I guess if you want to throw a New Year’s Eve Party, one way to do it is to get married and have a wedding reception on that day.  All I know is that when Max and Hulda got married in 1927, they did not wake up as husband and wife for the first time until the following year.

Max and Hulda were not your ordinary couple.  When they were married, Max was 48 years old and Hulda was 38.  Often, when I see a couple getting married at ages like this, it is likely to be a second marriage, but that is not the case here.  This was the first and only marriage for both Max and Hulda.  Also, Max was the firstborn of eleven children, whereas Hulda was the baby in a family of ten children.

Max was the nickname for Martin Seibel.  He was the son of Gotthold and Louise (Koestering) Seibel.  A post was written about Martin’s parents which was titled, Your Pastor for a Father-in-Law.   Here are photos of Martin’s father and mother.

Martin was born on July 7, 1879 and baptized at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg.  When he was confirmed in 1893, this photo was taken of Martin.  He was wearing one of those suit coats which was worn with just the top buttoned.

Another photo was taken inside the Seibel home showing Martin with his siblings and parents a little later in his life.

Martin is standing in the middle of the back row.  Two of the Seibel’s 11 children died in infancy, so we see the other 9 in this photo.  I wonder who is pictured in the framed portrait behind the family.  I also wonder who might have that photograph now.  That Seibel home is still standing today.  Here is what it looked like back then.

This home is located across the road from Altenburg’s City Hall now.  This home is said to have been built in 1878, one year before Martin was born.

When Martin filled out his World War I draft registration, it indicated already that he was in the lumber business and working for Altenburg Lumber Company.

Martin’s bride was Hulda Ahner.  She was the daughter of Friedrich August and Anna (Lungwitz) Ahner.  Here is a photo of Hulda’s parents.

Hulda was born on March 26, 1889 and baptized at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg.  Although this image is made from a copy of a photograph, we can see Hulda included with many of her siblings and her parents.

Hulda can be seen standing in between her mother and father and labeled as Hulda.

That leads us up to the marriage that took place 90 years ago on this date.  Here is the marriage license for Martin and Hulda.

Rev. Adolph Vogel was the pastor who agreed to perform a wedding ceremony on New Year’s Eve.  By the way, New Year’s Eve was on a Saturday that year, and Calvin Coolidge was the President of the United States.

About one year after they were married, Hulda gave birth to a set of twins, Corine and Lorine, on December 21, 1928.  Before the end of that year, these two babies had died.  The couple would have no more children.  I will show the death certificate for Lorine, who died on December 29th, because it illustrates an unusual situation where Lorine’s baptismal sponsor, Dr. Theodore Estel, ended up having to sign his own godchild’s death certificate about a week after she was baptized.

Sometime around 1938, there was a family reunion of Koesterings.  The family gathered in front of the old Koestering Store which was located across the street from Gotthold Seibel’s house.  Martin and Hulda can be seen in this photo.  I have put a red box around them.

Martin Seibel was a manager of the Altenburg Lumber Company for many years.  He was mostly responsible for working in the lumber business’s retail store.  We see him in this photo in that function.

Martin and Hulda lived on the east side of Altenburg, not far from the lumberyard.  Their home was located across the road from the Trinity Cemetery.  Here we see a photo of their house, which also still stands to this day.

Later in their lives, this photo was taken of Martin and Hulda.

Hulda died in 1961; Martin died in 1968.  They are both buried in the cemetery located almost directly across the road from where they lived much of their lives.  Here are their gravestones.

Despite the fact that Martin and Hulda had no children who survived, their Seibel and Ahner relatives gave them plenty of family.