Justly Proud
 Beverly Raffensperger Fauvre
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2001 Guild Press of Indiana
  ISBN: 1878208616

Amazon's price is: $21.95

Germans, arriving in America in the 19th century were one of the strongest groups of immigrants building the new nation. Justly Proud is Beverly Raffensperger Fauvre's homage to the generations of both her family & her husband's, who journeyed to the Midwest, as early as 1836, helped found a city & prospered there in.

Luckily the women of Beverly Raffensperger Fauvre's families were chroniclers & writers, leaving this author much to draw upon. Justly Proud is an engrossing glimpse into a way of life, long, long gone, when the many German American families came from a common heritage, intermarried, made business partnerships & shared personal tragedies. They are the foundations of our nation, as are the stones with which they built their stores, homes & tombstones.

Justly Proud begins with the story of a family plot in the Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. It is the 1970s, & the author is arguing with her father about both the extravagance of purchasing a brand new (so to speak) plot apart from all the other interwoven family plots, & her father's insistence on even discussing where he, his wife & his family would be buried.

Here we meet Beverly Raffensperger Fauvre's beloved “Babboo,” Lucy Bauer Raffensperger, & through her memories of her grandmother, born just twenty years after the Civil War, come the stories of her ancestors, of her great-great-grandparents who arrived in Indianapolis in 1836, & the sons & daughters who settled in the Hoosier capital, pioneer merchants in the heart of the town, turning it into a city of culture, education & prosperity.

“Intellectually interesting, courageous people, Babboo's family believed in hard work, enterprise and earning the respect of their neighbors, co-workers and friends. They believed in the importance of community, and they shared their talents and abilities...Fathers and mothers alike had high expectations for their children. It was hoped that each generation would build on the foundation built by the generation before it.” P.XVI

Then we meet the Bauers, whose history in America, goes all the way back to Mary Sachs who arrived in America as a six month old. In 1836 her father uprooted his family from Maryland & moved out West, to the little village of Indianapolis, where he became the first sexton of the old City Cemetery, commonly called Greenlawn. One of Mary's neighbors from 1839 to 1847 was Henry Ward Beecher, the well known New England Presbyterian preacher & author of Evolution & Religion. One of his sisters was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the abolitionist & author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is not recorded if Mary Sachs ever met this Beecher sister.

Here Mary Sachs grew up, & in 1850 married George Bauer, a merchant tailor & dealer in ready made clothing & furnishing goods. He had emigrated from Wuerttemberg in Germany, & arrived in Indianapolis in 1848, & was thus one of the prestigious, a “Forty-eighter.” & so the lineage continues along with the growth of an American city, & the intermarrying of families & the mingling of cultures.

The Raffensperger Roots go back to a certain Revolutionary soldier who served as a member of the York County, Pennsylvania Militia. It was his daughter, born in 1790, who married Martin Raffensperger. It was their grandchildren who moved to Indianapolis where their son became a druggist.

There are three sections of photographs of ancestors as well as the buildings they sponsored -- a gymnastic hall, a school, a drugstore, the commercial district & a summer cottage; as well as reproductions of a citizenship certificate & advertisements of family businesses. In the last section, photographs show Beverly Raffensperger Fauvre's more immediate family -- there are daughters & brides, mothers & grandmothers, sewing circles & business partners, as well as offices of an investment firm, & photos of Lt. G. William Raffensperger's service in the Pacific Theater in USNR between 1941-45.

All in all, a meandering, fascinating telling of a child's family tale. As if the Reader is looking at dozens of faded photos on top of the piano that came West with a long ago wife, & has never since been moved from its place of honor. As if a granddaughter is taking you from photo to photo & telling you their stories, as well as some of what had been happening in the city, the state, the nation & the world at the time these honored ancestors were living.

A worthy effort, & a fine example of recording one's family history. Beverly Raffensperger Fauvre should indeed be Justly Proud, for she has done us all a service by chronicling the arrival & the roots of her German American Family in Indiana.
(01/05/03)

Rebecca