I am going to return to a theme that has been discussed on this blog before. In fact, the featured couple has been used as an example of this theme in a previous post. However, the couple and their family was not discussed in much detail in that article. That story was also written back in the early days of this blog when the posts were quite short and lacked a lot of documentation. So, I return to highlight that couple today.

The theme is one that can be found in several early stories of couples coming to the United States in the 1800’s. Today’s pair comes to America as a couple that was engaged to be married, but since the requirements to get married in Germany were so stringent and so expensive, they came to this country to have their wedding. In the case of today’s pair, Andreas Fassold and Gertrude Hafner, we find them traveling together aboard the Adonis. That ship arrived in New Orleans on June 1, 1854. Here we find them on the passenger list.

I cannot decipher the name of the city from which they came. Several family histories on Ancestry say these two came from Krondorf which is located in Bavaria. I think what is important is that these two were from the same location and about the same age, indicating these two knew each other in Germany and were traveling as a couple. The passenger list also states that their destination was Missouri.

Andreas (later called Andrew) Fassold was born on January 22, 1828; Gertrude Hafner was born on May 12, 1827. These dates back up the ages shown on the above passenger list which show Gertrude as being a year older than Andrew. These two arrived at the beginning of June in 1854 and were married on October 5th of that year in Perry County, Missouri. That would make today their 166th anniversary.

Finding a document for this couple’s marriage on Ancestry proved to be a challenge. Although our German Family Tree says there was a Perry County marriage record for them, I was unable to find them even using the different spellings we have for these two that are shown in GFT. I did manage to eventually find that record. I found it in an unusual way. I first found a marriage record stating that a person by the name of John Fasold married Ann Silas on August 12, 1854. I figured that was close enough to the October 5th date that I could page through the records for that year to look for Andrew and Gertrude’s marriage. I was successful. Below is an image of that record which is quite difficult to read. I have now looked at enough of these types of records to know where to look for the names and dates. The marriage was performed by the Justice of the Peace, Thomas Stewart.

Finding the record for John Fasold made me also wonder if he and Andrew were related. After some searching, I found that a Fassold family had arrived in America in 1840. That family came to the United States aboard the Plato.

That led me down another rabbit hole. I seemed to remember writing about the ship, Plato, before, so I searched our previous posts looking for that ship. It turns out that I have written two stories including that ship. They involved a Bergmann family and a Hilpert man being on the same ship as these Fassold’s.

I think Andrew was another sibling in this Fassold family who remained in Germany when the rest of the family made the voyage to America. If so, he would have been about 12 years old at the time. Again, if so, why would he have not joined the family when they came to America in 1840? I do not know.

When the 1850 census was taken four years before Andrew arrived, we find this household living in the Cinque Hommes Township in Perry County. The head of the household was Michael Fassold who may have been Andrew’s brother, and there is a 20 year-old John Fassold in the family who probably was the other Fassold getting married in 1854.

Andrew and Gertrude Fassold are found in their first United States census in 1860, By then, they had 4 of their 7 children. Andrew was a farmer.

In the 1860’s, Andrew served in the military during the Civil War. Below is a record of his service.

One of their children, George Fassold, was born in 1860, and the next daughter, Barbara Fassold, was born in 1866. No children were born during the years of the Civil War. Then in 1870, we find the Fassold family shown below in the census for that year. We see all 7 of their children in this entry.

When the 1880 census was taken, it says this Fassold family was living in the Salem Township. I do not think that meant that this family had moved. If I have it placed correctly, the Fassold land would have been located right on the border between the Cinque Hommes and Salem Townships. The Salem Township was included for the first time in the 1880 census, and that is where we find the Fassold’s in that year’s census.

Sometime later in his life, Andrew had this photograph or drawing made of him.

Also, the photo/painting shown below was produced of both Andrew and Gertrude. I displayed this in a previous post, but now I have located the version of it that is in color.

That 1880 census would be the last one in which we find Andrew. He died in 1888 at the age of 60. I can show a Perry County death record for him in two images. It says he died of dysentery.

Gertrude lived long enough to experience the first few years of the 20th century. We find her living with her son, J. Michael Fassold who had married Emma Horn. Gertrude was 73 years old This entry is found in the 1900 census for Salem Township that is so difficult to read. I enlarged it to make it easier to decipher.

Gertrude Fassold died in 1903 at the age of 75. Both Andrew and Gertrude are buried in the Peace Lutheran Cemetery in Friedenberg, Missouri.

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By all rights, the person who should have written this post is our buddy, Clayton Erdmann. He would have saved me a lot of work on research, and even then, I may have gotten some things wrong along the way. However, I am not about to ask Clayton for help these days. His teaching duties during this COVID pandemic have probably included teaching both face-to-face with his students as well as virtually. Add to that the fact that Clayton has been working on his master’s degree. I look forward to the time when he will once again find some time to write some blog posts for us.