This article traces the intertwined lives of Frederick and Elizabeth, and their journey from mid-19th-century German origins to the family they ultimately built together in America. Against the backdrop of immigration, indenture, and the shifting landscapes of rural Pennsylvania, their story emerges through scattered census records, community histories, and newspaper articles. Though the paper trail is often thin, their resilience, fortitude, and determination shine through, offering a glimpse into the courage and persistence that shaped their descendants’ lives.
My last writing about our German Kentucky family focused on my 2nd GGF and Civil War veteran George W. Caseman of Pendleton County, KY, father of Mary Jane Caseman Martin of Lewis County, Kentucky. George’s lineage had always been something of a puzzle. The only clues were a likely connection to Jacob and Lydia Caseman in Pendleton County and a Civil War enlistment record listing his birthplace as Venango County, Pennsylvania.
I believe I have unraveled his ancestry, supported by strong evidence linking generations back to our original immigrant ancestor, 4th GGF Frederick Wilhelm Kaseman, who arrived from Germany in 1772. I suspect the “W.” of George’s middle name honors his grandfather.
Frederick’s birthdate, June 8, 1760, is engraved on his gravestone in St. Peter's Reformed Church cemetery in Paxinos, Pennsylvania. Newspaper death notices and town histories identify his birthplace as Nassau-dillenburg, in what is now the Rhein-Lahn district of Rhineland-Palatinate in southwestern Germany.
Nassau sits along the Lahn River with the requisite castle on the hill built in 1100 and historically ruled by a local dynasty. In the 1760s, Germany was still a patchwork of independent states frequently in conflict with one another; the Holy Roman Empire was declining.
Twelve-year-old Frederick arrived at the port of Philadelphia in 1772 under the name Friedrich Wilhelm Kaesemann, accompanied by a brother and possibly a sister. The surname is derived from German for “cheese man.” What would lead a youngster to undertake the daunting journey without a parent, knowing he would be indentured on arrival? The answer - for many poor immigrants indentured servitude was the only route to a hopefully better life.
George Sell, a farmer some 60 miles north west of Philadelphia, came to purchase laborers and took Frederick into his household for a period of seven years. When Frederick died, he still possessed the original indenture document. He had been bought for a debt of twelve pounds, and that in addition to food, lodging, and clothing, Sell would have him taught to read and write and provide two suits of clothes, one of which had to be new, plus twelve pounds at the completion of his indenture.
The system of indenture in the 1700s operated through ship captains who sold the rights to the labor of immigrants unable to pay passage. The captain, and sometimes merchants who profited from the indentured servant trade, advertised the immigrants who had not paid their passage. Buyers inspected the servants and and purchased their labor for a fixed number of years - seven in Frederick’s case - during which the immigrant was property of the buyer. In return the new master provided housing, food, and clothing until the period of indenture was finished. In time, landowners came upon a better idea - enslave Africans and you had a work force for life.
Sell was an early settler in Maxatawny located in the Kutztown area of Berks County, a region heavily settled by Palatine German immigrants. Maxatawny itself is 60 miles northwest from the Port of Philadelphia.
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| Philadelphia to Maxatawny |
Frederick’s servitude ended around 1779, when he became a free man. His marriage record to Elizabeth Huntzinger has not been located, but the marriage must have taken place before the estimated birth of his first child, our 3rd GGF Jacob Kaseman in the early 1790s.
Children of Frederick and Elizabeth:
Jacob (3rd GGF), b. early 1790s in Maxatawny, married by 1820 to Lydia, surname unconfirmed but census records indicate she is second-generation immigrant. Jacob died in Pendleton County, Kentucky, before the 1850 census, at about age 57.
Lydia, b. 1798 in Maxatawny, d. 1831 in Shamokin. She married Johann Pensyl, a shoemaker and farmer. They had six children before her death at 33. Johann later moved to nearby Rush, remarried, and raised another seven children.
John W., b. 1802 in Maxatawny, d. 1889, age 86 from a stroke. A weaver, he married twice: first to Elizabeth Reichard, and after her death in 1871, to Christina Yost.
Elizabeth, b.1807 in Maxatawny, d. 1888 in Shamokin. She married Leonard Pensyl, brother of Johann.
Joseph, b. 1811 in Windsor Township; d. 1853 in Shamokin at age 42, cause of death “consumption.” A farmer, he married Anna Maria “Mary” Haas in 1830. They had four children. Mary never remarried, but lived several years with a son, and then as a boarder.
Catherine, b. 1813, the last child to be born in Berks County; moved to Shamokin as a toddler; d. 1889 in Fairfield, Lycoming County. Married Swiss immigrant, Jacob Egli in 1830, a weaver by trade in Shamokin. Catherine was left widowed with five children in 1844. She remarried Gottlieb Fogle in 1849 and had a sixth child before being widowed again at 48, the same year her mother died. Catherine lived another 27 years.
Daniel, b. 1814 in Shamokin; d. 1897 at 82 in Bear Gap, only a couple miles from the family homestead in Shamokin. A farmer, he married Elizabeth Adams around 1835, and had seven children.
David, b. 1818 in Shamokin; d. at age 26 in nearby Rush Township. Married Elizabeth, with whom he had two sons Nathan and Frederick. After David’s death, young Nathan was raised by his grandparents Frederick and Elizabeth.
Tracking Frederick and Elizabeth through the Census
1790 Census
I’m still looking for this one, but Frederick, even though a free man, is unlikely to appear unless he is a head of household.
1800 Census (Maxatawny, Berks County)
Frederick and Elizabeth appear with three children under the age of 10; 2 girls and 1 boy (Jacob). Frederick as a laborer, not yet able to purchase land.
