Fegel Facts

Well, I'm back from my vacation to Brazil and I'm catching up in all my classes of my last semester here at BYU and I still find time to do some research on the side. I wasn't expecting to find anything, but I was fortunate enough to stumble upon something quite substantial for the Fegel branch of the family.

As a review, Christian Friedrich Fegel (1822-1865) was born in Hille very close to Haddenhausen where Albert (1796-1846), son of Ernst Holzgraefe (1764-1805), had moved to begin his family. Christian married Albert's oldest daughter, Anne Catharine Margrethe Ilsabein (1819-1847) and together they had a daughter named Emilie Ottilie Fegel. His wife died in 1847 and so he remarried to her younger sister, Justine Wilhelmine Caroline (1821-...spoiler alert! 1856). The two of them made their way to Evansville, but Emilie died at sea. They lived near my third great-grandfather there in Evansville and had many children...or so I thought...

I had previously believed that together Wilhelmine and Christian had seven children. Today, as I was randomly searching the internet for more information about the Fegel family, I stumbled upon this website which suggested something entirely different. This shows the marriage dates for three Fegels and their wives. A father, son and grandson. The last two coincided with what I had, but the first, was very different. The record was for the marriage of Christian Fegel to W. Ellermeyer on 6 March 1856. This didn't make sense initially. Christian would have been married to Wilhelmine Holzgraefe still. The more I looked at it, the more it didn't make sense.

Then I stepped back and looked at all the census records over the years which had Wilhelmine in them. I found that in 1850 she was 30, in 1860 she was 30 and in 1880 she was 53 (still haven't found the family in 1870). Now, census records are by no means a primary source and can be very inaccurate, but 10 years? That throws up a red flag. How can she be 30 years old in 1850 and 1860? Now that I was looking at it again, I remembered how weird that was when I first linked these records to her...then it all made sense.

Christian and Wilhelmine Holzgraefe were married in Germany, came to Evansville where they had two children after which Wilhelmeine died around 1856 (no proof of that yet). Then Christian married a third time to a Wilhelmine Ellermeyer in 1856 and they had five more children thus continuing the Fegel line, but not the Holzgraefe line.

So, what does this mean? It means that there are no living Holzgraefe descendants from the Fegel branch of the family as the one son of Christian who married and had children was the son of Wilhelmine Ellermeyer, not Wilhelmine Holzgraefe. This also leaves a few more questions to answer like, who is Wilhelmine Ellermeyer? and how/when did Wilhelmine Holzgraefe die? and where is she buried?