I have written tons of posts about people named Vogel. You will read another one today, but it will document the story of a Vogel that has no connections to the other Vogel’s that have appeared on this blog. We only have today’s Vogel’s in our German Family Tree because we now have the Trinity, Friedheim records included in that document. Another reason I will be telling this Vogel story is because the main character would be celebrating his bicentennial birthday today.

Louis Vogel was born on March 3, 1826 in the Bavarian region of Germany. I am not able to give the names of his parents, and his later death certificate does not give us any help. According to a later census entry, Louis came to this country in 1848, but there is also evidence that he may have arrived in the 1850’s. There are several missing documents in today’s story, and a few of them are census entries that I failed to locate. Two of them were the 1850 and 1860 census entries for Louis. I did not find any documentation for him until he participated in the Civil War. The military record below might be the one for Louis, but the age on it does not correspond with his age, which would have been 35 in 1861. His later obituary would say that he had been a soldier during that war.

Now, we will take a look at the woman who would become Louis’s bride. Catharina Dorothea Puntmann was born on April 1, 1850, the daughter of Heinrich and Catharina (Kraemer) Puntmann. That means she was about 24 years younger than Louis Vogel. The name on her gravestone is Dorothy, so I will use that name. She was baptized at Trinity Lutheran Church in Friedheim. An image of her baptism record from that congregation’s records is shown here.

Dorothy is found in the 1860 census at the age of 10. Several of the Puntmann children had Catharine included in their name. For some unknown reason, Dorothy was called Christine in this entry. Her father was a farmer in the Apple Creek Township.

Louis Vogel married Dorothy Puntmann on December 11, 1866 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Freidheim. That means Dorothy was just 16 years old when she was married. The church record for this wedding is shown below. Louis is called Lui on this document.

I can also display two different civil marriage records from Cape Girardeau County for this pair.

According to our German Family Tree, this couple had 8 children, and all of them have baptism records in the Trinity, Friedheim church books. The 1870 census was another elusive one. I once again failed to find the Vogel family. The 1880 census for the Vogel’s is shown here. There were 6 children in the household, and Louis was a farmer in the Cinque Hommes Township. One of Dorothy’s brothers, William Puntmann, was helping Louis with the farming.

Dorothy Vogel did not make it to the next census we can view in 1900. An article was published in the Perry County Sun in 1891 that described the time when she and a servant girl were badly burned. This tragic event contributed to her death not much later after it occurred.

That event took place in July of 1891. Dorothy died in November of that year. An obituary was also printed in the Perry County Sun for Dorothy. It does not give a cause for her death.

Dorothy Vogel is buried in the Peace Lutheran Cemetery in Friedenberg.

Louis is found as a widower in the 1900 census. He was living with his daughter, Mathilde, who had married Frank Schulte. Frank was a farmer in the Cinque Hommes Township. I think it is possible that Frank was farming on Louis Vogel’s farm land.

The last census in which we find Louis is the one taken in 1910. He was still living with the Schulte’s.

You are about to be told that Louis died in 1914, but when the plat maps were produced in 1915, there was still a parcel of land with Louis’s name on it that was located near Biehle.

Louis Vogel died in 1914 at the age of 88. We can view his death certificate below. You can see that Frank Schulte is the informant on this document.

An obituary for Louis appeared in the Perry County Sun. I will display it in two clickable thumbnails.

Louis Vogel is buried in the Home Cemetery in Perryville. His gravestone recognizes his military service during the Civil War.

The Vogel family that has usually shown up on this blog originated in the Saxony region of Germany. Louis came from Bavaria. The surname, Vogel, is also a fairly common one found in Germany. I do not think there is any family relationship between Louis’s Vogel family and the one that entered Perry County in the 1850’s that settled near Frohna.