I will start today’s post by sharing images of two census records from 1850.  Both of them are from the city of St. Louis, Missouri.  First, we have this one:

Then this one:

Both of these records are, as the title suggests, not as they seem.  The top record seems to be Frederick Schuricht’s family consisting of his wife and two of his children.  The bottom record seems to be Gottlieb Schuricht’s family with one child and probably Gottlieb’s father.  Neither one of these assumptions are correct.

They are not what they seem, in part because of an event which took place on July 8, 1849.  On that day, Johann Karl Ehregott Schuricht died during the infamous Cholera Epidemic which inflicted St. Louis with so many deaths.  Karl was the father of the five year old Charles in the top image and the three year old Hermann in the bottom image.  In other words, Charles and Hermann were brothers but living in two different households.  In both cases, the boys were living with an uncle.

One may wonder what happened to the mother of these two boys.  Her name was Maria Elisabeth Christina Hedwig (Kraft) Schuricht.  She was the youngest daughter of the butcher, Herman Kraft, of St. Louis.  Karl and Elisabeth had been married in 1843 by Rev. C.F.W. Walther.  Here is their marriage record.

After they were married, they had three children.  Two of them were the two boys listed above.  There was also a daughter born on August 4, 1849…..about a month after her father died.  That daughter then died on November 6th of that year as a result of consumption (tuberculosis).  After that death, it is debatable what happened to the mother.

Family histories on Ancestry.com either attribute the mother’s death to the year 1850 or 1855.  The people who choose the 1855 date probably do so because there is an item in some St. Louis death records that says an Elizabeth Kraft died in that year.  I think the 1850 date may have been passed down in histories that have been written about the Schuricht family over the years without documentation.  Her death is not included in the Old Trinity records, and I could not locate a cemetery in Findagrave.com that listed her.  It is also possible that some researchers have seen the above 1850 census records and assumed that Maria must have died late in 1849 or early in 1850, causing these children to be housed with their uncles.

I lean toward the 1850 date.  If Maria died in 1855, then the most reasonable conclusion would be that she felt she could not take care of her two boys.  I just do not think that is as likely as an 1850 death.  The problem with the 1850 death is the fact that it is not recorded in the Old Trinity books.

Here is another mystery involved with this Schuricht couple.  Many family histories on Ancestry.com attach these two photos to these two Schurichts.

I guess I have problems believing that these are photos of two people that died in their thirties.  They look too old to me.

In 1860, we find the young Charles (Karl) Schuricht in a list of students who were attending Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

He is just 14 years old, so I am guessing that he was part of the gymnasium program which was preparing young men for later seminary training to become pastors.  I was unable to find Herman in the 1860 census.  However, ten years after Charles was living with Frederick Schuricht, Barbara Lochner was living in that Schuricht household.  Her story was told in the article, Mama Lochner.

The really interesting part of this story is the fact that we find both Karl and Herman living in the same place in Illinois in 1880.

Charles is the pastor and Herman is a teacher at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Blue Point, Illinois, which is near Altamont.  While these two brothers were at that congregation, there were several babies born that did not live very long.  The St. Paul Lutheran Cemetery contains several Schuricht names on gravestones, all of which were children who died early.

I found photos of both Charles and Herman.  Charles is on the left; Herman is on the right.

Here is fairly recent photo of St. Paul Lutheran in Blue Point.

Charles died in 1918 and is buried in Zion Friedheim Lutheran Cemetery in Decatur, Indiana.  Pastor Schuricht is not shown in a list of pastors who have served that congregation.  However, Rev. F.C.D. Wyneken is.  He was the second president of the Lutheran Church=Missouri Synod.  Here is Carl’s gravestone.

Herman died in 1932 and is buried in Prairietown Cemetery in Madison County, Illinois.  It is near Alton.  I do not have a photo of his gravestone.

The area around Altamont, Illinois has had many connections to the 1839 immigration and Perry County over the years.  Several teachers and pastors in that vicinity spent a part of their time in Perry County or had roots to the immigration.  Some of these were mentioned in a previous post about Teacher Stohs from Wittenberg titled, Teacher Stohs – Dad’s Teacher.

There was also another post written about another uncle of these two men who died on the way up the Mississippi River in 1839.  It was titled, Buried on the Bank.

This was a story about how two brothers were separated by circumstances beyond their control when they were very young.  However, God managed to find a way to get these two siblings back together as they both proclaimed the Gospel in the same little church in rural Illinois.  God works in mysterious ways.