By Emily Smucker Beidler
Since 1976, my father, along with many, many others, worked on a genealogy that is a credit to this organization. They started with Christian the first, but soon found it too big and too difficult to verify which Christian was which. So they concentrated on the Christian the third line – Christian, son of John, son of Christian our immigrant ancestor. And while I respect genealogy as the skeleton on which all of our family history is built, it’s the stories that hang of this skeleton, the very simple stories of human experience that have always pulled me towards family history.
Here’s one of my favorites:
It was the late 1700s and Christian Schmucker was no stranger to grief. He had moved his family from Lancaster County (Berks County really) to Mifflin County in search of a better life, more land, a dream of farms for his children…at a time where moving meant following the wagon by foot over uncertain roads, memories of Native American conflicts fresh on his mind. He moved his family from eastern to western Pennsylvania along with a fellowship of Amish friends. Little did he know that he would soon bury his wife in this new land, holding her infant, both lives lost in childbirth. Suddenly he was left, a widower with 10 children – I imagine support from his Amish neighbors was immediate and heartfelt but he was a pioneer in a land of pioneers. How much help can you ask for?
So he chose to make a daring journey - to ride horseback by himself over a hundred miles into an entirely different Amish settlement with the express purpose in finding a wife… and what kind of a woman would be willing to marry him and raise his 10 children? I wonder how many times he stopped. I wonder how much grieving he did on the way. Was he crazy to believe that such a thing could happen? The story goes that in his silent desperation, he prayed for guidance and the Lord’s blessing and as he came to a fork in the road, he let go of the horses reins and said aloud, “In the name of God, go to the right or to the left.”
And so it was that he came to the farmhouse where another young woman was living her own world of grief.
Veronica Levengood Peachey was living with her sister’s family after her young husband died of yellow fever. He died even before she gave birth to their first child, Abraham. Tears nearly consumed her until she resolutely decided that it was more important to be strong for her son. So the new widow and new mother moved in with her older sister and family. She was the younger sister, and had grown up working the fields with her brothers rather than learning to run a house so this must have felt more comfortable for Veronica . Following her older sister’s lead gave her time to grieve but also contribute to the never ending workload of farming that is every farmer’s life.
But the strangest thing happened one morning – she got up before dawn to help the men get an early start to drive cattle to the market in Philadelphia. During a lull in the morning’s work, she lay down on the bench behind the stove to rest. As she drifted of to sleep, she had the strangest dream. She saw a ruddy-bearded man come riding onto their property – through the creek bed and up the hill. He was mounted on a bay horse, with a white blaze on it’s forehead. She awoke half-way, enough to recognize how strange the dream was, then drifted back into sleep again, only to have the exact same dream. There was too much work to be done to linger on them, so she pushed herself on. (If I were Veronica, I think I’d pour myself a strong cup of coffee.)
But some time later, we don’t know if it was days or weeks, a stranger did come riding through the creek bed and up the hill. When he came to the door, she recognized him as the man she had seen in her dream – or was it a nightmare? Was she just imagining the coincidence? Would anyone believe her if she told them? She kept her thoughts to herself. As was the custom, the man was welcomed in, an Amish man among fellow Amish people and he stayed for dinner. While the men were eating, Veronica slipped out and ran as fast as she could to the barn. And that’s when she saw it – the same bay horse with the same white blaze on its forehead. If you’re getting a little weirded out, can you imagine how Veronica felt? Who was this man? Where did he come from? What is going on? She learned soon enough – it was Christian Schmucker (my fve times great grandfather) who came in hope, in good faith, and maybe in desperation, to fnd a wife. He shared with his new friends both his story and his intent and his eyes caught Veronica’s. He asked if he might return to visit her. And so the whirlwind courtship began and ended – because on his next visit back to see Veronica, he asked if she would be willing to marry him
Now it was the custom in the Amish church to announce to the congregation three weeks before a wedding the intention of two people to marry and Christian hoped to take Veronica home to do just that. But as he consulted with the preachers, they had a different idea. Tey granted special permission to wed immediately, right there and then in her sister’s kitchen. You see, it was Christian’s turn to host the church meeting at his house in a few weeks and he really needed Veronica’s help to prepare the house.
So overnight, Veronica’s life completely changed. She went from being the younger sister, mourning widow, mother of a newborn, to wife and mother of 11. On top of cooking and washing clothes for 13 people, learning to know a new husband in the midst of the work, she also had the responsibility to clean up a whole house – a house that she was suddenly responsible for in order to invite the entire Amish community for church and meet them all for the very frst time. Te cards must have seemed stacked against her to make a good impression and in a moment of feeling overwhelmed, she slipped back behind the house, her new house, and wept. I can imagine her, pulling her apron up to hide her face and wipe her tears. Te story goes that it was here, behind that house, that her new step children found her crying. They said immediately, “We will help you,” so eager they were to please their new young step mother. And they did.
To Christian and Veronica’s union, came 8 more children. Sometimes when we tell family stories, we hear what we want to hear, and if that’s the case, I unapologetically like to believe that this was a happy marriage that was lived out through two individuals who had already carried more than their share of heartache.
We know this story because it’s been handed down from generation to generation. It’s said that Veronica loved telling this story to her grandchildren who passed it on through the generations like a beautiful priceless quilt.
I wonder what they’d say if they knew that we’d be here today telling their story. I wonder what they’d say if they only knew how many people would pull together to collect a genealogy encompassing over 50,000 names – all beginning with them. I wonder what they would say. Presented by Emily Smucker-Beidler, 2016 SSS Family Gathering Lancaster, Pa. References: Te Story of my Great Great Great Grandmother, by Christina Nef Jonas Smucker, Ancestors and Descendants, by John R. Smucker
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