Johanne Christiana Ahner is today’s birthday girl. Known by friends and family as Jane, she was born on September 22, 1882 in Altenburg, Missouri. Jane was baptized, confirmed, and married at Trinity Lutheran Church. She was the daughter of August and Anna (Lungwitz) Ahner.
When Jane was 20 years old, she married Joseph Hoehne. Their marriage took place on April 19, 1903. As Joe’s wife, Jane became Jane Hoehne, and around here, the pronunciation for her name would have been Jane Hane. Here is their marriage license.
This couple was blessed with a Christmas baby, their first child, on December 25, 1903. They would go on to have eight children.
Joe was the son of Ernst and Emilie (Hecht) Hoehne. Joe’s great grandparents, Johann and Concordia Hoehne, were part of the original immigration in 1839 and were granted property in the Dresden community. In the 1910 census, Joe was farming with his father, Ernst. By the time of Joe’s marriage, his mother had already died, and it must have been a real blessing for the Hoehne household to have Jane enter the scene and help take care of the housekeeping. In 1915, we see in a property atlas that both Ernst and Joseph owned land. Even though the Dresden community fizzled out very early after their pastor, Rev. C.F.W. Walther took a call to St. Louis, this land area was still called Dresden by many.
The road going by the Ernst Hoehne property is still called Dresden Road. I mention all this because many of the church records in the Immanuel Lutheran books refer to the Hoehne family as being from Dresden, MO. The original Hoehnes were charter members of Immanuel when it split from Trinity in 1857. Here is a picture of the Hoehne barn with several of the children standing in front.
The 1920 census indicates that Joe was still in the farming business, but when the 1930 census was taken, it indicates a change. Joseph shows the occupation as being “landing keeper” at the river. They were also living in the village of Wittenberg.
From 1931 to 1935, Joe was a mail carrier on what was called the Star Route that went from Wittenberg to Old Appleton. In 1936, Perry County got its first school bus, and this picture from 1939 shows Joe Hoehne standing with a bunch of students who rode his bus which took students from Wittenberg to Perryville to attend high school. Joe is standing with arms crossed on the far right.
In that same year, 1939, we see Joe pictured with other officers of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Wittenberg. Joe is second from the left in the front row next to Rev. Deye with the glasses.
Jane contracted liver cancer and died in a hospital in St. Louis in 1945. Here is her death certificate.
Here is a later photo of Joe.
Joe lived a very long life, dying in 1976 at the age of 94. Both Joe and Jane are buried in the Trinity Lutheran Cemetery in Altenburg.
Joe had several jobs that involved “getting ’em where they needed to go”. He made sure riverboats and their cargo got where they needed to be. He delivered mail to where it had to go. He delivered students to where they needed to learn. And he was actively involved in his church, making sure his family and other members got to where they needed to go. All indications also point to the fact that Joe got where he needed to go to, and is enjoying his time there now.
I haven’t been very far down Dresden Road in 25 or 30 years. When I was in my early teens we used to go squirrel hunting at the old farm with my grandfather Joe Scholl and his brothers. My uncle Jim liked to drink from the spring down there.
About 20 years ago I was living in Altenburg for a few months (my job was closer to there than Cape where I had been living) and tried to drive down there, got stuck in a ditch, and had to walk all the way back up to the highway to the lumber company and call a tow truck. The driver didn’t charge me anything, and said that my cousin Patrick Scholl had gotten stuck in the same spot a week before.
I noticed the person who provided information on Jane’s death certificate was Clarence Newberry who lived on Rosa Street and that is where Jane died. Was that a relative?
Uncle Clarence (Newberry) was Frieda Hoehne’s husband. They lived in St. Louis. Frieda was my grandpa’s and my mom’s godmother.
I remember when Grandma Hoehne died. She had come up to St. Louis in hopes that the doctors there could do something for her, and lived with us for perhaps a month. I came down one morning for breakfast, and Mom (Frieda) was sitting in the living room kind of tearful, and told us that Grandma had died that night and they had already removed the body.
I’ve actually heard Hoehnes (my great grandmother) from that area pronounce the E at the end, so when people say it’s pronounced Hane it sounds odd to me.
I’ve heard it both ways, but I’ve had people fuss at me for including the “e” in the pronunciation. I had a classmate at Lutheran North in St. Louis, Lon Hoehne, and we pronounced his name, Hay-nee.
Yeah, we always pronounced it Haynee as well.
We always pronounced it Hayney, but Uncle George’s family pronounce it Hane. Mom told me that Granddpa Joe wanted to pronounce it with the ey sound on the end because he thought it sounded more “English”
I was drawn into this blog by the Lungwitz name but found you and can’t help but say “hi”. I was Patsy Hartmeister from Ascension. My dad, Elmer, worked for your dad at, I would guess, your home and the store. I remember going to the store to buy record albums and, I believe, mom and dad bought our first color TV from your dad. You are quite a bit older than I am, LHSS class of ’66, but I remember Kathy clearly.
RE: the Lungwitz/Ahners. Mrs. Lundgwitz was a Haergert, a sister of my gg-grandmother Sophie who married Friedrich Haecker. . My mother was Edna Meyr Hartmeister, born and raised in Altenburg, came to St. Louis to work, met dad and the rest is history.
I am truly sure that many of my LHSS classmates, in my class and in those classes before and after, are related somehow through Perry County.
Clarence and Frieda Newberry are respected people from my past and now we are related. For what it’s worth…
Thanks for your post. God be with you.
Pat (Hartmeister) Borgman
Patsy, you are right about many LHSS students’ families being from Perry County. I was in the class of 1964. My mom (she was originally from Farrar and my dad was from Altenburg) would look through the “Buzz Book” and recognize many names from Perry County.
Grace Mueller Truemper