Wittich/Wittig

From Germany, across the ocean, up the Hudson River, down the Erie Canal and over Lake Erie, Anna Kunigunde Wittich came to Vermilion, Ohio.

Last modified 07/22/2005

Wittich

(I'm developing a separate page to outline the Wittich name in Germany as well as cousins to America.)

Anna Kunigunde Wittich lost her mother at a young age and didn't get along well with her new stepmother. At the tender age of 19, she decided to join some cousins and friends in their trip to America (see her passport) reasoning that she could come back to Hesse, Germany, if she didn't like the United States. She traveled to Vermilion, Ohio in ~1836, where she met and married Casper Ernst about 1837. Somewhere along the line, she and her brother in Vermilion changed the name spelling to Wittig.

Anna and Casper had six daughters (see Ernst page) and lived there on the shores of Lake Erie, but the marriage was not destined to last. On 31May 1852, she divorced him. He died not long afterward, of typhoid fever. In Oct 1854, Anna and her 5 youngest daughters followed the eldest daughter and her new husband John Strieter to Newburgh, Ohio where Rev. Strieter had been called to organize St. John's Lutheran Church.

The divorce and subsequent move took a toll on Anna's relationship with her brother, Conrad Wittig, and other members of her and her ex-husbands family. She was estranged from them for the rest of her life, and did not communicate with them. The Wittigs remained in Vermilion, but I have not researched any more about these cousins.

See the Ernst page for the rest of the story of Anna and the girls. Anna died 23 Mar 1875 in Newburgh, OH.

The best stuff written about the Wittich/Wittig surname in my family tree was written by Henry F. Rahe, grandson to Casper and Anna, and my great-great-grandfather. In 1942, he wrote A Sketch of the Parents of the Ernst Girls for his first cousin, also a grandson of the pair. It is a wonderful work, full of detail and stories.