Joseph Magnus Kleger's Birthplace is Found!!

     But I'm not going to tell you where just yet, I'm going to make you hungry for it. I have been looking for his birthplace and parents for 35 years - off and on of course - but 35 years, so I'm going to make you wait just a little bit longer too!

     First I want to explore some ideas of why Joseph M.'s history was so hard for me to find.

One -
     My grandfather, Frank August Kleager, died in 1929 at age 33, when my father, Clyde Louis Kleager, was only 11.  At the time of Frank's death, he and his wife Sophie were living in Havelock, Lancaster County, Nebraska.  In the same county were two other Kleager families - Frank's brothers Joseph William Kleager and Edward Louis Kleager.  All 3 families had moved to Nebraska from their birthplace in  Franklin County, Missouri in the previous decade.
     In addition to two Kleager families, living in the same county were Sophie's parents; Louis Henry and Minnie Drewel, and her youngest brother Elmer Drewel.  She had family near by.
     But, within two years of my grandfather's death, my grandmother, Sophie (who later called herself "Eleanor") Kleager moved with her five young boys 100 miles farther west of Havelock to a farm near Alda, in Hall County, Nebraska.  She distanced herself farther from family.
     Over the years I have tried to ask my father why he thinks his mother moved away from both her own family, and her dead husband's family.  Clyde wrote in 1997: "A major part of mother's thought was a passion to keep her family together.  Her fear was that someone or group would decide that she couldn't cope with doing this financially or otherwise.  She felt that the first cue of failure would be to ask for assistance from anyone, and relatives seemed to be the most suspect in this regard."
   My dad, Clyde, only remembers meeting his grandmother Lesetta Mincemeyer Kleager a few times when she came to Nebraska.  Sophie and her boys were too poor to do anything as extravagant as going back to Missouri - where she grew up also - and visit family.  His grandfather, Joseph Kleager, died before my father was born, a year before Frank and Sophie married and moved to Nebraska. So, just by moving to Nebraska they were distanced from the Kleager family in Missouri, and after Frank's death, Sophie moved herself farther, from even the Nebraska part of the Kleager family.
   As a result, the stories and history and ancestry of the Kleagers just didn't get passed on.  My father, a great story teller with a brilliant mind that can recall details well, knows very little of his father's life, let alone of his grand parents Kleager's lives.


Two -
   My great great grandfather, Joseph Magnus Kleger/Klager/Kleager/Kleager (yes, it was spelled that many ways in documents relating just to him) could not read or write.
   That had to be a handicap all his life.  He was the son of a "day laborer", and man who had no skill or occupation, who just worked where and when he could get it.  Joseph M. immigrated from Switzerland at the age of 30, alone, as far as I can tell.  He landed in New Orleans in October 1846, and was in St. Louis by November.  Perhaps he had distant relatives near Washington, Missouri where he first lived after arriving.
   He was poor, he was illiterate, and he was alone.
   Any document had to be written by some one else, the name "Joseph Kleger" written, and then around the "Joseph Kleger" was an "X his mark".  He left no records that he himself wrote.  He never read anything.  This was not the middle ages, this was between 1816 - 1885, and there were great thinkers and writers all over the world, and in Missouri - but he was left out of that world.
   I'm not certain he knew when his birthday was.   From what he said on the ship's manifest;  he was born in 1816.  From his U. S. Army enlistment; 1817.  His declaration to become a citizen of the U.S.; 1820.  From the 1850 and 1860 census; 1823.  Maybe he never learned to do math either.  Perhaps he was so impoverished as a child he had no access to education.
   I wonder if he ever even picked up any English, surrounded as he was by German speakers Missouri.
   He did not leave much of a trail.  Certainly no letters, journal entries or written documents.  Part of why he was so hard to find because he left nothing behind.
   When he died, without a will, in 1884, his processions (from probate packet) consisted of: "1 Ward robe, 1 Bed Stead, 1 feather bed and 1 lot of clothing".  He was owed a note for $200, but owed someone else $300.  $46.45 was owed for his medical bills, $20.00 for his coffin, $6.65 for a bill to L. H. Himburg General Merchandise and Agricultural Implements, and another bill for $1500.  He lies in an unmarked grave, and there seems to be no record of what cemetery.
   In his lifetime of 68 years he had 2 wives and 7 children, he owned and sold land, he was always listed as "farmer" in the census records.  He accomplished things.  He just did not pass down any legacy that I can find of his childhood, or even his adult life.

