Today’s post does not have its beginning in Perry County, but it does not take long to get here, and once it’s here, it stays. We begin with the birthday girl for today, Anna Elise Christine Ochs. She was born on July 13, 1875, the daughter of Peter and Elizabeth (Gausmann) Ochs. The Ochs surname had been found in Perry County for quite a while prior to this time, and as near as I can tell, somehow Elise’s father found a bride who lived in Darmstadt, Illinois, and that pair got married in 1874 in Darmstadt. Elise was their first child, born in Darmstadt, but Peter and Elizabeth decided to bring their new baby back to Perryville to have her baptized at Immanuel Lutheran Church. A transcription of her baptism record is pictured below.
Another daughter was born in Darmstadt in 1877, and that baby was also brought back to Perryville to be baptized. In the 1880 census, we find the Ochs family living in Darmstadt. Peter was a cooper. There was also a young son in this entry, but our German Family Tree has no information about where he was baptized.
When the next child was born into the Ochs family in 1882, that child was baptized at Peace Lutheran Church in Friedenberg, and the Friedenberg Remembrances book says that child was born in Damstadt. Then, it appears that the Ochs’s moved back to Perry County in the mid-1880’s, and the remaining children were baptized at Immanuel, Perryville.
Since Elise got married before the next census we are able to view, I will now have us look at the man who would become her husband. His name was Frederick (or Friedrich) Bergmann, who was born on Christmas Day, December 25, 1862. I will call him Fred. He was the son of John and Sophia (Poehner) Bergmann. Fred was baptized at Peace Lutheran Church in Friedenberg. He is found in the 1870 census at the age of 7. Fred’s father was a farmer in the Cinque Hommes Township.
Next, we find Fred in the 1880 census as a teenager. His father had died in 1873, so his widowed mother was the head of the Bergmann household. Fred and his older brother were working on the family farm.
Fred Bergmann married Elise Ochs on November 1, 1896 at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Perryville. A transcription of their church marriage record is displayed here.
We can also take a look at the Missouri marriage license for Fred and Elise. Elise is called Lizzie on this document.
The German Family Tree lists 6 children born to this pair. All of them were baptized at Immanuel, Perryville. In the 1900 census, we see 2 children in the Bergmann household, along with Fred’s mother and 2 boarders, a man who was working on the farm and a young girl who was a servant.
The 1910 census shows 5 children in the Bergmann family. One additional child had been born during the previous decade who had died as a young child. Once again, we find a hired man who was doing farm work and a young girl who was a servant.
The 1915 plat maps for Perry County show the Fred Bergmann farm located near Perryville.
The 1920 census turned out to be the last one in which we find Elise. Just 4 children were still living with their parents.
Elise Bergmann died in 1929 at the age of 54, although the death certificate below says she was 64. I think a mathematical mistake was made by the person completing this form. The term, apoplexy, was used to describe the cause of death. That term often got used in those days to describe a sudden death and probably was used to describe a stroke.
An obituary for Elise was published in the Perry County Republican.
Both the death certificate and the obituary use the spelling of the surname with only one “n” at the end. The same would be the case for Fred. It looks as if these Bergman’s made the decision to remove an “n” from their name at some point in time.
Fred is found in the 1930 census as a widower who was living with his daugther, Edna. He continued to be a farmer.
Fred Bergman died in 1934 at the age of 71. His death certificate also uses the term, apoplexy, to describe his cause of death.
We can also take a look at Fred’s obituary that appeared in the Perry County Republican.
Fred and Elise Bergman are each buried in the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in Perryville.
In addition to the subtle change in the spelling of the surname, Bergman in this story, I also had to be careful with Bergman’s who had first names starting with an “F”. After I added some more images to our Bergmann folder in our GFT images, we now have 52 images that are labeled with a name beginning with an “F”. I have already written articles about men named Ferdinand and Fritz Bergmann and a woman named Friedericke Bergmann. I looked through my verson of the GFT and found that it had Bergmann’s from page 126-164. That is 38 pages of Bergmann’s in that document. It is one of the largest lists of reecords in the GFT for a surname.