Take, for example, their grandfather, John G. Koerner. Native of a German village, near Schleiz, he became so bitterly opposed to German militarism and autocracy that he determined to migrate to the United States. He sailed from Bremen to Baltimore early in 1818 and went to live in Virginia. Besides gaining recognition in the United States for his mechanical ability and for the superior quality of farm wagons and carriages he manufactured, he became known, too, as a person who did his own thinking. He did not accept all that he heard or read. Indeed, he seems to have been a “character.” It was his habit to read newspapers aloud to his family, and when, as invariably happened, he came to something that interested him because of approval, disapproval, or for any other reason, he would interpolate comment without changing his tone or rate of utterance. It was impossible for a listener to tell just how much that he seemed to be reading was actually in the paper and which ideas were his own. One by one, members of his family would study the paper afterward to see if various surprising statements were really there. No matter how commonplace a newspaper article may have been, it was never colorless as he read it. His wife, the former Catherine Fry, American born, also came of pioneer ancestry, from the German language section of Switzerland. Their daughter, Susan Catherine Koerner, was born April 30, 1831, when they lived at Hillsboro, Loudoun County, Virginia, but the family moved to Union County, Indiana, shortly after that--at a time when there was still pioneering life in the Hoosier country. The Koerner farm became a rather impressive one for those times. There were finally a dozen or fourteen buildings, including the carriage shop, all conspicuous for their workmanlike construction and orderliness. John Koerner lived to the age of eighty-six.