   So, it's been hard to learn much about Joseph Magnus Kleger's origins.  Now that you appreciate that ... there is more coming soon!

The many children of Friedrich Wilhelm Drewel

My great-great grandfather, Freidrich (Fredrick) Wilhelm Drewel had a lot of children!!

        His first wife was Maria Louisa Dierking, whom he married in 1863.
        They had:
            Fredrich Ernst Drewel in 1864
            Louisa Maria "Mary" Drewel in 1866
            Emilie Dorothea Caroline "Lena" Drewel in 1868
            Louis Henry Drewel in 1870 (my great grandfather)
            Edward Drewel in 1872
            Louise K. Drewel in 1875

        Maria died in May, 1875, only 8 days after Louise was born, so it had to be from some sort of complications of childbirth.  The 37-year-old widower, Freidrich, with 6 young children under the age of 10 must have looked around quickly for a new wife.  He found a neighbor and fellow church member.

        So on August 2nd, 1875, just 3 months after his wife's death, he married 19-year-old Catharina Wilhelmine "Mina" Rosendahl.  Shortly after their marriage, in December of 1875, baby Louise died at the age of 7-months-old.  Mina and Fred started having children less than a year after the baby's death.  
         They had:
             Ida Wilhelmine Drewel in 1876
             Heinrich Wilhelm "Billie" Drewel in 1879
             Dorothea Henrietta Sophie "Dora" Drewel in 1884
             Wilhelmine Caroline Hulda "Minnie" Drewel in 1887

          Tragedy struck again.

          Less than a month after baby Minnie's birth, his second wife died.  Now he was a widower with 9 living children, though the oldest was 23.  His wife Mina died in August, and by December 1887 he had found another neighbor and fellow church member.  This time he married a widow who was only 4 years younger than him, Charlotte Cathrine Wilhelmine Hotmar Knehans.

          However, she had 8 children of her own, plus at least 2 step-children from her now dead husband's first marriage!!
          Her children were:
             Maria Louisa Knehans born 1863
             Heinrich Wilhelm "Henry Knehans born 1865
             William Freidrich Knehans born 1867
             Louisa Sophia Knehans born 1869
             Wilhelmina Kathrine "Minnie" Knehans born 1871 (my great grandmother)
             Elizabeth "Lizzy" Knehans born 1872
             Caroline Elise Knehans born 1867
             Franz Louis Knehans born 1880
       

          I don't know how many of the 19 living children and step children that they had between them were combined into the same household.  I assume perhaps some of the older ones had moved out.  I'm also not sure about which house they moved into, if she got to keep her husband's house and farm.  Who knows, maybe they maintained 2 households and had older kids living in one.  If we had the 1890 Census (it was burned), it would help with sorting that out.

         BUT ...... the plot thickens!

         In 1891, just four years after Fred married Minnie, two of Fred's sons married two of Minnie's daughters:
              Louis Henry Drewel married Wilhelmina Kathrine "Minnie" Knehans on June 11th.
              Edward Drewel married Elizabeth "Lizzy" Knehans on February 6th.

         Louis Drewel and Minnie Knehans eventually had 9 children, including my grandmother Ella Elisabeth Sophia "Eleanor" Drewel (Kleager Wiese).

         Louis and Minnie's 9 children would have been "double cousins" to Edward and Lizzy's 8 children, and for any of them, visiting the grandparents would involve only going to one house!
           



 

Letter to a Son in World War II

This is a Memorial Day post!

My grandmother was Ella Elizabeth Sophia Drewel Kleager, and in her later years called herself "Eleanor".  She became a widow at the age of 35 in 1929 at the start of the Depression, with 5 boys aged 11, 11, 9, 7 and 5.

During World War II all FIVE of her sons were in the military at one time.  In August, 1945 she wrote to one of them (we don't know which one):

Kind of makes you think.