Searching for Burgenlanders in Bancroft, Kossuth County Iowa

Why did my relatives, the Schötls, and many families from Mönchhof (now in Burgenland, Austria) emigrate to Bancroft, Kossuth County, Iowa?

After spending the first of our two days to Kossuth County in the County seat of Algona, we spent our 3rd and final day in Bancroft. (see the Algona blog here)

As early as 1882, Catholic families came to make their homes in and around Bancroft.  It was designated as an out-mission of Algona and Mass was celebrated in the Bancroft public school building for the next several years.  In October 1889, Bishop Hennessy directed Father Nicholls to build a church in Bancroft and the 36' x 60' structure was completed October 19, 1890. It was deemed a separate Catholic parish within the Dubuque diocese.

From our research we put together a list of the Burgenlander burials in Kossuth County, many in Bancroft. 

We started with the "Burgenlander's Honored and Remembered" listed by the Burgenland Bunch. We went through and created a spreadsheet of the families who came from the Neusiedl  area villages buried throughout the U.S.  We sorted that for just the Iowa burials. We next sorted that alphabetically by town burial site in Iowa.  What we found is that the Bancroft St. John the Baptist Cemetery has burials from Mönchhof immigrants representing 14 families.  To these we could add others, like the Schotls, who were Bancroft residents but with no burials.

Shan contacted Judy Vaske, the business manager at Saint John the Baptist Church in Bancroft with our list.  Judy agreed to bring the cemetery records and meet us at St. John the Baptist cemetery to locate the graves.

Shan Thomas and Judy Vaske

Shan at the Martin Sanftner grave marker

The cemetery books are very detailed with the graves marked according to the placement in quadrants. A map is posted on a board in the center of the cemetery. The cemetery is in excellent condition and well cared for. 

St. John the Baptist Cemetery Map

Burgenlanders buried in St. John's Cemetery, Bancroft

last name  maiden name   1st name    home village    birth  death           cemetery         place

Deim		Johann	Mönchhof	1865	1941		St. John's	Bancroft
Deim	Rainer	Catherine	Mönchhof	1866	1931		St. John's	Bancroft
Lentsch	Rapp	Rosalia	Mönchhof	1857	1926		St. John's	Bancroft
Rainer		Gregor	Mönchhof	1873	1909		St. John's	Bancroft
Rainer		Lorenz	Mönchhof	1843	1909		St. John's	Bancroft
Rainer	Krenn	Genofeva	Mönchhof	1846	1907		St. John's	Bancroft
Rainer		Martin	Mönchhof	1877	1901		St. John's	Bancroft
Rapp		Franz	Mönchhof	1856	1903		St. John's	Bancroft
Rapp	Zittritsch	Marie	Mönchhof	1859	1942		St. John's	Bancroft
Rapp		Josef	Mönchhof	1870	1928		St. John's	Bancroft
Rapp	Sanftner	Magdalene	Mönchhof	1876	1963		St. John's	Bancroft
Regner		Georg	Mönchhof	1875	1970		St. John's	Bancroft
Sanftner		Gothardt	Mönchhof	1868	1950		St. John's	Bancroft
Sanftner	Schwartz	Elisabeth	Mönchhof	1871	1954		St. John's	Bancroft
Sanftner		Martin	Mönchhof	1862	1932		St. John's	Bancroft
Sanftner	Rapp	Barbara	Mönchhof	1868	1932		St. John's	Bancroft
Sanftner		Mathias	Mönchhof	1844	1911		St. John's	Bancroft
Sanftner	Pöckl	Anna	Mönchhof	1852	1925		St. John's	Bancroft
Sanftner		Michel	Mönchhof	1856	1908		St. John's	Bancroft
Sanftner	Hoffman	Anna	Mönchhof	1855	1901		St. John's	Bancroft
Lentsch		Melchior	Podersdorf	1882	1904		St. John's	Bancroft
Lentsch		Michel	Podersdorf	1855	1931		St. John's	Bancroft

We were able to locate and photograph all but 3 of the Burgenlander graves. These we assumed were either never marked, marked but missing, or the stone was buried under the grass.

Some of the Burgenlander grave markers at St. Johns the Baptist Cemetery

After we finished at the cemetery and had a little lunch in downtown Bancroft, we headed to the church where we met with Lori Geitzenauer, the Director of Religious Education for St. John the Baptist Church. She helped us search the church records for births, baptisms, confirmations, marriages and burials. She took a tremendous amount of time and was very patient with us.

We looked for Schötl/Hoffman records, then Lori showed us other names from our list. More time with these records would give a better picture of this Burgenland group.  

