Broemmelsieck Family History
The Broemmelsieck family is related to our Landwehr family through the marriage of Carrie Broemmelsick to Jule Landwehr, youngest son of Fritz Landwehr, in 1903. Carrie Brommelsick was a daughter of Casper Heinrich 'Henry' Broemmelsieck, and a granddaughter of Johann August 'August' Broemmelsieck. August Broemmelsieck was a son of Heinrich Mathias Broemmelsieck, a farmer, and Anna Maria Elisabeth Brockmann (see :figref refid=cbrom.).
According to his obituary, August Broemmelsieck was born in the village of Berghausen, Prussia, on January 1, 1803. Berghausen was located only eleven miles due west of Joellenbeck (see location #5 on :figref refid=minden.).
On September 30, 1833, August was married at Borgholzhausen (two miles northeast of Berghausen) to Franziske Charlotte Voss, daughter of Johann Christoph Voss and Catharine Ilsabein Stricker. Franziske was born at #45 Hoerste on January 13, 1809, and was baptized four days later in the Evangelical Lutheran Church at Hoerste. The village of Hoerste was located less than five miles south of Borgholzhausen (see location #6 on :figref refid=minden.).
When August and Franziske were married in 1833, August was described in the record of their marriage as an "estate leaser by inheritance". Since both August's parents and Franziske's parents died prior to their marriage, it would appear that August inherited the lease-rights from his father to a farmstead at Holzfelde.
Henry and Minnie Broemmelsieck, the first two children born to August and Franziske, were born in the village of Holzfelde (located about three miles southwest of Borgholzhausen) in 1835 and 1837. Shortly thereafter, in 1839, August Broemmelsieck emigrated with his wife and two young children to America, where he settled down as a pioneer farmer south of Berger, in Franklin County, Missouri.
As new German immigrants arrived in America, those already here often helped the new arrivals get established. The Broemmelsieck family was no exception. A brief biography of the Jurgen Heinrich Alberswerth family, who immigrated to Franklin County from Dissen, Prussia in 1839, notes that five members of the Alberswerth family spent their first winter at the August Broemmelsieck farm.
The August Broemmelsieck family were probably "squatters", living on Government land, for their first two or three years in Franklin County. But America was trying to settle the new states west of the Mississippi River. To make the proposition more enticing, Congress passed an act in 1820 that made land available to individual settlers for $1.25 an acre. Under the terms of that 1820 land ordinance, August purchased his first forty acres of American farmland from the U.S. Government on September 20, 1841, at a price of $1.25 per acre. This parcel of land was located about two miles south and one-half mile west of the village of Berger Station (now called Berger), in northwest Franklin County (see :figref refid=warren.).
The August Broemmelsieck family added to their landholdings on February 16, 1844, when they purchased a second forty-acre parcel of land from the U.S. Government in the name of August's oldest son, Henry Broemmelsieck. This forty acres was located immediately north of the forty acres that August bought in 1841. On the map provided by :figref refid=mbrom., these first two land purchases appear as the G. F. Dieterle farm in the southeast corner of Section 15. Today, this land is located immediately southwest of the point where Route Z, coming south from Berger, intersects with Highway 100. Henry Broemmelsieck was not quite nine years old when this second land purchase was completed, raising questions about August's motivation for purchasing the land in the name of his son.
:fig id=cbrom frame=box depth='6.1i'.
:figcap.Broemmelsieck family chart
:figdesc.The ancestry of Carrie (Brommelsick) Landwehr
:efig.
When the Broemmelsieck family first settled in northwest Franklin County, there were no German Protestant churches in the area. The first settlers in the nearby German village of Hermann had arrived only one or two years before the Broemmelsieck family, and the first church would not be erected in Hermann until 1844. In 1842, however, the first Quarterly Conference of early Methodism in the area was held in an old rock house three miles southeast of Hermann, or about three miles northwest of the Broemmelsieck farm. And, in 1844, a congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized as the Meyer's Church, and began meeting only two miles south of the Broemmelsieck farm (on the map provided as :figref refid=mbrom., the Meyer's Church can be located on the C. Weber farm in Section 26).
Then, in March of 1845, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States purchased one and one-half acres of land from August and Franziske. The rectangular plot of land, which measured ten rods by fourteen rods in size, was located along the southern edge, and forty rods west of the southeast corner, of the forty acres that August had purchased in 1841. Today, this land lies about 220 yards west of the Spreckelmeyer Road, and one-half mile south of Highway 100.
The land, which August and Franziske sold to the church for $1.50, was acquired by the church for the purpose of erecting a dwelling house for the Methodist Episcopal preacher for the Hermann Mission. The provisions of the deed included the priviledge of obtaining water from the spring on the forty-acre tract from which the land was taken. Meetings of the Berger Station congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church were held at this parsonage until their first church was erected in 1851. While abandoned many years ago, the foundation of this early church and its cemetery can still be found, hidden from view in a grove of trees some distance from the nearest road.
The construction of a Methodist parsonage so close to the Broemmelsieck home must have been a joyous event for August and his family. In fact, August may have been instrumental in the selection of the site. While raised in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, the Broemmelsieck family became stalwart supporters of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. August and his family were not only active in the activities of this German Protestant church--two of August's three daughters later married Methodist ministers.
Evidence of the strength of August Broemmelsieck's religious faith is abundant. For example, his faith had a significant effect on Heinrich Ellerbeck, a guest at the Broemmelsieck homestead in 1845. The relationship between August and Heinrich Ellerbeck is not quite clear. One of August Broemmelsieck's sisters, Catharine Heinriette Broemmelsieck, married a Johann Heinrich Ellerbeck at Borgholzhausen, Prussia in April of 1832, so there was a family tie between the Broemmelsieck and Ellerbeck families. However, Catharine Heinriette (Broemmelsieck) Ellerbeck's husband was about fourteen years older than the Heinrich Ellerbeck who was a guest of the Broemmelsieck family, and her sons were younger than the guest. The guest referred to August as "uncle", so perhaps he was married to another sister of August Broemmelsieck.
A brief autobiography of Heinrich Ellerbeck was published in Jubilaeumsbuch der St. Louis Deutschen Konferenz (The Jubilee Book of the St. Louis German Conference) about 1903. In that autobiography, Heinrich related that he was born in 1818 in Holzfelde, the village where August and Franziske Broemmelsieck lived before they emigrated to America. He wrote that he had a desire to leave his Fatherland and go to America:
"since the emigration of my uncle in 1839. After a journey of 56 days, our ship docked in the harbor at New Orleans, La., and from there I came to St. Louis, Mo., after a 17 day journey up the Mississippi. The month of January, 1845, found me living with my uncle, Broemelsick, about 8 miles from Herman, Mo., with whom I was happy. In his home a breath of Christianity was blown to me. Special stress was laid on the fact that one could be certain of his salvation; this particularly appealed to me and made a good impression on me. At a Lord's Supper, led by the brothers L. S. Jacoby and Karl Koeneke, I heard my first German sermon in America, which made a deep impression on me. I joined the church and began to seek God night and day."
:fig id=mbrom frame=box depth=8i.
:figcap.Map of area south of Berger
:figdesc.From Atlas Map of Franklin County, Missouri, published in
1878
:efig.
