One hundred three years ago, Rudolph Hopfer (today’s birthday boy) married Frieda Frentzel.  If you study  German Lutheran family history in East Perry County, it does not take you long to figure out that the Hopfer and Frentzel surnames are found in large numbers in the Uniontown, Missouri area.  In fact, if you would use the search function on this website and place either of those names in the box, you would find plenty of results showing other posts written for this blog that mention or highlight them.

About sixty years before this Hopfer/Frentzel marriage, there was another Frentzel/Hopfer marriage.  In the earlier case, it was a female Hopfer marrying a male Frentzel.  Emilie Hopfer, who married Carl Frentzel, was at one time considered to be the last of the original 1839 immigrants to die before we discovered another one who died later.

Rudolph Hopfer was born on April 26, 1884, so today would be have been his 134th birthday.  His parents were Emanuel and Caroline (Rabold) Hopfer.  He was the tenth and last child born into this family.  Rudolph was baptized at Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown a day after he was born.  When he was 25 years old, the 1910 census shows that he was still living with his parents and helping to run that farm.

Rudolph married Frieda Frentzel on April 11, 1915 at Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown.  Here is their marriage license.

Frieda was born on December 2, 1886 and also baptized at Grace Lutheran Church.  Frieda was the first child of Arno and Louise (Brandes) Frentzel.  This photo of Frieda was taken at a studio located in St. Louis.

I looked for Frieda in a St. Louis 1910 census, but was unable to find her there during that year.  She is not in Perry County either in 1910.  Nor could I find her anywhere in a census for that year.

Rudolph was 30 years old, and Frieda was 28 years old at the time of their wedding.  Here is a wedding photo showing the couple.

Another photo was taken on the occasion of their wedding which included their wedding party.

I questioned who the other two people were in this photograph because they were not identified in the source from which I got the photo.  However, if you look at the Grace, Uniontown record for this marriage you will see that there were two witnesses for this wedding, and they were Paul Bultmann and Emilie Frentzel.

Paul Bultmann was the son of Rudolph’s older sister, Lydia, so that makes Paul his nephew.  Lydia was 15 years older than her baby brother, so her son was not that much different in age than the groom.  Also, if you look once again at the 1910 census shown earlier, you will see Paul Bultmann living with the Hopfer family, also helping out with that farm.  Both of  Paul’s parents were dead by the time of the 1910 census.  Emilie Frentzel was Frieda’s younger sister, born two years after her.

Rudolph filled out forms to register for the draft during both World War I and World War II.  Here are those forms.

Our German Family Tree shows three children born into this family.  All of them were boys.  There is a family history on Ancestry.com that states there were four boys.  Rudolph was a farmer in all the records I could find, and he died in 1959.  Here is his death certificate.

He died at the age of 75.  Frieda died in 1984 at the age of 98.  These two are both buried in the Grace Lutheran Cemetery in Uniontown.  Here are their gravestones.

I know that I have a cousin whose child married a Hopfer.  I think that Hopfer is tied into this family somehow, but I am not sure how.  Maybe someone in my family can help me out.