Today, we will be celebrating the birthday of a man who was born on this day 200 years ago. Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Brickhaus was born on March 15, 1825 in Jöllenbeck, Germany. John was the son of Johann Friedrich Wilhelm and Anne Margrethe Ilsabein (Niehaus) Brickhaus. That means John must have been a John, Junior. I am not able to show an actual image of his baptism record, but I am able to display this transcription of it.

The above document spells the surname as Boeckhauss, but when we see John’s family after their arrival in America, it eventually became spelled as Brickhaus.

John would get married in Germany before moving to the United States. The woman who became his bride was Hanne Margarethe Friedericke Zoellner, who was born on September 9, 1828. She was also born in Jöllenbeck. Hanne was the daughter of Christian Friedrich and Anne Margrethe Ilsabein (Heidemann) Zoellner. I found later documents that also called her Hannah or Hanna. As I usually do, I settled on Hanna because that is the name on her gravestone. Her baptism record from the same parish in Germany is pictured here.

John Brickhaus married Hanna Zoellner on September 28, 1849, and that event also took place in Jöllenbeck. The marriage record for this pair is shown below.

One piece of evidence I was able to find regarding the Brickhaus’s immigration to this country was the date of 1859 given as the year of immigration on Hanna’s 1900 census entry. However, an obituary for her says she came to this country in 1860. A child named Maria was born in 1864 to this couple, and that child was baptized at Trinity Lutheran Church in Friedheim. You can see that even at this early time in America, the surname is spelled Brickhaus.

The only other older child in this family who was born in Germany was Anna Brickhaus. She was confirmed at Trinity, Friedheim in 1865. Her confirmation class is shown in the image below. I have highlighted Anna’s name. She was born in 1850, so unless there were some other children who were born and died during the interim, it looks like there were 14 years between the births of Anna and Maria.

The Brickhaus’s are found in the 1870 census living in the St. Mary’s Township with 4 children. John was a farmer.

Next, we find the Brickhaus household in the 1880 census. This time, they were living in the Cinque Hommes Township. Their oldest daughter, Anna, had gotten married, and an additional child was born during the previous decade, so we once again see a census entry with 4 children.

John died later in 1880 at the age of 55. Hanna would remain a widow for over 30 years after her husband’s death. We have to wait 20 years to be able to view another census entry for Hanna. In the 1900 census, she is found living with her son, Fritz, who had married Louise Hobeck. Several of Hanna’s grandchildren are listed in this entry. Fritz was a farmer in the Cinque Hommes Township.

The last census in which we find Hanna is the one taken in 1910. She was 81 years old and still living with her son, Fritz, and his family.

Hanna Brickhaus died in 1914 at the age of 84. Her death certificate below simply gives senility as her cause of death.

Hanna’s death record is found in the books of Trinity Lutheran Church in Friedheim.

I was also able to locate two different obituaries for Hanna. You may have to click the thumbnails below to enlarge them.

Both John and Hanna Brickhaus are buried in the Trinity Lutheran Cemetery in Friedheim. John’s gravestone confirms his birthday of March 15th, but it says he was born in 1824, which does not agree with the baptism record displayed earlier. If he was born in 1824, then he would have celebrated his bicentennial birthday last year.

The daughter of John and Hanna named Maria, whose baptism record was shown in this post, would be the second wife of Ernst Yamnitz. This family photo of Ernst and Maria’s family has shown up on this blog on several occasions. You can see that there are a lot of Yamnitz’s that would include John and Hanna in their family trees.

I know a few of the descendants of this Yamnitz family who provide important services for our museum. First of all, Tim Yamnitz, who is a Perry County native, now lives in Germany. Tim is a valuable resource when we need help reading old German handwriting. He also can get at some German church records that we would have trouble getting. Tim has also put together a collection of immigration facts that deal with individuals who migrated to America and settled in Perry County. Also, we have a docent couple, Bob and Carol Kassell, whose Ancestry.com family tree provided some valuable information for this post. Carol’s maiden name is Yamnitz. Our museum greatly appreciates these folks who have chosen to be such valuable resources to us.