Michael Kaiser was born in the Alsace Region on April 24, 1838 to Michael Kaiser and Marie Anne Claussmann.  The younger Michael frequently went by Mitchell as evidenced on various documents bearing his name.  Family stories relate that as a young man, Mitchell was in Army.  With the political turbulence in that region of Europe, he found himself either in the French Army or the German Army at any given time.  As the story would have it, one night he slipped away from the encampment along the Rhine River and met up with a friend who had a boat.  Passenger lists for arrivals into New Orleans indicates a seventeen year old Michel Kaiser arrived from LeHavre, France on the Nuremberg on April 21, 1855.  Also arriving on that ship was his fifteen year old brother John B. Kaiser.

Mitchell Kaiser farm south of Vincennes.

By 1860, Mitchell had made his way to Knox County, Indiana where he was working as a farmhand on Lambert Halter’s farm.  On January 15, 1861, Mitchell married Lambert’s daughter Mary Elizabeth. Mitchell acquired about 50 acres of land near his father-in-law south of Vincennes and supported his ever growing family by farming.  Over the course of the next twenty years, Mitchell and Mary Elizabeth were blessed with at least ten children, four of which lived to adulthood–Michael, Rose, Lambert, and Anthony.  In August 1881, their first born daughter Mary Elizabeth died at the age of seventeen.  A few short weeks later, after giving birth to their youngest daughter Elizabeth, Mitchell’s wife passed away on October 10, 1881.  The babe unfortunately died two weeks later.  They were all laid to rest in Mt. Calvary Cemetery.

On Jun 14, 1887, at nearly the age of fifty, Mitchell married his second wife, Magdalena Keller.  She was the daughter of John Keller and Magdalena Fleck.  Magdalena gave birth to seven children, three of which reached adulthood–Magdalena, Raymond, and Clara.  Mitchell continued to work the family farm until he succumbed to a bout of pneumonia on February 27, 1912 at the age of 73.  He, too, was laid to rest in Mt. Calvary Cemetery.

Mitchell Kaiser was my 2nd-great grandfather on my mom’s side.

REFERENCES

• United States Census, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910
• Indiana Death Certificates
• Indiana Marriage Collection
• New Orleans, Passenger Lists
• Find A Grave Website
• Halter Family History, compiled by Phyllis Vennard Halter, 1979
• Vincennes Daily Commercial–April 5, 1888 & July 17, 1888
• The Vincennes Commercial–February 28, 1912