Yesterday’s post about William Timmermann could be referred to as an “outsider” entering the realm of our German Family Tree. Some surnames in that document take up pages and pages. And there are other surnames that show up as pretty lonely entries. You will be reading the story of another one of those “outsiders”. For this post, I had to make a new folder for the surname, Wehe, for our “GFT Images” collection.

This tale begins with a birthday girl who has a surname that takes up 5 pages in our GFT…Doberenz. Bertha Amelia Doberenz was born on January 13, 1891, making today her 133rd birthday. Bertha was the daughter of Henry and Ernestine (Proehl) Doberenz. Bertha was baptized at Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown. An image of her baptism record from that congregation’s books is pictured here.

Bertha is found in her first census entry in 1900 at the age of 8. Her father was a farmer in the Union Township.

Next, we find Bertha in the 1910 census as a teenager. She was not living with her parents. She was a servant in the Arno Hopfer household, also in the Union Township.

The last census in which we find Bertha as an unmarried woman is the one taken in 1920. She was back living with her parents at the age of 28.

Now, we will turn our attention to the man who would become Bertha’s husband. His name was Carl Wilhelm Wehe, who was born in Germany on June 17, 1885. His later death certificate gives no father’s name, but calls his mother, Marie Rindermann. Carl came to America when he was in his 20’s. One census entry says he came in 1910, and another says he arrived in 1914. The first document I located for Carl is a 1915 Iowa state census which says he was living in Maxfield. That town is located in Bremer County, which has been mentioned often on this blog as a place where Perry County natives migrated to find work, especially those from Immanuel Lutheran Church in Altenburg. This is the area where the Iowa Synod had its origins. Already, he is described as being a Lutheran.

Carl had his World War I draft registration completed in 1918. It gave him a Denver, Iowa address. Denver is just down the road from Maxfield. Carl was working for August Koelling on his farm.

The 1920 census has Carl living in Maxfield and working as a servant doing farm labor. If I read this entry correctly, Carl Wehe was working for a man named C.H. Kehe, which certainly is an interesting pair of similar names.

Because of the number of Perry Countians who settled in Bremer County, I suppose that is how Carl became familiar with a girl living in Uniontown. On April 8, 1921, Carl Wehe travelled to Uniontown to get married to Bertha Doberenz. The wedding took place at Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown, and we locate the church record shown below which is found in that congregation’s books. This document says Carl was from Denver, Iowa. 

We are also able to view this couple’s Missouri marriage license. It says Carl was from Denver, but it says he was from Black Hawk County. That county and Bremer County are adjacent to one another and the boundary is quite near Denver.

I located the Wehe’s in a 1928 E. St. Louis, Illinois city directory. It says that Carl was an interior decorator.

This couple had just one child, a daughter named Rosa born in 1928. In the 1930 census, we see Carl, Bertha, their young daughter, and a nephew of Carl’s named Irvin. Carl was the proprietor of a restaurant and Irvin was a butcher.

The 1940 census shows just Carl, Bertha, and Rosa in the household. This time, Carl was a laborer in a brewery.

Carl had his World War II draft card completed in 1942. This form says Carl’s employer was the Lemp Brewery Company. The Lemp Brewery in St. Louis had become the Falstaff Brewing Company, and another Lemp Brewing Company had been established across the river in East St. Louis in 1939.

Both Carl and Bertha were still living in 1950, but I failed to find them in that year’s census. Carl Wehe died in 1961 at the age of 76. His Missouri death certificate says he died while living in Kansas City.  It also states he was an employee of the Falstaff Brewery.

Bertha Wehe did not die until 1970 at the age of 78. Her death certificate says she died in Wittenberg, Missouri.

Both Carl and Bertha are buried in the Grace Lutheran Cemetery in Uniontown.

Now, you know how a few gravestones found in a Perry County cemetery are inscribed with the surname, Wehe. Since their only child was a girl, no other Wehe’s came from Carl’s branch of the Wehe family tree. 

Maybe someday someone will be doing research on Perry County names and find that another “outsider” named Jessen showed up in the records. She married a guy by the name of Schmidt, who descended from the original immigrants to this area, but her roots were in Hardwick, Minnesota. She will probably always be called an “outsider”, but she’s my favorite outsider.