Today’s post is a continuation of the one written by Timm Yamnitz that we published yesterday. I know we got a great response from Part 1, and I trust that today plenty of people will read what Paul Harvey used to describe as The Rest of the Story.
Just a quick side note. When I moved to Altenburg in 2010, I became acquainted with another John Muench, who was an active supporter of the Saxon Lutheran Memorial in Frohna. He died in 2013. John was a well-known character around here, and he is missed. I took a quick look to see if the John Muench I knew is a descendant of the John Muench who celebrated his 200th birthday yesterday. From what I found, it looks like the more recent John Muench was a descendant of Conrad Muench, and I could find no connection to the other John Muench. Perhaps Timm could answer this question sometime.
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Yesterday, we ended by looking at John Muench’s military service during the US Civil War. As the war drew to a close, people began to look toward the future. In the age before automobiles, the distance between the Muench farm northwest of Perryville and Peace Lutheran in Friedenberg (with its church and school on Frankenberg Hill southeast of Perryville) was not an insubstantial journey to make each week, especially in inclement weather. It’s only natural that they wanted something a little closer to home. In 1866, John was among the 14 charter members of Immanuel Lutheran in Perryville, as originally told in a 1904 history of the congregation and later retold in the congregation’s centennial booklet:
The two congregations continued to share a pastor and a church register for the first several years after Immanuel was established. The record loss resulting from the 1942 parsonage fire at Peace Lutheran in Friedenberg means we can’t view baptism records for most of John and Rosina’s children. However, their last daughter, Anna Margaretha, was born after Immanuel called its own pastor and instituted its own register. Her baptism was recorded in the books of the new congregation, where John and Rosina remained members for the rest of their lives:
The biographical sketch noted John’s industriousness, making his $3,600 real and personal property valuation on the 1870 Census really stand out to me (increasing more than 70% from $2,100 the previous decade). Though the sketch only mentioned six of John and Rosina’s children, all seven were enumerated with them on their farm in Saline Township that year.
When their fifth child, Sophia, died of diphtheria just months later, her death record at Immanuel gave her age as only 5 years, 8 months, and 4 days.
Despite this loss, it’s no surprise the Muench family soon needed more living space for their six growing children. According to the Perryville Weekly Union, John “raised a neat log residence on his premises” in March 1875, which measured thirty-one feet long by twenty feet wide and a story and a half tall. Most families today couldn’t imagine 8 people cohabitating in little more than 620 square feet, not to mention having to visit the outhouse in winter!
Three more townships were established in Perry County in 1872, bringing the total up to the eight it is today. This placed their farm and their new cabin in Central Township for the 1876 Missouri State Census. One of my favorite aspects of Missouri’s state censuses is that agricultural activity was listed on the same sheet with the names and ages. This means you don’t have to track down a separate form to see someone’s livestock and harvests, like you do for the federal censuses.
Having 450 bushels of corn around was not without consequences. A playful narrative published in the Perryville Weekly Union reports that John found himself locked in battle with “a small regiment of mice” while transferring corn from a pen to his barn. In true Nutcracker fashion, he emerged the victor—having killed or wounded “the whole army of mice.” No word on whether a life-sized Mouse King was among the casualties, but the mice clearly picked the wrong barn that day.
“John P.” and “Rosanne” appeared once again in Central Township for the 1880 U.S. Census. Their older sons were helping on the farm, while the younger children were attending school. By then, their eldest daughter, Mary, who had married John Bergmann in 1877, was no longer living at home. Since Warren enjoys alliteration, he might put it this way: Mary, the magnificent maiden of these Muench and Meyer migrants who married in Missouri, had now met her Missouri mate, married, and moved away.
John and Rosine appear to have finally retired from farming about 1890. As they prepared to leave the farm for a house in Perryville, they held a public sale shortly before Christmas to liquidate some farm equipment and household items.
John and Rosine both died in 1897, just a few months apart, though one other death was recorded at Immanuel Lutheran in Perryville between them. John died of a stroke while Rosine succumbed to a heart attack. They were survived by six children.
Their obituaries were published in The Perry County Sun. John’s, in particular, bears a striking similarity to his 1888 sketch in Goodspeed’s, suggesting that their children—or whoever wrote the notices—may have drawn from it.
John and Rosina were buried beside one another at Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in Perryville. Along with their names, birth dates, and death dates, their respective gravestones are inscribed with the words “Father” and “Mother”.
The birth date inscribed on John’s gravestone matches the birth date shown on his baptism record (23 June 1825). However, mathematically-inclined readers may have noticed the birth date calculated by subtracting the age indicated on his church death record (71 years, 8 months, & 3 days) from his death date (28 February 1897) would have been two days later (25 June 1825). Such minor discrepancies are relatively common in 19th-century records. The baptism record is the more reliable birth date indicator because it was created at the time of his birth and isn’t prone to calculation errors. Over the years, several researchers have also conflated his name with that of his brother or his eldest son, assuming the “P” of “John P. Muench” stood for “Pancratz/Pancratius”. The records consistently debunk this assumption: his baptism and confirmation records in Germany, as well as the Baltimore passenger list and his children’s church records in Perryville, all point to “Paul/Paulus.”
As mentioned earlier, we don’t have his wife’s baptism record to compare her dates. As for her name, some researchers note that “Christina” and “Rosina” never appear together in the same record. Conspicuously, “Christina” also only appears in records created shortly after immigration by English-speakers who might have misinterpreted what they heard spoken in a strong German accent. Maybe she had both names, or maybe someone simply misheard. Regardless of some of the exact details, John and Rosina’s legacy lives on in Perry County, where many of their descendants remain. Some have their own migration stories, spreading out to cities in states across the country, while others—like me—have even found their way back to Germany.