The Blocher Family of Germany, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kansas

RG Note: Parts of the following have been edited to correct errors of fact and provide additional details that were not available when Josephine wrote her story about the Blocher families. Links to specific named family member profiles on FamilySearch have al;so been added.

The Plocher family lived in the little town of Sulz am Neckar, Württemberg, Germany. It is located in the southwest corner of Germany, about 40 miles south of Stuttgart. In small cottage at the edge of town, several adult sons of Andreas Plocher and Anna Catharina Wegennast, had just heard a very disturbing bit of news at the market place that day. Rumors of war were flying all over the town square. A notice was tacked on the post in the middle of the market, ordering all men the ages of sixteen or older, to report for military duty the following week. The brothers, Ludwig, Johan, and Matthias Plocher, were all in that age group. They had decided if Germany went to war again, they would leave and go to the British Colonies in the America’s. Germany in the middle 1700’s was much different from the Germany of today. It was divided into three hundred small sovereign states, each ruled over by Dukes. They were always involved in a series of small bloody wars. Fredrick the Great was king over all of these states. The life of the peasants was a kind of bondage to these Dukes. Free speech was forbidden and there was little religious freedom. Jews and Protestants were especially persecuted. The Blocher family were Protestant (Lutheran), and their family were all christened and married in the Evangelische Kirche Sulz, a Lutheran church. It was becoming very dangerous for Protestants to live in Germany at that time. Of the six Plocher brothers that were of military age in 1751, only Matthias, born in 1730, appears to have made it out of Germany, because the other Plocher brothers are all recorded in later Sulz am Neckar church records.

Matthias quickly disposed of all his property and other valuables, as secretly as he could. He knew if he was caught; he might be hung. He would need the money to get started in the Colonies. He was bound for the new world and a new life. In the American Colony, he (or some unknown official) changed his surname spelling from Plocher to Blocher, which was not a radical change. He made it out of Germany in either 1751 or 1753. There were two man named Matthias Plocher who arrived in Philadelphia in those years, and it is uncertain which one was ours.

In May of 1759, Matthias married Christina Barbara Schwab in Trappe, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. She was also born in Württemberg, Germany, and always went by her second name, Barbara. They had eleven children born between 1762 and 1778 in Manheim Township, York, Pennsylvania, eight sons and three daughters. Among these was son Joseph Blocher, born in 1777, just after the Revolutionary War started.

In 1804 in Manheim Township, York, Pennsylvania, Joseph Blocher married Elizabeth Roberts. They had eight children born in York, PA. Then about 1823 or 1824, they moved to Harrison Township, Darke County, Ohio, where two more children were born. Their eldest son was Samuel Blocher, born 14 August 1805 in Manheim Township, York, Pennsylvania.

In 1829 Samuel Blocher married Catherine Wyland in Darke County, Ohio. It was about this time, the Blocher family converted to the German Baptist Brethern religion, the members of which were called “Dunkards”. The family had a tradition of naming their children names from the Bible. It was natural for Samuel to name his son Joseph, after his father, when the boy was born in Ohio in 1831. Samuel and Catherine had eight other children besides Joseph.

RG Note: The following is Josephine’s partial version and expansion of an original story written by Lydia Blocher Maichel, one of Noah Blocher’s sisters, which was apparently shared within the family.

Joseph Blocher married on 11 September 1853 in Washington Township, Darke County , Ohio to Sarah Hollinger, and he and Sarah continued this naming tradition, naming all thirteen of their children from the Bible. Sarah was of Swiss German stock, born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1835. Sarah never dreamed in 1853, when she married Joseph Blocher, that she would leave all of her family and friends and go west to Kansas. The couple already had a large family when they loaded all their possessions on wagons. They then boarded a steamboat for Westport, Missouri. This town is now part of Kansas City. It was early in the spring of 1863 when they arrived. Joseph unloaded the wagons and bought oxen, to pull them to their next home. It was over fifty miles to Willow Springs township in Douglas County, Kansas. One of the wagons had a false bottom in it. This was where Joseph hid the gold he received from the sale of his old farm. He bought a much larger farm, one that could better feed his growing family. He used the gold to pay for the trip west and the farm. The family used oxen to do all the hauling on the farm. They hauled rocks to build the many miles of rock fences needed. Wire fences were not invented until many years later. One son, Noah, said, “I must have built a hundred miles of rock fence when I was a boy.” Some of these rock fences can still be seen in places.

To break the oxen, the boys would put six yoke of oxen on a log wagon and drive twelve miles for a load of logs. When they got back, the oxen knew what was expected of them. One of the ox yokes, that Joseph and his sons used, can be seen in the Museum at Topeka, Kansas. Another one is hanging on the wall at the Old Castle Museum, in Baldwin, Kansas.

