This story starts with the death of Emilie (Schuppan) Mueller on April 27, 1891 and backtracks to her birth in Frohna, Missouri in 1853. Emilie was born on September 26, 1853 to Adolph and Emilie Schuppan. The Schuppan family had actually been in America prior to the Saxon immigration to Perry County, but they found their way here by the year 1850. Before we continue, let’s backtrack even further.
In 1839, when the Saxon immigrants were struggling to stay alive during that first winter in Perry County,a group of Scotts-Irish Presbyterians from nearby Brazeau recognized the needs of the Germans and came to their rescue. Food was brought to help some starving fellow Christians. Probably even more important was the knowledge they shared. They knew what crops grew here best. They knew what poison ivy looked like and which snakes were poisonous. They were also willing to share that information with the Germans, even though they spoke a different language.
Back to 1853. Adolph Schuppan was a carpenter. The Presbyterians in Brazeau were building a new church, and they were in need of a carpenter. They hired Adolph Schuppan to help them build their church. It could be said that it was time for the German Lutherans to come to the aid of the Presbyterians.
At the same time when he was working on the church in Brazeau, Adolph and his wife were building a new baby a short distance away in the town of Frohna. She was named Emilie Carolina Schuppan. Her baptism record is shown below:
It even appears that the pastor of the Frohna congregation, Rev. Christoph Heinrich Loeber, was a sponsor.
Emilie Carolina Schuppan was not done being involved with the building of churches. She married a pastor, Rev. Wilhelm Mueller, in 1875, who was also from Frohna. By that time, the Schuppan family were members of a relatively new church in New Wells, Missouri, just down the road from Frohna. And Emilie and her preacher husband were involved in a couple of newly formed Lutheran churches in the Midwest before her rather early death at the age of 37. You could say most of her life, she was surrounding by people who were building churches.
Thank you for this lovely story! I have been catching up from the beginning of your blog whenever I can after encountering your site when studying the Saxon immigration of my ancestors. I paid attention to it originally, as my mother has some Moellers in her lineage — but it turns out these folks are distant relatives through my father’s lineage.
On my mother’s side are 4 consecutive generations of Lutheran pastors as well as ancestors who assisted in the founding of churches connected to the Missouri Synod. We’re distantly related to Rev. Keyl as well. But it appears on my father’s side we also have relatives who were pastors with deep ties to this area.
My direct Vogel ancestry mostly ended up in Baltimore. However, my great-great-grandmother’s sister Caroline Emelie married Adolph Schuppan and ended up in Perry. You can see her maiden name Vogel in that baptismal record for Emelie Caroline.
The granddaughter of Martin Henry “Mr. Mueller, the Salesman”, Meta Louise Singer (Mueller), submitted family sheets for these Vogel and Schuppan lines years ago. Because her name was written Meta L Singer, I kept coming up with some very interesting hits when trying to locate any other research she had done online!