Heinrich Ellerbeck went on to become one of the pioneer ministers of the St. Louis German Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
On February 22, 1848, August Broemmelsieck bought another forty acres of land from the U. S. Government. This tract was located immediately west of the forty acres August purchased in 1841.
On August 11, 1850, August purchased 3/4 acre of land from Frederick and Charlotte Spreckelmeyer for $5.00. This small parcel of land was located in the northeast corner of Section 22, just south of the southeast corner of the forty acres that August purchased in 1841. Perhaps August and Franziske decided to build a home on this site.
After their arrival in Franklin County, August and Franziske Broemmelsieck had three more children. Lotte was born about 1839 or 1840, Ann in 1845, and William in 1852.
The first of August Broemmelsieck's children was apparently married in May of 1855, when Minnie Broemmelsieck married Heinrich Brune. Minnie was August's eldest daughter, not quite eighteen years of age. We believe that Heinrich Brune, her new husband, was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
August lost another daughter to marriage four years later, when Lotte Broemmelsieck married Friedrich Femmer in November of 1859. It is significant that their Franklin County marriage record lists Friedrich Femmer's residence as "Wyandotte in the Territory of Kansas". The town known as Wyandotte, Kansas in 1859 is today known as Kansas City, Kansas. As early as 1818, the Federal government had made the surrounding area a reservation for the Delaware Indians. The Wyandot Indians purchased the land from the Delaware in 1843. They laid out a community and named it Wyandot City. During the 1850's, white settlers began to move to Wyandot City, and they soon outnumbered the Indians. The whites renamed the community Wyandotte.
Less than three weeks after Lotte was married, Henry Broemmelsieck, her older brother, was married in December of 1859. Henry married Mrs. Mena (Heidbreder) Schaefer, a young widow. There is no indication that Henry purchased any additional land, so we may assume that he and his bride started their married life on the August Broemmelsieck farm.
Only four months later, on April 21, 1860, August and Franziske Broemmelsieck, and Henry Broemmelsieck and his new bride, Mena, sold their Franklin County farm. The land they sold consisted of the eighty acres that they purchased in 1841 and 1844 (less the one and one-half acres earlier sold to the Methodist Episcopal Church), plus the 3/4 acre purchased in 1850, plus an additional 40 acres located in the northwest corner of Section 23 (directly southeast of the 40 acres purchased in 1841). Gottlieb Dieterle purchased the land from August and Henry for $1600.
August and Henry sold their Franklin County farm in preparation for an important event in the history of the Broemmelsieck family. In the spring of 1860, August and Henry left Franklin County, where they had lived for over twenty years, and moved their families two hundred miles west, into the Kansas Territory.
The Kansas Territory, in 1860, was known as "bleeding Kansas". In the 1850's, Kansas had become the symbol of the nationwide struggle over slavery. In Congress, Northerners and Southerners clashed over the question of whether new states and territories would permit slavery. In 1854, Congress had found a way to create new territiories and avoid the issue of slavery. The answer was popular sovereignty, also known as squatter sovereignty. The settlers, sometimes called squatters, in each territory would decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Under this plan, Congress created the Kansas Territory in May of 1854.
Soon settlers from both North and South were streaming into Kansas, aided by groups who wanted to influence the decision on slavery. In the elections of 1855, many citizens of the slave state of Missouri crossed the border and voted in Kansas. Pro-slavery candidates won control of the territorial legislature, and passed many pro-slavery laws.
Violence broke out, particularly in the area close to the Missouri border. More than fifty-five persons died in the battles between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. The violence in "bleeding Kansas" over the slavery issue attracted attention throughout the United States. Finally, the anti-slavery forces, or Free Staters, gained control of the legislature and repealed the pro-slavery laws. A constitution forbidding slavery was written and approved, and the voters asked Congress for statehood. But many Free Staters had joined the Republican party, and Southern Democrats in Congress would not vote to admit a new Republican state.
The Broemmelsick family, then, moved right into the heart of "bleeding Kansas". The reason for their move is difficult to deduce. August was fifty-five years old, and had an established farm in Franklin County, where he and his family had made their home for over twenty years. Typically, the German immigrant farmer settled in an area, expanded his landholdings in a prudent manner, and then divided his land among his sons when he retired from the land. Perhaps August wanted to move his family to be near his newly-married daughter, Lotte, and her husband. Perhaps August was not typical of the German farmers, and missed the challenges of the frontier, which had moved west into the Kansas Territory. Certainly, Frederich Femmer must have spoken to his father-in-law about the lure that the Kansas Territory held for him. Or, perhaps August was influenced by the political situation in Kansas.
Regardless of his reasons, August moved his family to the Kansas Territory in the spring of 1860. We believe that all of his children either moved into the Kansas Territory prior to August's move, or accompanied August and Franziske. The Broemmelsieck family settled on a forty-acre farm that August bought for $400 on May 22, 1860. The farm was located in Johnson County, about twenty-five miles west-southwest of Kansas City, and ten miles east of Lawrence, a Free State town partially burned by supporters of slavery only four years earlier. Then, in October, August expanded his forty-acre farm by acquisition of an additional 120 acres adjacent to the first forty acres. The additional 120 acres cost August $700.
The Broemmelsieck family arrived in Kansas only months before the outbreak of the Civil War. Kansas became the 34th state in January of 1861, after several southern states had left the Union. But not all of the Broemmelsieck family were happy with the move to Kansas. Henry Broemmelsieck and his wife Mena stayed a year or two, but then decided to return to Franklin County.
The August Broemmelsieck family continued to be very active in the Methodist Episcopal Church after their move to Kansas. Under the direction of the West German Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the church apparently began organizing in the Lawrence, Kansas area about 1858, two years before the Broemmelsiecks settled in the area. When the church purchased property in Lawrence on December 31, 1862, the list of seven trustees included the name of August Broemmelsieck, even though August and his family still lived ten miles east of Lawrence.
In Kansas, as in Missouri, no one was entirely safe from the dangers of the Civil War. While the major battles may have threatened only the young men in uniforms of blue and gray, surprise attacks from guerrilla bands were a threat to all citizens at any place, at any time. Henry Broemmelsieck may have escaped an early death by returning to Missouri when he did. And August Broemmelsieck just barely escaped with his life, when the Broemmelsieck family became bit players in one of the tragic events of the Civil War.
William Quantrill was the leader of a Confederate guerrilla band during the Civil War. Born in Ohio, he went to Kansas in 1857 and started farming. The next year, he rode west with a wagon train and became a gambler, then returned to Kansas in 1859 and taught school. He was accused of stealing cattle and horses and of killing several persons, but escaped arrest.
Soon after the start of the Civil War, in December of 1861, Quantrill organized a band of guerrilla troops. Within a few months, he became the most ferocious, and the most feared, of the Missouri guerrilla commanders. He led his men on raids against Kansas and Missouri farmers and townspeople who favored the Union. In raids across the Kansas line in 1862, he shot down scores of unarmed civilians and plundered and destroyed much property. His raid of Olathe, about eleven miles east of the Broemmelsieck farm, in August of 1862, was particularly bloody and destructive.
Quantrill's band was mustered into Confederate service in 1862, but continued to operate independently. Quantrill had lived in Lawrence, Kansas, in the 1850's, and was under indictment there for crimes of burglary, horse-thievery, and Negro-kidnapping. Lawrence was the capital of Kansas abolitionism, and the home of Jim Lane, a leader of the abolitionist cause. On August 21, 1863, Quantrill and his men committed their most infamous atrocity when they burned most of the town of Lawrence, Kansas, and killed about 150 people. Frank James, Jesse James' brother, rode with the band that day.
