware County. Herman's wife, Christina, and their eight children aged three to sixteen, would keep up the original homestead. Christina would live there until her death in 1942, then her son William would continue to farm the Berning homestead until he retired to Breda in 1961.

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