Today was the birthday of two brothers in the Johann Versemann family.  It just so happened to be the oldest and the youngest siblings in that family.  As a result of these two brothers, there is a sizable number of Versemann descendants that we still find.  I will attempt to tell their stories today.

Johann Versemann was from the town of Ostervesede, which is located in the Hannover area near the city of Scheessel in Germany.  Here is a map of that vicinity.

Johann was married to Marie (Brockmann) Versemann when Heinrich, their first child was born on January 31, 1855.  Three other children were born to this couple in Germany, two girls and a boy.  Then Marie died around 1867, and Johann remarried.  His second wife was Engel Holmann.  In 1868, this couple had their first child, a boy named John.

It was at this time when Johann made the decision to move to America.  They traveled to the United States aboard the ship, Berlin, which arrived in Baltimore, Maryland in August of 1868.  Here is the passenger list showing the Versemanns.  It extends over two pages.

John is listed as being three months old (3/12) when he made this voyage.  Also, notice that above Johann’s name, you will see Marie Holmann, a relative of his first wife.

After arriving in America and settling in the Farrar, Missouri area, Johann and his second wife continued having some more children.  Three more boys were born, and the last of these was Herman Versemann, who was born on January 31, 1874.  In other words, Herman was exactly 19 years younger than his older half-brother, Heinrich.  The members of the Versemann family were members of Salem Lutheran Church in Farrar.

Heinrich was married twice.  His first wife was Ernstine Eggers. They were married on September 13, 1883 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg.  This couple had three children, all boys, before Ernstine died in 1889.  Then in 1891, Heinrich married Emma Koenig.  These two were married at Immanuel Lutheran Church in New Wells, Missouri.  As near as I can tell, there were two sets of Koenigs in this area, one centering in the New Wells area and one centering in the Farrar area.  It is likely that they were somehow related to each other back in Germany.

According to our German Family Tree, Henry and his second wife had 12 additional children, only one of which died before being confirmed.  Henry, like his father, was a farmer in the Farrar vicinity.  On this map, you can see the piece of land which was farmed by the Henry Versemann family indicated by the red arrow.

The younger birthday boy, Herman, married another Koenig, but she was from the Koenigs in the Farrar area.  Her name was Maria Koenig.  They were married on October 25, 1900.  Herman and Maria had 8 children.  The oldest of these was Rosa Versemann.  She was one of the main characters in the blog post, Farrar Transfer.

Fred Eggers, a valued member of our research crew and also an expert on Farrar, tells me that Herman farmed the land shown on the above map indicated by the blue arrow, even though it is labeled with Herman’s name.

There are 16 pages in our German Family Tree of descendants of the Johann Versemann family.  On display at the Saxon Lutheran Memorial in Frohna is a family tree of this clan.  Here is a photo of a good portion of that tree.

Henry’s branch can be seen on the lower right.  It is indeed an impressive branch.  Herman’s branch would be located way toward the top and cannot be distinguished in this photo.  I think you can see why there are so many descendants to be found to this day from this family.  I hope many of them manage to find this blog post and share it with the rest of them.