Baptisms at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, 

Bancroft, Iowa, July 2015 

• Michael Joseph Schotl, baptised 30 Dec 1897, born 13 Dec. 1897, son of Michael Schotl & Elizabeth Hoffman Schotl
• Michael Mathias Schotl, baptised 30 Jul 1899, born 27 Jul 1899, son of Michael Schotl & Elizabeth Hoffman Schotl
• Franz (Frank) Mathias Schotl, baptised 8 Jul 1900, born 6 Jul 1900, son of Michael Schotl & Elizabeth Hoffman Schotl, god parents Joseph & Lena Rapp
• Mathias Paul Schotl baptised 8 May 1902 born 30 Apr 1902,  , son of Michael Schotl & Elizabeth Hoffman Schotl, god parents Michael & Anna Sanftner                                                           (last name Schotl is spelled Schöttel in Baptismal Records)

Marriages at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, 

Bancroft, Iowa, July 2015 

• Michael Schotl to Elizabeth Hoffman, 10 Feb 1896, witnesses Matt Schotl & Teresia Sanftner
• Joseph Rapp to Lena Sanftner, (Franz Schotl god parents) witnesses John Rapp & Anna Green

Burials at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, 

Bancroft, Iowa, July 2015 

• Mathias Hoffman, died 6 Oct 1906, buried 8 Oct 1906, age 75

The lesson was how valuable church records can be in genealogy. We knew that Michael Schötl and Elizabeth Hoffman had 4 sons born in Iowa but there was no record of these births at the county. The church records are the only documents we have about the boy's birth dates and given names. 

The parish of St. John The Baptist is nearing its 125th year in 2016 and is currently in the 100th year since the building of the church.  The quasquicentennial celebration is set for July 2nd 2016.  A call for stories, pictures and artifacts has been made by the church's History Committee.  Information can be mailed to PO Box 94 Bancroft, IA  50517.






The Schötls and others didn't stay long in Iowa.  According to the 1905 Minnesota State Census, the Schötl family, with the exception of Frank and Mary, were living in Columbus Township, Anoka County.  It was in the Anoka County records and with the help of the Burgenland Bunch that we discovered that many of their Hungarian neighbors from Mönchhof had settled on adjacent or nearby farms in Columbus Township.

The Schotls and other Burgenlanders in Kossuth County

Rose and Frank wedding photo
 with Matt Kreitz and Theresa Pollreis

Most of  my recent blogs have been about my Kunshier relatives. 

My maternal grandmother, Rose Kunshier, a German-Bohemian, was born and raised in Columbus Township, Anoka County, Minnesota.  It was there that she met and married Franz "Frank" J. Schötl, a German-Hungarian.

Shan and I have been tracking Frank's history for quite a while now and I would like to share some of that information in these next few blogs.  

Franz "Frank" J Schötl 

Early in our research, we determined that my maternal grandfather, Frank Schötl, came from Mönchhof  in current day Burgenland, Austria. I have written about Frank and Mönchhof in an earlier blog. (You can read that here)


We know the Schötls came in two groups. Sons, Michel and Matthias, went to Bancroft in Kossuth County, Iowa in 1897.  Their parents Matthias Sr. and Maria Theresia nee Kornfehl, and remaining siblings Joannes "John", Franz "Frank", and Maria "Mary" followed later. They sailed out of Bremen on the The Frankfort, and arrived in Baltimore in May of 1902.

The family was held at the port for medical examination and the manifest notes that Matthias Sr. was "senile". It appears that Matthias Sr., then age 66, never made it to Bancroft with Maria Theresia.  She arrived at her new home in America, a widow.

We became more interested in the Bancroft connection when we did the research project looking at how many Burgenlanders lived in Columbus Township. (read that here)
The data showed that 3 Burgenlanders were born in Iowa. That led us to do more work on these families and to do further research on Kossuth County, Iowa. 

We verified that, in addition to the Schotls, the Koch, Lentsch, Saxe and Sanftner families had been in Bancroft, Kossuth County, Iowa. Anyone else, we wondered?

Census research in Kossuth County didn't help because the families were identifying themselves as Germans, not Austrians, and not Hungarians.  We next tried the ever helpful Burgenland Bunch.  We started with the "Burganlander's Honored and Remembered" listings. We went through and created a spreadsheet of the families who came from the Neusiedl  area villages buried throughout the U.S.  We sorted that for just the Iowa burials. We next sorted that alphabetically by town burial site in Iowa.  What we found is that the Bancroft St. John the Baptist Cemetery has burials from Mönchhof immigrants representing 14 families.  To these we could add others, like the Schotls, who were Bancroft residents but with no burials.  