A book entitled Civil War on the Western Border describes Quantrill's approach to Lawrence, Kansas that fateful night. The following account begins after Quantrill and his three hundred horsemen crossed the Missouri border into Kansas in the early evening of August 20, 1863:
"Every man in Quantrill's force was a seasoned rider, skilled in getting the most out of his mount. The race ahead would test Quantrill's leadership of light horse. At first he ordered a swinging trot. Twelve miles across the border, when darkenss had fallen, Quantrill called a halt to graze the horses. Grass-fed animals must eat often. After an hour, the men were ordered to tighten saddle girths and mount. Riding through the sleeping village of Spring Hill (15 miles southeast of the Broemmelsieck farmstead), the column turned northwest, heading now for the first time straight toward Lawrence. At eleven o'clock they clattered into Gardner (eight miles from the Broemmelsieck homestead) and, shortly beyond, left the road for a northerly route across the prairie. Lawrence slept less than twenty-five miles away.
Quantrill counted the miles against the midnight hours and watched the stars. The crisis of his lifetime had come. Many of his men strapped themselves in their saddles, hobbling their stirrups, in order to sleep on the march and be ready for tomorrow's butchery. These outdoorsmen knew their way across open country, but new fences and brushy creek crossing might delay the march. Quantrill took no chance. At homesteads he impressed sleepy farmers to guide the column. When the country ahead became strange to a guide, a bullet ended his usefulness. Ten were thus shot in eight miles."
It appears that August Broemmelsieck came very near being pressed into service as one of Quantrill's short-lived guides that fateful night. The Portrait and Biographical Record of Leavenworth, Douglas, and Franklin Counties, Kansas, published by the Chapman Publishing Company in 1899, contains a biography of William Broemmelsieck, the youngest of August's children. The biography relates the events at the Broemmelsieck farm that August night:
"At the time of the Quantrell raid, August 21, 1863, Mr. Bromelsick (William) was a child of eleven years, and was living with his parents on a farm four miles southeast of Eudora, Douglas County. When the raiders marched toward Lawrence they made only two or three stops after leaving Kansas City. One of these was at the Bromelsick farm. They also stopped at the Bentley house, one-half mile east, where they killed two soldiers who were stopping there. Coming on to the Bromelsick farm, they arrived there about eleven o'clock. The family were all asleep, but were awakened by the command to surround the house. The father hastened to the cellar to hide, knowing that his life was in danger. Some one knocked on the door with the butt end of a gun. The mother answered the knock and tried to convince the raiders that there were no men on the place, but they searched and soon found the father and the hired man. The latter, who was the first one caught, was taken outside, but being strong, knocked his two captors down and escaped to the cornfield. When they found Mr. Bromelsick (August), they made him dress, and as he was tying his shoes, the wind blew the light out. The darkness saved his life. He slipped away, escaped through the back door and fled to the field. As the raiders searched through the house they found the eleven-year-old son, whom they jerked out of bed, to see if he was large enough to kill, but finding him so small, left him alone. Meantime the father had fled to a neighbor, whom he endeavored to persuade to hasten to Lawrence with the alarm, he himself being too old to undertake the trip; but the neighbor was thoroughly frightened and feared to venture out. The raiders left, carrying with them nothing but a double-barreled shotgun. About daylight Mr. Bromelsick and his hired man ventured back to the house, and it was not until they arrived that the family were sure they had not been killed in the night."
In a book entitled Quantrill and the Border Wars, Connelley discusses the guides taken by Quantrill and his guerrillas that night. Connelley states:
"If a guerrilla found in any guide a resemblance to some one who had left Missouri he shot him down. And when a guide knew the road no longer he was shot."
Connelley also describes the events at the Broemmelsieck farmstead that night:
"A mile west of Captain's creek the bushwhackers came to the house of William Bromelsick (Note: this should read August Bromelsick, not William). Living with him was a Mr. Klingenberg. These Germans were refugees from Missouri, and their lives were forfeit to any guerrilla who might find them. The house was surrounded. The men were ordered to act as guides to Lawrence. They knew their danger. Bromelsick asked permission to tie his shoes, and it was granted. As he stooped for this purpose, he blew out the light in the hands of his wife, and sprang through the door, reaching a cornfield amidst a shower of balls, but uninjured. Klingenberg concealed himself under some rubbish, but was soon found and allowed to dress. A guerrilla took hold of each of his arms and led him into the yard. There, being a man of great size and strength, he shook off his captors and rushed to the friendly cover of the growing corn with no further mishap than several bullets through his clothing."
August retired from farming, and moved his family into Lawrence, in June of 1865, just two months after the end of the War of the Rebellion. August received $3000 for the 160 acres earlier described, plus an additional forty acres he had acquired, thereby doubling his money on the land he had owned less than five years. Two months later, in August of 1865, August's youngest daughter was married. Ann Broemmelsick married Rev. Johann Adam Mueller, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who had served the congregation in Lawrence just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War.
The 1870 census places August and Franziske and their youngest son, William, in the third ward of Lawrence, Kansas. August listed his occupation as that of a laborer, and eighteen-year-old William was employed as a clerk in a Lawrence dry-goods store. August had purchased city lots in Lawrence, and valued his real estate at $1000. He valued his personal property at $100. The following year, August's address in Lawrence was the "East side of New Hampshire between Warren and Berkley" (between what are now Ninth and Tenth Streets). An 1873 Atlas of Douglas County reveals that August owned two adjoining lots on Rhode Island Street, just south of Warren Street, where his home was located. He also owned three lots on New Hampshire Street, just behind and to the south of his home.
The last of the Broemmelsieck children left the nest in March of 1874, when William was married in Trenton, Illinois, to Louisa Eisenmayer. After his marriage, William and his bride made their home in Lawrence. August's eldest daughter, Minnie, now a widow, was remarried about 1877-79. Her second husband, Rev. Daniel Walter, like her first, was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
August Broemmelsieck would live in Lawrence the last forty years of his life, and Franziske the last thirty-five years of her life. We know relatively little about them during their later years. Politically, August was a Republican. He continued to be active in the German Methodist Episcopal Church in Lawrence, where he served as a class-leader.
Franziske Broemmelsieck died on September 12, 1890, while visiting her daughter, Minnie Walter, then living in Warrenton, Missouri. Franziske was eighty-one years old. She was returned to Lawrence, Kansas, where she was buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery.
:fig id=oakhil frame=box depth='6.5i'.
:figcap.August and Franziske Broemmelsieck gravestone
:figdesc.Oak Hill Cemetery, Lawrence, Kansas
:efig.
After his wife's death, August made his home with his daughter and son-in-law, Daniel and Minnie Walter. The Walters were living in Eudora, Kansas, about six miles southeast of Lawrence, and only about three miles from the farm where the Broemmelsiecks first settled in 1860. August died at their Eudora home on December 21, 1895, at ninety-one years of age. He was buried beside his wife in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence.
It is interesting to note that the spelling of the Broemmelsieck name changed several times after their arrival in America. The original German spelling was "Brömmelsieck". Soon after their emigration, the spelling changed to "Brömmelsick". By 1880, the umlat was usually dropped, and the name occasionally appeared as "Broemmelsick", but usually appeared as "Brommelsick". The spelling did not change again until about 1920-1930, when an "m" was dropped, thereby completing the change to "Bromelsick".
