We enter the month of December today.  We enter the season of Advent and approach Christmas.  I think it is only right that today’s story leads us to a marriage in which both the father of the groom and the father of the bride were named Immanuel.  However, it was the birth of the groom that attracted me to this story.  Martin Joseph Johannes Koenig was born on December 1, 1896.  He went through life mostly being called John.  He was baptized at Salem Lutheran Church in Farrar, Missouri.  This is his baptism record.

John’s parents were Immanuel and Clara (Weinhold) Koenig.  Clara Weinhold was what we often refer to as a “dirt Weinhold”.  She was from a Weinhold clan that were mostly farmers, as opposed to another Weinhold clan in which many were in the milling business.

Since John was born before 1900, the first time we find him in a census is the one taken in that year.  That census record is difficult to read, so I will not show it here.

In 1920, John would marry a girl by the name of Emilie Auguste Amanda Lorenz.  Like her future husband, she would go by the last of the three names she was given….Amanda.  She was born on September 26, 1902.  She was also baptized at Salem Lutheran Church in Farrar.  This is her baptism record.

Amanda was the daughter of Immanuel and Martha (Soehl) Lorenz.  We have this Lorenz family photograph that includes Amanda.

Amanda is the girl standing second from the right.  As you can see, she is one of the youngest siblings in this family.  If the date shown in this newspaper article is correct, Amanda would have been 11 years old at this time.

The first census in which we find Amanda was the 1910 census.

John and Amanda were married on December 19, 1920.  Before they were married, they can both be found in the 1920 census as still being single.  First, here we find Amanda.  She was still living with her parents in the Salem Township.

John, however, was no longer living in that township.  We find him living in the Union Township.

John’s father had died in 1916, so he was living with his mother and a younger sister.  He must have moved off the Koenig home place and was a farmer in Union Township.

So on December 19, 1920, when John married Amanda, only one of the fathers named Immanuel was still living.  The marriage took place at Salem Lutheran Church.  Here is the church record for that wedding.

We can also look at the civil marriage license for this wedding.

I find it somewhat puzzling that John is said to have been from Seventy-Six, Missouri.  That village is not located in Union Township where the census said he was living.

In 1930, the census still finds the Koenigs in Union Township with several children.  This is the first census in which we see that John was a carpenter.

Altogether, this family had 9 children, all of which appear to have lived into adulthood.  I was unable to locate a photograph of John Koenig, but we have another Lorenz family photograph which includes Amanda.  She is sitting in the front on the left.

John died in 1970; Amanda died in 1984.  They are buried together in the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in Perryville. 

Over the years, there have been several Lorenz and Koenig men who have been carpenters.  I guess you could say that this story is told about a carpenter that was the son of Immanuel.  The Bible tells the story of an Immanuel who was the son of a carpenter.