The story you will read today does not have a typical beginning point. Usually I locate a baptism or marriage record and use it to highlight someone’s birthday or anniversary. Every once in a while, I will highlight a day of death. Today is quite different, and quite possibly will be the only one of its sort, that I ever write. I actually hope so. Today’s tale was found because a man was wounded by a gun shot on today’s date…March 8th. That gun shot would subsequently lead to his death. However, the story begins back in Germany near the city of Dresden.

Samuel Gottfried Kaempfe, Jr. was born on June 4, 1838 in Kleinpestitz, Germany. The map below of some neighborhoods in the Dresden metropolitan area shows where Kleinpestitz is located.

Samuel was the son of Samuel, Sr. and Juliane (Lippisch) Kaempfe. A previous post was written about Samuel’s parents titled, Kaempfe’s Carriage. That post speculated whether Samuel’s father was once a carriage driver for Rev. C.F.W. Walther. I am able to display Samuel’s baptism record from Germany. He likely was baptized by Rev. Martin Stephan.

A few months after he was born, Samuel’s parents, who had joined the immigration society led by their pastor, Rev. Martin Stephan, boarded a ship to make the voyage to America. They left Germany in November of 1838. The Kaempfe family traveled aboard the ship, Johann George. We can see them on the passenger list for that ship below. This image indicates that this family was from Pestitz.

If you look at the passenger list for the immigrants found in the book, Zion on the Mississippi, it says they were from Kleinpetitz. After arriving in this country, the Kaempfe’s settled in the Dresden community in Perry County. They remained there just a few years before moving to St. Louis. There is a photo on some Ancestry.com family trees that say the photo below shows Samuel, Jr. with his parents when he was a very young boy.

Then, prior to the 1850 census, the Kaempfe’s moved across the river from St. Louis to Centreville, Illinois, which is in the East St. Louis area. Samuel’s father was farming there according to the 1850 entry in that year’s census. Samuel, Jr. was 12 years old at the time.

Ten years later, we find the Kaempfe’s still living in the same location. I think the ditto mark behind Samuel’s name indicate that he was farming with his father.

The Civil War broke out in the 1860’s, and Samuel was required to register for the draft. His draft registration information is found in the image below.

Samuel did go off to war and served in the 20th Regiment Illinois Infantry in the Union Army. A description of that regiment’s activity during the war is shown here.

The war was winding down in 1865. General Sherman had already attacked and burned the city of Atlanta on his March to the Sea. Then on March 8, 1865, Samuel’s regiment fought a Confederate army in the Battle of Wyse Fork. The battle took place near the city of Kinston, North Carolina as shown on this map.

It was there that Samuel was shot in the chest by a Confederate soldier. He would be taken to a hospital and did manage to remain alive until March 15th when he succumbed to his wound. Samuel is buried in the New Bern Cemetery in Craven County, North Carolina. His gravesite is not marked, but there is this stone recognizing the unknown soldiers buried there.

A more complete biography of Samuel’s life and tragic death is included here in a few images.

I am now going to switch gears in order to discuss another topic. I have had some suspicions for quite a while now about some of the earliest photos that I have run across and placed on this blog. The latest one is the one shown earlier in this post. Even on Ancestry.com, there is a note accompanying the picture of the 3 Kaempfe’s that says it is only believed to be this trio and mentions that there may not have been photos like this at the time when Samuel, Jr. was so young. I have to figure that Samuel, Jr. was just about a year old in that photo. That makes me really wonder whether it was even possible for such a photo to be produced at that time. My quick research of the matter came up with the fact that the earliest photo taken in the United States was produced in 1839, the year that the Kaempfe’s landed in New Orleans. That first photograph was taken in Philadelphia, and it may have taken some time for this new technology to reach even a city like St. Louis, much less to the wilderness of East Perry County. Not only that, the early photos that I have seen are nowhere near the quality of the one shown above.

I have had concerns about a few other photos over the years. Here is a photograph that some claim to be that of Christiane Buenger. Christiane died in St. Louis in 1849 during the Cholera Epidemic. I have to question if a photo such as the one below would have even been possible at that point in time.

I know that when I published by book, Mama Buenger: Mother of a Synod, I considered using this photo on the book cover, but I decided against it because I had serious reservations about whether it was indeed her.

I questioned another photo shown on this blog recently that was reportedly that of Joseph Lichtenegger when he was a boy in Austria in the mid-1850’s. Since Joseph came to America when he was a teenager, and the story is that he had to walk all the way from St. Louis to the town of Pocahontas, I wonder if that family had the financial ability to have a photograph of him in Austria back in the early days of photography.

I am going to give one more example of photos that really make me scratch my head. The 2 photos below are of Franz Julius and Maria Biltz holding some very young children. These photographs were supposedly taken in the early 1850’s. At that time, Rev. Franz Julius Biltz was the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Friedheim. The stories I have read about the Biltz’s during their early years indicate that Pastor Biltz had to do all sorts of extra jobs to make ends meet in Friedheim as that congregation’s pastor. He certainly was not making lots of money that could be spent on such a luxury as photographs. But somehow, these photos have all the appearances of being the right parents with the right ages of their children. I have to question how this is possible.

I have placed all these photos in previous blogs, but I always feel that I should express some doubt in my mind about whether they are correctly identified. I do not consider myself an expert on this topic, so I might express my skepticism when I display such photos. I still like to display them anyway because I love looking at such old photos, and I am guessing that you may enjoy seeing them as well.