1810 Census (Windsor Township, Berks County)
The family, now about 13 miles rom Maxatawny, includes Frederick, Elizabeth, 12-year-old Lydia, 8-year-old John, 3-year-old Elizabeth, and an unidentified young adult female. Jacob is absent and may already have married, as he has a daughter born by about 1810.
1820 Census (Shamokin, Northumberland County)
The Kaseman’s made a significant move from Windsor Township about 50 miles west to that part of Shamokin later set off as the unincorporated township of Ralpho.
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| Maxatawny to Shamokin |
Local histories describe him as an earlier settler, likely arriving around 1814. This move likely afforded him opportunity to become a landowner and, over time, he expanded his farm beyond the original 50 acres. Four additional children were born during the 1810s, even as Frederick is in his 50s. The census lists seven children in the household. Newspapers describe Frederick as both a successful farmer and businessman.
1830 Census (Shamokin)
Only 69-year-old Frederick, 59-year old Elizabeth, and the two youngest sons remain on the farm. The daughters had married, though Lydia died the following year at 33.
1840 Census (Shamokin)
Frederick, Elizabeth, and a teenage girl are in the home, likely a granddaughter.
Over the next decade, two more sons passed away,
David, age 26, who had moved to Rush Township
Jacob (3rd GGF) about age 50, who had migrated from Pennsylvania to Ohio and then to Pendleton County, Kentucky
Frederick became guardian to David’s young son, Nathan.
1850 Census (Shamokin)
This is the first census that lists all members of the household.
Son Joseph, age 39, is living on the family farm with Frederick and Elizabeth, while Joseph’s wife and children are on an adjacent property. Joseph died three years later of tuberculosis. Son John and his family are also on a nearby farm. Notably, all the family members, including the older generations could read and write, indicating value placed on literacy despite growing up in rural, sparsely populated areas.
1860 Census (Shamokin)
Only 15 year-old Nathan, listed as a farm hand, is living with 100-year-old Frederick and 90- year-old Elizabeth. Son Daniel and family live a few farms away.
Elizabeth died two years later at the age of 92, and Frederick lived until 1867, dying at the remarkable age of 107.
Elizabeth’s death notice in the Shamokin Herald reads:
We are pained to learn that Mrs. Elizabeth Kaseman, aged 92 years, wife of the venerable Mr. Kaseman, whose age is 102 years, fell off the hay mow in the barn of Mr. K. yesterday morning and broke her neck. This accident separates a couple who have lived happily in the bonds of wedlock nearly three-fourths of a century. Mrs. Kaseman was in the enjoyment of good health and was remarkably active for one of her age. She was a native of Germany, and when she arrived in this country was sold for 20 pounds to pay her passage money. She has for many years resigned in this county. We believe this remarkable couple carried on farming with little or no assistance and she was thus engage when she met her untimely end.
Interestingly, from 1850 onward, census records list Elizabeth’s birth place as Pennsylvania, while Frederick’s consistently note his German birth. Berks County, where Frederick lived during his indenture, has a substantial Huntzinger presence, but I have not able to place Elizabeth within any documented Huntzinger family. Her German birth, however, is supported by an 1860 interview for the Sunbury Register in which she produced her “Daufshine” stating she was born August 20, 1771. As no such word exists in German, the reporter must have misheard “Taufschein,” meaning a German baptismal certificate.
The same reporter observed Frederick had ten clocks in two downstairs rooms and “a few more upstairs,” “so he may continually have before him an ocular demonstration of the fleetness of time.”
Frederick lived another five years and died in 1867 after an incredible, courageous, and productive life. His obituary in the New York Tribune reads:
Frederick William Kaseman died in Shamokin Township, Northumberland County, PA, aged 107 years, 1 month, and 22 days. He was born in Nasa, Dilbourg, Germany, on the 8th of June, 1760. When he came across the sea with his older brother, he was sold for his passage, amounting to 12 pounds, for seven years to George Sell, in Maxatang Township, near Kutztown, Berks County, the agreement for which service he still had in his possession, with the signature of the county seal upon it, dated in the year 1772. The said George Sell was bound in this agreement to give him his board and lodging, and apparel, and have him taught to read and write, and at the end of the term to give him two suits of clothes, one of which must be new, besides the twelve pounds in money; so that he must have been about 22 years of age at the time, which is what he claimed. Although having reached this remarkable age, only a few years ago he cradled, bound, and shocked twelve or fourteen dozen of rye in a day, without hat or shoes, and only during the last summer he was able to hoe and take out his own potatoes.
In his will, Frederick donated an acre of land for the construction of a school in Ralpho. A one-story brick school house was erected and named in his honor. In October 1867, his son John and son-in-law Leonard Pensyl, acting as executors of the estate, advertised the sale of the property: 14 acres, a dwelling with a well near the door, a barn with good stabling, a carriage house, “necessary” out-buildings, a fruit orchard, and several acres of white oak timber.
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| St. Peter's Lutheran Reformed Church, also known as "the Blue Church |
Frederick was a deacon and elder at St. Peter’s Blue Lutheran Reformed Church in nearby Paxinos where he, Elizabeth, and six of their offspring are buried.
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| Frederick Kaseman Is not my help in me and is wisdom driven quite from me? |
Frederick's quote from Job 6:13 is perplexing for a man of such accomplishments as it reflects feelings of hopelessness and despair.
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| Elizabeth Huntzinger Kaseman I have fought the good fight. I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. |
Next post: Jacob Caseman, the link between Frederick W. Kaseman and George W. Caseman.
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