From 1976-1981, there was a popular TV series called Charlie’s Angels. Right now, there is a movie in the theaters by that title which attempts to recreate that show. The show highlighted three ladies who teamed as crime fighters. I have three daughters who have on occasion compared themselves to Charlie’s Angels. They even recreated the famous Charlie’s Angels pose for the photo below.
I will be telling the story of three Darnstaedt girls today who I will refer to as Gottfried’s Angels. I was going to tell the story of only one of the girls…..the one who was born on November 20th….but when I ran across the photograph below, I decided to include all three.
Gottfried and Amalie (Schlimpert) Darnstaedt had six children who grew to adulthood. The three oldest were boys, and the three youngest were girls. I should add here that there was a 7th child born into this family. It was a girl twin to the second-born son, but she lived less than a month. The Darnstaedt family reminds me of a friend’s family who had three girls before having three boys. The three Darnstaedt girls are shown in this Ancestry.com family tree.
The Gottfried Darnstaedt family sat for a family portrait in the early 1900’s which is shown below. The photo includes the three older brothers as well as their grandmother, Friedricke (Mueller) Darnstaedt.
I guess you could say this illustrates My Three Sons and Gottfried’s Angels. The 1900 census shows all 6 of Gottfried’s children.
Anna Darnstaedt, the youngest girl in the family, is today’s birthday girl. She was born on November 20, 1895. All of the Darnstaedt children were baptized at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg. Here are the baptism records for Gottfried’s Angels from oldest to youngest.
1915 was an eventful year for this Darnstaedt family. First of all, Sarah Darnstaedt, the oldest of the girls, was married on June 13, 1915. She married Joseph Schmidt, the son of Jacob and Rosina (Schmidt) Schmidt. His parents were the subject of the post, Schmidt nee Schmidt. Joseph Schmidt had been previously married to Matilda Richter, but she had died in 1913. Our German Family Tree says that Sarah added 8 more children to this Schmidt family which already had 7 children by the first wife. Here is the wedding photo of Joseph and Sarah.
We also have this Joseph Schmidt family photograph which contains Schmidt children from both wives.
Later that year, on September 19, 1915, Lina Darnstaedt married Arthur Schmidt. Arthur was Joseph Schmidt’s younger brother. Arthur also had a twin brother, Immanuel Schmidt, who was married to Maria Buck on the same day as Arthur and Lina. The story of two twin Schmidt’s getting married on the same day was told in the post, Two of a Kind….Later a Full House. Here is the wedding photo of Lina and Arthur.
The youngest of Gottfried’s Angels, Anna, was part of the above wedding party. I believe she would be the one on the right. We have another wedding photo of the Schmidt twins. Lina and Arthur are on the right.
We have a later photo which showed several Schmdt’s, some of which came from the Arthur Schmidt/Lina Darnstaedt marriage.
Anna Darnstaedt never married. I know that I couldn’t resist the temptation to look to see if there would have been another Schmidt brother from the same family for Anna to marry. As it turns out, there was another Schmidt that could have filled the bill. Paul Schmidt was the baby of that Schmidt family, being born in 1885, making him about 10 years older than Anna. However, I think I found Paul in a 1910 census living in Beemer Township in Nebraska, where a lot of other Perry County natives relocated at about that time. I also found his World War I draft registration which showed him living in York, Nebraska in 1918.
By 1918, Paul Schmidt was married. He was even married to a girl named Anna. But it was not Anna Darnstaedt. Since two of Paul’s brothers married Darnstaedt sisters, I am sure he knew Anna Darnstaedt, but I guess you could say those two were not meant to be a couple. It certainly would have been quite the story, though, if Gottfried’s Angels would have all married brothers in the Schmidt family.
Out of the 6 children in the Gottfried Darnstaedt family, 3 of them never married. In the later years of their lives, two of them, Anna and Dick Darnstaedt, lived together in Altenburg in the house right behind our museum.
All three of Gottfried’s Angels are buried in the Trinity Lutheran Cemetery in Altenburg. Lina died in 1949 at the age of 55. Sarah died in 1972 at the age of 81. Anna died in 1986 at the age of 90.
It has not been very common lately for me to find a story with several available photos. I guess you could say I have experienced a photo famine. I enjoyed telling this tale today which all began with a photo of 3 sisters. And when it also included a bunch of Schmidt’s (even if they weren’t in my Schmidt clan), it made it even more interesting for me. A whole passel of Schmidt descendants come out of this story.