I am not sharing this post because today is the birthday of one of the highlighted characters. I am not sharing it because it is the wedding anniversary for a married couple. I am sharing this post because a rather unusual event took place on September 1, 1850, making today the 175th “anniversary” of that occasion. In our German Family Tree, we find the following note attached to a girl named Concordia Rosine Wilhelmine Goenner.
“Note: A record in the Old Trinity Lutheran Church books says that in 1850, someone abandoned a baby that was about 8 months old on the terrace of the Lutheran College on the evening of 1 Sep 1850. The Goenners took that baby in and adopted her. She was named Concordia Rosine Wilhelmine Goenner.”
The attached post that was written back in 2017 tells much of the story of one of the first teachers at the Log Cabin College in Altenburg. His name was Johann Jacob Goenner. I will let you read that article for most of the details about Jacob’s story, but I am going to add some information that was not found in that post. In addition, I ended up with some new questions that I cannot answer.
First, let me say that the incident that occurred on September 1st in 1850 happened at an interesting time in the history of Concordia Seminary. After the Seminary moved to St. Louis in 1849, a new building was constructed and dedicated that year which was going to house that institution. The 1850 Seminary shown below was built near Holy Cross Lutheran Church, one of the early churches in the St. Louis area.
That was the property on which the abandoned baby was found. That baby was baptized 3 days later on September 4th. The record for that baptism is found in the books of Trinity Lutheran Church in St. Louis, the congregation where Rev. C.F.W. Walther was the pastor. I am displaying two images below of a translation of that baptism record. It does not include a birth date or the name of the mother.
I am thinking that this baby girl was given the name, Concordia, because she was found on the Concordia Seminary property. I also think that the middle name, Rosine, may have been given to her in recognition of Jacob’s first wife, Rosine (Winter) Goenner. I am not aware of a reason for the other name, Wilhelmine.
The note written at the end of this record says that the baby girl was found on the terrace of the Lutheran College and then taken in by Rector Mr. Goenner. I have to wonder if Jacob Goenner was the actual person who found the infant. Is it possible that one the the seminarians found the baby and handed it over to their teacher, Mr. Goenner? If that was the case, you can find a list of possible people who resided at the Seminary in this 1850 census entry. I have highlighted Jacob Goenner. By the way, Rev. C.F.W. Walther and his family which included 4 children is found on the bottom of the previous page of that year’s census. He was also living at location #597, so he must have been also living in the Seminary building.
Right below Jacob’s name in this entry is a 17 year-old female named Maria Lochner, among the names of so many young male seminarians. Family stories state that Maria was a maid for the Walther family. A fascinating story about Maria’s arrival in this country is told in the post, Mama Lochner. Two years after this census, Maria Lochner married Christoph Loeber, who was the pastor in Frohna.
I find the list of Concordia’s sponsors in the above baptism record to be rather interesting. There were 2 Buenger’s, one being Rev. J.F. Buenger and Emilie (Buenger) Walther, C.F.W.’s wife. Another sponsor was Maria Lochner. Another sponsor was Ferdinand Grosse, who can also be seen on the above census entry.
Here is where I will mention my first puzzling question. Jacob had married his second wife, Justine Noennig, in 1844, and she was still alive in 1850. Why was Jacob living at the Seminary without his wife being listed in the above entry?
I found the Goenner’s in the 1860 census, which, because Jacob died in 1864, would be the last one in which we find him. The Goenner’s were listed right below the Walther’s, and Jacob was called a professor at Concordia College. This time we do see Jacob’s wife, even though it looks like she is just called Mrs. Goenner.
This entry presents a few more questions. There is a 17 year-old female in the Goenner household whose name looks like J.W or J.M. Concordia, the abandoned child, would have been only 10 years old at this time. What happened to her? If a professor’s child had died, there must have been a death record in a Lutheran church’s books. They were living near Holy Cross at that time, so maybe that death record can be found in that congregation’s books. However, I looked in a book that contains lists of people whose records are found in their books, and I failed to find any other Goenner’s except for Jacob’s death record in 1864. By the way, Jacob Goenner is buried in the Concordia Cemetery in St. Louis. He has a site on Findagrave.com but no gravestone photo. His Findagrave site includes this information about him.
Another question is who was the 17 year-old girl in this 1860 census that was in the Goenner household. And what happened to her? I also failed to find any other Goenner baptism records in the Holy Cross book.
While I’m at it, let me point out another problem. I was not able to find Justine Goenner in the 1870 census. Where was she in 1870? If we could see the 1870 census entry, it possibly might have included the mysterious child found in the 1860 census. We know that Justine died in 1879 in Altenburg and was buried in the Trinity Lutheran Cemetery. However, there is no gravestone photo for her. I went to the cemetery this morning in hopes of finding Justine’s gravestone. The stone on the left in the photo below is the one for a person who is listed 2 records before Justine’s in the Trinity death records. I figure that the second site to the right of that one is likely where Justine was buried, but, as you can see, that gravestone is missing.
Delving into this story enabled me to find a few more documents that provided information pertinent to the discovery of an abandoned baby back in 1850. However, in the process, it ended up presenting me with the possibility that this Goenner couple may have had another child (perhaps another adopted one) other than the one discovered on the terrace of Concordia Seminary on September 1st. So often when doing family research, one answered question leads to several unanswered questions.