I am happily back in Altenburg.  I arrived at the museum this morning all ready to get back to work on a blog post.  I found a welcoming smile at my computer.  Little Marty was quite glad to see me.  With our museum being closed these days, Little Marty was getting lonely.  I think we are going to see what we can do about getting a Little Katie to keep him company when no one else is around.

We start today’s story with a birthday that took place 184 years ago in Austria.  On March 19, 1836, Charles Wallmann was born.  I am not sure what his father’s name was, but there is evidence that his mother’s name was Theresa.  It looks like it was Theresa that traveled to America with several sons on the ship, Therese, in 1857.

I wrote another story a while back about Johann Wallmann who married Katharine Gratz.  Those two Wallmann’s are not connected to each other in our German Family Tree, but I think this piece of evidence shows that they were brothers.  The first document in which we find Charles Wallmann was the 1860 census for Shawnee Township in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri.  He was living in the Joseph Meyr household and working as a farm laborer.

Meanwhile, a girl by the name of Rebecca Stirewalt was born in Salisbury, North Carolina.  I found numerous spellings of this surname, but I settled on using Stirewalt because I found evidence of that surname around Salisbury, North Carolina.  Rebecca, according to her death certificate, was born on February 20, 1844.  Also according to that death certificate, her parents were Henry and Christiana (Haldanan sp?) Stirewalt.  I have this suspicion that Rebecca’s family was of the Presbyterian faith since several people in this vicinity came from that area of North Carolina and established Presbyterian churches, such as the one in Brazeau.  Apparently her family moved to a new location not long after she was born.  In the 1850 census, we find the Stirewalt family living in Union County, Illinois which is located across the Mississippi River from Cape Girardeau County.  Her father is called a millstone cutter.

Rebecca was still living in Union County, Illinois in the 1860 census.

Charles Wallmann would marry Rebecca Stirewalt in 1863, but before that happened, Charles went off to fight in the Civil War.  According to the military record below, he entered the service in 1862.  It also says he was discharged for disabilites.

The Wallmann/Stirewalt marriage took place on September 1, 1863 at Immanuel Lutheran Church in New Wells, Missouri.  The church record for that wedding is shown below.  I have included the wedding right above theirs in those church books.  That was the wedding of his brother, Johann, and Katherine Gratz.  These two marriages were only the 3rd and 4th marriage records in that congregation’s books.

We also have a civil record of that marriage.

According to our German Family Tree, Charles and Rebecca had 5 children.  We find this family in the 1870 census.  Charles was a farmer, and Rebecca’s mother was living in their household.

By the time of the 1880 census, 4 of their 5 children had been born.  One more child would be born in 1883.

We don’t see them in another census until the one taken in 1900.

The last census in which we find Charles and Rebecca was the 1910 census.  They were living in the household headed by their daughter, Elizabeth Grosse, who by that time was already a widow.

Sometime, likely later in their lives, Charles and Rebecca had this photograph taken.

Rebecca Wallmann died in 1911 at the age of 67.  We can look at her death certificate.

Charles Wallmann died in 1917 at the age of 81.  Although his death certificate should be available, I was unable to find it.  If that document was available, I might have been able to determine the name of Charles’s father and his mother’s maiden name.  Findagrave.com has entries for these two in the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in New Wells, Missouri, but no photos are shown of their gravestones.

This post is another example of a time when I discovered a few facts that are not included in our German Family Tree.  Unfortunately, we find it very difficult to keep up with all the changes that could be made to that document because we lack the time and manpower to get it done.

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We now have been blessed with a artistic rendering of what our current musem’s expansion is going to look like.  Our friend and talented artist, Jeanie Eddelman has taken our plans and turned them into a drawing which shows the building we are now in the process of constructing.  This image will also be placed on our website’s home page.  Thanks to Jeanie for providing this great visual what we see in our dreams.