“My father, Jacob Straubhaar, was born January 21, 1876 at Niederstocken, Bern, Switzerland. He died on February 20, 1945 at Rupert, Minidoka County, Idaho and was buried in the Rupert Cemetery on February 24, 1945. My father’s parents were Jacob Straubhaar and Anna Elizabeth Strahm.
“My mother, Lena Blaser, was born July 14, 1873, at Langnau, Bern, Switzerland. She died on January 9, 1919, at Rupert, Minidoka, Idaho and was buried in Montpelier, Bear Lake, Idaho. Her parents were Christian Blaser and Anna Marie Gerber.
“My father and mother were married in the Logan, Utah Temple on October 26, 1899.
“My mother was 18 when she came to the United States. We have been told that since she spoke English as well as her native Swiss language that she helped at Ellis Island with the records of arriving Swiss immigrants. Lena’s brother Chris came to America first and worked in Chicago as a basket maker. Then came Alfred and Ernest and they settled for awhile in Bern, Wisconsin. When the brothers had saved enough money they sent for their mother and the rest of their brothers and sisters except for my mother Lena who, apparently, stayed in Switzerland with her father. Their father didn’t come to the United States. Lena came a year later.
“My uncle Alfred Blaser has researched his mother and father’s history and he writes as follows: Anna Marie Gerber (my maternal grandmother) was born February 10, 1841 in Frittenbach by Langnau, Switzerland, the daughter of Elizabeth Kuhni and Johannes Gerber. Their farm barely produced enough to feed their family. Anna Marie learned to read and write even though she rarely was able to attend school. She married Christian Blaser on August 12, 1864. They had seven children: Rosetta, Ernest, Robert, Christian, Lena (my mother), Maria and Alfred. Apparently, Uncle Alfred reports, Christian Blaser drank up his earnings and Anna Marie did dressmaking to support her family. Anna Marie was raised in the Lutheran Church and had attended the Methodist Church. When she heard the Mormon elders preach the gospel, she knew this was the religion for which she had been searching. She knew that she wanted to take her family to America. They embarked on the ship “The City of Rome” on May 14, 1899. They arrived at the end of their journey in Montpelier, Idaho on June 4, 1899. Anna Marie died on October 20, 1902. (Excerpted from Alfred Blaser’s story “I Remember Mother”).
“My father was quite young, about six, when he came to the United States with his family. A wealthy man in Montpelier, a Mr. Koonz, brought people over from Switzerland to work for him. To pay back their passage they worked for over a year milking cows and working in his dairy operation. My grandfather Jacob came over that way. He and my grandmother Anna Elisabeth had six daughters and one son, who was my father. Diphtheria and typhoid took three of the girls as youngsters. Rose, Mary, Elizabeth and Jacob, my father, were the surviving children.
“My grandfather, Peter Larsen, John Bauman and John Bischoff pooled their resources and started their own cheese making operation. My grandparents had 5 acres of ground in town. The cows were herded out on the hillside outside of town and brought back into town every evening. Hay and grain was raised and at harvest time horses and people tromped the grain on to canvas and then the straw was taken off the grain.
“Later on the grain was harvested with a Ringling Bros. contraption. About five teams of horses would go around in a circle which turned a tumbling rod which operated the thresher and a grain separator. Someone on the end stacked the straw. A binder pulled by horses cut the grain and tied it into bundles. These bundles were taken to the separator which separated the grain from the straw and chaff.
“I was sixteen when our family moved to Rupert, Idaho. We lived on a farm outside of town. A terrible flu epidemic hit the country in the winter 1918-1919 and everyone in the family came down with it except Mable. The doctor who came out to the house told my dad that I was so sick that I probably wouldn’t live until morning. I overheard him telling Dad that so I was determined that I would live. During the night our mother died. This was January 9, 1919. Hubert and I were 19 and 17. A light went out of our lives when our mother died.
“Dad married Sarah Fidelia Babbitt on May 21, 1920. She had a little girl named Pearl. They continued to live in Rupert. Dad and Fidelia had Lena Elizabeth, Edna Beth, Max Rudolph (who died as a baby), Della, Reva Marie, Ernest Lee and Joyce Arlene.
“My dad died on February 21, 1945. He and Fidelia and the younger children were living in Paul, Idaho. Dad had gone to a farm sale with two of his friends–one was Jake Kerbs. It was a very cold day and Dad must have gotten chilled. His friends thought he didn’t look well so they drove him home. He died in the car. He didn’t suffer a long illness in the hospital so that was a blessing for him. He was a good man and a good father and we missed him very much.”
-John Joseph Straubhaar
Excerpt from Straubhaar Family History, July 1990