The younger Blocher children often herded sheep on the open prairie, one mile north of the old Santa Fe trail. They watched many wagons going west. The wool from the sheep was sheared, washed, carded and spun into yarn. The yarn was then knitted to make warm garments, as well as mittens and stockings for the family. All of the candles used to light the house after dark, were also made at home. Joseph bought a load of apples in the fall, because there were no orchards in Kansas then. Sarah and the girls dried the apples, as well as wild plums, for use in the long, winters. They buried potatoes and turnips to keep them for winter use. Eggs were put in lime water, to keep and eat when the hens quit laying, in the fall. The main stay of their diet was cornbread and fried mush. The corn was grown on the farm and ground at a nearby mill. This family grew almost everything they ate, as it was a long way to a store.

One night about midnight, Joseph heard a noise out behind the smoke house. This is a building used by the family to smoke and cure meat. He got up and took his gun down from the pegs over the door. Then he slipped out into the yard. it was near the end of the Civil War and he knew there were a lot of border ruffians about. He was very careful as he watched the man in the faint moonlight. He was sure the man was up to no good or he would have hailed the house with a, “Hello”, before getting that close. As Joseph watched the stranger, he saw him trying to steal his best saddle horse. He aimed as carefully as he could in the dim light and shot at the horse thief. The man fell to the ground and when Joseph walked up and turned him over, he saw the thief was dead. He was afraid the man might have friends close by. He thought the best thing to do would be to bury the horse thief right there. As long as he lived on that farm, Joseph thought about the man he killed and buried behind his smoke house. He never told anyone about the affair until many years later. He always wondered who the horse thief was, and if he had a family waiting somewhere for him. Many men disappeared in the early west and were never heard from again.

When Quantrill and his raiders came to Lawrence, Sarah carried bedding out behind a rock ledge in the timber. She hid her children there to keep the raiders from finding them, One of the older girls, Catherine, was in Lawrence, when Quantrill and his men rode into town, killing all the men they saw. They set fire to the town that day and almost burned it down. Catherine hid under the outside staircase of the old Eldridge Hotel with some other ladies. They were not harmed, but Catherine was so frightened she wet in her pantaloons, long bloomers the girls wore then. As long as she lived, she would always be embarrassed when the story was told.

The Blocher family belonged to the same church as Joseph’s parents had. Sometimes they are called Dunkards. They are still numerous in Douglas County. The women never cut their hair and wear it covered with a white bonnet at all times. They wear a dark bonnet over that outside in the winter. For a coat they wear a three cornered cape, made of some dark colored material. The men wear pants with a button flap instead of a zipper. Their hair is long, and cut straight across in back, always covered with a black hat when they are outdoors. The men also wear a beard, long on the chin and smooth on the sides. A television set is not allowed in the house, and a radio can only be used to listen to the weather forecasts and religious music. They believe in hard work, plain living and helping each other. Maybe we would all be a little happier if we would take a few lessons from them. Sarah Blocher remained true to these beliefs all of her life. After her son Noah married, he shaved his beard off and was read out of the Church for that.

Joseph moved his family to a farm in Osage County in 1888. This farm was near Overbrook, Kansas. They lived in a small clapboard house with a dirt floor, until a new house was built. When the house was finished, Joseph must have gotten restless because he “Went Over the Hill” so to speak. He wasn’t heard from until many years later. A son, Josh, ran across him by accident, in Texas. Joseph sent for Sarah to come to him and they would try to patch the marriage up. She went, because she felt it was her duty to try again. She tried for six months, but it didn’t work out, and she went back to the farm. Joseph died at his son’s home in 1904.

Sarah made a deal with her daughter, Barbara, and her husband Charles Reed to farm her land. In return for taking care of her until she died, they would get the farm. Several years later, something happened to that arrangement, she found she could not get along with them. She left to live out her life in the homes of her son, Noah, and another daughter, Lydia Maichel. Barbara and her husband kept the farm, however.

It was while living at Lydia’s house Sarah took sick. They hired a neighbor woman to take care of her. That woman was the grandmother of Pat Salisbury. Many years later, Pat married Thomas Routh, Sarah’s great-great-grandson.

Noah was the ninth child, in that large family of Joseph and Sarah. They had ten boys and three girls. Noah was born in Darke County, Ohio in 1861. He was only two years old when they made the long, dangerous trip on the steamboat, up the Missouri river. Noah was a short young man, a little on the stocky side, with dark brown hair and coal black eyes, when he courted and won the heart of Mary Falwell, in 1887.