Fearless Female Blogging Prompt For March 13

Last year in honor of Women's History Month I featured several women who were favorites of mine in blog posts.  This year I have discovered The Accidental Genealogist's blogging prompts for Women's History Month and have been trying to keep up with them.  The original post can be found HERE with all the prompts for the month listed.  The prompt for today is:

March 13 — Moment of Strength: share a story where a female ancestor showed courage or strength in a difficult situation.

My family history is filled with women who must have had great strength and courage to do what they did on a day to day basis.  Crossing the ocean,  settling in the wilderness,  and countless other things that seem daunting to me.  If I had not recently blogged about my ancestor that hid the horses in the living room from the army during the Civil War and threatened to throw hot water on the soldiers if they came in the house I would pick her for this post.  You can read about her HERE  but since that is a recent post I will pick another of many available examples.  

Anna Marie Catherina Hertzler (1722-1751) had the bad luck to marry above her station.  She was called a morganatic wife.   Since her husband was above her social ranking she not only could not inherit his wealth but he could not inherit his family's estate as long as they were married.  So in order that he could marry someone of higher station, he shipped Catherina off from their home in Germany along with his young son to the new world in about 1750.  Johanne Michael Buechele was the son's name.  After they were here about six months, Catherina received word that she was inheriting money in her own right, but in order to collect it she had to be present back in Germany.  This was a hard and courageous decision to make to go back across the ocean to get her inheritance as the trip was a difficult and dangerous one.  Unfortunately,  even though she made the brave decision to go,  enroute their ship was boarded by pirates and she was murdered.  They took young Michael, who was around age 12,  prisoner and he was kidnapped for two years by the pirates.   Once when the pirate ship was in port in Philadelphia young Michael escaped and was able to take refuge with  a German family in Germantown.   You can read the story several places online,  one place can be found HERE.   This Michael had a son named Michael,  who had a daughter named Susanna, who had a daughter named Elizabeth, who had a daughter named Carrie Bell who was my paternal grandmother's mother.