Emigrated

Kaspar Scheuber, a brother of the gypsum miller Josef Mariä, kept the Schlüssel inn in Büren and narrowly escaped bankruptcy in 1886. His son Josef was summoned before the cantonal court for insolvency at the end of 1887; back in 1884 he had spent weeks in custody in the town hall.

According to his descendants, Josef had already left for Argentina in 1885, leaving his wife Katharina Scheuber-Agner behind in Nidwalden at first. Their eldest son Josef had been born in Stans in 1883. Later the family followed him. His sister Paulina, who was working as a nanny in Buenos Aires, found him there by chance.

Eleven children of Josef and Katharina are recorded in the family tree, and their names already sound Spanish: Emilio, Enrique, Ernesto, Federico, Luis, Lydia. A large clan grew up around Buenos Aires and as far as Tornquist in the south of the province; today 25 descendants of Josef are in the tree. Many years ago a Scheuber family from Argentina wrote to Peter Steiner, asking him to check a family tree that supposedly led back to Brother Klaus. The letter was one of the impulses for his book on the Scheuber.

Two sons of his sister Brigitta, who ran a furniture shop in Basel with Georg Anton Lutz, also later made a new home in Argentina.

Jakob’s son Adolf became a respected farmer in California. There he called himself «Bill», so as not to be mistaken for the poacher Adolf Scheuber, who in 1899 had shot two gamekeepers on the Gruobi alp and fled to South America.

In 1929 Bill married Berta Franziska Keiser; they had six children. Bill died in Modesto in 1990. Today 48 of their descendants are recorded in the tree, most of them in California and Texas, which makes the American line the largest branch of the family outside Switzerland.

Sources: Peter Steiner, «Notes on the family history», in the Book of the Scheuber, and his notes on the 3rd edition; figures from the family tree.