The Family of Charles and Caroline Ascherman
UNITED STATES
The Family of Charles and Caroline Ascherman
Charles Fredrick Ascherman was born January 3, 1838 in Wehringdorf, Germany to Friedrich Wilhelm Ascherman, b.1785, and Clara Maria Nolker, b. 1796. He arrived in America in 1854, at the age of 16, following his brothers, Ernst Henry who arrived in 1846 and William Fredrick who came in 1850. He apparently lived with his brothers for some years before he and Ernst Henry purchased 160 94/100 acres of land in Dearborn County, Indiana for the sum of $4,000 from John F. and Matilda Pate on March 2, 1865.
At the age of 28, Charles married nineteen year old Caroline Louisa Prante on March 22, 1866 at Farmer’s Retreat, Indiana. Caroline Louisa Prante was born August 8, 1847 in Dearborn County, Indiana, the 2nd child of seven children born to Jobst Heinrich Prante, born April 17, 1816 in Bulsten, Germany and Maria Elizabeth Sollmanns, born October 27, 1817 in Ostenwald, Grunenberg, Hannover, Germany. Over the next twenty-six years ten children were born to Charles and Caroline, two of whom died in infancy.
THE FARM
From Rising Sun take highway 262 west to the town of Milton. From that point St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, at Bear Branch, is six miles. The road makes a 90-degree right curve, the farm is about ¼ mile from this curve on the left. It is approximately half way between Milton and the church. The house and barn are gone, but the people who own the land have made a lake close to the road. The barn was on the left, the house on the right.
The house, barn, creamery, smokehouse, chicken coop and pigpen were located roughly in the center of the property. Part of the land was used to produce corn, wheat and hay; the rest was for livestock, which included horses, cattle, chickens and pigs. There was a large vegetable garden adjacent to the house, plus many blackberry bushes and apple trees, which amply fed the growing family.
The house was a two story, built on a foundation of creek stones with a tin roof. There was never indoor plumbing, but it was wired for electricity in 1939. The first floor had a central hallway with a living room and fireplace to the right, two bedrooms to the left, and a kitchen that extended almost the entire length of the house on the backside. Two additional bedrooms were upstairs. The cistern was at the end of the driveway between the vegetable garden and the barn. The well was in the backyard approximately twenty feet from the backdoor.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FARM
After Charles and Caroline died, and sons, Frederick William and William Martin died in 1957, their sister, Minnie, sold the farm in 1958 for $7,500. She lived with her son, Edwin and his family until 1959. After her sister Clara Caroline died in 1959 in Louisville, Kentucky, she moved there to live with another sister, Margaret Marie. After Margaret’s death in 1965, she moved back to Aurora, Indiana to again live with her son. In 1999 or 2000 the farm was sold again for $153,000.
