The German Family Tree directed me to Rev. Johannes Rennicke for today’s tale. Actually, I have previously written a post about Rev. Rennicke that was titled, Yet Another Jahn Marriage. However, that post was written during the first year of this blog and did not contain many documents. I thought I would expand on his story today. I was attracted to John today because the GFT says that he was born 200 years ago. I know why the GFT gives that date of birth. It is mainly because that is the birthday etched in his gravestone. However, I will also show you a document that gives a man named Johannes Friedrich Christian Rennicke as being born on a different day. That document is displayed below. It says that this baby was born on January 5, 1826 and baptized at the Kyritz parish located in Brandenburg, Germany. This image says that John’s parents were Christian and Henrietta (Krause) Rennicke.

I am not sure when John made his way to the United States. However, I will display his 1900 census entry later in this post, and it says that his year of immigration was 1856. I have placed an enlarged image of that date below. I think it may be the year, 1850. After all, John was married in America in 1851.

One thing we do know is that at about 1850, John Rennicke was the pastor at a church located in St. Clair County, Illinois.

Now, we will look at the woman who would become Pastor Rennicke’s bride. Her name was Sophia Jahn, who was born on July 17, 1830. Sophia was the daughter of Gottfried and Dorothea (Schmidt) Jahn. She was born in Frankenau, Germany. We can view her baptism record below from the parish in Frankenau.

The Jahn family was part of the Gesellschaft that arrived in Perry County in 1839. She and her family made the voyage across the Atlantic aboard the ship, Copernicus. The Jahn family names are listed on the passenger list for that ship below.

We find Sophia in the 1850 census prior to her getting married. She was 20 years old, and her father was a shoemaker in the Brazeau Township.

The big mystery in this story is how a pastor in St. Clair County, Illinois managed to get acquainted with a shoemaker’s daughter in Altenburg, Missouri. I do have a theory that may explain this. One of the young men who came to Perry County as part of the Gesellschaft in 1839 was a pastoral candidate named Georg Schieferdecker. He also came to this country aboard the ship, Copernicus. Not long after arriving in America, Georg became a pastor and in the 1840’s was serving as a pastor in Millstadt, Illinois. Millstadt is located right near the border between the St. Clair County and Monroe County. He may have gotten to know Pastor Rennicke. Then in late 1849, Pastor Schieferdecker moved to Altenburg to become the second pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church. Perhaps Rev. Schieferdecker played matchmaker and introduced Rev. Rennicke to Sophia Jahn.

Rev. John Rennicke married Sophia Jahn at Trinity, Altenburg on March 22, 1851. The marriage record for this event is shown here. This record says that John was a pastor in St. Clair County.

It appears that the Rennicke’s had 5 children that were born in Illinois. Then, in 1858, Rev. John Rennicke accepted the call to serve Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown as their second pastor after Rev. Carl Gruber died. We find the Rennicke’s in the 1860 census living in the Cinque Hommes Township with 5 children. All 5 of the children were said to be born in Illinois. John was called an Evangelical Lutheran minister.

Two more Rennicke children have baptism records in the books of Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown. Pastor Rennicke served the church in Uniontown until 1864. When the 1870 census was taken, the Rennicke’s were living in Granville, Wisconsin. Granville is basically a suburb of Milwaukee nowadays. There were 9 children in the Rennicke household.

In the 1880 census, the Rennicke family was living in Morrison, Wisconsin where John was still called a minister. I think Rev. Rennicke was the pastor of Zion Lutheran Church, which is given the address of Wayside, Wisconsin. There were just 2 children still living with their parents.

The last census in which we find both John and Sophia is the one taken in 1900. They were living in the household of their daughter, Christina, who had married Phillip Schatz. Phillip was a blacksmith, and John was called a retired clergyman.

Later in their lives, after John had a stroke, this photo was taken.

I am also able to display these two photos of John and Sophia.

Not long after the above census entry was taken, Rev. Rennicke died in July of 1900. He was 74 years old when he died. In the 1910 census, Sophia is called a widow and was living with a different daughter, Elizabeth, who had married George Frosch. George was a merchant at a general store in Morrison.

Sophia Rennicke died in 1915 at the age of 84. Rev. John and Elizabeth Rennicke are buried in the Zion Lutheran Cemetery in Wayside, Wisconsin. You can see that Rev. John Rennicke’s gravestone definitely says that he was born on January 24th.

I think this story gives us a set of circumstances in which a man who happens to be a Lutheran pastor comes to Perry County to be married to an Altenburg girl, and then later the Altenburg girl might have been an influence in getting her husband a call back to Perry County. God works in wondrous ways.

One more interesting side note: Rev. Gotthilf Loeber, the son of Rev. Gotthold Loeber, died in Wayside, Wisconsin.

Tomorrow, assuming the winter storm does not take out our power, you will have the opportunity to read a post written by our guest blogger, Fred Eggers.