My grandmother Carrie was born on this date 125 years ago. She was the fourth child of Charles and Ida, proud carriers of the Von Steuben family name, and collateral descendants of the Revolutionary War hero, Baron Von Steuben, Inspector General of the Continental Army at Valley Forge.
But her entire life was completely influenced by the death of her father four months before she was born. On September 6, 1899, The Easton Daily Express reported the tragic news:
STEUBEN’S INJURIES FATAL
Charles Steuben, 28 years old, of Nazareth, the brakeman on the Easton & Northern railroad who had his skull fractured last week by being struck by an overhead bridge at Nazareth, died at that place at 4 o’clock this morning. He was standing on top of a freight car at the time the accident occurred. The deceased man leaves a widow and three children.
That’s a three-sentence summation of a three-second accident that has eternal ramifications for those who survived, as well as many who were yet to be born.
One month later, the Northampton County Orphans Court appointed a guardian “for the purposes of executing a release in behalf of the aforesaid minors to the Bangor & Portland Railway Company, releasing and discharging any and all damages or actions for damages for an injury received by the said Charles A. Von Steuben, while in the Employ of the Bangor & Portland Railway Company and resulting in his death, in consideration of Twenty Five dollars a month for a period of ten years.”
But despite the Court’s assistance, grandma Carrie was born into hardship January 24, 1900, which unfortunately grew quickly worse. Just months later, her two brothers, Floyd, 7, and Barron, 5, died 31 days apart, likely from a common childhood disease, leaving just one sibling, sister Elnora. I can’t help wonder if such stresses contributed to widow Ida’s untimely death at the young age of 34, leaving Carrie orphaned at age 9.
The poor sisters were placed in foster homes, not so much to assimilate into families, as to work for them. Carrie went to work for the Fritz family in the Victorian-era farmhouse in rural Moore Township, near the bottom of the hill leading up to Chapman Quarries.
And there’s where Charles’ fateful day continues a legacy that affects me personally. For if Carrie hadn’t been orphaned, she likely wouldn’t have moved out of the family home, or enrolled in the Chapman Quarries schoolhouse, or met her husband Joe Herd, or raised her own herd of Herds. And the rest, as they say, wouldn’t have been history.