Yesterday, one of the characters was Anna Lang.

Not long after she arrived in America in 1840, her mother, Magdalena (Harz) Lang, died.  Her father remarried.  His second wife was Anna Marie Fassold, and she blessed John Lang, Sr. with 7 more children.  The youngest of those children will be a major character in today’s story because today was her birthday.

Margaret Lang was born on November 11, 1849.  She and her parents were members of Peace Lutheran Church in Friedenberg.  This 1850 census shows one-year-old Margaret right next to her half-sister, Anna (17 years old).

Please note that there is another sister of Margaret named Mary on this list.  She will enter the story later.

On October 29, 1867, Margaret married John Frederick Rauh.  John was the son of  Johann E. and Elizabeth (Baer) Rauh.  We have this photo of Elizabeth.

The birth of John Frederick is a bit of a puzzle.  Here is an image of the passenger list of the Neptune that landed in Baltimore in November of 1840.  Both John Rauh and Elizabeth Baer are on that ship.

John F. Rauh’s birthday is given as November 4, 1840.  Was Elizabeth pregnant on the voyage?  I will let you figure it out.

Here is a civil record of this Rauh/Lang marriage.

According to our German Family Tree, John and Margaret had three children, two girls and a boy.  Then in 1877, Margaret became a widow.  John died at the age of 36.  However, she would not remain a widow very long.  In 1878, she married John’s brother, Adam Rauh.  Here is that marriage certificate.

Margaret and Adam would have four more children, three boys and a girl.  We have this photo of Margaret and her second husband, Adam.

Adam died in 1915, making Margaret a widow for the second time.  Her two husbands are buried in two different cemeteries.  John Frederick is buried in the Peace Lutheran Cemetery in Friedenberg, and Adam is buried in the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in Perryville.  Here are their gravestones.

The firstborn child of Margaret and John Frederick, Josephine, married Heinrich Ochs.  One of his daughters married Martin Mecker.  Here is a photograph which shows five generations and Margaret holding her great great grandchild.

Margaret lived to be 91 years old.  She died in 1940.  Here is her death certificate.  She died simply from complications of old age.

Margaret is buried in the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in Perryville.

Before I finish this story, I must tell of another Lang-Rauh connection.  Margaret’s sister, Maria (shown in the above 1850 census record) married another Rauh brother, John Rauh, Jr.  This couple and their family are shown in this photo.

A previous story was written about this family that ended up in Alva, Oklahoma.  That post was titled, Martin Catches Emma – Later a Sooner.  Those Rauh men sure loved those Lang women.

One other thing.  Special thanks go out to our guest blogger, Clayton Erdmann, who, although he was not able to write this post, provided some of the information and a few of the photographs used here.