Back in 2021, I wrote the story of a man and woman who were celebrating their 150th wedding anniversary. Today, I will share that post on another special day…the 175th birthday of the groom. Michael Heinrich Schuessler was born on August 31, 1849, the son of Michael and Rosina (Hoppe) Schuessler. Henry was baptized at Concordia Lutheran Church in Frohna. Back in February of 2021 when I first wrote the attached post, we had just gotten a snowstorm that prevented me from getting any church records. Now, I am able to display his baptism record from the books of Concordia Lutheran Church in Frohna. Before I display it, let me say that Henry was baptized under very unusual circumstances. First of all, earlier in 1849, Rev. G.H. Loeber was serving both Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg and Concordia in Frohna. However, earlier in August of that year, Pastor Loeber died, and Concordia was without a pastor. I do not know who baptized Henry, but in the image below, you can see his baptism record beneath another one that was recorded by Rev. Loeber. You can see that the handwriting is different in Henry’s record.
Not only was the regular pastor not present for this baptism, but there was another person who was not there. As you can see in the translation of the above baptism record, Henry’s father had died on July 22nd, so his mother was a widow when Henry was baptized.
You might think that I could now display Henry’s church marriage record, but he was married during the Koestering Hole, so their marriage was not recorded in the Concordia books. However, I will display the civil marriage record for this couple, even though it is included in the previous post. I have discovered fairly recently that some marriage records can be found on Family Search that are easier to read than the ones found on Ancestry.com. Here is the Perry County record for the Schuessler/Baum wedding from Family Search.
One more thing. Henry’s baptism record very clearly states that he was born on August 31st. However, as you can see on the image below which shows a close-up of Henry’s gravestone, It says he was born on August 30th.
The August 30th date of birth probably comes from his Missouri death certificate which has that date of birth on it. So, I suppose today might be the day after the youngest Schuessler’s 175th birthday. It all depends on whether you trust the baptism record or the death record.
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Just a quick note. At the time of this writing, our museum is experiencing issues with our Facebook page. Right now, we are unable to make new posts to that page. Also, the last couple of days, the blog posts that have been written have not been automatically shared to that Facebook page. Anything you can do to attempt to spread these posts to other people would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps you would be willing to share our latest blog posts on your own Facebook page.