As a grandfather of a pair of twins, I am usually attracted by stories involving twins.  This is definitely one of those…..with a curiosity or two.

First of all, I noticed that there was a Ludwig (Louis) Boehme who married Louisa (Lulu) Lottes on November 19, 1901.  I must admit that the thought of a Loo-ey and Lulu being husband and wife tickled my funny bone.  Then as I looked into this story, I ran into twins…..several of them.

Louis Boehme was a twin.  He and his sister, Sarah Josephine Boehme were born in 1876.  Here are their baptismal records in the Trinity, Altenburg books.

Although it is not an impossible situation, it is not often that you see a set of twins with different birthdays.  Josephine (on the left) was born on April 27th and Ludwig (on the right) was born on April 28th.  Another interesting fact is that these  babies were just two out of 33 babies to be baptized at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg in the year of 1876.  That’s one way to grow a church.

The parents of these twins were Ludwig and Sarah (Hartung) Boehme.  You may notice that these twins’ names also included the names of their parents, Ludwig and Sarah.  A previous story about the Hartung family was written on this blog…..From Muddy Creek to Brazeau Creek.  Here is a picture of the parents.

This couple was married in 1865, not long after Ludwig had served with the Union Army during the Civil War.

When we look closer at this Boehme family, we find that on January 10, 1874, about two years before the birth of Louis and Josephine, there was another set of twins born by the names of Clara and Ernst.  So in the course of just a little over two years, Sarah Boehme had given birth to four children.  You can also see that both sets of twins were a boy and a girl.

Here is an absolutely adorable photo of Louis and Josephine when they were quite young.

To add to all this, there had already been three children born into the Boehme family previous to these four.  All in all, Sarah Boehme gave birth to fourteen children.  Several of the last babies died quickly, but when Sarah died in 1901, it was recorded that eleven of her children were still alive.  She died about two months before the marriage of Louis and Lulu.

Another interesting fact is that not even two weeks after Louis was married, his twin sister married Theodore Mueller.  The twins had a joint marriage picture taken even though their weddings did not take place on the same day.

Amazingly, the first children to come into the family of Louis and Lulu was a set of twins, however they were stillborn.

There is just too much to write about concerning this family.  I think I will write a “Part 2” to this story tomorrow, telling what happened later to Louis and Lulu.