Stauffer Pioneer Cemetery

The Bean [a.k.a. Biehn] Family on Bean Road. John Biehn with his bride Anna Shierich arrived in Wilmot Township from Doon, Ontario in 1833. He purchased a 200 acre block of wooded forest from the Crown Lot 24, Concession 3 for 125 English pounds , one mile southwest of Haysville. As required by all pioneer families on Crown land, part of the purchase price was to build a log house and clear so many acres of land for agricultural purposes. Here they lived the rest of their lives with their eleven children. John and Anna set aside a half acre of their farm for a meeting house which was known as the Biehn Mennonite Church for nearly one hundred years. It is now called the Nith Valley Church. Anna Sheirich Bean died in 1881 at the age of 63. John Bean died in 1898 at the age of 86. They are buried in this cemetery along with their children as follows: Simon, son, died in infancy. Levi, eldest son, died at 17 years as a result of a runaway team accident. Nancy, married Charles Daniells, died in 1873 in Virginia, U.S.A. The Biehns were natives of Switzerland and the first generation arrived in 1742 and settled in Pennsylvania. One of the sons of John and Anna, David Bean, started teaching in schools at Blenheim, Baden and Washington, ON., at the age of 16. In 1889 he became the sole owner of The Waterloo Chronicle [kept in family til 1954] and Berlin's Daily Telegraph in 1893. Later David became the first chairman of the Waterloo Water Commisssion and then Mayor of Waterloo in 1901.