Shirer

Shirer

The immigrant Johann Friedrich Scheurer and his wife Maria Eva Brenneisen were from Hauingen, just northeast of Lörrach in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), a little north of Basel in Switzerland.  It was only recently (2010) that I located the correct village, and found the church christening record and marriage record shown below. The family immigrated in 1843, first to western New York state, then to Wisconsin and ultimately to Iowa where my pure German great-grandmother Mabel Shirer met and married my pure Scots-Irish great-grandfather Jay Boyd at Mt. Vernon.  Her father, William Shirer, had moved the family from Benton County, Iowa, to Mt. Vernon to enable the children to attend Cornell College there.  Mabel's older brother Seward Shirer was the father of the notable American author and international radio correspondent William L. Shirer, most well known for his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  Some Scheurer descendants adopted "Shirer" (which is close to the sound when Germans pronounce the surname), while others kept the German spelling. Of William's seven siblings, only Michael Scheurer (1838-1910) had children -- from two marriages, he had 12 children, born in Iowa and Kansas.

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Lillian, William, Mabel, and Seward Shirer, circa 1896.

Mabel as a child.

Shirer family, at the Ferreby's home in Humboldt, Iowa, circa 1908.

Mabel with her firstborn, Donald Lindsey Boyd, born February 21, 1897.

Mabel May (Shirer) Boyd

1807 christening record, Johann Friedrich Scheurer, Hauingen Church Book.

1833 marriage record, Joh. Friedrich Scheurer and Maria Eva Brenneisen, Hauingen Church Book.