Shortly before Christmas 1864, my great-great-aunt Margarethe Walter said a tearful goodbye to her husband, Johann, certain she would never see him again. A Sheboygan County German immigrant farmer, Johann was forced to leave her and their baby daughter to join the Union Army during the Civil War. Margarethe’s premonition was spot on, but in a way she could not have imagined.
Johann’s infantry unit was charged with guarding supply trains. Constantly on the move, communication with loved ones was sporadic. They trained in Kansas, marched to Tennessee, then Alabama, Louisiana, and finally Green Lake, Texas. Though the war was winding down, they did see limited action. Fortunately, Johann was not wounded; however, most casualties were caused by disease, not gunfire. In August 1865, Johann was stricken. He lay near death, felled by sunstroke, thousands of miles from home.
Then suddenly his wife was there, conjured up in a delirious dream, holding Margaretha and giving him strict orders not to die. He rallied and was on his way to recovery when he got the letter. Posted months earlier, it was from his brother-in-law John George Holzschuh. Reading the contents, Johann collapsed with grief, struggling to absorb the news. Margarethe had died on June 19.
What happened was not explained, just that he was needed at home to attend to his farm and daughter. The letter did contain a bit of comfort. His daughter was living with Anna Maria and John George, my great-great-grandparents who had accepted that responsibility by being named Margaretha’s godparents at her baptism.
On Sept. 20, 1865, Johann was granted a 30-day furlough “on account of the death of his wife and helplessness of his child(ren).” Once back in Lima, he arranged for his daughter to continue staying with the Holzschuhs and for John George to run his farm. Even after that proved unnecessary as the war ended, Margaretha continued to live with John George and Anna Maria, who had just given birth to their eighth child.
The next April, Johann married Maria Schuessler. He and Maria had 11 children so obviously it was his first wife who had the infertility issues. This is where things get problematic. Johann’s family lineage is well documented, but his marriage to Margarethe is not included anywhere.
The only record of them having a child was the reference in his military record and his daughter’s baptismal certificate. She is not listed in the 1870 Census so she must have died by then. Indeed, Johann’s grandchildren always maintained that any children by his first marriage must have died young because they had always heard there were none.
There is a troubling something else. In Johann’s second family’s history, his descendants write that Johann and Margarethe were married in Germany and came to Wisconsin together with an eloping couple. The eloping part is correct; the bride-to-be was Johann’s sister. The rest cannot be true. There are copies of immigration papers in the Holzschuh family book that show Johann came in 1855 while Margarethe came with John George and Anna Maria in 1856. Documentation of their double wedding on June 29, 1856, is also included there.
How do we account for these competing stories? Did Johann’s and Maria’s children deliberately erase the first part of their father’s marital history? That can never be known, but what is certain is that Anna Maria opened her loving arms and heart to Margaretha. She stayed with her adopted family, and her untimely death must have hurt my great-great-grandmother as much as if she herself had given her life. I like to imagine Anna Maria using the iron pot to make comfort food to soothe her grieving family when the little girl died.
Like almost all women of her time, Anna Maria was no stranger to heartache. In 1861, she buried her sixth child, Katherine, who lived just a few weeks. I once asked Dad if I was named after Katherine because he affectionately called me Katrina if I had done something praiseworthy. He shook his head. My name was Kathleen because of a favorite song, “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” That was a pleasant thought until he explained that his Irish pals would sing it during their merrymaking when the whiskey and beer flowed freely.
As I write this, my thoughts turn to Anna Maria. I picture her clutching her prayer book as clods of dirt thud against tiny caskets. Was she beseeching God for this to be the last time she must deal with loss of a loved one cruelly ripped out of her life? If so, it’s a blessing she had no idea what anguish lay ahead.
(To be continued)
Kathleen Marsh is a lifelong educator, writer, and community advocate. She has published eight books, four on the history of Townsend, where she and husband Jon are happily retired on the beautiful Townsend Flowage.
Categories
