Two days ago, I wrote the story of an Oehlert couple who had two sets of twins. Yesterday, we had some visitors who live in St. Louis whose grandparents also had two sets of twins…the Poppitz Pairs. I have decided to take a day off from researching today for a few reasons, one of them being that our museum is without a director since Denise Hellwege is no longer with us. She had gotten into the habit of writing posts for this blog on Fridays, thus giving me a day off once a week. I also got into the habit of having a day off each week. I figure I should continue to have days off every once in a while, so I am sharing the original story of the Poppitz twins, with a few additional documents that were not included in the story when it was first published.
The Septeowski siblings who visited yesterday were the children of Mildred Poppitz, who was in the first set of twins to be born to Ernst and Mallinda (Riske) Poppitz. It was a boy/girl set of twins. They were born on April 1, 1921. The children of this Poppitz couple were all baptized at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg. The baptism records for Marvin and Mildred Poppitz are pictured here.
Four years later, the Poppitz parents had a pair of twin girls that were born on September 2, 1925. Their baptism record are shown here.
Marvin and Mildred were confirmed in 1934. Back in those days, pastors at Trinity would usually list the male confirmands before the females, so Marvin and Mildred are not found right next to each other in this image.
Perhaps the Septeowski siblings are not aware that their mother’s confirmation verse was Psalm 143:10. In fact, her twin brother, Marvin, was assigned the same verse.
“Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground.” Ps. 143:10
The twin Poppitz girls were confirmed in 1939. We see Violet and Viola listed right next to each other in their confirmation records below.
Violet and Viola were also assigned the same confirmation verse. I am thinking that Rev. Adolph Vogel may have done that whenever he had twins in his confirmation classes. It doesn’t look like it, but I think their confirmation verse was Isaiah 43:1. I think the portion of that verse given to them is shown below.
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine.” Isaiah 43:1(b)
Mildred Poppitz married Aloysius Septeowski on June 12, 1948. I asked the Septeowkski siblings yesterday where their parents were married, and they said they were married in St. Louis, but were not able to identify the church where that wedding took place. I have located a St. Louis marriage record for Mildred and Aloysius, but I, too, failed to identify which church that the pastor listed on this form served. Perhaps one of our readers could help us identify the church for us.
I must confess that, although I enjoyed providing a tour for the Septeowski siblings yesterday, I probably enjoyed even more reminiscing with Dale Septeowski about our memories of playing soccer together for Lutheran High School North. I will close today with this photo we had taken yesterday of Dale and Dawn Septeowski (on the right) and Gerry and Karen (Septeowski) Hilkenbaumer (on the left). Dale spent much of his career as a professor of psychology at Concordia College, Chicago (although Dale attended that school back in the days when it was called Concordia Teachers College, River Forest). We hope to see these folks back in Altenburg again someday.
