I find it really hard to NOT write the story of a person who is included in our German Family Tree who is celebrating their 200th birthday. I have one of those stories to write today. It has a lot of holes in it, so I am guessing that this will be a shorter article than most.

This tale will also discusss the fact that a ship named the Minerva arrived in New Orleans in 1853 carrying several people who ended up settling in East Perry County and northern Cape Girardeau County. Several surnames that have been written about on this blog in the past are found on the passenger list of that ship.

Johanna Sophia Wachter was born on June 17, 1824 in Gefell, Germany. Sophia was the daughter of Johann Erdmann Christoph and Anna Katherina (Grosskopf) Wachter. It looks as if Sophia was the oldest of several Wachter children who were born between 1824 and 1844. All of those children were born in Germany, and several of them ended up in the United States.

My go-to person to find information about the Wachter family is Jenni Wachter, who has a family tree on Ancestry.com. Although she does not have official documentation attached to her tree, she says that Sophia Wachter married Johann Christoph Gottfried Schneider on May 20, 1850. Not much is known about John Schneider. Prior to coming to this country, this couple had one child named Ernestine. If Ernestine’s death certificate is correct, which says she was born in January of 1850, then she was born just before her parents got married.

The Schneider’s made the voyage to America aboard the Minerva, which arrived in New Orleans on November 28, 1853. We find their names on this ship’s passenger list shown below.

Before proceeding with Sophia’s story, let me show you another image from this Minerva passenger list. It is found 2 pages after the one on which the Schneider’s are found. On this image, you will see the names Zoepfele (which is likely Saalfeld), Wachter, and Bodenschatz. These are all names that take up plenty of pages in our German Family Tree.

Catherine Saalfeld, wife of Henry Saalfeld, was Sophia’s mother. Her first husband, Sophia’s father, Johann Wachter, died at some point prior to 1853. Then, Catherine married Henry Saalfeld just before departing for America. Many of the Wachter’s on the list above were Sophia’s siblings.

After arriving in the United States, the Schneider’s settled in the Apple Creek Township of Cape Girardeau County. We find the Schneider’s in the 1860 census with just one child. This is puzzling because another daughter, Caroline, had been born in 1858 and baptized at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Altenburg. For some unknown reason, that daughter is not in this entry. John was a farmer.

Next, we find John and Sophia and their family in the 1870 census. A son had been born in 1860 and was also baptized at Immanuel, Altenburg. That son, also named John, is called 5 years old in this entry. That is likely wrong. Also, in this entry, you do see the daughter born in 1858 named Caroline.

John Schneider died during the early 1870’s. I have no documentation for that death. When the Missouri state census was taken in 1876, we do not find John listed in the Schneider entry. We also see the household of Ernst Rudert right above the Schneider’s. Ernst had married Ernestine Schneider in 1871.

The widow, Sophia, is then found in the 1880 census, and once again we see her living with the Ernst Rudert family. Ernst was a wagoner and farmer in the Apple Creek Township.

Sophia Schneider died in 1895 at the age of 70. Her death record is found in the books of Immanuel Lutheran Church in New Wells. Both John and Sophia Schneider have entries on Findagrave.com for the Old Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in New Wells, but neither of them has a gravestone photo. Most likely, those stones are unreadable.

There are plenty of examples in our German Family Tree that list the surnames of Wachter, Schneider, and Bodenschatz being baptismal sponsors for each other. For some, like the Schneider’s, their records are found in church books in northern Cape Girardeau County. For the Wachter’s and Bodenschatz’s, we find records not only in Cape Girardeau County, but also in Perry County churches like Trinity and Immanuel in Altenburg.

I have a confession to make. After almost getting finished writing this story, I noticed that Jenni Wachter’s family tree says Sophia was born on July 17th, not June 17th. Also, I discovered that when we look in our German Family Tree to see Sophia as John Schneider’s wife, it says Sophia was born on June 27th in 1824. The bottom line is that I now am not sure that today is Sophia’s bicentennial birthday. However, if it is not, I think I can safely say that her actual 200th birthday is sometime soon. And, I decided to put a question mark in the title.