As a final postscript to the history of the August Broemmelsieck family, it is interesting to note that there was a second Broemmelsieck family, the Johann Friedrich 'Frederick' Broemmelsieck family, whose migration path closely followed that of August's family. While the relationship between August and Frederick Broemmelsieck has not yet been determined, there can be little doubt that they were closely related. They may have been brothers or cousins.
Our first record of the Frederick Broemmelsieck family appears about ten years after August Broemmelsick settled south of Berger, Missouri, when Frederick began purchasing land just south of Beaufort, also in Franklin County. Frederick made several land purchases in the area between 1849 and October of 1859.
Frederick Broemmelsieck was born in Prussia approximately 1820-23. His wife, Katharine Charlotte, was born in Prussia approximately 1816-17. Katharine's maiden name was apparently Landwehr, but we don't yet know whether she was related to our Landwehr family. Frederick and Katharine had a son, Friedrich Wilhelm, who was born in Prussia approximately 1845-46, before their family emigrated to America.
The Frederick Broemmelsieck family were among the first members of the Methodist Episcopal congregation located at the present site of Leslie, Missouri. Frederick's son, Friedrich Wilhelm, was married to Wilhelmina Knehaus on September 10, 1864. They were married in Franklin County by Rev. John Brune, a Minister of the Gospel. The marriage was ill-fated, however, as Friedrich Wilhelm died three months later, on December 23. He was buried in the Methodist Cemetery at Leslie.
On June 12, 1871, Frederick Broemmelsieck's wife died. She was buried near her son in the Methodist Cemetery at Leslie. Frederick was not a widower long, as he married Katharine Knelter of Beaufort only six weeks later, on July 28, 1871. Frederick's new bride was born in Prussia about 1846. Frederick and his bride left Franklin County between 1871 and 1873, and moved to Lawrence, Kansas, where August Broemmelsieck and his family were living. In 1873, Frederick Broemmelsieck and his family lived on Delaware Street, in Lawrence, about one block south and one block east of August and Franziske Broemmelsieck.
The 1880 census of Lawrence, Kansas indicates that 58-year-old Frederick Broemmelsieck, his 34-year-old wife Katharine, and their four young children were living on Pennsylvania treet. Frederick apparently died between 1880 and 1895, as Katharine, listed as a widow, was living with the family of William Broemmelsieck (August's youngest son) at 923 Rhode Island Street in 1895.
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:hp3.Children of Johann August 'August' Broemmelsieck:ehp3.
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:li.Casper Heinrich 'Henry' Broemmelsieck was born at #48 Holzfelde, Prussia on February 27, 1835. He may have been named after Casper Heinrich Rodenbrock, who was his godparent at his March 8 baptism at the Lutheran Evangelical Church in Borgholzhausen. Casper Heinrich Rodenbrock, husband of Marie Ilsabein Voss, was the infant's uncle, and lived in the nearby village of Cleve. Henry Broemmelsieck was probably only four years old when he emigrated with his parents and sister to Franklin County, Missouri in 1839.
Henry grew up on the Broemmelsieck family farm south of Berger. He was married on December 16, 1859, to Hanna Wilhelmina 'Mena' (Heidbreder) Schaefer, widow of John Schaefer. Mena Heidbreder was born on June 1, 1837, in the Prussian village of Elverdissen, which was located only seventeen miles east of Holzfelde, where Henry was born (for the location of Elverdissen, see #7 on :figref refid=minden.). She and John Schaefer had been married twenty-one months earlier, on March 17, 1858, by John C. Hoech, Minister of the Hermann Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Henry Broemmelsieck and Mena were married at her father's home, by Gerhard Timken, Minister of the Hermann Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church (and the same minister who would marry Anna Landwehr and Henry Guese only fifteen days later). Henry was twenty-four years old, and Mena was twenty-two.
When the Broemmelsieck family moved to the Kansas Territory the following spring, Henry and Mena Broemmelsieck went with them. But they didn't stay long. The Civil War broke out in 1861, and Henry and Mena returned to Missouri. Henry was back in Franklin County in time to enroll in the 54th Regiment of Enrolled Missouri Militia. Henry enrolled at Berger Station, as a Private in Company E, serving under Captain Silas Hall. Company E was apparently formed about October of 1862. We have not found any record of active service for his Company, but they undoubtedly were called into service when the Confederate army, under the command of General Sterling Price, invaded Franklin County in the fall of 1864.
Everett Brommelsick, a grandson of Henry Broemmelsieck, recalled hearing two stories about Henry's experiences during the turbulent Civil War years. One story related that Henry was a farmer in the Berger bottom during the war. One night Henry heard a horse coming, and figured it was a rebel, so he went out the back door and hid. He had two big vicious dogs, and all at once he heard one of the dogs whine, and heard a shot fired. The next morning one of the dogs was limping. The other story related that when General Price's army went through the area in 1864, they had to be on the lookout, and hide all the horses.
On March 9, 1864, Henry and Mena sold a one-sixth interest in 157 acres of land located one mile north of the current site of the Senate Grove Methodist Church. Mena apparently inherited the interest in the land as a result of her earlier marriage to John Schaefer. Henry and Mena sold their interest to Louis Rohlfing for $250.
Then, on April 3, 1865, Henry bought forty-eight acres of land only about one-half mile east of the land that he and Mena sold only a year earlier, and three miles southeast of the original August Broemmelsieck farm. He purchased the forty-eight acres from Louis and Mary Rohlfing for $350. On the map provided as :figref refid=mmeyer., this farm is identified as the B. Brommelsick farm in Section 25. Henry would live on this farm for the next thirty years.
Perhaps Henry and Mena had given up on starting a family of their own when they decided to adopt two children. When the census was taken in 1870, the Henry Broemmelsieck family consisted of Henry, Mena, and three children. The eldest of the children was Thomas Broemmelsieck, age nine; the second was Augusta Broemmelsieck, age six; and the youngest was Hannah Broemmelsieck, age five months. Henry and Mena had adopted the two older children, whose names were Thomas McJerry and Augusta Lange. While we don't know the circumstances of Thomas' adoption, we know that Augusta was adopted from the Methodist Orphan's Home in 1868, more than eight years after Henry and Mena were married. Hannah was born to Henry and Mena the year following Thomas' adoption, in October of 1869.
:fig id=pbrom frame=box depth='6.2i'.
:figcap.Henry and Louisa (Thiekoetter) Broemmelsieck
:figdesc.Courtesy of Burton Landwehr
:efig.
Mena was only forty years old when she died on January 26, 1878, after eighteen years of marriage to Henry Broemmelsieck. Her death was recorded in the Church Book of the Hermann Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She was probably buried on the Broemmelsieck farm, or in the Meyer's Church cemetery. Mena's obituary indicates that she was survived by her husband and daughter, her father and mother, and three brothers and two sisters.
