While looking into Farmer Gary‘s story about “The tuberculous house” last week, we climbed a little higher on the family tree to take a look.

It was there we found a tiny branch, reaching out for sunlight.

We found Peter.

Born on May 2, 1848, Peter was one of nine children born to Lorenz and Catherina Dilger in what is now Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Peter’s sister Theresia, who was six years older than he, grew up to be the paternal grandmother of Gary’s paternal grandmother, Emma.

How excited little Peter, just eight years old, must have been to find out his family was going to immigrate to America!

Lorenz and Catherina, along with their children, boarded the Ship Guttenberg at the Port of Le Havre, France. They set sail for America in the fall of 1856.

And Peter wasn’t the youngest of the Dilger children. He was the seventh child born to Lorenz and Catherina; the fourth of five sons.

Here’s the passenger manifest from Ship Guttenberg:

The list starts with Lorenz, 54, and Catherina, 48. Their children are Paul, 19; Agatha, 18; Theresia, 14; Lorenz Jr., 12; Theodore, 11; Peter, 8; Englebert, 5; and baby Maria, not yet one. Sadly, baby Wendelyn – who should have been 10, died the day after she was born. How hard it must have been to leave her little grave behind, along with life as they’d always known it.

From what I’ve been able to find out about Ship Guttenberg, it was a sailing ship (not a steamship), so it took its sweet time heading to the Port of New Orleans. Departure from France was in early September or late August. The Passenger Manifest, signed by shipmaster Townsend Weeks, lists their arrival date as October 30, 1856. Weeks handed the list of 264 adults, 35 children, and eight infants over to Customs officials.

The family made it safely to America.

The Dilger family traveled north (probably up the Mississippi to the Ohio River by steamship) to their new farm. They settled in Fulda, a small town a few miles south of our farm.

Tragically, Lorenz passed away on December 8, just weeks after they arrived in Indiana. He is at rest in the cemetery at Saint Boniface Church in Fulda.

Two years later, Agatha married Lothar Tretter in 1858 and moved to his nearby farm.

The 1860 Census lists Catherine as the head of household. Her occupation? Farmer. As a farm family, the children helped to keep food on the table, a fire in the hearth, and clothes on their backs. It must have been an incredible struggle. Still, Peter and Englebert continued in school.

Peter felt a calling to the priesthood. He was just 17 years old and was among the first to profess monastic vows at the nearby Saint Meinrad Abbey on July 25, 1865. This was in the abbey’s infancy; it was founded less than a dozen years earlier.

While studying to be a priest, Peter took the name Fr. Boniface.

Fr. Boniface is among those listed in the 1870 Census, below. He was one of just 12 priests at the Saint Meinrad Abbey.

If you look closely, you’ll see Fr. Boniface is the youngest of the dozen priests. And only one priest was born in Indiana – or in America, for that matter.

Boniface is Latin for doer of good.

Fr. Boniface professed his Solemn Vows on January 21, 1871. He was ordained a priest five days later.

This young sprig in our family tree was to only experience two months as a priestly doer of good. Fr. Boniface died on March 31, 1871.

We don’t know what happened. The staff at what is now the Saint Meinrad Archabbey sent me all the information they had about the young priest. The details are sparse, unfortunately, given that early records were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1887.

More than 150 years later, the monks continue to care for Fr. Boniface – for Peter – as he rests in their cemetery at the archabbey.

For more stories, please subscribe here and we’ll send you a notice via email with each new post: