My Genealogy Hound

Anton Walker, Sr., is the son of Kasper and Barbara (Baumann) Walker, both natives of Switzerland. He remained a bachelor until forty years of age, when he married and reared a family of eight children, five sons and three daughters. He was a farmer by occupation, and both lived all their lives in their native land. He was one of the Swiss soldiers who impeded Napoleon on his Italian campaign. He lived to be seventy-nine and she sixty-one years of age; of their children three sons came to America. Anton was born in Switzerland in 1821. On reaching manhood he went to Paris, France, and for about five years worked as a dairyman. In 1847 he came to America, and after running on the Mississippi River a short time came to this county in 1848. From 1850 to 1855 he made three trips to California to mine gold, and while upon one of the return trips the ship ran upon a rock about 300 miles south of San Francisco. On board were about 800 passengers, and all would undoubtedly have perished for food and water had not a ship passed by and picked them up. For seven days they hung on the rock, and the last two or three days their fare was limited to one potato a day. In 1856 Mr. Walker married Miss Matilda Gulden, a native of New Jersey, born in 1837, and the daughter of Ferdinand and Wilhelmina S. (Trautwein) Gulden, who came from Bavaria, Germany in 1833; her father died and Mrs. Gulden married Daniel F. Byersdorf. Ten children were the result of Mr. Walker’s marriage, five sons and five daughters. During the war he was in the militia; he votes for the man in all political matters. He owns 365 acres in this and Osage Counties, and as a farmer has been quite successful.