Following the death of his first wife, Henry married Louisa Thiekoetter eighteen months later on July 24, 1879. Louisa, the daughter of Christopher and Verena (Meir) Thiekoetter, lived east of Shotwell (for further information about the Thiekoetter family, see :hdref refid=thie.). Henry was forty-four years old, and Louisa was twenty-five. We know of no tie between Henry Broemmelsieck, living south of Berger, and Louisa Thiekoetter, living fourteen miles further south, near Shotwell, before they were married in 1879. It is interesting to note, however, that the Methodist minister serving Henry Broemmelsieck's congregation south of Berger in 1879 was Rev. John Wanner, who was married to Louisa Thiekoetter's half-sister, Amelia. Perhaps Rev. John Wanner introduced Henry, his recently-widowed parishoner, to Louisa, his sister-in-law!
Henry and Louisa expanded their 48-acre farm on May 6, 1881, when they bought an additional thirty-two acres immediately west of their farm from Senator F. W. Pehle for $180. While a county road ran through the tract of land that Henry purchased, it gave him two adjacent forty-acre parcels.
Henry and Louisa lived on the Broemmelsieck farm south of Berger for the first sixteen years of their marriage. Their home consisted of a two-story, five-room farmhouse, with a good spring located only fifty feet from the front door. Nine children were born to Henry and Louisa in this home. The family was affiliated with the Immanuel congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and attended services in the same building that is now known as the Senate Grove Methodist Church. The church was located slightly more than a mile south of the Broemmelsieck farm. There was a mill on Berger Creek, only one-half mile northwest of their home. The family traded at the Rohlfing Store, located about two miles south of Senate Grove. Everett Bromelsick recalls that his father, a son of Henry Broemmelsieck, would carry a big box of eggs to the Rohlfing Store, and return home with a big box of groceries. The house where the Henry Broemmelsieck family lived remained standing until 1976, when it was finally burned by the present owner of the property.
In 1896, Henry and Louisa decided to move. On August 10, 1896, they sold their eighty-acre farm to George M. Miller for $2150. And four days later, they bought a 116-acre farm just south of the "Iron Bridge" over the Bourbeuse River in the Champion City community. The farm is identified as the H. Brummelsick farm in Section 8 on the map provided by :figref refid=mcc98.. Henry purchased the farm from the Gehlauf family for $2175. John and George Giebler had a saw mill at the Elbert place near Champion City, and they helped Henry saw the wood he needed to build a house on his new farm.
Except for sixteen and one-half acres that they sold to Edward Landwehr in 1913, Henry and Louisa spent the rest of their lives on the Champion City farm they purchased in 1896. Henry and his family were pillars of the Methodist Church in Champion City. Henry's grandchildren remember Henry in his later years as a quiet, and extremely kind, little man with a full black beard.
Henry Bromelsick died at his farm home near Champion City on September 27, 1920. He had been ill with heart trouble for several months. After a funeral at the Champion City Methodist Church, he was buried in the church cemetery.
Henry's widow, Louisa, moved to St. Louis about 1923, where she made her home with her daughters, Frances and Amanda. Louisa died in St. Louis on May 24, 1926, and was returned to Champion City for her funeral, and buried beside her husband at the Champion City Methodist Church.
:li.Catharine Wilhelmine Henriette 'Minnie' Broemmelsieck was born at #48 Holzfelde, Prussia on June 29, 1837. She was baptized in the Lutheran Evangelical Church at Borgholzhausen on July 9. She was probably named after her godparent, Catharine Wilhelmine Voss, who was undoubtedly a relative on her mother's side of the family.
Minnie emigrated to America with her parents and older brother when she was about two years old, and grew up on the Broemmelsieck farm south of Berger. Minnie was apparently married on May 17, 1855, when the marriage records of Franklin County, Missouri, indicate that "Wilhelmina Brommelsieck" married "Heinrich Brune". The couple was married by Rev. William Kleinschmidt, Minister of the Hermann Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
We have no further information about this marriage. However, we note that there is a badly-weathered gravestone immediately adjacent to the gravestone of August and Franziske Broemmelsieck in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence, Kansas. The name on the stone appears to be "Rev. J. H. Brune", and the date of death may be "October 6, 1862". We know that Minnie was later married to Rev. Daniel L. Walter. When Rev. Walter died in 1907, his obituary stated that he had married "Minnie Bruns, widow of Rev. H. Bruns". There was a minister named Heinrich Bruns, who was a contemporary of Daniel Walter, and this reference to "Minnie Bruns" was probably a mistaken reference to "Minnie Brune". We suspect, therefore, that Minnie married Rev. J. Heinrich Brune in Franklin County, Missouri, and that he died in the Lawrence, Kansas area in 1862.
So, Minnie lost her first husband (possibly in 1862), and later married Reverend Daniel L. Walter, an early Minister of the German Methodist Episcopal Church. Born in Lohningen, Kanton Schaffhausen, Switzerland on November 11, 1833, Daniel Walter emigrated to America as a 15-year-old youth following the death of his mother. He first settled in Chicago, and in 1852 was converted to the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was associated with the church in Chicago for twenty years. Then, in 1874, he was sent to the Omaha Mission.
Daniel spent three and one-half years with the Omaha Mission, and built two churches and a dwelling place. His first wife died at Omaha, leaving him with four small children. In 1877, he went to Lawrence, Kansas, where he served as pastor for two years. It was probably during his two years at Lawrence that he met and married Minnie (Broemmelsieck) Brune. If her first husband died in 1862, she had been a widow for fifteen years. Rev. Walter then served in Eudora, Kansas, until 1881, during which time he helped build a church. After an illness, Daniel took a two-year leave with pension.
Daniel and Minnie went to Lake Creek, Missouri where Daniel served from 1883 to 1886, to Junction City, Kansas from 1886 to 1887, and then to Central Wesleyan College, in Warrenton, Missouri, where Daniel served as Treasurer from 1887 to 1892.
The campus of Central Wesleyan College was later to include a three-story brick building, called Eisenmayer Hall, which provided rooms for seventy-five men. The building was named Andrew Eisenmayer Hall in memory of a man who had given generously to the college. About 1900, with increased enrollment, funds were badly needed for a men's dormitory. Andrew Eisenmayer of Trenton, Illinois gave $1000. After his sudden death, his family gave considerably more in his memory. Andrew Eisenmayer was probably the father of Minnie Walter's sister-in-law, Louisa P. (Eisenmayer) Broemmelsieck, wife of William Broemmelsieck. Thus, it seems likely that Daniel and Minnie Walter played a role in soliciting the donation that eventually resulted in the construction of Eisenmayer Hall.
Daniel retired in 1894, and he and Minnie apparently spent their early retirement years in the Eudora, Kansas community. An 1895 Kansas census, recorded just months before August Broemmelsieck's death, lists the Daniel Walter family as residents of Eudora. Daniel and Minnie were living on a 47-acre farm, and August, now a widower, was living with them.
The census described their small farming operation. They valued their farm at $3000, indicated that they had eighteen acres in corn, cut five tons of tame hay in the previous year, and sold 750 pounds of butter. They had one horse, three milk cows, two other cattle, six peach trees, six plum trees, ten cherry trees, five pear trees, and one dog!
Daniel died at his home in Eudora on March 13, 1907. He was survived by Minnie, and by Daniel's two sons, who were living at Leavenworth, Kansas. Daniel was buried in the Eudora Cemetery.
:li.Charlotte Catharine 'Lotte' Broemmelsieck was the first of our Broemmelsieck family born in America. She was probably born on the Broemmelsieck farm south of Berger in either 1839 or 1840.
