In my genealogy research, I traced my father’s grandmother, Catherine, to her roots on the Iloff farm in Cherry Ridge, Honesdale, Pennsylvania, about two hours north of New York City. Catherine’s parents were Henry Iloff, who emigrated in 1841 from St. Nicholas, Saarland, and Catherina Lattauer who emigrated in 1845 or 1846 from Ober-Floerscheim, Hesse-Darmstadt. They were married February 2, 1846 at St. Matthew’s Church in “Little Germany” on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
In 1850, Henry and Catherina purchased land in Cherry Ridge, Honesdale, where they built the farm that remained in the family for a hundred years. In 1851 Catherina’s sister Agnes Lattauer Schweizer emigrated with her family from Ober-Floerscheim to Cherry Ridge. The Schweizer farm also remained in the family for a hundred years.
I had been told about the family Henry Iloff had with two wives who were somehow related: nine children with his first wife and nine with his second over a forty year period–fourteen of whom were living at the time of his death in 1889. I was shocked to learn that when his first wife died in 1869, Henry married his wife’s sister’s daughter Johanna Schweizer–who was half his age and his children’s cousin. I suspect that the marriage was considered scandalous in a conservative farming community, and that it did not sit well with the children of the first marriage, four of whom left the local area. Nonetheless, Henry Iloff was elected to the prestigious position of Wayne County Commissioner a decade later. Continue reading “Children of German Immigrant Farmers in Cherry Ridge: American Stories by Carol P. Christ”
Feminism and Religion 