Barbara Muggenthaler is the great grandmother of Lorain Berg, Calvin R. Berg, and Karl Brunhofer.

Barbara Muggenthaler and Georg Berg were married on 22 May 1855.

During her lifetime, the brother's Grimm were collecting and publishing German folk stories such as Aschenputtel [Cinderella], Schneewittchen [Snow White], and Der Froschkönig [The Frog Prince]. It is possible that Barbara heard these tales when she was a little girl and then repeated the stories to her own children.

Any stories Barbara might have told to her children were very different that the Grimm's Fairy Tales read by her great grandchildren and their descendants in America. As National Geographic explains, "Once they saw how the tales bewitched young readers, the Grimms, and editors aplenty after them, started "fixing" things. Tales gradually got softer, sweeter, and primly moral."

In the United States, several literary events are worth mentioning: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was developing the horror story, Godey's Ladies Book was published from 1830-1898), and Transcendentalist Club began publishing The Dial (1841).