Profile of Anthony (Anton) Lienhart. born 1871 in Balzhofen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, died 1959 at Pinellas, Florida.
Anthony grew up in a little farming village 6 miles east of the Rhine River and 20 miles northeast of Strasbourg, France, in southwest Germany. In Google Maps it is shown as Balzhofen, Buhl. Anthony’s daughter Mary said that Anthony ‘s mother arranged his passage to the U.S. to avoid military service when he was 15, although ship records seem to show him arriving in 1889. He arrived in New York City and stayed there awhile, then slowly drifted west, working as he went. The 1900 census shows him as a boarder in the home of John Fleming at Batteese Lake in Jackson County, MI, and he worked on Fleming’s farm.
In 1902 he married Elizabeth Duffy, from the Stockbridge area. Anthony was a Catholic and may have met Elizabeth, who was Irish-American Catholic, in church activities. At around this time Anthony was acquiring land and they began working their own farm, located in Bunkerhill, Ingham county at the corner of Catholic Church Rd & Haynes Road. This is less than a mile east of the Catholic Church we attended as kids. Their house on the corner still stands (it’s yellow now), but the farm buildings are gone.
They had 10 children in rapid succession, all of whom attended the 3-room school at the Catholic Church. Our grandpa, Bernard, was #4, born in 1907. Elizabeth, the kids’ mom, died in October 1916 of a ruptured appendix, at just 38 years old. At that time the kids ranged in age from Joe, 13, down to Dick, 10 months.
Anthony gradually expanded his farm until it was nearly 500 acres, about the size of three or four typical farms in the area in the early 20th century. He became one of the first farmers in SE Michigan to raise Peppermint as a crop. (Apparently he started a lasting trend in his locale. In the early ’70s I helped 3 Bunkerhill farmers in the very dirty job of harvesting their mint crops.)
Anthony remained a bachelor until 1949, when he married German-born widow Gertrude Leon, who he met while wintering in Florida. She passed away in 1952. Anthony passed in 1959, at 88.
Ted Lienhart
Mary Elizabeth Duffey Lienhart (1878-1916)