Charlotte was married in Franklin County, on November 29, 1859, to Friedrich Femmer, whose residence at the time of their marriage was Wyandotte, in the Kansas Territory. They were married by Gerhard Timken, Minister of the Hermann Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
There were other Femmers in the Berger area, and it would seem likely that Charlotte's husband had previously lived in the vicinity of the Broemmelsieck farm. He may have gone to Kansas, established a home, and then returned to Franklin County to marry Charlotte.
Charlotte died at Eudora, only a few miles from the spot where the Broemmelsieck family first settled in Kansas. We have no information regarding the date of her death, but suspect it may have been within twelve months after August Broemmelsieck moved to Kansas in the spring of 1860.
"li.Anna 'Ann' Broemmelsieck was probably born on the Broemmelsieck farm in northwest Franklin County on June 8, 1845. She undoubtedly moved to Kansas with her parents in 1860. Ann was probably only fifteen or sixteen years old when she first met Rev. Johann Adam Mueller.
Johann Adam Mueller was born "in Walsheim in Landau" (probably southwestern Germany) on May 24, 1836. He emigrated to Quincy, Illinois in 1855, where he joined the German Methodist Episcopal Church in 1856. In 1860, he went to the new Lawrence, Kansas, Mission as a missionary, where he probably met young Ann Broemmelsieck. He transferred to Manhatten, Kansas in April of 1861, the month the Civil War began. A year later he joined the Union Army, and served until the war ended in 1865.
After the war, he apparently returned to Lawrence, Kansas, where he married Ann Broemmelsieck on August 2, 1865, just two months after the Broemmelsieck family moved to Lawrence from their farmstead. Ann and Johann were married by Rev. John H. Brune. For the next 27 years, Johann served Methodist congregations in Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas. Then, in 1892, he retired. Upon his retirement, Johann and Ann first returned to Lawrence, Kansas, then lived in St. Joseph, Missouri, and finally moved to Los Angeles, California in 1905.
Ann died in Los Angeles on June 1, 1910, and Johann died in Los Angeles on November 12, 1911. They are both buried in the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery in Hollywood, California.
:li.William F. 'Will' Broemmelsieck was born on the Broemmelsieck farm in northwest Franklin County on April 18, 1852. William was only eight years old when his family moved to the Kansas Territory. He was educated in the grammar school of Eudora, Kansas, and the high school of Lawrence. After clerking in a dry-goods store in Lawrence for seven years, he entered the firm of H. A. Kendall & Co., dealers in "gents' furnishing goods", who operated out of a small store in Lawrence.
William was married to Miss Louisa Eisenmayer in Trenton, Illinois, on March 20, 1874. Louisa Eisenmayer was born in Mascoutah, Illinois in 1852 or 1853. Louisa's parents were emigrants from Bavaria. Her father had been an early settler of Illinois, and was the president of the Eisenmayer Milling Company. Louisa had received a good education, and was a graduate of the Illinois Female College at Jacksonville, Illinois.
In 1877, William bought out his business partner, making him the sole owner of his own business, "Wm. Bromelsick Hatters and gents furnishings". In 1880, we know that William and his family lived on Tennessee Street in Lawrence. By 1896, the Lawrence City Directory listed the Bromelsick residence as 923 Rhode Island Street, the house that would serve as the Bromelsick family home for the next fifty-four years. In 1893, William bought a building at 807 Massachusetts Street, from which he began operating his business. William's biography, published in the Portrait and Biographical Record of Leavenworth, Douglas, and Franklin Counties, Kansas in 1899, described William's business:
"His store is as complete in details and perfect in arrangement as any of the kind in Kansas. Two floors are utilized for the stock, the most of which is sold at retail, although some jobbing is done. His stock of hats is the largest in the city, and in style and price the utmost satisfaction is given."
The biography continued with a description of William's other interests:
"In addition to the business here he is a director of the Atlas Building and Loan Association of Lawrence, which he assisted in incorporating. In politics he is a Republican. For two years he was a councilman from the third ward. He is a member of Lawrence Lodge No. 6, A. F. & A. M., and Lawrence Chapter No. 4, R. A. M."
When The Peoples State Bank of Lawrence was organized, and opened for business on January 1, 1906, William Bromelsick was its president. He continued to be active as both a merchant, and the president of the Peoples State Bank, until his death. After completing a full day's work at the bank, William died at his home at 923 Rhode Island Street on the evening of February 16, 1929. He was interred in a mausoleum at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence.
William left an estate of $75,000. The estate consisted of his home and property on Rhode Island Street ($7300), his business on Massachusettes Street ($32,500), and his stock in the bank ($35,700). William bequeathed $1000 to Anna Mueller (a niece), $500 to Ida Steinel (a niece), and $500 to George C. Brune (no known relationship). Louisa inherited the balance of the estate.
After William's death, Louisa and her two sons continued to live at the family residence on Rhode Island Street. Louisa died on July 23, 1946, and was interred beside her husband in the mausoleum at Oak Hill Cemetery.
According to his obituary, August Broemmelsieck was born in the village of Berghausen, Prussia, on January 1, 1803. Berghausen was located only eleven miles due west of Joellenbeck (see location #5 on :figref refid=minden.).
On September 30, 1833, August was married at Borgholzhausen (two miles northeast of Berghausen) to Franziske Charlotte Voss, daughter of Johann Christoph Voss and Catharine Ilsabein Stricker. Franziske was born at #45 Hoerste on January 13, 1809, and was baptized four days later in the Evangelical Lutheran Church at Hoerste. The village of Hoerste was located less than five miles south of Borgholzhausen (see location #6 on :figref refid=minden.).
When August and Franziske were married in 1833, August was described in the record of their marriage as an "estate leaser by inheritance". Since both August's parents and Franziske's parents died prior to their marriage, it would appear that August inherited the lease-rights from his father to a farmstead at Holzfelde.
Henry and Minnie Broemmelsieck, the first two children born to August and Franziske, were born in the village of Holzfelde (located about three miles southwest of Borgholzhausen) in 1835 and 1837. Shortly thereafter, in 1839, August Broemmelsieck emigrated with his wife and two young children to America, where he settled down as a pioneer farmer south of Berger, in Franklin County, Missouri.
As new German immigrants arrived in America, those already here often helped the new arrivals get established. The Broemmelsieck family was no exception. A brief biography of the Jurgen Heinrich Alberswerth family, who immigrated to Franklin County from Dissen, Prussia in 1839, notes that five members of the Alberswerth family spent their first winter at the August Broemmelsieck farm.
The August Broemmelsieck family were probably "squatters", living on Government land, for their first two or three years in Franklin County. But America was trying to settle the new states west of the Mississippi River. To make the proposition more enticing, Congress passed an act in 1820 that made land available to individual settlers for $1.25 an acre. Under the terms of that 1820 land ordinance, August purchased his first forty acres of American farmland from the U.S. Government on September 20, 1841, at a price of $1.25 per acre. This parcel of land was located about two miles south and one-half mile west of the village of Berger Station (now called Berger), in northwest Franklin County (see :figref refid=warren.).
The August Broemmelsieck family added to their landholdings on February 16, 1844, when they purchased a second forty-acre parcel of land from the U.S. Government in the name of August's oldest son, Henry Broemmelsieck. This forty acres was located immediately north of the forty acres that August bought in 1841. On the map provided by :figref refid=mbrom., these first two land purchases appear as the G. F. Dieterle farm in the southeast corner of Section 15. Today, this land is located immediately southwest of the point where Route Z, coming south from Berger, intersects with Highway 100. Henry Broemmelsieck was not quite nine years old when this second land purchase was completed, raising questions about August's motivation for purchasing the land in the name of his son.
