Anna Maria Spanier

1820s–1840s

Born 20 November 1825 in Prüm, in Prussia's Rhine Province, the daughter of Luzia Spanier. Married the shoemaker Johann Bedesem in Prüm on 24 February 1846.

1850s–1860s

Emigrated with Johann to Philadelphia. Daughters Magdaline (1861), Helena (1863), and Sara (1867) were born; a baby died at birth in 1866.

1870s–1880s

Son Peter Paul was born in 1870. Widowed in the 1870s, she sent Peter Paul to a Catholic home in California.

1900s–1910s

Moved to Pleasantville, New Jersey, where she died on 8 April 1910.

From Prüm to Philadelphia

Anna Maria Spanier was born on November 20, 1825, in Prüm, a town in the Eifel hills of Prussia's Rhine Province; her mother was Luzia Spanier. On February 24, 1846, in Prüm, she married Johann Bedesem, a shoemaker, and the couple later emigrated to Philadelphia, where Johann was working at his trade by 1858.

In Philadelphia Anna Maria had daughters Magdaline (1861), Helena (1863), and Sara (1867), and a baby who was born and died on the same day in November 1866. Her son Peter Paul, Ben's 2x-great-grandfather, was born in January 1870. Johann died sometime in the 1870s, and Anna Maria sent Peter Paul, still a young boy, to a Catholic home in California; by 1880 he was living with Dominican sisters in San Francisco, and he did not come back to Philadelphia until he was a young man.

In her later years Anna Maria lived in Pleasantville, New Jersey, near Atlantic City. She died there at 6 Bayview Street at eight in the morning on April 8, 1910, at eighty-four, of kidney disease brought on by an enlarged heart, and was buried in Pleasantville.