Margaret Springer: Pennsylvania Dutch Origins

1812-1899
great-great-grandmother

(pg. 275 of Rupp’s list of German immigrants???)

      Margaret Springer was born September 30, 1812, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Michael Springer and Susanna Sunderland. She was the youngest of 11 children, all surviving to adulthood. Her siblings were Daniel (1791), Sarah (1792), John (1794), Michael (1796), Elizabeth (1798), Nancy (1801), Mary (1806), William (1806), Susanna (1808) and Peter (1810).

       Margaret’s father Michael was a Revolutionary War patriot. He served as a private in the militia of Westmoreland County in 1782, and was called out to guard the line on the frontiers. He later received depreciation pay for his services, which helped compensate him for the depreciated currency with which he was paid. The Springer family is difficult to untangle, but one significant source says that Michael’s father, Michael Springer, came to America in 1752 on the ship “Halifax”. This immigrant Michael Springer Sr. is our earliest known Springer ancestor and our 4^th great grandfather. His maternal grandmother was from Hanover, Germany. Other sources state that the Springers were from Sweden and this appears to be what her sons Thomas and Andrew believed, because this was stated in a newsletter for Gilman, Illinois.  Dad’s cousins have since refuted this Swedish connection and it appears that Margaret was “Pennsylvania Dutch” in her origins, a descendant of early German-speaking immigrants to Pennsylvania.

       In the 1830’s, Margaret Springer married Henry Crooks and they had 10 children together. We see Margaret in the federal censuses, but all the records tell us is that she ‘kept house’. I’m sure this was no small feat with her large family and the responsibilities of a farm. Dad’s cousin, Miriam Bolick, visited the farm that Henry and Margaret owned and she took pictures of several pieces of original furniture, including a jelly cupboard. The home was originally 2 stories, although a couple of additions were made. Originally, there were fireplaces in every room and 4 chimneys.

       Margaret (Springer) Crooks died on March 14, 1899, 16 years after the death of her husband Henry.  In 1900, her 3 unmarried children (William, John and Martha) and her widowed son Andrew, whose wife died in 1899, are living together on the family farm in Hanover township, Beaver County, PA. No doubt, this is where Margaret Crooks lived prior to her death.