Today I am going to focus on three amazing females from Wittenberg.  Here are photos of these three.

From left to right:  Sarah (Hartung) Boehme, Agnes (Schuessler) Roth, and Laura (Roth) Boehme

According to our German Family Tree, Sarah gave birth to 13 children, Agnes gave birth to 9, and Laura gave birth to 13.  That’s a grand total of 35 children between these fruitful females.  Granted, some of the children died early and did not require care for very long, but nonetheless, there were still plenty of descendants that came from these families.  And compared to a lot of other families from back in that day, not many young children died in these three families.  They are responsible for a lot of pages in our German Family Tree.

Today is the birthday of Theodore Boehme, child #10 in the Sarah Boehme family in Wittenberg.  He was born on December 14, 1882 and his baptism is recorded in the Trinity Lutheran Church books.  Having said that, it is still likely that Theodore may have been baptized in Wittenberg.  A combination church/school building was located in Wittenberg in those days where Sunday services were often conducted by the pastor from Altenburg.  Any baptisms conducted in Wittenberg were recorded in the Altenburg church books until St. Paul’s Lutheran Church was officially established in 1902-1903.  In this record in the Wittenberg church books, we see the Boehme family already listed in 1902.

Theodore’s father was Ludwig (Louis) Boehme.  Here is a photo of Ludwig and Sarah Boehme probably standing in front of their house with three ladies who were likely daughters.

On this 1915 map of Perry County, you can see the Boehme land parcels highlighted with red arrows.  They had a parcel of land in the river bottoms and one more up in the hills.

Now we will move on to the Roth family.  Laura Roth was born into Agnes Roth’s family on September 2, 1891.  She was baptized at Concordia Lutheran Church in Frohna.  Laura’s father was Christian Roth.  Eight of the Roth children were baptized in Frohna.  It is said that the Roths moved to the Wittenberg area in 1904.  Their farm was located about where the blue box is shown in the above map.  It is an area called Gill’s Point.  On this map, we see Gill’s Point labeled.

Their youngest son in the Roth family was their only child that was baptized at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Wittenberg.  We see the Roths showing up in the St.Paul’s records in 1904.

The Roth family had a photo taken which included 7 of their 9 children before they moved to Wittenberg.  Here is that photo.  The baby in Agnes’s lap is said to be George who was born in 1902.  Laura is standing on the far left.

On April 17, 1911, Theodore Boehme married Laura Roth at St. Paul’s.  Rev. F.M.
Rudi performed the ceremony.  Here is the marriage record found in the church books.

This Boehme family would start having children in 1912 and continue having them until the 13th one was born in 1935.  That last one is known affectionately around here as “Sonny” Boehme.

Another photo of the Roth family was taken when the youngest child, Oscar Theophil, was married in 1931.  By that time, Agnes had died, so she is not in the photo.  Laura is standing on the far right.  Christian, the father, is wearing suspenders.

My wife had parents who both came from rather large families, but not as big as the Roth and Boehme families.  My wife often amazes people with the fact that she had 72 first cousins.  I don’t have the energy today to attempt to figure out how many cousins the children in the Theodore Boehme family must have had.  Here is a portion of the census record of 1940 from Wittenberg.

Between the two Roth families and the Boehme family shown here, I count 15 children that were first cousins.  That is from just three families and some of the kids were already off and married by 1940.

The Mama Boehmes who are highlighted in this story both had a baker’s dozen of children.  Mama Roth comes in with quite a passel of kids too.  If these ladies were typical Perry County women, and I have every reason to believe that they were, they all must have been experts at producing all kinds of tasty baked goods in their kitchens as well.