Kossuth County Map

We were determined that at some point we needed to visit Kossuth County and check court documents and church records for ourselves. So now, 4 years later, we were able to schedule the trip. Shan made numerous contacts and appointments with those who could help in our quest, and in late June of 2015, we were finally on our way. 

We would like to thank Jean Kraemer, Amy Frankl-Brandt, Judy Vaske, and Lori Geitzenauer for all their help.

The first stop was in Algona, the county seat  of Kossuth County. At the courthouse  a large sculpture of Louis Kossuth greets everyone. 

Who was Lajois "Louis" Kossuth? 

"He was a Hungarian lawyer, journalist, politician and Regent-President of the Kingdom of Hungary during the revolution of 1848–49. He was honored in his lifetime not just in Hungary, but in the United States, as a freedom fighter and bellwether of democracy. After his visit to U.S., streets, squares, and even some towns and counties were named after the Hungarian hero." Read more here (The Hungary Initiatives Foundation)

The plaza in front of his statue is paved with Memorial bricks.
One of the bricks was placed in remembrance of the Lorenz and Eva Gisch family who came from the Burgenland village of Podersdorf. 


We went inside to introduce ourselves to Jean Kramer who had helped with preliminary record searches and who made some contacts on our behalf. She is a past president of the Kossuth Historical Society and active in their genealogical society.  Jean's day job is in the county clerk's office where the probate records are kept. We then went downstairs to the Recorder's Office.  We were looking for a death record for Matthias Schotl Sr. which we didn't find, a marriage certificate for Michael Schotl and Elizabeth Hoffman, which we found,  and birth certificates for their first 4 children, also not found.   We were able to see indices to these records which confirmed other Burgenlanders. 

Our next stop was at the Algona Public Library where we searched through the Genealogical Society's holdings.  The collection includes, books, directories, newspaper clippings, photographs and microfilm.  

One of the big questions is Why Kossuth County, Iowa?

photo provided by Amy Frankl-Brandt

To try to answer this question, we visited the Kossuth County Historical Museum In Algona. We toured the museum on Tuesday morning and later in the day met with Amy Frankl-Brandt, the current president of the historical society, to talk about the Burgenlander presence in the county. She is related to one of the earliest Burgenlander residents in Kossuth County. Her great great grandfather was Josef "Joseph" Frankl. He came from Podersdorf in the district of Neusiedl am See, now in Burgenland. Amy hadn't heard of Burgenland, but seemed quite interested, and wanted to learn more.  We gave her a copy of Walter Dujmovit's book, The Burgenlander Emigration to America, to read and then to place in the Algona Library.  Amy had great family stories but not an answer to why Kossuth, County.

The Pecks, Dr. Rosemary Ruffenach and the Austro-Hungarian community living in Saint Paul's North End

I am working on two blogs about a recent research trip to Kossuth County, Iowa.  Shan and I wondered when did we learn that the "Hungarians" were "German-Hungarians" who are now "Burgenlanders ?" In searching through my files I came across this Blog that I forgot to publish. Here it is now.

I have been trying to track the Frank and Rose Schotl family as they moved from the country to the city of Saint Paul.  I wanted to know where they settled, who their new neighbors were, and at what jobs they were employed.

Four of their children: Martin, Lawrence, Leonard, and Bernice were born in Forest Lake. They moved to St. Paul in about 1918 and soon after were joined by siblings Pearl (1920) and Herbert (1923). The neighborhood was known as the North End with Rice Street being the main thoroughfare and main street of commerce.   We found them on Saint Paul City Directories, and the Federal Census for 1930 living at 28 East Maryland Avenue. This may have not been their first residence.  

Donald L. Empson in his book, The Street Where You Live: A Guide to the Place Names of St. Paul mentions the North End as being "roughly between the Burlington Railroad tracks and Larpenteur Avenue, between Western Avenue and Oakland Cemetery/Jackson Street." a report on housing conditions in St. Paul in the 1930's "... is in the main part composed of those of Hungarian extraction or birth who as a group seem to be of low civic consciousness.  For the most part they are a laboring class and this would indicate well kept homes which is more or less true. The houses are however for the most part poorly built and no amount of attention will entirely remedy the initial inadequateness."

Mr. Empson's elitist attitude seems to be the kind of rationale which was often used to demolish a neighborhood or run a freeway through it.  In other words, we will have to destroy the neighborhood in order to save it.  Anyhow, the neighborhood did survive, and many immigrant families practiced their folkways and raised happy, healthy children.

The children in our family, for the most part, attended the area public schools including Geranium Street School also known at the time as the Robert A. Smith Elementary School. 

