Mareah Scholte

Hendrik Scholte’s second wife, Mareah, has become a very colorful part of Pella’s history. Hendrik Scholte and Mareah Henrietta Elizabeth Kranz met through a curious chain of events. Mareah, 15 years younger than Hendrik, was studying at a girl’s school in Paris where her father was teaching astronomy. Mother Kranz had been called back to the Netherlands to care for her sick mother and had gone there with Mareah’s younger sister, Hubertina.

Mother Kranz heard Dominie Scholte, recently widowed, preach and was very impressed. Father Kranz, having completed his two-year stint in Paris, with Mareah, came home. Mother urged Mareah to accompany her to hear the exceptional Scholte. (It was said that Mareah had little if any interest in religion.) Mareah agreed to go and soon after was converted and courted by the minister.

They has a June wedding in 1845. The three Scholte daughters had a new mother. Mareah was just thirteen years older than Sara, the Dominie’s oldest daughter.

Although Mareah surely heard discussions about the emigration, she had not thought much about herself becoming an emigrant. She was happily pregnant and did not realize what this move could mean to her.

It was only after her son was born that a servant burst into her room to excitedly announce that the Dominie and all of them were going to America. Mareah became very emotional. On the third day of life, the tiny baby died, leaving Mareah in a state of shock and depression. She was ill for a long time. The October departure Scholte had planned was put on hold until spring.

Even though the Scholte family traveled by steamship, a relatively luxurious way to cross the ocean, Mareah still became very ill during the journey. She was glad to reach New York where the Scholtes were warmly welcomed as they waited for the other ships to arrive. This and the time spent in St. Louis did not prepare Mareah for the disappointment she felt when she arrived in Pella, her husband’s dream.

She was shocked to see that Pella was little more than a patch of trampled prairie grass with a dilapidated log cabin that was to be her new home. Mareah became very homesick and Scholte immediately promised to build her a grand house with many of the comforts of their Utrecht home.

Gradually, the new home was built near the log cabin. The Scholte House stood out as an enormous structure in the new town, and Mareah enjoyed filling the rooms with fashionable furnishings sent from St. Louis, and also shipped from The Netherlands. Many of these treasures are still on display at the Scholte House Museum. Entertaining helped her survive the early days in the young town. Being a mother to her three stepdaughters also kept her mind and time occupied. While in America, Mareah and Hendrik had eight more children. Henry, David, and Dora were the only children to survive early childhood.

After Hendrik’s death of a heart attack in August 1868, Mareah took Dora to Detroit to attend school. While in Michigan, Mareah once again took interest in her music and made friends within Detroit’s music circle.

In the spring of 1870, Dora came down with typhoid fever. Robert Beard, a twenty-four year old musician, befriended the sick girl. When it appeared that Dora was recovering it was decided they would return to Pella because she missed it so much.

On the way home she became very ill and died one week after returning to Pella. Robert, who had accompanied them to Pella, asked Mareah to marry him. Mareah, now forty-nine, did marry him, even though he was several months younger than her first son would have been had he lived.

Mareah seemed so young that no one gave much thought to the age difference of the couple.

She and Robert enjoyed music, entertaining and traveling together. The two were happily married for twenty one years before Mareah died in September, 1892. She was seventy-one.

Mareah is buried in the vault with her beloved Dominie and daughter Dora.

Robert Beard remarried and continued to live in the Scholte House until his death October 31, 1920. He is buried elsewhere in Oakwood Cemetery in the plot with his second wife’s family.

Mareah’s three stepdaughters and her own two sons, Henry and David, were the only Scholte children who lived to adulthood.