This week, as a result of a donation from a recent family reunion, our museum has a new exhibit.  This exhibit displays some artifacts we now have that demonstrate how a prominent Frohna family celebrated wedding anniversaries.  The case shown below displays these items.

This all started with the marriage between August and Maria (Roth) Lueders that took place on November 22, 1855 at Concordia Lutheran Church in Frohna.  Rev. Christoph Heinrich Loeber, second pastor at Concordia, performed the ceremony.  Here is the marriage record for that event.

In 1880, on the occasion of their 25th anniversary, the headdress that is shown in this glass dome was worn by Maria.  The item is silver in color.

If a photo had been taken at that occasion, it would have included 10 children.  Two others had died in childhood.  The youngest of these ten, whose name was Paul, was only one year old in 1880.

Twenty-five years later, on the occasion of this couple’s 50th wedding anniversary in 1905, another celebration was held.  By that time, another child, August Karl Lueders, had died at the age of 23.  The cause of his death was shown as “typhoid malarial with inflammation of the brain”.  A photo taken of this event has been passed down through the years, and it is shown here.

The headdress worn by Maria in this photo is also included in the display we now have at our museum.  It is gold in color.

Here is a close-up of Maria wearing this headdress.

Each of the family members in this photo are wearing some sort of pin also.  We see August wearing a rather elaborate one.

Each of the children is wearing a simpler “leafy” pin.  Here is a close-up of the youngest, Paul, showing the pin he was wearing.

It was Paul that was the child that brought the Lueders and Weinhold families together in Frohna.  Paul married Martha Weinhold five years after this anniversary took place.  It was a Weinhold/Lueders family reunion that met in East Perry County recently. They are the ones that brought these items to our museum.  At that reunion, a decision was made to donate these items to us, and right now, we are proud to display them.  This photograph was taken when some descendants from the Lueders family delivered their donation.

Below is a better photo from that day.

I cannot resist also relating this story to the fact that today is Pentecost Sunday.  While taking photos of this new exhibit, this ongoing exhibit of artifacts from St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Wittenberg could be seen on the other side of our gallery.

I moved closer to take another photograph.

Then I got even closer to get a shot of the old hymn board from that church.

At the bottom of that hymn board, you will see the word, Pfingstfest.  That is the German term for Pentecost.  I will close today’s post with words that were shared with me today from our friend in Saxony, Lutz Backmann.  He wrote, “Ein frohes und gesegnetes Pfingstfest!”  (A happy and blessed Pentecost!).