It may be Cinco de Mayo elsewhere in the world, but we Germans would say it is the fünfter Mai.  And on the fifth of May in 1886, Clara Vogel was born in Jacob, Illinois.  I knew that after looking in our German Family Tree, I was quite sure that I was not going to find much else in our research library to help with Clara’s story because there are just a few records in the Christ Lutheran Church books for her.  How wrong I was!

When I arrived at the shelves containing family binders in our library, I saw this in front of my eyes.

I was reaching for one of the large binders when my eye spotted the smaller green book on the left.  The surname Lohrmann got my attention because today’s story has Clara Vogel marrying a Lohrmann.  I pulled this book off the shelf.

Once I looked inside, I realized I was no longer in the position of not having much information for today’s story, but now I had too much.  It became a matter of what I was going to use in this post and what I was going to have to ignore.

One of the church records we have for Clara Vogel is her baptism record.  Clara was the daughter of Henry and Amalie (Palisch) Vogel.  She was baptized at Christ Lutheran Church in Jacob, Illinois.  The baptism record is in two images.

Clara grew up in this Vogel house.  This photo was taken much later when her parents were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in 1915.

Six years before Clara was born, Justus Lohrmann was born in Macomb County, Michigan.  Justus was born on April 16, 1880.  He was the son of Carl and Mary (Heinemann) Lohrmann. Carl Lohrmann was a Lutheran minister.  The 1880 census shows Justus as a newborn baby.

In 1902, we find Justus Lohrmann listed in a city directory for Springfield, Illinois.  He was a student at Concordia College.  Justus was studying to become a pastor, just like his father.

In 1904, when it was time for Justus to serve his vicarage, he was sent to be a vicar at Christ Lutheran Church in Jacob, Illinois where Rev. P.S. Estel would be his mentor.  Rev. Estel also had Perry County roots.  There is a story that is told in this family.  It is reported that when the newly-arrived vicar went to visit the Vogel family, Clara did not want to meet him, and she hid behind a door.  We have this photo of Clara that I figure must have been taken at about this time in her life.

That situation, however, apparently did not last long because on April 30, 1905, Justus and Clara were married at Christ Lutheran.  Here is the church record for that marriage.

We also have this couple’s wedding photograph.

After Justus was ordained, his first call was to Marion Springs, Michigan.  He was there for only a short time, and then took a call to Trinity Lutheran Church in Muskegon, Michigan.

It was during their time at Muskegon that the photograph below was taken with their first two children.

There is a story that says that Clara returned to Jacob, Illinois to have her second child, Reinhold.  That story is backed up by a document in the Christ Lutheran books.  We find Reinhold’s baptism record there.

Just a quick side note:  Our German Family Tree does not have any Lohrmann surnames in it.  In the case of Justus, his name is misspelled in the GFT.  He is referred to as a Lohmann, which is a common Perry County name.  If you look at the above record, the name Lohrmann written in cursive can easily be read as Lohmann.

The Lohrmann family had many children.  A family history on Ancestry.com shows ten of them.  The 1910 census shows that the Lohrmann family had moved back to Illinois where Rev. Lohrmann was the pastor in Covington.

Here is a  photograph of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Covington, Illinois.

 

In 1915, Justus took a call to become the pastor at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Baldwin, Illinois.

While he was in Baldwin, Rev. Lohrmann had to fill out his World War I draft registration.

This photograph of the interior of St. John’s Lutheran Church says that many children in this Lohrmann family were baptized there.

There were still a few other locations for Pastor Lohrmann to serve.  He went to Altamont, Illinois to assist his son, Marcus, who was also a Lutheran minister.  He went there in 1938.  In 1943, he became the pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Darmstadt, Illinois.  Then in 1955, Rev. Lohrmann retired and moved to Okawville, Illinois.  While in Okawville, Justus and Clara celebrated their golden wedding anniversary.  A photograph was taken on that occasion.

You can see that this family has grown quite large.  I am going to put a few other photos in a gallery.  You can click on the thumbnails to enlarge them.  They have their own captions.

 

There is also this photograph that includes many relatives of Clara from the Vogel side of the family.

Included in the front row, along with three Lohrmann boys, you will find Buddy Fick, whose story was told in the post, Hulda’s Boys & the Loss of Her Buddy.

I also just have to show this photo of Clara working in her kitchen.

This photo really caught my eye because I have a pot that used to belong to my parents.  My father always placed it under a downspout at our house and used the rain it gathered to water plants.

This looks identical to the one that Clara is holding.

Justus died in 1960; Clara died in 1965.  They are buried in the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in Okawville, Illinois.

There are so many other stories and photographs I could have used in this post.  If you are interested in finding out more about this family, I suggest you visit our museum and look at the book that we have. I can guarantee that you will spend quite a bit of time paging through it.

When I went to find a Vogel binder in our library, I was especially looking for a Vogel family photograph that I have used on this blog before.  I knew Clara was in the photo, but I was not sure which one she was.  I found that photo in the book I located, and it is labeled with all the persons being labeled.

Now you also know who all the people are in this photograph.