Today is a travel day for my wife and me. We head back to Altenburg after a wild weekend just outside Chicago that gave us the opportunity to watch some grandkids play sports. Grandma and Grumps have their buttons popping with pride because all three games we watched ended up in victories, with the grandkids being important contributors.
I am pulling up an old post that was written on this date five years ago. It told the story of a Schmidt groom who married a Mueller bride. When the German immigrants arrived in Perry County in 1839, there were 4 different clans of Schmidt’s in the group, along with 4 different clans of Mueller’s. So, it was going to be quite likely that there would be Schmidt’s who would marry Mueller’s along the way. As this post points out, my grandparents were a couple made up of a Schmidt groom and a Mueller bride.
When this story was written 5 years ago, the bride, Sarah Mueller was celebrating her 140th birthday, so this time around, she would be celebrating her 145th birthday. And my grandmother, Bertha Mueller, was Sarah’s sister. Sarah managed to find her Schmidt husband in one of the other Schmidt clans, one who actually came from two different Schmidt clans because he was the son of a Schmidt/Schmidt marriage.
I did not take the time to search for additional documents to add to this story, but I did manage to locate 2 photos that have never shown up on this blog before. First, here is a photo that supposedly shows Ernst G.L. and Sarah Schmidt at a later time in their lives. There is a question mark in the caption, so I suppose there is some doubt that this pair is actually them.
The second photo that I discovered was this one showing a bunch of siblings who were part of the Schmidt/Schmidt marriage. It includes the famous Schmidt twins, Emmanuel and Arthur, who married their wives on the same day. Also in the picture is their sister, Agnes, who never married, but lived under the same roof with her twin brothers and both of their families. The caption identifies which one in the photo is Ernst G.L. Schmidt. Quite a few posts have been written about the characters in this photo.
Included in the attached post are some photos taken during the construction of our South Gallery, which was taking place during the “COVID Days” of 2020. Right now, we have an art collection on display made up of pieces of art produced by various people who are connected to our area’s history. There are even a few included in the display produced by some Schmdt’s. The South Gallery has become a great place to display exhibits which are hung on walls.
The photo of Great Uncle Ernst and Great Aunt Sarah appears to me to be authentic, I believe it was taken in front of the house that Ron&Arles Schmidt lived in before they built the current house on the same location.