Timm Yamnitz is once again the author today’s post, which is a continuation of the one that was published yesterday.

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We left off yesterday with the death of Augusta’s first husband, Christian Haupt. Like him, her second husband was also named Christian Haupt and he was also born in Sudheim, Kingdom of Hanover, where he was baptized by the pastor of the local Lutheran Church. However, he was born nearly a decade later on 1 Jan 1835 and baptized as “Heinrich Christian Friedrich Haupt”, third son and fourth child of tailor Johann ‘Justus’ Christian Haupt and his wife, Anne Dorothee Marie ‘Elisabeth’ née Jäger. As one might expect with a January 1st birthday, his was the first baptism recorded in the parish for the year. He and yesterday’s Christian Haupt were probably 2nd, 3rd, or 4th cousins, but I didn’t take time to investigate the exact relationship.

I was unable to determine exactly when or where today’s Christian Haupt arrived in the US, though it was likely also in New Orleans sometime before 1860. Like yesterday’s Christian Haupt, I believe he was also enumerated as “John Haupt” in the 1860 US Census. He was living in the household of “John Curre” [Kurre] in Apple Creek Township and working as a farm laborer.

During the US Civil War, Christian (called “John” here) first enlisted in the 4th Missouri Cavalry regiment, was transferred to the 5th, and then discharged after suffering for consumption. Since “Johann” was not one of the names on his baptism record, it’s easy to wonder how he came to be called “John”. As if the parallels between him and Augusta’s first husband weren’t strong enough, he also later enlisted in the 2nd Missouri Light Artillery Regiment, where he was the bugler for Company A. I wonder if he was with them in Little Rock when the first Christian died. (click the thumbnail to view the full size image)

This brings us up to Augusta’s marriage to her second Christian Haupt at Trinity Lutheran Church in Cape Girardeau, where “Heinrich Christian Haupt” and widow “Johanna Sophie Wilhelmine Augusta Haupt” were married on 29 Mar 1866. The record indicates they were not members of the congregation (“Nicht z[ur] G[emeinde] gehörig”).

Rev. Riedel probably knew the couple from Trinity Lutheran Church in Friedheim, where he had previously served as pastor. While the church marriage record above indicates he recorded it with the county on May 5th, the return filed with the county clerk was actually dated two days later.

Shortly after their marriage, they filed a nuptial agreement with the county recorder declaring that Augusta’s children from her first marriage would be treated as full lawful heirs of her new husband, entitled to inherit shares equal to that of any children born to second marriage. This is particularly notable given the typical marriage and inheritance customs of the day.

The children it identifies were also identified as dependents in her first husband’s pension file. If I’m correctly interpreting the annotations on the left, it indicates an application was submitted in St. Louis on their behalf on 30 Mar 1866 (the day after Augusta’s second marriage). The dates written after each child’s name appear to align roughly with their respective 18th birthdays (when they would no longer be eligible for support). Payments were to commence on 25 Jul 1866. Augusta’s second Christian is listed on the pension card on the right as the guardian (“Gdn.”) of her first Christian’s minor children.

The baptism of the first child born to Augusta’s new marriage, Sophia Wilhelmine Charlotte ‘Auguste’, was once again recorded in the Sudheim portion of the church register at Friedheim. If one didn’t know Augusta’s first husband had died and she had subsequently remarried a man by the same name, it would be easy to assume they were the same person.

Their growing family appeared together on the 1868 Missouri State Census. For whatever reason, infant Mathilde appears to have been called “Katie” in this enumeration.

Because of a pastoral vacancy at Friedheim, their next daughter, Caroline ‘Mathilde’ Amalie, wasn’t baptized until February 1869, when their former pastor, Rev. Friedrich Wilhelm John, was back visiting in the Sudheim area, by which time Mathilde was just a few weeks shy of her first birthday. For this reason, her baptism was recorded both in the Friedheim church register and in the register at his new congregation, Eisleben Lutheran in Fornfelt, a village in northern Scott County, Missouri that was later consolidated into Scott City.

Another daughter, Caroline ‘Amalia’, was born the following September and baptized at Sudheim in February 1870.

For the US Census that July, Christian’s household was flanked by two other Haupt households. It seems likely that the three were related but I was unable to determine the exact nature. The last young man was marked as both “Dumb” (mute) and “Insane”.

A small Haupt family mystery is hinted at in the pages of A Belated Census of Earliest Settlers of Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, which is essentially a directory of gravestones at rural cemeteries in and around Cape Girardeau County, compiled by Rev. William J. Gammon and published in 1958. The name and age at death for “Henry W. Haupt” seems to be a match for Augusta’s eldest son, whose baptism record we saw yesterday. The numbers beside each entry on the left refer to Gammon’s code for the cemetery where the gravestone was found. Nearly all of the Haupt family burials were found at the Lutheran church cemeteries in either Kurreville or Egypt Mills. Why then was Henry buried at cemetery 64d, which Gammon’s directory called the Martin Cemetery, and why wasn’t his death recorded in the church register?

Sadly, circumstances in which one family member was excluded from Lutheran cemeteries often point to suicide. Even so, it’s curious that he was buried on Martin land instead of Haupt land. In the baptism records shown above for Henry’s younger half-sisters, Mathilde and Amalia, both had sponsors with the surname Martin. In 1889, Mathilde would even go on to marry Johann ‘August’ Martin, whose parents were the aforementioned baptism sponsors. A Cape Girardeau County plat map from 1930 also appears to show “J.A.” and/or “A.J.” Martin owning land along County Road 471 southeast of Kurreville, which seems consistent with the location indicated by Gammon’s driving directions for cemetery 64d.

Well, that’s all for today. Special thanks go to Barbara Theiss and the other friendly staff members at Trinity Lutheran Church in Cape Girardeau for their assistance this week in obtaining an image of the 1866 church marriage record pictured above. Tomorrow, we’ll finally wrap up this Hauptidentitätsverschmelzung with Part 3.