Rev. J.F. Koestering served Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg from 1864-1887. For the first thirteen years of that time, from 1864-1877, he also served as pastor of Concordia Lutheran Church in Frohna. During those years, the church in Altenburg dedicated a new church sanctuary in 1867, and the church in Frohna dedicated a new sanctuary in 1874. Despite the two buildings using different materials for construction of the outer walls, the two churches on the inside were very similar……and still are, since both those buildings are still in use. Here is a photo of Rev. Koestering.
Not long before Pastor Koestering took a call to St. Louis at the end of 1887, there was a very special day in the Koestering family. That day was July 14, 1887, and the event took place at Trinity Lutheran Church.
Here at the museum, those who work in our research library often refer to a portion of the Trinity records as the Koestering Hole. A short post was written about the Koestering Hole quite a while ago. As indicated in this image, death records do not show up from 1864 until 1876.
However, many other records are included, and especially after Rev. Koestering was only serving one parish, he kept pretty good records. He certainly included two marriage records for weddings which took place on July 14, 1887. Here is an image of those records. The writing is in German.
Two of Pastor Koestering’s children were married on that day, one daughter and one son. I have actually already done blog posts on both of the couples shown here, but I was unaware that they were both married on the same day. The top record shows the marriage of Friedrich (Fred) Koestering and Susanna Fischer. Here is their marriage license.
The bottom record shows the record of Magdalena Koestering and Rev. Ernst Schuessler.
The story of Fred Koestering was told in the blog post, Koestering Store. I do not have a photo of Susanna, probably because she died rather early, but I do have a photo of Fred.
His daughter, Martha, and a grandson are pictured here with Fred.
The story of Magdalena Koestering was told in the blog post, Farmer Becomes Pastor after Marrying His Pastor’s Daughter. Ernst had grown up in Altenburg, but he was already a pastor in St. Louis by the time he married Magdalena. It was while Rev. J.F. Koestering was with the Schuessler family in St. Louis when he died.
There is another later tie-in with the date, July 14, 1887, and the Koestering/Fischer family. On that same day in 1887, a baby was born. That baby was Theodor Mangels, and he would later marry Flora Palisch. Flora was the daughter of Henry and Juliana (Fischer) Palisch of Frohna. A recent post was about the Henry Palisch family and store titled, Unraveling the Palisch/Fischer Connectons. Flora would have called Susanna and Fred her aunt and uncle. Her aunt and uncle’s anniversary was also her husband’s birthday…..same day and even the same year.
I did a search on what else happened around the world on July 14, 1887 but didn’t come up with much. However, I did find out that starting on July 1st of that year, the construction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, began. And now you know that too.
Warren, I recently located a couple of documents that may shed a little more light on the Rev. Koestering and Rev. Ernst Schuessler relationship prior to Ernst’s wedding to his daughter. Ernst’s father, Carl “Gottlob” Schuessler died in October of 1879. I don’t know the reason but Rev. Koestering became the Curator of the estate of Ernst on 15 Aug 1882. The curatorship was ended on 10 Jan 1886 when Ernst received his $29 from his fathers estate. The latter document was notarized in Sangamon County, Illinois. I assume that Ernst was enrolled at the practical seminary in Springfield at this time. This information comes from the Perry County Probate Records – Case # 997.