Christoph Reutter (age 14) emigrated to the USA in 1850 with his mother Anna Dorothea Reutter and his sister Anna Maria Margareta Reutter (age 25). Since Anna was married to John Adreas Wirth in Frankenlust in June 1850 (right after they arrived), it is likely that he also traveled with them.

Anna Dorothea had good reason to believe that the new world promised a better life for her daughter and son, Anna Dorothea and Christoph's father, Leonard, had never been able to aquire the property in Germany needed for permission to marry. Leonard and Anna dorothea probably lived together, faithfully married in God's eyes, but their children were legally illegitimate. Leonard died in 1848; since Reutter was Anna's family name, we don't know his surname--unless it was also Reutter.

Christof and his mother (Anna Dorothea) settled first on a farm in Frankenlust Township, an 1892 collection of local biographies say that Christof built the first house in that vicinity in 1850. He would have been 14 at the time. The house must have been on someone else's land, since there is no record of Christoph owning land untill 1859. In any case, Anna and Christoph soon moved to Lower Saginaw (now Bay City) in the early 1850's.

At first Christoph ferried people across the river in a canoe at Columbus Avenue. For eight years, he worked as a teamster. Many years later, Christoph's grand daughter Elsa (Reutter) Arnold met a woman who reffered to him as "that little man who was always kind to me" when she visited her father's business (a lumberyard?).

In 1859 Christof bought government land in Monitor Township. The biographical book says "it was entirely unimproved, and to him fell the work of cutting away the timber and doing thorough pioneer labor. On his first locating here the woods were the haunt of many wild animals, such as bears, panthers, and a variety of small game. In addition to clearing his farm (40 acres), he also cut out and improved the roads leading to and from it."

Mary Margareta Gremel (Christof's wife-no marriage date) came to the USA in 1851 when she was eight years old. Her father died shortly after the family arrived. As she was growing up, she lived as a housemaid with various families, especially in the parsonage of the Sievers family.

Elsa (Reutter) Arnold remembers both Reutter grandparents well, since the lived just across Salzburg Road from Elsa's father Wilhelm (Christof and Mary's son) Reutter and his family. Elsa remebers walking next to Christof while he was plowing and at least once he startled a rabbit, whipping off his hat, he sent it sailing toward the rabbit neatly capturing the rabbit beneath it. Christoph laughed, retrieved the hat, and let the terrified rabbit run away. Mary Gremmel Reutter would spin wool yarn, dye wool and knit long scratchy stockings that Elsa and her siblings disliked wearing. Mary often yodeled while she worked and Elsa always wondered how she did it. "I remember," Elsa says, "Grandma baked bread in an outdoor oven in the woodshed. That bread had a special taste--brown and crusty all over. I had to stay out of her way while she tapped it to see if there was a hollow sound to show that it was done.

Christoph and Mary had nine children in all, two sons and seven daughters, all atended St. John's School in Frankenlust. When Christof retired, he and his family moved to Kiesel Street in Salzburg. There are no dates for their deaths but it was after 1900 when they moved to Kiesel St.

Thank You, Mike Reutter(mreutter@ismi.net)