(b. 28 FEB 1794, d. 01 APR 1837)
Her account of coming to the New World, written for her family in 1878, was included in the Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri (Howard Louis Conard, editor, 1901, vol. 2, pp. 322-325), in a biographical sketch about their son, David Dubach:
I, Maria Catherine Von Gunten, was born in the Canton of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, August 5, 1800. My husband, John Aaron Dubach, was born in the Canton of Berne, Switzerland, February 29, 1794. We were married at Neuchâtel, 1819, and emigrated to America in May, 1821, with our little son, less than one year old, and my husband's father and mother. We joined a colony of Swiss, numbering one hundred and seventy-four, who were induced by a book sent out by Lord Selkirk, of England, describing the Red River country as a land flowing with milk and honey. We, ignorant of the country, in looking at the map supposed it was the Red River of the South, but instead, after a voyage of three months on the sea, we were landed at Hudson Bay, in July. From there we proceeded in open boats up the River Nelson, across Lake Winnepeg, to the Red River of the North, up the river to Fort Douglass. This was the place of our destination, represented to us to be a land fertile and beautiful, where we could raise grain and fruits of every kind, and where we could soon have homes abounding in wealth and prosperity. We stopped here in September, but it was found there was not enough provisions at the fort to sustain all through the winter, and it was determined to send some seventy-five of the younger and stronger to Pembina, sixty miles up the Red River, where game and fish were said to be more abundant. With this number went our little family of five in dog sleds. We arrived at Pembina just as the winter closed in, built a log hut, with stick chimney and a window of oiled deerskin to let in a ray of light. I spent the winter carding and spinning buffalo hair and knitting garments and hunters' mitts, the price of the latter being twenty pounds of buffalo meat. My husband spent the time catching fish through holes cut in the ice or hunting game. Thus we managed to live through the winter. After the spring thaw, the river rose so they could catch no fish, and for over one week we subsisted on roots dug from the ground. During the whole of the first year we had not a morsel of bread. As soon as the ground was sufificiently thawed, I assisted my father-in-law in spading up the ground and putting in crops, while my husband fished to support the family. Do you wonder that I have never since cared to eat fish ? While spading the ground here, my father-in-law unearthed what he believed to be an edible root called by the natives austebon—probably an artichoke—but it proved to be a poisonous wild parsnip. He offered me part of it, I tasted it, but it did not seem natural so I spat it out. My father-in-law ate his portion and it proved fatal. He was soon taken sick, and, as there was no medical aid at hand, was soon beyond earthly help. This was the severest trial of all. Death in such a barren country as this, away from friends and every comfort. His coffin was of the rudest kind, being strips hewed from logs with a hatchet and nailed together. Oh, the deep sorrow of that hour as we stood around the lonely grave and gave our father to the ground in that desolate country, without friend or sympathy, save that shown us by the Canadians living there. They were Catholics, and as soon as the body was laid out in linen (of which we still had some left from the meager supply we were allowed to bring with us from Hudson Bay) they placed candles at the head and foot of the body, and as we had need of their kind sympathy, we did not wish to offend them by removing the candles, knowing that it could not hurt him whose spirit was already in the light of God's presence. To go back from our landing here, we were told that it would be impossible to convey our household goods to Fort Douglass until spring, except what we actually needed for the winter, and that in spring they would be sent to us; but alas, that was the last we saw of the good things our ample chests contained. Many dozens of linen clothes and bedding my dead mother had given me, beside that my father and mother-in-law had possessed, were waited for in vain, but they were never sent to us. We remained at Pembina during the summer following my father-in-law's death, and raised crops sufficient to sustain us comfortably, having raised some wheat, which was ground by a hand-mill. Being dissatisfied with the country, however, we determined in the spring of 1823 to move to the State of Missouri. Accordingly, in June, as soon as the grass on the prairie was sufficient to maintain cattle, we started in company with some thirteen other families in about six carts, all that could be hired in the settlement to convey our effects to the head waters of the St. Peter's—now Minnesota—River, about two hundred miles from Fort Anthony, now Fort Snelling. On this journey of over four hundred miles the women had often to walk twenty miles a day, with their babes in their arms, the men bearing arms and serving as guards, the surrounding country being infested by hostile Indians. On arriving at Lake Traverse, the head waters of St. Peter's River, the men set about making canoes out of cottonwood trees. There we spent three weeks, during which time the able-bodied men had to make a trip to a fort, some thirty or forty miles distant, to replenish the exhausted stock of food. This consumed four days of the time, and some of the women stood guard at our tents, like sentinels