Smith Elementary School class picture 1932

The sign indicates this is two separate classes A6 and B7.  I think the top two rows are the 6th graders and the bottom 3 rows are the 7th graders. My mother, Bernice Schotl, is pictured in the 2nd row from the top among the 6th graders. The School Crossing Guard Patrol was chosen from the highest class.  Note all the belts and badges of the Patrol members of those in the first 3 rows.

Getting Back to the Schotls, I found that Martin Schotl had married Anna Peck, daughter of Frank and Mary Peck ca. 1935. They moved in with Anna's widowed mother, Mary, at 1220 Woodbridge in Saint Paul's 8th Ward. They were still living there in 1940 after the birth of their son Kenneth. Also in the household were Anna's brothers, Joseph and Michael Peck. Martin's occupation was given first as a driver and later as a baker for Hugo Koenig.

One evening as I was working on the Martin Schotl tree, I "Googled" Schotl, Peck and Rice Street and scrolled down to find an article by Rosemary Ruffenach in the 2011 Saint Paul Almanac entitled Great-Grandma’s Fur Coat [the entire article is linked] Ostensibly the article was about the coat made of dyed rabbit fur, that Rosemary now owns, but it was really more about her people and their immigration and settlement on Saint Paul's North End.  Her grandmother was a Peck.  Rosemary writes of her grandmother, "Her family arrived in

Saint Paul one cold April afternoon in 1888, when she was thirteen years old, along with sixty other immigrants from Andau, Austria (then Hungary). They were dumped on a Saint Paul sidewalk by their travel 'expeditor'."  Her grandmother managed and later owned a grocery store on Rice Street and  "the coat would have graced Grandma's shoulders during Mass at St. Bernard's Church in Saint Paul's North End community."

Well this seemed too much coincidence to let pass.  As least I wanted to find out more about Rosemary.  She is listed on one site as instructor at secondary and post-secondary levels, teaching in the areas of language arts, social studies, visual arts, and journalism.  She has a doctorate from the University of Minnesota and has published numerous articles in the local and national press.  Her essays have been included in the Minnesota Book Award-winning Voices for the Land Anthology (Minnesota Historical Society Press), 2002, Voices for the City anthology (1000 Friends of Minnesota/ Milkweed Press), 2003, and Saint Paul Almanac, 2011. I wanted to make a contact with Dr. Rosemary Ruffenach and compare our family history in the Rice Street Neighborhood.  Shan took the initiative and received a immediate response.  "I would be happy to answer questions."  Rosemary also sent us the article she wrote titled "Bless My Homeland Forever."  It is about the Austro-Hungarians coming to St. Paul.  It was included in the Minnesota Genealogist Vol. 38, No.1.  "The Pecks had settled at 1225 Woodbridge Street by 1893 and stayed there, with John listed as a 'laborer' in the city directory until 1911, when he was 75. After John’s death in 1914, Elizabeth moved in with their married daughter, Elizabeth Peck Tell, and her family in Minneapolis. Son Leonard married within a decade of arriving and moved into 1223 Woodbridge Street. Their third son, Martin, age three at the time of emigration, later came to reside at 1186 Woodbridge Street, and grandson Bernard (son of John Peck, Jr., and Eva Laber) moved in down the street at 21 East Maryland Avenue."     There are always questions about the reason or reasons some one or some family decided to leave for a new country.  Life was not easy for German-Hungarians (now known as Burgenlanders) beginning in the 1870s. A worldwide economic depression struck in 1873 following  the crash of the Vienna Stock Exchange.  Three years later Burgenland saw a period of disasters: • 1876: constant rainstorms in February and March, followed by very hot weather • 1879: severe storms damage crops • 1882: village cows die from disease • 1883: extreme cold • 1885: severe drought • 1886: very long, cold winter with unusually large snowfall • 1887: rainstorms causing the hay to rot in the fields • 1888: very long, cold winter with unusually large snowfall.  Since the 1880's when the German-Hungarians began to settle in the North End, attracted by the jobs with the Railroads, they reached out to family and friends back home to join them in this developing ethnically friendly neighborhood.   Thanks to Charlie Deutsch of the St. Paul Burgenland Bunch, we have the records of St. Bernard's baptisms, marriages and deaths.  Through the Saint Paul City Directories we could locate addresses and occupations.  Through the various Federal Census we could find out ages, language spoken, place of birth and double check the addresses.  Thanks to the Burgenland Bunch, we now had the larger context of the many German-Hungarian Burgenlanders who had emigrated to the United States.   This group of genealogists have been doing the research for many years and share the information through their web site.  We were able to join the club and add our searches to theirs.