The Ancestoral History of the Bowles, Ryan, Gemberling, Matlock and Smallwood Families - 1786-1980.
The Gemberling info was given by Ruth Samllwood Nixon. She passed away before it made it to print. She helped with the family history as well as the prints. She was the first child born to Bert. C. Smallwood and Zora Gemberling. The booklet was sent to Peggy Fletcher by Ken Mitchell whose mother was Edith Esther Smallwood, sister to Ruth Smallwood Nixon.

Frederick Gemberling, or Uncle Fred, as he was familiarly called by all his neighbors and friends, was born in Union County, Pennsylvania, April 11, 1827 (son of Philip Gemberling, Jr. and Elizabeth Martin, grandson of Philip Sr. and Eva (Glass) Gemberling).
He grew to manhood in the same county where he was born, and received a fair education for that early day. He also learned the trade of a tanner, as all boys were expected to learn a trade as well as working on the farm.
He was married to Mary A. Steninger, March 16, 1847. they lived in Pennsylvania until the spring of 1854. They had heard such glowing accounts of the new West that they determined to seek a fortune and a home in Central Illinois.
Grandfather Gemberling often told us of the stories that reached their Eastern home aout the great natural temptations of the then new West. Some of them were as follows: T'was said geese, ducks, brants, prairie chickens, quail, wild turkeys, deer and fish were so plentiful your living would cost you nothing. Also the birds gathered around the ponds that dotted the unbroken prairies until you could rake up enough feathers for beds where they shed their plumage. While some of this was true there were other things that made hard ships that over came all the advantages.
These glowing accounts caused Grandfather Gemberling, Grandfather Woland, and George Mixel, so well remembered by older settlers, and William Guinter, a brother-in-law of Mr. Gemberling's to leave their boyhood homes and friends to try their luck in this new country.
The family of Grandfather Gemberling consisted of himself, wife and three little boys, David, Cyrus, and Albert. D.H. (David H.) remembers well the trip and their experiences. The engine was fired with wood and the cars much like the street cars of today, probably not so large. On this train they traveled to a city in Ohio on Lake Erie, then crossed one corner of the lake in a boat and again boarded another train running through northern Indiana and to LaSalle, Illinois. Here they were again transferred to a boat on the Illinois River. When they arrived at LaSalle they were undecided as to their location. Mr. Guinter threw up his hat and said the way the wind blew that hat - that way he wanted to go. It blew north so he went in a northerly direction to Monroe, Wisconsin where he spent the remainder of his life and reared his family. The other three families came down the Illinois River to Pekin, landing there the 7th of May 1854.

Many thanks to Ken Mitchell for providing the source of this information.

Created on ... April 07, 2003