at a military camp. Our own tent was made of four sheets sewed together. One can imagine our fears, while waiting these four days, and our joy at the sound of their footsteps, as we lay there that last night under our tents. I seem yet to hear the voice of my husband as he called out : 'Are you alive ?' We then loaded our canoes for Fort Snelling. The water was so shallow we had to draw these boats with ropes along the shore, and at times were compelled to unload and carry our goods and boats for some distance. At times there would be just a little water, and at such places my husband would pull the boat and I would push, while my mother[-in-law] sat in the boat, holding our little boy. We were about three weeks making this trip, rowing our canoes or drawing them along the shore in day time, and at night camping on the shore. Three days before we reached the fort one of the canoes ran against ours, upsetting us in the water. Here we lost what provisions we had and part of our clothing. All of our goods were wet, and we had to stop one day to dry them. The day after we started again we met some Indians, from whom we procured green corn, and this was our food until we reached Fort Snelling. We were kindly received at the fort and were permitted each morning to draw soldiers' rations, which, after our disappointments and privations, seemed sumptuous fare. We were at the fort about one week, when a keelboat came to bring government supplies from St. Louis. Free passage was supplied us and provisions for the journey in this boat, and thus we came down the river to St. Louis, the trip consuming about three weeks. At this day such a trip would seem very tedious and hard, but to us, who had endured such hardships, it seemed very comfortable. At Fort Snelling we learned that Mr. and Mrs. Simon and their daughter Zellie had been there before us. They had remained seven months in the fort, but had left for the States some time before we arrived. The contrast between this trip, taken fifty-five years ago, and one taken now over the same route, on one of our palatial steamers, is hard to describe. Then no town was visible from Fort Snelling to St. Louis, except Alton, Illinois; no signs of hfe, except here and there a farmhouse. Now city after city meets the gaze of the traveler, and here and there the river banks are joined by handsome bridges that afford safe crossing for the flying trains and add beauty to the landscape. Soon after we arrived in St. Louis my husband was taken sick with bilious fever and was ill for three months. After his recovery we rented a farm on an island five miles above the city. In the spring we planted this farm of forty acres, and by June we had a fine prospect for harvest. Here, too, had been born, in January, a little daughter. We began to be encouraged and looked hopefully to the future. But alas, our hopes were in vain ; we were again doomed to disappointment. The river began to rise, and my husband being sick with the measles, I had to help the man we hired to work the farm in heaping up the ground on the low part of the farm, to keep out the water. We worked about a week at this place, hoping every day that the water would recede, until we had a levee about four feet high on the upper side of the cornfield; but, after all our toil, one night the water broke through and in a few hours all our hopes had fled. I had a nice lot of young poultry, but. these fowls, with our growing crops, were all washed away, we barely escaping with our lives. My husband had to be carried from his bed to a boat and taken to our neighbors, who lived on the other end of the island, which was higher ground. We remained with them for about ten days, till my husband and little son recovered, and then went to St. Louis. There we rented a dairy farm at $100 per month, and would have prospered but for both being taken sick. This farm was located in what is now the heart of the great city of St. Louis. The proprietor took advantage of our ignorance of the language, the laws of trade and customs of the country and cheated us shamefully. He took the farm from us, with our crops all garnered, allowing us nothing for our summer's work. We remained in St. Louis four months and then started for Indiana, heartsick and discouraged. We were anxious to find some of our people, and hearing of the Swiss settlement at Vevay, Switzerland County, Indiana, we determined to go there. We started across the country in an oxcart, and were three weeks making the journey that now takes twelve hours by rail. We arrived at Vevay in November, 1824, glad to meet some of our own countrymen. There we met the Simon family, who were of our colony. They were the only persons there whom we had ever met before, but we soon made friends among them, and from this time on my life was one of less adventure. Sunshine and shadow, joy and sorrow have succeeded each other; a family of seven children were born to us. When the youngest was but eight months old my husband was taken from me by death. Since then his mother and four of our children have joined him on the other shore. Through all these trials and vicissitudes the Lord has sustained me, and now, having passed my 'tliree score and ten,' I am enjoying a green old age, and can look over all and say, God's watchful providence has been over me.
The von Gunten or de Gunten family appears to be originally from Sigriswil, in the Canton of Bern. In modern times, they have acquired citizenship at Neuchâtel, Boudevilliers, and Môtiers. Since Maria's account says she was married at Neuchâtel, it may be that her family had already settled in that city, possibly before she was born.
