If you took the letters, A,K,L,M, and R, would you be able to make up a surname that would be easily identifiable?  Maybe you saw it today’s title, but I doubt that you could have predicted a spelling like Kraml.  I did a search on Ancestry.com and found that the surname could only be found in a very limited manner in the United States and only in the state of Missouri.

Theresie Kraml is today’s birthday girl.  She was born on May 26, 1867, but you do not find her baptism record in any of the churches around here.  That is because she was born in Austria.  Her parents were Gottlieb and Franziska (Pigler) Kraml, and it is reported that they originally lived in the village of Schladming in the Austrian Alps.  The first church record I could find of the Kraml family in this area was a death record for a stillborn child in 1871.  That record can be found in the church books of Immanuel Lutheran Church in New Wells, Missouri.

Theresie must have been quite young when her family moved to America.  She was confirmed at Immanuel in 1881.  We find her in this list of that year’s confirmands.

Theresie had an older sister named Maria who married Joseph Perr, and that couple had numerous children.  A story was written about that couple titled, Joseph’s Son-in-Law Joseph.  Maria and Joseph Perr’s family with several of their children are shown in this photo.

Theresie’s mother, Franziska, died in 1878, and Gottlieb married again.  His second wife was Anna Maria Lichtenegger.  That couple had two more Kraml children.  Ida Kraml was born in 1880, and another child was born and died on April 26, 1884.  Since all the children that lived were girls, the Kraml name disappeared from around here.

Here is a photo of Gottlieb, his second wife, Anna Maria, and Ida (left) and Theresie (right).  By the time of this photo, Maria Kraml must have already been married.

Ida never married.  She died in 1965 and is buried in the St. John’s Lutheran Cemetery in Pocahontas, Missouri.  Here is her gravestone.

In 1887, one day after her birthday, on May 27th, Theresie married Frederick Schoen.  Here is their marriage license.  Schoen is German for beautiful, so it is certain that Theresie was a schoene braut (beautiful bride).

They were married at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Pocahontas.  Although we do not have any records of children born into this family in our German Family Tree, there is evidence that they had four children, two boys and two girls.  This 1900 census shows three of those four children.

Another son was born in 1902.  This 1900 census also states that Theresie immigrated to America in 1869.  It is somewhat puzzling that this census says that she and her parents were born in Hungary.  Frederick is listed as a dry goods merchant.

Theresie died in 1912 at the age of 45.  Here is her death certificate.  It states that she died of Tuberculosis of Larynx.

Interestingly, the doctor who signed off on this death certificate was Dr. W.A. Schoen.  That would have been one of Frederick’s younger brothers.  The story of two Schoen boys who became doctors was told in the story, The Good Doctors from Pocahontas.  I could not find Theresie’s grave on Findagrave.com.

After her death, Frederick remarried in 1914.  His second wife was Amanda Kasten.  She was the daughter of Karl and Juliane (Lehner) Kasten.  I do not think the second marriage resulted in any more children.   Frederick died in 1942.  Here is his death certificate.

 

Frederick is buried in the St. John’s Lutheran Cemetery in Pocahontas.  Here is his gravestone.

Kraml was a name that showed up in the German Family Tree for just a short time and disappeared because all the children were female.  However, some of the Schoens and the Perrs can include the Kraml surname in their family histories.