:fig id=cbrom frame=box depth='6.1i'.
:figcap.Broemmelsieck family chart
:figdesc.The ancestry of Carrie (Brommelsick) Landwehr
:efig.
When the Broemmelsieck family first settled in northwest Franklin County, there were no German Protestant churches in the area. The first settlers in the nearby German village of Hermann had arrived only one or two years before the Broemmelsieck family, and the first church would not be erected in Hermann until 1844. In 1842, however, the first Quarterly Conference of early Methodism in the area was held in an old rock house three miles southeast of Hermann, or about three miles northwest of the Broemmelsieck farm. And, in 1844, a congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized as the Meyer's Church, and began meeting only two miles south of the Broemmelsieck farm (on the map provided as :figref refid=mbrom., the Meyer's Church can be located on the C. Weber farm in Section 26).
Then, in March of 1845, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States purchased one and one-half acres of land from August and Franziske. The rectangular plot of land, which measured ten rods by fourteen rods in size, was located along the southern edge, and forty rods west of the southeast corner, of the forty acres that August had purchased in 1841. Today, this land lies about 220 yards west of the Spreckelmeyer Road, and one-half mile south of Highway 100.
The land, which August and Franziske sold to the church for $1.50, was acquired by the church for the purpose of erecting a dwelling house for the Methodist Episcopal preacher for the Hermann Mission. The provisions of the deed included the priviledge of obtaining water from the spring on the forty-acre tract from which the land was taken. Meetings of the Berger Station congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church were held at this parsonage until their first church was erected in 1851. While abandoned many years ago, the foundation of this early church and its cemetery can still be found, hidden from view in a grove of trees some distance from the nearest road.
The construction of a Methodist parsonage so close to the Broemmelsieck home must have been a joyous event for August and his family. In fact, August may have been instrumental in the selection of the site. While raised in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, the Broemmelsieck family became stalwart supporters of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. August and his family were not only active in the activities of this German Protestant church--two of August's three daughters later married Methodist ministers.
Evidence of the strength of August Broemmelsieck's religious faith is abundant. For example, his faith had a significant effect on Heinrich Ellerbeck, a guest at the Broemmelsieck homestead in 1845. The relationship between August and Heinrich Ellerbeck is not quite clear. One of August Broemmelsieck's sisters, Catharine Heinriette Broemmelsieck, married a Johann Heinrich Ellerbeck at Borgholzhausen, Prussia in April of 1832, so there was a family tie between the Broemmelsieck and Ellerbeck families. However, Catharine Heinriette (Broemmelsieck) Ellerbeck's husband was about fourteen years older than the Heinrich Ellerbeck who was a guest of the Broemmelsieck family, and her sons were younger than the guest. The guest referred to August as "uncle", so perhaps he was married to another sister of August Broemmelsieck.
A brief autobiography of Heinrich Ellerbeck was published in Jubilaeumsbuch der St. Louis Deutschen Konferenz (The Jubilee Book of the St. Louis German Conference) about 1903. In that autobiography, Heinrich related that he was born in 1818 in Holzfelde, the village where August and Franziske Broemmelsieck lived before they emigrated to America. He wrote that he had a desire to leave his Fatherland and go to America:
"since the emigration of my uncle in 1839. After a journey of 56 days, our ship docked in the harbor at New Orleans, La., and from there I came to St. Louis, Mo., after a 17 day journey up the Mississippi. The month of January, 1845, found me living with my uncle, Broemelsick, about 8 miles from Herman, Mo., with whom I was happy. In his home a breath of Christianity was blown to me. Special stress was laid on the fact that one could be certain of his salvation; this particularly appealed to me and made a good impression on me. At a Lord's Supper, led by the brothers L. S. Jacoby and Karl Koeneke, I heard my first German sermon in America, which made a deep impression on me. I joined the church and began to seek God night and day."
:fig id=mbrom frame=box depth=8i.
:figcap.Map of area south of Berger
:figdesc.From Atlas Map of Franklin County, Missouri, published in
1878
:efig.
Heinrich Ellerbeck went on to become one of the pioneer ministers of the St. Louis German Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
On February 22, 1848, August Broemmelsieck bought another forty acres of land from the U. S. Government. This tract was located immediately west of the forty acres August purchased in 1841.
On August 11, 1850, August purchased 3/4 acre of land from Frederick and Charlotte Spreckelmeyer for $5.00. This small parcel of land was located in the northeast corner of Section 22, just south of the southeast corner of the forty acres that August purchased in 1841. Perhaps August and Franziske decided to build a home on this site.
After their arrival in Franklin County, August and Franziske Broemmelsieck had three more children. Lotte was born about 1839 or 1840, Ann in 1845, and William in 1852.
The first of August Broemmelsieck's children was apparently married in May of 1855, when Minnie Broemmelsieck married Heinrich Brune. Minnie was August's eldest daughter, not quite eighteen years of age. We believe that Heinrich Brune, her new husband, was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
August lost another daughter to marriage four years later, when Lotte Broemmelsieck married Friedrich Femmer in November of 1859. It is significant that their Franklin County marriage record lists Friedrich Femmer's residence as "Wyandotte in the Territory of Kansas". The town known as Wyandotte, Kansas in 1859 is today known as Kansas City, Kansas. As early as 1818, the Federal government had made the surrounding area a reservation for the Delaware Indians. The Wyandot Indians purchased the land from the Delaware in 1843. They laid out a community and named it Wyandot City. During the 1850's, white settlers began to move to Wyandot City, and they soon outnumbered the Indians. The whites renamed the community Wyandotte.
Less than three weeks after Lotte was married, Henry Broemmelsieck, her older brother, was married in December of 1859. Henry married Mrs. Mena (Heidbreder) Schaefer, a young widow. There is no indication that Henry purchased any additional land, so we may assume that he and his bride started their married life on the August Broemmelsieck farm.
Only four months later, on April 21, 1860, August and Franziske Broemmelsieck, and Henry Broemmelsieck and his new bride, Mena, sold their Franklin County farm. The land they sold consisted of the eighty acres that they purchased in 1841 and 1844 (less the one and one-half acres earlier sold to the Methodist Episcopal Church), plus the 3/4 acre purchased in 1850, plus an additional 40 acres located in the northwest corner of Section 23 (directly southeast of the 40 acres purchased in 1841). Gottlieb Dieterle purchased the land from August and Henry for $1600.
August and Henry sold their Franklin County farm in preparation for an important event in the history of the Broemmelsieck family. In the spring of 1860, August and Henry left Franklin County, where they had lived for over twenty years, and moved their families two hundred miles west, into the Kansas Territory.
The Kansas Territory, in 1860, was known as "bleeding Kansas". In the 1850's, Kansas had become the symbol of the nationwide struggle over slavery. In Congress, Northerners and Southerners clashed over the question of whether new states and territories would permit slavery. In 1854, Congress had found a way to create new territiories and avoid the issue of slavery. The answer was popular sovereignty, also known as squatter sovereignty. The settlers, sometimes called squatters, in each territory would decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Under this plan, Congress created the Kansas Territory in May of 1854.
