Bertha Barbara Trümpi Huber

The umlaut helps to confuse Bertha’s records in America. Usually, the umlaut is dropped and Trumpi is used, it is also Trumpe and sometimes Trumpy, misspellings include Trunpe. Bertha was born the oldest child of Bernhard Trumpe and Bertha Koch on 9 May 1884, in Ennenda, Glarus, Switzerland. We know nothing about her childhood, although we do know she “came from a big family and had a stepmother as her father married twice.

She is my wife’s most recent immigrant coming to America in 1903 when she was only 18 years old. She came in the care of an aunt and uncle who traveled from America to get her in Switzerland and bring her back. She then settled in Wisconsin where she met Johann (John) Huber. She married Johann on 2 March 1905 in New Glarius, Wisconsin,[1] most likely at the Swiss Church in New Glarus in a religious ceremony by Rev. A. Roth. Anna Altman and Gebert Huber were the witnesses.

The young couple settled in Primrose, Dane County, Wisconsin. [2]

In April of 1908, she had her first child, a daughter, Florence Wilma Huber.

Three Chicago businessmen formed the Baldwin County Colonization Company in 1903: Alexander Klappenback, F. W. Herdick, and Henry Bartling. They hoped to establish a German colony near Perdido Bay, Alabama. In 1904, settlers were offered 20 and 40-acre portions of land.[3] They provided free trips to southern Alabama in February to people who bought property in the Colony.

The excitement of land of their own in the warmth of Alabama enticed the young family to move south in 1907 or 1908. Shortly after she and John located to Elberta, Baldwin County, Alabama, in 1908 she gave birth to her second child.[4]

Sometime between 1916 and 1920, the young family decided to return to the north and purchased a farm in James Township, Saginaw County, Michigan. After daughter died in 1934, their granddaughter came to live with them (Bertha, her husband, and her son Clarence). Bertha spoke Romansh, High German, and English. Her husband died in 1948. She continued to live at the James Township farm until she died from a coronary occlusion on 21 March 1964.

Bertha was buried in an unmarked grave at Oakwood Cemetery, Saginaw, Michigan. Section 116, Plot S692 on March 25th.