Elizabeth Ording Deppen Albers married August Albers after the death of her first husband. Her first husband died leaving her with two little daughters and a forty acre farm to run alone. She married her neighbor on the next farm, August Albers. This merged their farms together to make an eighty acre farm. Whether she married for love, or more likely, in panicked despair is lost to time, however, being alone and in charge of a farm and two children would be a daunting task today, it would be unimaginably hard before the advent of tractors, electricity, and daycare.

I am guessing a little that the linked Deppen is the correct one but the numbers work out since he died in 1868 and August and Elizabeth were married on 22 June 1869. Elizabeth had two daughters by her first Deppen husband. The first daughter was Mary Deppen Huber, the other daughter became "Sister Maxima" a nun in the nearby order (Sisters of the Precious Blood) at St. John's. Her name is listed in a registry at the nearby history museum at the relic shrine in Maria Stein. Unfortunately, there are no known photos of Sister Maxima

I am so grateful to Marge Albers for sharing the photo of Elizabeth Ording Albers with me this year!

By August Albers family lore reports she had Henry, Joseph, William, and Anna, as well as Bernadina. Katrina and William are said to have died on the same day, one in the morning and one in the evening. They share an unusual double gravestone. It was likely during the cholera outbreak but I've also seen other local graves where the children died of measles or whooping cough in the same day.

Elizabeth herself died at the depressingly young age of forty. Her great great grandchildren (by her son Henry Albers) still live on the farm she shared with her husbands.