1870. He lives with wife Rachel and no children in Mifflinburg where he is a blacksmith.

1880. Fred Diehl age 33 blacksmith born in PA lives in Valley Falls, Jefferson Co, Kansas with wife Kadda age 21 also born PA and Maude age 2 and unnamed son 3 months. Also living with them is William H Diehl 38 a blacksmith born in PA and Fred's nephew Edwin age 14 born PA.

There is a story here, but I do not know what it is. Frederick Diehl married Rachel R Fries and lived in Mifflinburg in 1870 -- they never had children. In 1880, Rachel R Diehl was living with the Newton Heisler family in Mifflinburg and said she was married but there was no sign of her husband anywhere in the Mifflinburg area.

Curiously, I did find Fred Diehl in Jefferson County, Kansas -- the same birth year and the same occupation (blacksmith) as Frederick Diehl of Mifflinburg in 1870 -- living with William H Diehl, his brother, and William's son Edwin. All were born in Pennsylvania. This clearly was the Mifflinburg Diehls -- upped and moved to Kansas. But the amazing thing was that Fred was married to a woman named Kadda, she was but 21 years of age -- was also born in Pennsylvania -- and they had two year old daughter Maude and a yet unnamed son age 3 months.

Did Frederick and Rachel divorce? Did he just leave her? The only comparable situation I am aware of is that Melissa Kleckner's first husband ended up in Iowa by 1880 living with a second wife while Melissa remained behind in New Berlin. She later married George Peter Mertz.

Rachel was one of two women born in the early 1840’s of that name who married men named Diehl. Figuring out who was who created a great deal of work for me. In the 1910 Census, Rachel Diehl was a widow who said she had never had children and was living with her widowed sister Catherine Frederick. I should have immediately concluded this could not be our Rachel who obviously had had children and who, as best I knew, had no sister Catherine. But the story of why I at first ignored these “discordant notes” is told in the Kleckner chapter.

When I finally did figure out that this Rachel was not our Rachel, I still was curious as to who she was and I thought figuring out who Catherine was could help me sort things out. I first searched the 1850 Census for anyone named Rachel of the right age and anyone named Catherine of the right age and then matched up last names to find the matching set. This process led to the household of sisters Rachel and Catherine living with their father Henry Fetterolf in Hartley Township, Union County. They were of exactly the right age to be Catherine and Rachel decades later. But Rachel Fetterolf have nothing to do with this story, it turns out.

Because I finally found the truth of the matter in Mifflinburg church records -- the same ones that document the life history of our Rachel. Both the 1868 marriage of Frederick Diehl and Rachel Fries and the 1869 marriage of Jacob Frederick and Anna Catherine Fries were documented. And that led me to find the family of John Fries living in 1850 in Point Township and 1860 in Mifflinburg with daughters Rachel and Catherine of the right ages. I now know it was Rachel R Fries who I had been confusing with Rachel E Kleckner.

Frederick and Rachel Deal (the Deal and Diehl spellings were used almost interchangeably back then) lived in Mifflinburg in 1870, as did William H and Rachel Diehl. After Fred left her, Rachel moved in with the Heisler family in 1880 -- and that was my first false sighting of what I believed was our Rachel before I realized ours had died in the 1870’s.

Because of my mistaken idea that the surviving Rachel Diehl in the 1880 Census was Rachel (Kleckner) Diehl -- I came to first learn about Frederick Diehl sort of through the “back door” -- i.e. while trying to determine who this other Rachel Diehl was. So I obviously then thought I needed to figure out who this Frederick Diehl was. It turns out that he was none other than the younger brother of our William H. Two brothers, sons of George of New Berlin, married women named Rachel — William married Rachel E Kleckner, Frederick married Rachel R Fries. Both Rachels were born in about 1844.

In 1880, even though there was no husband in evidence, Rachel did say she was married and then by 1900 was calling herself a widow. I don’t know if that was true by then or not, I do not know when Frederick died.

I don’t know when exactly Frederick moved to Kansas nor when he married Kadda or even whether they met and married before he left Mifflinburg or after.

It is interesting that Fred Diehl named a daughter Maud since his brother William H Diehl also had a, by then deceased, daughter named Maude. Either the younger was simply named for the older or the name Maude takes on some family significance for both Fred and William H.