Today’s post was found because a couple got married on April 3rd, but it will take me a while to get around to that wedding. This story helped me answer some questions I have had in the past that went unanswered at the time. So, I am going to backtrack a bit.

In 1854, a Gerler family arrived in America aboard the ship, Kossuth. When the Gerler’s got on the ship in Germany, there were 9 children aboard the ship with their mother and father. By the time this ship arrived in New Orleans, the mother and two children had died while on the voyage. The story of that Gerler family was told in the post, The Genesis of the Gerler Genealogy.

A year earlier, in 1853, a 28 year-old woman came to this country aboard the ship Ernst Moritz Arndt named Anna Oberndorfer. She came from Austria. Some other Oberndorfer’s had arrived the year before and settled in the vicinity of New Wells and Pocahontas. Here is the list of Oberndorfer’s including Anna on the ship that arrived in 1853.

The widower, Christian Friedrich Gerler married Anna Oberndorfer on May 20, 1855 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg. However, this marriage did not last long. At the end of August later that year, Christian Friedrich died, leaving Anna as a widow with a bunch of Gerler stepchildren that she was just getting to know. Anna then married Johann Schmidt on December 10, 1855. That means Anna was married twice during 1855. Something else happened in 1855. During her short marriage to her first husband, she became pregnant. That means she was pregnant from her first husband when she was marrying her second husband. That child was born in April of 1856. The marriage records for the above weddings were displayed in the previous blog post.

At some point when all of this unusual set of circumstances took place, the Gerler children that originally came aboard the ship in 1854 were “farmed out” to several different families in the Altenburg area. Then, John and Anna Schmidt began having children. Most of the baptism records for those children are found in the books of Immanuel Lutheran Church in New Wells. However, there was a child named Herman Ertman Schmidt who was born on October 24, 1867, and for some unknown reason, his baptism record is not found in Immanuel’s books. Herman is one of the main characters for this post. In the 1870 census, we find Herman at the age of 4. He is called Ertman in this entry. His father was a farmer in the Shawnee Township. The child, Seda, in this entry is the child whose father was Christian Friedrich Gerler, but when she was born, her father had died, and her mother had already remarried. It makes me wonder what surname such a child should take. In this entry, it looks as if Seda took the name Schmidt, although the census taker wrote it as Smith.

In the 1880 census, we discover that this Schmidt family moved across the Mississippi River to a township near Jonesboro, Illinois. Herman was 14 years old and living in the Meisenheimer Township. I find it interesting that the family right below the Schmidt household in this entry was a Meisenheimer family.

Now, we will turn our attention to the woman who would become Herman’s wife. Her name was Maria Katherine Ludwig, who was born on August 15, 1867. Mary was the daughter of Peter and Elizabeth (Gratz) Ludwig. I have also written a post about Mary’s parents titled, Peter’s 45th Birthday. Mary was baptized at Immanuel Lutheran Church in New Wells. Her baptism record is displayed below.

A year after Mary was born, a new Lutheran congregation was established in Pocahontas named St. John’s Lutheran. Mary’s father was a charter member of that church. Mary is found in the 1870 census at the age of 2. Her father was a farmer in the Apple Creek Township.

The last census in which we find Mary prior to her marriage was the one taken in 1880. Mary was 12 years old, and her family had gotten larger during the previous decade.

Herman Schmidt and Mary Ludwig must have gotten to know one another when they were growing up and attending St. John’s, Pocahontas. Then, on April 3, 1888, Herman came to Pocahontas to get married to Mary Ludwig at St. John’s. That would make today this pair’s 137th wedding anniversary. We can view the Missouri marriage license. This document says Herman was from Union County, Illinois.

I believe that Herman and Mary had 4 children. At least one child was baptized at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Kornthal, Illinois. Below is the baptism record for Emilie Schmidt, who was born in 1896.

When the 1900 census was taken, we find the Schmidt’s living in Jonesboro with 2 children. Also in their household was Mary’s brother, William Ludwig, who was working with Herman on his farm.

Plat maps were made for Union County, Illinois is 1908. We find Herman’s farm not far from where the Kornthal church was located and also not far from Jonesboro.

The 1910 census is the last one I found for the Schmidt’s. All 4 of their children were listed in this entry. This time, Herman was called a farmer in Jonesboro.

Herman Schmidt died in 1918 at the age of 50. An Illinois death record for him is displayed below.

Herman has a grave site on Findagrave.com for the Jonesboro Cemetery in Jonesboro, but they do not have a gravestone photo. However, his page on Findagrave.com includes this transcribed obituary.

This story will also leave me with some unanswered questions. After her husband’s death, I lost track of what happened to Mary and her family. I did not locate her in any more census entries and was unable to determine when or where she died. However, at least now I know a little more about what happened to the Schmidt/Gerler couple after they were married.