# Bonfeld A Protestant village in the countryside south of Heilbronn, Bonfeld was home to two families whose lives intertwined across the nineteenth century: the Streibs and the Daubels. For both, this was a place of farms, blacksmith work, and the parish church register that recorded their births, marriages, and far too many early deaths — until, in the 1880s, one branch of the family left it behind for good. ## The Streib Family The Streibs anchor the earliest part of the story in Bonfeld. On 17 October 1793, Johann Christian Streib married Eva Barbara Braun, who had been born on 27 June 1770. Over the next sixteen years they buried more children than they raised. Christiana Elisabetha, born in July 1795, lived not quite three years. Catharina, born in June 1797, died the following May at not even a year old. A second daughter given the name Christiana Elisabetha, born in March 1799, was the one who survived to adulthood, living until December 1879. A son named Johann Christian, born in July 1800, died at ten months. Another Johann Christian followed in 1804 and lived into manhood. Johann Adam, born in June 1806, died that October. Georg Philipp, born in April 1809, died eighteen days after his birth. Eva Barbara herself died on 1 July 1809, worn by two decades of childbearing and loss. The repeated reuse of names — Christiana Elisabetha, Johann Christian — was the family's quiet answer to that mortality, each new child carrying forward a name a dead sibling had briefly held. George Michael Streib, one of the surviving sons, married Christiana Deck on 17 November 1829. Christiana had been born in Bonfeld on 18 March 1802, a daughter of Peter Deck, citizen and farmer in the village, who died on 9 January 1810. Her family too knew early death: her brothers Jakob (born 1803, died 1805), Friedrich Jakob (1807–1824), and Friedrich (1810–1818) all died young. George Michael and Christiana raised their family in Bonfeld through the 1830s. Their children included Johanna Katherine (1830), an infant born and died on the same day in January 1832, Johann Christian (1833, died 1866), Sophia Magdalene (1836), Philipp Friedrich (1837), and Magdalene Christiane, born 10 July 1840. George Michael died on 26 September 1872. Two of these children left Bonfeld for America. Sophia Magdalene married on 22 January 1861. Her brother Philipp Friedrich absconded to America in 1869 and drowned in the Mississippi near St. Louis. And Magdalene Christiane would marry into the Daubel family and cross the ocean with them. ## The Daubel Family The Daubels came to Bonfeld from nearby Babstadt and Ehrstadt. Johann Christian Ludwig Daubel, born in Babstadt, and Christiane Rosina Haueisen, born in Ehrstadt in 1806, married in Bonfeld on 19 July 1836. Christiane Rosina's father, Johann Adam Haueisen, was a citizen and farmer in Bonfeld who died on 1 November 1835, less than a year before the wedding. Their children were born and, in several cases, died in Bonfeld. Johann Ludwig, born 7 March 1837, died the following year. Ludwig was born on 9 October 1839. Johann came in 1844. A daughter Christiana, born 16 February 1852, lived only until 15 February 1853, one day short of a year. Johann Christian Ludwig, the father, died in Bonfeld on 20 May 1869, and Christiane Rosina followed on 4 May 1886. Ludwig Daubel — the son born in 1839 — became a blacksmith in Bonfeld and married Magdalene Christiane Streib on 31 January 1867, joining the two village families. Their children were all born in Bonfeld: Henry (Heinrich) in December 1867, Phillip in March 1869, Louie Johann Ludwig in May 1871, Charles in January 1873, and the twins August and Sophia Elisabeth on 29 September 1875. ## Leaving Bonfeld In 1881 Ludwig and Magdalene Christiane took their children and left Bonfeld for the United States. Ludwig had to apply formally to leave the country and carried some 3,000 marks with him. The reason was plain: he wanted to spare his sons the strict military conscription of the German state and to give his children more freedom and safety. He was the first Daubel to make the crossing, and the family shipped their household furnishings and farm machinery by train. They first settled among other Germans at Hanover in Washington County, Kansas, where Ludwig worked as a blacksmith and mason for a decade before the sons — Henry, Phillip, August, Louie, and Charles — pushed farther west. The trades and self-sufficiency they had learned in Bonfeld traveled with them: farming, blacksmithing, milling their own grain, sawing their own lumber. Charles, born in Bonfeld in 1873 and just eight when the family emigrated, would carry the memory of the village name — recorded in his own family's story as *Bönfeld* — long after the church at Bonfeld had recorded the last of the family's baptisms. For those who remained behind, the record closes quietly. Johann Daubel, born in 1844, died in Bonfeld on 2 November 1900. Sofia Pauline Schneider died there on 23 November 1907, the last of these lives to end in the village the family had once called home.