When my mother handed me all her notes from her years of pre-internet genealogy research back in 2011, I found mystery upon mystery which needed to be solved. Today, one of those mysteries finally came to a close.
The Mystery
Originally, I had two family trees, one for each of the Holzgrafe brothers from Germany living in Evansville, Indiana. Their relationsip as brothers was not proven, but only assumed. The older brother was called Henry August Holzgrafe and his wife was Carloine Baker. The younger brother was William Ferdinand and his wife was also Caroline Baker. One of William Ferdinand's sons was William Ferdinand.
The Investigation
The first thing that caught my attention was the name William Ferdinand. When I started, I tried finding both families in as many census records as possible. I could not find a William Ferdinand for the life of me! I could see the son William Ferdinand who went by Ferd later in life, but I couldn't see his father as a Ferdinand or Ferd. He was refered to a number of times as Fred though. Fred and Ferd look alike, but it's a different name. Eventually, I determined that his name was in fact Friedrich Wilhelm Holzgraefe.
I then turned to the next obvious mystery, Caroline Baker. This one stumped me for a while. How could both brothers be married to the same woman at the same time? It wasn't until I found both brothers on the same census page in 1860 that I realized, they were different women. Both Henry August and Friedrich Wilhelm had married women named Caroline. But which was the Baker?
I found a copy of the marriage record of Henry Holzgrafe to Caroline Baker in the notes my mother provided me. So, who was this other Caroline, the wife of Friedrich Wilhelm? After a ton of research on the matter, I found her maiden name to be Kahle, a family from the same town in Germany as Henry August and Friedrich Wilhelm.
But then something else didn't seem right. Baker? Really? That's not a very German name and all the records I found indicate that Caroline Baker-Holzgrafe was born in Germany. Additionally, I couldn't find any evidence of a Baker family to which Caroline might have belonged in Evansville. So, I looked at the marriage records of their children and found some more interesting information. Some of them listed Caroline's name as Caroline S. and others Caroline Schnake and others just Caroline. Schnake? Well, at least it's more German. In fact, when Henry August and Friedrich Wilhelm first arrive in Evansville, they start up a brick laying company with a Schnute. This might have been a misspelling of the name Schnake. After a little more research in Evansville and in Germany, I was convinced that Caroline Schnake married Henry August Holzgrafe, but where did Baker come from?
I put the matter to rest for a long time. My parents were kind enough to go on a trip for me to Evansville last summer and they brought me some useful information for my research. They tried helping with this mystery, but they were only able to bring back the marriage record of a Peter Baker to a Caroline Schnake, but they were married on the same day as Caroline Baker and Henry August, so it couldn't have been the same Caroline. In fact, I had stumbled upon this record before and had considered it, but ruled it out because of the date conflicts.
Well, today I thumbed through some old documents I have and found these two marriage records and looked at them carefully. They are both signed by the reverend A. Saupert of the Trinity Lutheran Chruch in Evansville, Indiana. The dates that are the most obvious are 9 september 1850, but then I read carefully. "Be it further remembered, that on this 9th day of September 1850, the following certificate was filled in my office..." This was only the date for when this document was filled out. I looked at the marriage of Peter Baker to Caroline Schnake and just after that statement it reads, "This certifices that I joined in marriage as husband and wife Peter Baker and Caroline Schnake on the 5th day of June 1850." Looking at the marriage record for Henry Holzgrafe and Caroline "Baker" it says the same thing, but with the date of the 5th day of September 1850. BAM!
The Solution
In summary, it was found that Marie Caroline Louise Schnake (birth name in Germany) immigrated to Evansville, Indiana with her family around 1845 where she met and married a man by the name of Peter Baker on 5 June 1850. Then, for whatever reason, the marriage didn't work out or Peter died, but Caroline felt to remarry to Henry August Holzgraefe. They were married on 5 September 1850, but when they went to get the marriage license, they were required to provide proof of her previous marriage which she must not have had. Therefore, on 9 September 1850, what must have been a very frustrating day, Caroline had A. Saupert fill out a certificate saying that he married her and Peter Baker back in June and then she had A. Saupert sign another certificate the same day stating that he had married her to Henry August Holzgrafe a few days earlier. Game. Set. Match!
I guess the only mystery left would be to learn more about this Peter Baker. Who was he, where did he come from, and what happened to him? Other then that, the Caroline Schnake-Baker-Holzgrafe mystery is officially closed!
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