Five centuries of Iven family history converge in Loose Creek
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Five hundred years can make history seem distant, but for members of the Iven family who gathered on Aug. 14 at Immaculate Conception Cemetery in Loose Creek, the distance between 1526 and 2026 could be measured in names, photographs, family stories and generations.
At the center of a new memorial to Peter Iven and Anna Gertrude Muenks Iven is the Iven coat of arms, marking exactly 500 years since Holy Roman Emperor Charles V bestowed the arms upon an earlier Peter Iven on Aug. 14, 1526.
Family members and others gathered at the cemetery to dedicate and bless the new stone honoring the immigrant couple whose descendants became part of the fabric of Loose Creek and Osage County.
Nick Iven, 82, traveled from Horseheads, New York, for the occasion after decades spent researching and preserving the family’s history.
“Everyone, thank you for coming,” he said. “I really appreciate it. It’s kind of a special day for the Iven family.”
The date was intentional, but the memorial also answered a much more immediate need.
Peter and Anna Gertrude had been buried at Loose Creek, but their original markers had disappeared or could no longer be identified. The uncertainty had troubled descendants for generations.
The absence of a marker was not a recent discovery. In a family history prepared in 1975-76, Clement Bernard “Clem B.” Iven recalled asking Loose Creek old-timers about Peter and Anna’s burial place as early as 1942.
When he searched the cemetery again in 1957, no monument marked the graves, and many of the older residents who might once have known their precise location had already died. Family information itself contained conflicting accounts about whether Peter and Anna had been buried at Loose Creek or Taos.
Another page of Clem Iven’s genealogy eventually recorded that Peter was buried in the Loose Creek cemetery and specifically noted that there was no marker on his grave.
Nick Iven said the idea of correcting that absence also followed an example established by another local historian. He credited Joseph Muenks, father of Joel Muenks, with beginning a tradition of placing memorial stones in Immaculate Conception Cemetery for the community’s immigrant ancestors.
“I just followed his lead,” Iven said.
Joseph Muenks also helped lead the effort to establish the immigrant monument in front of Immaculate Conception Church, along with Hubert Bescheinen, and was among those instrumental in establishing the sister-city relationship between Loose Creek and Lank, Germany.
The new memorial finally provided what generations before had lacked — a permanent place bearing Peter and Anna Gertrude’s names and a physical record of the family they began in Missouri.
Preserved in stone
What resulted is considerably more than a conventional gravestone.
Iven worked with Jerrod Atteberry of Capitol Monuments Inc. to design the memorial. Iven said he wanted Atteberry’s name included on the stone in recognition of his work, but Atteberry declined, and the company name appears instead.
The Iven coat of arms is the focal point, but the monument incorporates photographs, names and pieces of a family story spanning generations. It includes an image of Peter and Anna Gertrude, along with their birth, marriage, and death information.
The reverse side records the 14 children born to the couple. Other images preserve surviving pieces of the family’s history.
Peter Iven’s muzzleloading rifle, now owned by Brady Iven of Freeburg, is among them. “He actually shot a deer with it this year,” Nick Iven said.
Brady had the firearm restored after it survived a house fire and was passed down through the family in pieces. His story and the rifle’s return to the deer woods form another link between an object from the family’s past and a descendant still using it today.
Another image relates to Peter Jacob Iven and a family distillery, including markings associated with whiskey barrels. The memorial also recalls Peter Iven’s blacksmith trade and includes an image of an agricultural implement Nick Iven believes may have been brought from Germany.
Taken together, the images make the monument something approaching a family history written in stone.
The place where it stands has a history nearly as deep as Peter and Anna Gertrude’s Missouri story.
The six-acre property that became the Immaculate Conception Church property was purchased in 1843, and the deed described a Catholic church and graveyard on the site. The first log church was dedicated in 1845, and Loose Creek became an independent parish in 1848, shortly before land records document Peter Iven’s first purchase there in the spring of 1849.
A rich family legacy
Peter Iven was born on Sept. 3, 1814, in Bedburg. He immigrated to the United States in 1842. Anna Gertrude Muenks, born in 1824, had arrived the previous year.
They were married on April 8, 1844, at St. Francis Xavier Church in Taos. Their marriage appears in the parish register kept by Jesuit Father Ferdinand Helias, whose missionary work helped establish Catholic communities throughout central Missouri.
Nick Iven said the couple lived in Russellville following their marriage before eventually settling at Loose Creek. Their first three children were born during that period, he said.
Joel Muenks of Loose Creek noted that the landscape still carries the Iven name. Motorists traveling Hwy. 50 descend what locals know as Iven Hill, and nearby stands the old Iven homestead.
“That’s Peter Iven’s house,” Muenks said. “He built that old farm out there.”
Over the next two decades, their family grew to 14 children, spreading the Iven line through generations of Osage County families.
Anna Gertrude died Sept. 29, 1873, at 49.
Peter later married Lucinda “Lena” Pointer. He died May 15, 1876, at 61.
More than a century later, descendants were still trying to determine exactly where the first couple rested.
Now there is no ambiguity about where their names can be found.
Blessing the gravestone
Father William Debo, pastor of Holy Family Parish in Freeburg and Sacred Heart Parish in Rich Fountain, placed the dedication into a broader context of faith, memory and responsibility to generations yet to come.
“We are here again to remember and give thanks for life,” he told those gathered.
With 500 years of family history framing the occasion, Fr. Debo emphasized that remembrance is not merely about looking backward.
“This is a day of marking this faith, this place and their name,” he said. “This is a day to remember the love imparted to this family and how that has gone for many generations.”
Grave markers themselves, he noted, reflect one of humanity’s oldest efforts to preserve a connection with those who have died.
“Throughout history, stones have been a way to mark the final resting places of those that we love,” Fr. Debo said.
The larger purpose of a permanent memorial, he continued, extends beyond people who personally knew those buried there. It speaks to people who will encounter their names decades or centuries later.
As he blessed the monument, Fr. Debo prayed that it would stand “as a testimony to their life and legacy.”
“May it speak not only of death but the life that continues to those who remember,” he said.
The priest also asked that those who pass the cemetery recognize something of the people buried there and the community built by generations around them.
“May all who pass by this place from this road feel the warmth and spirit and strength and devotion,” he said of the countless people resting there.
His final challenge was directed not toward the monument but toward the descendants gathered around it. “May each of you be a living stone,” Fr. Debo said.
Neal A. Johnson is editor of the Unterrified Democrat newspaper (unterrifieddemocrat.com) in Osage County, which published a version of this story in its Aug. 26 issue. This version is published here with permission.
