Christian, Mary and their family of (then) four children left their Wurttemberg home in the summer of 1840 and set sail for America from Le Havre, France on the ship, "Phillipe," probably looking for a better life. The family arrived in New York Harbor on July 27, 1840. Christian had earlier been to America in the 1830's with a brother, scouting out the possibility of settling in America and beginning a new life. The long voyage was an eventful one for my seven year-old grandmother Louisa, having thought she witnessed sharks following the boat across the ocean. Passengers died on the long voyage and were buried at sea, so perhaps they were seen as frightening sharks to a young girls eyes, but were perhaps just merely dolphins. After arriving in America, my young grandmother was put out to service as an indentured servant with a Pennsylvania family. As cruel as it sounds to us today, this was a common practice of the day for poor families in order to survive. The rest of the family settled in the small village of Curryville in Blair County Pennsylvania. Young Louisa was miserable in her new home and eventually ran away from her foster parents, somehow making her way by packet boat along the rivers and canals and made her way back to her family in Blair County, as shocking as it sounds. By then, the Christian Schmalz family had settled in a large two story home on Henrietta Road. (It was sometime after this that the Schmalz surname became Americanized to Smaltz.) However, young Louisa was not to be with her family for long, as her parents once again put her out to service with a local family, John and Nancy Bowers. There she apparently remained, most likely until she married. Louisa first appears on the 1850 U.S. Census living with the Bowers family. She would have been 18 years of age by then. It was reported that Louisa developed a deep bond with the Bowers, one that remained into her adult years.
Louisa went on to meet and marry my 2nd great grandfather, Henry Shoeman, a Pennsylvania native. They were married on January 18, 1852 by the Lutheran pastor in Martinsburg. Henry and Louisa eventually purchased a tract of land on Henrietta Road just east of Curryville in the early 1860's and together they cleared the land, built a home, and raised a family of eleven children, twins, Sarah and Mary, Elizabeth, John (my great grandfather), Anna Margaret, Franklin, Ephraim, Charles, Albert, Emma, and Lydia. Charles and Anna Margaret both died fairly early in life.
Louisa was known far and wide in the Curryville area as a self-taught "practical nurse." Families in those days did not readily summons a doctor. Instead, someone with a natural aptitude for nursing such as my grandmother had would be called in to help. Louisa would drop whatever she was doing on a moments notice, put on a clean apron, turn the duties of the home over to her daughters, and go to whomever was in need. It was a common practice of the day to heal with herbs. Families would grow them and then hang them up to dry so they would be readily available when the need arose to use to make a tea or poultice. Louisa used those same old world methods.
Louisa Smaltz Shoeman passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage on October 8, 1910 at the age of 78. Her husband died the year before, shortly after the couple celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary. She was laid to rest next to her husband, Henry, a short distance from the Shoeman home in the cemetery of Diehl's Crossroads Brethren Church.
