Maria Elisabeth’s younger brother, Carl Joseph, emigrated from Steinfeld to America, arriving in Baltimore on the Bark Union on September 18, 1866. He was the first of the family known to have come to America. His future bride, Anna Vaarman, accompanied him. They settled in Illinois, where they lived for at least fifteen years. In America, he spelled his name Schlerman.

Elisabeth married Johan Henrich Tobias Brüning in 1853 when she was nineteen. They had two children. In December 1855, six weeks after the birth of Wilhelminia, he died. In 1861 Elisabeth married Fred Wübker, with whom she had at least two children who survived past infancy. The Wuebkers emigrated to America in 1877,171 settling in Kniest Township, Carroll County, Iowa. Elisabeth’s brother Carl Joseph and his family moved from Illinois to Iowa. Elisabeth’s brother Carl Joseph and his family moved from Illinois to Iowa, where the siblings were next door neighbors, as the pattern often was. Besides the Brüning and Wuebker natural children, Fred and Elisabeth adopted Paul, born in 1885, when Elisabeth was 53. The 1900 Federal census reports that she had eight children, four of whom survived until that time.166

The name is spelled in many different ways, usually “Schloerman” in later family records.120,163,164