Marguerite Schnackenberg Meyer

Clay Center's Early Days Are Recalled By Mrs. Maggie Meyer

Mrs. Maggie Meyer, who will celebrate her 90th birthday next Feb. 6, has been a resident of Clay Center ever since she was about nine and a half years old.

Born in Germany, she came to America when she was three. Memories of the early days are still vivid for the well known western Ottawa-co. woman.

Her first recollections, when she was about two and a half, were of being vaccinated in a small village church. Then she remembers going up a hill to feed porcupine which would eat from her hand.

With her parents and a sister, she boarded a boat for America.

"I remember a passenger had passed away and they placed her in what seemed to be a large canvas. Two men took hold of the ends and gently tossed her overboard. I would not have seen this, but Mother was very sick, and being the curious type, I wandered all over the boat," recalls Mrs. Meyer. She remembers seeing seahorses following the boat.

One time she climbed the stairs to the upper deck and fell all the way down to a large basin of water. The trip took about three or four months. There was a terrible storm that frightened all the passengers.

"The boat rocked and rolled. Tables and chairs, pots and pans moved all over," remembers Mrs. Meyer. "Many of the people were very sick. Mother was very ill all the way over."

The first thing she noticed when she arrived in New York was the trains "which seemed to be running on the house tops."

In two days they left New York coming directly to Oak Harbor to stay with people by the name of Gates. Two years later the family moved to Toussaint, where a sister and later a brother was born.

"On the day of my sister's birth," recollects Mrs. Meter, "I fell in the Toussaint River and nearly drowned. We lived in Toussaint four or five years, buying a farm there. Then we moved to Graytown for about two years, and then to Clay Center where I have lived ever since."

On August 21, 1890, she was married to George H. Meyer of Woodville. They celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1940. Mr. Meyer died in 1946 at the age of 78 years.

Originally published on April 17, 1957.

Timeframe: April, 1957. Maggie would have been 89.

Where It Fits: Marguerite Schnackenberg is the daughter of Johann Hinrich Schnackenberg & Christena Koster. Marguerite married George Meyer and they are the parents of Della Meyer-Rudes. Marguerite is the grandmother of Merrill & George Rudes and the great-grandmother of Diane, Harlow, Merrill, Terrence, Jacquelyn, De Ila, Connie and Amy Rudes.

In History: Today Marguerite "Maggie" Meyer would have turned 142