On 3 Feb 1923, Juanita Mary Flournoy (née Burke) married Alvin Edoman Stech in Harris County, Texas. Juanita had one child, Mary Elizabeth Flournoy by her previous marriage to Alvin Aubery Flournoy. Juanita and Alvin Stech raised Mary, and their daughter, Ella Louise Stech, and had 5 sons, Alvin Lee Stech, Vernon Ernest Stech, Robert Louis Stech, Richard Donald Stech, and Raymond Edmund Stech. They were married until her death in a car accident in 1945. Daughter, Mary married George Monroe Brown on 24 Oct 1935 in Houston, Harris County, Texas opening the way for many future Brown's and Stech's to share a lot of ancestry.

The Stech's had arrived in this country only two generations before from Germany. Thanks to some research done by Joachim Stech in Germany and passed on to an Ancestry.com user, Shawn Cox in 2013, we have some data that tells us a little about where the Stechs came from in Germany. Mr. Stech and his son were researching their family in Prignitz and as a favor to Mr Cox decided to check the church books in Ferbitz too. The earliest Stech they found was Churt Steich, but no information. Steich's son Hans Stech married Rosemund Stolte on 23 Oct 1710 at Bochin. The next generation was Andreas Stech; b: ~1709 at Deibow, he married Maria Margaretha Spanier on 27 Nov 1744 at Ferbitz. Following that was;

Hans Joachim Stech, b: September 29, 1757 at Ferbitz; d: before 1811 (Place unknown) he married Anna Maria Buss(e), b: Sep 1759, d: 27 Feb 1818, Ferbitz

George Christian Erdmann Stech, b: May 22, 1788, Ferbitz m: July 10, 1811, Ferbitz, d: October 02, 1826, Ferbitz he married Catharina Magdalene Margarethe Schroeder, b: ~1788, d: May 03, 1841, Ferbitz

George Erdmann Stech, b: October 25, 1818, Ferbitz, m: May 21, 1841, Ferbitz; d: ?? he married Maria Catharina Charlotte Friderike Tiede, b: ~1815, d: ??

And then was Joachim Friedrich Johann Stech, b: August 10, 1843, Ferbitz. It was he who brought his family to America. You can read the research done by Joachim Stech here.

Joachim Friedrich Johann Stech
and Family

Ancestry user, aprildbower originally shared this on 17 Jan 2010 [3]

So why did our Joachim Stech move his family to Texas? It's doubtful that we'll ever find his specific reasons, but there is a lot of history about German migration to Texas starting with Johann Friedrich Ernst in about the 1830's. He wrote many letters back to friends.

He described a land with a winterless climate like that of Sicily. It had abundant game and fish, was fertile and rich, and awaited the impress of German labor to make it produce abundantly. Taxes were virtually nil, and large tracts of land were available for only a surveyor's fee; hunting and fishing required no licenses. Texas was an earthly paradise. Like other writers of America letters, Ernst stressed the positive aspects of the new land and downplayed or omitted the negative. One of his letters appeared in a newspaper in northwestern Germany and also in an emigrant guidebook and greatly magnified his role in promoting the migration. [1]

Then there were several organised projects to bring more Germans to Texas up to the civil war. But after the war, from 1865 to the early 1890s, more Germans arrived in Texas than during the thirty years before the war. The Germans were ambitious farmers and artisans who believed their futures were cramped by the social and economic system at home. They were not poverty-stricken and oppressed. Indeed, they were able to afford the substantial cash investment required in overseas travel. [1]

It was on 12 Sep 1890 that Joachim and his family arrived in New York aboard the vessel Saale departed from Bremen, Germany. He brought his wife, Marie, and his young children Frederick, Carl, Herman, Johann, Emma, and August. [2] In the 1900 US Census, we find Joachim and his family living in Colorado County, Texas, near Weimar where Joachim would live out his life.

To see the many descendants of Joachim Stech up to the present day that are listed in this tree just click right here. If you know of any that are left out, please let me know.