Both of the characters that make up today’s married couple can be found in the long-lost 1880 Union Township census pages. There is no family history on Ancestry.com that lists an 1880 census record for either of these two individuals. The groom, you will discover, was one of the 21 children fathered by the patriarch of the Hemmann Clan, J.G. Hemmann. Let’s begin with this Hemmann son.

Martin Hemmann was born on April 29, 1857, making today his 164th birthday. His parents were Johann Gottfried and Rosina (Hoffmann) Hemmann. Johann Gottfried had 9 children by his first wife in Germany. Then he married Rosina, and she gave birth to 12 more children in America. Martin was the 19th of the total of 21, the 10th to have Rosina as his mother. Martin was baptized at Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown, Missouri. Here is an image of his baptism record.

Martin is part of a large Hemmann household in the 1860 census for the Cinque Hommes Township. He is 3 years old, and his father was a farmer.

Next, we find Martin in the 1870 census as a teenager. His father had died in 1864.

We find an interesting situation in the 1880 census. Martin’s mother was still living, but she was living in the household of another son, Julius Hemmann. That census entry is also part of the long-lost pages. Martin, however, is listed in an entry with just him and his sister, Wilhelmina. Wilhelmina had been married to Heinrich Mahnken, but he died in 1878. For some reason, Wilhelmina is listed here as a Hemmann, not a Mahnken. Martin was a 22 year-old farmer. This entry is the very last one in those long-lost pages of the 1880 census.

Now, we must turn our attention to Martin’s future wife, Caroline Thauwald. She was born on October 9, 1861 in Germany, the daughter of Peter and Ernestine (Moeckel) Thauwald. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may recognize the surname Moeckel. The only place I found that gave evidence of Mrs. Thauwald having the maiden name of Moeckel is on the death certificate of Caroline Thauwald. Perhaps it was a relationship with the Moeckel’s in Perry County that inspired the Thauwald family to come to America in 1869. We find the Thauwald family in the 1870 census for the Brazeau Township, but we don’t find them easily. After utilizing some of the strategies I have learned over the years, I finally found them. Their surname was transcribed as Tschuvold on the Ancestry.com census records. Caroline was 9 years old.

The first church record I found that included a Thauwald just so happened to be the confirmation class in which we find Martin Hemmann. That was the class of 1871. Caroline’s older sister, Ernestine, was part of the class.

Caroline Thauwald is found in the confirmation class of 1875.

The Thauwald family is found not too far away from Martin Hemmann’s entry in the 1880 census for Union Township. Caroline was 20 years old.

On November 9, 1882, Martin Hemmann married Caroline Thauwald at Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown. Below is the marriage record for this couple from that congregation’s books.

The German Family Tree lists 7 children born to Martin and Caroline, one which died when only months old. We cannot look at a census record for this family until 1900. That census showed 5 children in the family.

Next, we find the Hemmann’s in the 1910 census. Only 2 of their children remained in their family.

The 1920 census includes the same two children still living with Martin and Caroline, but it also shows that Caroline’s parents were living with them. Her father, Peter, was called an 85 year-old carpenter.

The Hemmann household can next be found in the 1930 census. Ernst and Ottilie were both in their 30’s and still unmarried.

Caroline Thauwald died in 1931 at the age of 70. Her death certificate says she died of peritonitis. This is the document which says Caroline’s mother’s maiden name was Moeckel.

I was unable to find Martin Hemmann in the 1940 census. He would die in 1944 at the age of 86. Cancer of the stomach is given as the cause of death on his death certificate.

Martin and Caroline Hemmann are both buried in the Grace Lutheran Cemetery in Uniontown. I am puzzled by the spelling, Carolene, on Caroline’s gravestone. I didn’t find her name ever spelled that way.

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The family of the patriarch, J.G. Hemmann, takes up about 23 pages of our German Family Tree. The Martin Hemmann family takes up just one of those pages, but it does display 7 of the numerous grandchildren of J.G. Hemmann. Someday, I should take the time to count how many grandchildren he had. It had to be a bunch. I know I am blessed with 6 grandchildren, and they are a true joy in my life, but I must admit that I would have much difficulty trying to keep up with the number of grandchildren this man had.