Christian Houser

Unfortunately we know very little of Christian Houser at the moment. Hopefully with some success in my research, we will learn more very soon. (Update: since this was written, we've learned much more, including his parents and grandparents - see his page in the genealogy section of this website).

Christian Houser is said to have come from Fredericktown, Maryland, to the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he married the young Quaker girl, Sarah Fisher, who had recently moved there from Lynchburg, Virginia. Because he was not a Quaker, she was condemned for marrying counter to discipline. (mcd) The Quakers kept very good records of this type of matter, and it has been duly published in the Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy for the Monthly Meeting of Cincinnati, Hamilton, Ohio.

Christian and Sarah had their one child, Mary Elizabeth Houser, on February 15, 1831 in Cincinnati. Though it was said that she was a delicate child, she lived to be 90 years of age, dying in Evansville, Indiana on February 17, 1911.

Christian Houser was a cabinet maker by trade. When his daughter Mary was five years old, he made a dresser or bureau for her which had at each end a shallow closet for her dresses and in front, drawers of graduated height for her other possessions. Mary Elizabeth Pyke has written: I was her first great-grandchild (Mary Elizabeth Houser Babcock) and when I was born in 1908, she decided to send this bureau to me. In a letter written to me when I was only three weeks old, she commented: "I can remember when in the second drawer I kept two dolls --one in green silk and one in pink covered in lace. I thought them so pretty"... and I had a set of dishes that came from a great aunt in Fredericktown, Maryland."

Christian's wife, Sarah Fisher Houser died when Mary was just a baby. Christian died when she was only eight years old in what her obituary called "the historic Natchez cyclone." Mary moved to Evansville, Indiana to live with her maternal aunt, Matilda Fisher Morgan, and her husband, Dr. Daniel Morgan.