The story I have to write today will give me the opportunity to share with you a new resource that we have available in our research library.  I hope to also tie two people found in our German Family Tree together by looking at some of these German records.  First let me show you what our new resource looks like.

These are new portfolios that are filled with images of the records from the Lutheran church in Paitzdorf, Germany.  These church records go back into the 1700’s.  As you can see, Gerard Fiehler has some work to do in order to find room for some more portfolios on the research library shelves in the background.  In fact, I just took this photo of him in the process of doing this job.

Here is a photo of a portion of the cover of these records.

On to today’s story.  It starts with the fact that today was the birthday of Wilhelm Friedrich Buck.  He was born on July 17, 1809.  I have found some records that indicate that this Buck family came from the towns marked on this map of the Stuttgart, Germany area.

Wilhelm Buck was not part of the Gesellschaft in 1839, but he must have arrived in Perry County not long after the original immigrants.  He was married at Trinity Lutheran Church in 1841.  He married Justine Schmidt on June 27, 1841.  Here is that marriage record as it is found in the Trinity Lutheran church books.

Justine Schmidt was one of the original immigrants.   She came to America aboard the Copernicus with her mother and several siblings.  Here is a passenger list which shows this family.

I have included in this image a few Kramers that were found just below the Schmidts in this passenger list.  I will explain why I included them as I go along.

Justine’s parents were Gottfried and Maria (Kramer) Schmidt from Paitzdorf, Germany.  As you can see in this passenger list, the Kramers were from Paitzdorf also.  Gottfried died in Germany before the 1839 immigration.  I found this page in the Paitzdorf records which shows either births or baptisms of children in the very early 1800’s.  I have highlighted three of the names on the list.

Gottfried, Johann, and Gottlob all correspond with the names of the three older Schmidts on the passenger list shown above.  The dates all correspond with dates that we have in our German Family Tree for these three.  Justine just barely does not make it onto this page, and I could not locate another page in these records for her.  She was born in 1811.

As I mentioned before, the maiden name of Justine’s mother was Kramer (or Krahmer).  Let’s go back to the Gottfried Kramer that is on the Copernicus passenger list underneath the Schmidts.  Our German Family Tree shows that Gottfried was the son of Hans and Rosina Kramer of Paitzdorf.  That brings us back to our new Paitzdorf records.  I found this baptism record for Maria Krahmer (who married Gottfried Schmidt) from 1775.

I have included a second record underneath Maria’s because it is yet another Krahmer.  It shows how careful we have to be when looking at these records.  The bottom record shows a Johannes Krahmer whose parents were Georg and Rosina Krahmer.  Maria’s mother had the same first name, Rosina.

These records also include the baptism record for Gottfried Krahmer in 1778.

This time, we find two Gottfried Krahmers, one on top of the other.  The parents are the same two sets of parents we saw in the previous record.  The record that matches up with Maria’s parents is the one on the bottom with Hans as the father and Rosina as the mother.

Our German Family Tree does not connect Maria (Kramer) Schmidt with Gottfried Kramer.  I think these records prove that these two were brother and sister.  I also think that is why we see them listed together on the Copernicus passenger list.  Maria did not live long after she arrived in America.  She died in August of 1840.  Here is her death record.

Now back to the Buck story.  Wilhelm Friedrich Buck was the First Buck.  Our German Family Tree includes baptism records for seven children born to Wilhelm and Justine.  Three of those children died as infants.  Another three seemingly disappear from the church records after they were teenagers.  My best guess is that they died and disappeared into the Koestering Hole which has been written about on many occasions.  Here is the 1850 census from Altenburg that shows some of the members of this Buck (Buk) family.  Wilhelm was a saddler.  I believe the Edward Buck in the list is Wilhelm’s brother.

The only child that we see continuing to the next generation in our church records is the last one born into this family….the Last Buck.  His name was Gottlieb Buck.  Gottlieb married Pauline Oehlert and that couple had several children.  All in all, this Last Buck resulted in several pages of descendants in our German Family Tree.

In conclusion, Wilhelm Buck died in 1854 at the age of 45.  We do not know when Justine died.  That is probably also due to the Koestering Hole.  Here is the death record for Wilhelm.

This story excited me because I was able to utilize some new records we have at our museum, and as a result, in my first effort at using them, I was able to add some newfound information to our German Family Tree.