Soon settlers from both North and South were streaming into Kansas, aided by groups who wanted to influence the decision on slavery. In the elections of 1855, many citizens of the slave state of Missouri crossed the border and voted in Kansas. Pro-slavery candidates won control of the territorial legislature, and passed many pro-slavery laws.
Violence broke out, particularly in the area close to the Missouri border. More than fifty-five persons died in the battles between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. The violence in "bleeding Kansas" over the slavery issue attracted attention throughout the United States. Finally, the anti-slavery forces, or Free Staters, gained control of the legislature and repealed the pro-slavery laws. A constitution forbidding slavery was written and approved, and the voters asked Congress for statehood. But many Free Staters had joined the Republican party, and Southern Democrats in Congress would not vote to admit a new Republican state.
The Broemmelsick family, then, moved right into the heart of "bleeding Kansas". The reason for their move is difficult to deduce. August was fifty-five years old, and had an established farm in Franklin County, where he and his family had made their home for over twenty years. Typically, the German immigrant farmer settled in an area, expanded his landholdings in a prudent manner, and then divided his land among his sons when he retired from the land. Perhaps August wanted to move his family to be near his newly-married daughter, Lotte, and her husband. Perhaps August was not typical of the German farmers, and missed the challenges of the frontier, which had moved west into the Kansas Territory. Certainly, Frederich Femmer must have spoken to his father-in-law about the lure that the Kansas Territory held for him. Or, perhaps August was influenced by the political situation in Kansas.
Regardless of his reasons, August moved his family to the Kansas Territory in the spring of 1860. We believe that all of his children either moved into the Kansas Territory prior to August's move, or accompanied August and Franziske. The Broemmelsieck family settled on a forty-acre farm that August bought for $400 on May 22, 1860. The farm was located in Johnson County, about twenty-five miles west-southwest of Kansas City, and ten miles east of Lawrence, a Free State town partially burned by supporters of slavery only four years earlier. Then, in October, August expanded his forty-acre farm by acquisition of an additional 120 acres adjacent to the first forty acres. The additional 120 acres cost August $700.
The Broemmelsieck family arrived in Kansas only months before the outbreak of the Civil War. Kansas became the 34th state in January of 1861, after several southern states had left the Union. But not all of the Broemmelsieck family were happy with the move to Kansas. Henry Broemmelsieck and his wife Mena stayed a year or two, but then decided to return to Franklin County.
The August Broemmelsieck family continued to be very active in the Methodist Episcopal Church after their move to Kansas. Under the direction of the West German Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the church apparently began organizing in the Lawrence, Kansas area about 1858, two years before the Broemmelsiecks settled in the area. When the church purchased property in Lawrence on December 31, 1862, the list of seven trustees included the name of August Broemmelsieck, even though August and his family still lived ten miles east of Lawrence.
In Kansas, as in Missouri, no one was entirely safe from the dangers of the Civil War. While the major battles may have threatened only the young men in uniforms of blue and gray, surprise attacks from guerrilla bands were a threat to all citizens at any place, at any time. Henry Broemmelsieck may have escaped an early death by returning to Missouri when he did. And August Broemmelsieck just barely escaped with his life, when the Broemmelsieck family became bit players in one of the tragic events of the Civil War.
William Quantrill was the leader of a Confederate guerrilla band during the Civil War. Born in Ohio, he went to Kansas in 1857 and started farming. The next year, he rode west with a wagon train and became a gambler, then returned to Kansas in 1859 and taught school. He was accused of stealing cattle and horses and of killing several persons, but escaped arrest.
Soon after the start of the Civil War, in December of 1861, Quantrill organized a band of guerrilla troops. Within a few months, he became the most ferocious, and the most feared, of the Missouri guerrilla commanders. He led his men on raids against Kansas and Missouri farmers and townspeople who favored the Union. In raids across the Kansas line in 1862, he shot down scores of unarmed civilians and plundered and destroyed much property. His raid of Olathe, about eleven miles east of the Broemmelsieck farm, in August of 1862, was particularly bloody and destructive.
Quantrill's band was mustered into Confederate service in 1862, but continued to operate independently. Quantrill had lived in Lawrence, Kansas, in the 1850's, and was under indictment there for crimes of burglary, horse-thievery, and Negro-kidnapping. Lawrence was the capital of Kansas abolitionism, and the home of Jim Lane, a leader of the abolitionist cause. On August 21, 1863, Quantrill and his men committed their most infamous atrocity when they burned most of the town of Lawrence, Kansas, and killed about 150 people. Frank James, Jesse James' brother, rode with the band that day.
A book entitled Civil War on the Western Border describes Quantrill's approach to Lawrence, Kansas that fateful night. The following account begins after Quantrill and his three hundred horsemen crossed the Missouri border into Kansas in the early evening of August 20, 1863:
"Every man in Quantrill's force was a seasoned rider, skilled in getting the most out of his mount. The race ahead would test Quantrill's leadership of light horse. At first he ordered a swinging trot. Twelve miles across the border, when darkenss had fallen, Quantrill called a halt to graze the horses. Grass-fed animals must eat often. After an hour, the men were ordered to tighten saddle girths and mount. Riding through the sleeping village of Spring Hill (15 miles southeast of the Broemmelsieck farmstead), the column turned northwest, heading now for the first time straight toward Lawrence. At eleven o'clock they clattered into Gardner (eight miles from the Broemmelsieck homestead) and, shortly beyond, left the road for a northerly route across the prairie. Lawrence slept less than twenty-five miles away.
Quantrill counted the miles against the midnight hours and watched the stars. The crisis of his lifetime had come. Many of his men strapped themselves in their saddles, hobbling their stirrups, in order to sleep on the march and be ready for tomorrow's butchery. These outdoorsmen knew their way across open country, but new fences and brushy creek crossing might delay the march. Quantrill took no chance. At homesteads he impressed sleepy farmers to guide the column. When the country ahead became strange to a guide, a bullet ended his usefulness. Ten were thus shot in eight miles."
It appears that August Broemmelsieck came very near being pressed into service as one of Quantrill's short-lived guides that fateful night. The Portrait and Biographical Record of Leavenworth, Douglas, and Franklin Counties, Kansas, published by the Chapman Publishing Company in 1899, contains a biography of William Broemmelsieck, the youngest of August's children. The biography relates the events at the Broemmelsieck farm that August night:
"At the time of the Quantrell raid, August 21, 1863, Mr. Bromelsick (William) was a child of eleven years, and was living with his parents on a farm four miles southeast of Eudora, Douglas County. When the raiders marched toward Lawrence they made only two or three stops after leaving Kansas City. One of these was at the Bromelsick farm. They also stopped at the Bentley house, one-half mile east, where they killed two soldiers who were stopping there. Coming on to the Bromelsick farm, they arrived there about eleven o'clock. The family were all asleep, but were awakened by the command to surround the house. The father hastened to the cellar to hide, knowing that his life was in danger. Some one knocked on the door with the butt end of a gun. The mother answered the knock and tried to convince the raiders that there were no men on the place, but they searched and soon found the father and the hired man. The latter, who was the first one caught, was taken outside, but being strong, knocked his two captors down and escaped to the cornfield. When they found Mr. Bromelsick (August), they made him dress, and as he was tying his shoes, the wind blew the light out. The darkness saved his life. He slipped away, escaped through the back door and fled to the field. As the raiders searched through the house they found the eleven-year-old son, whom they jerked out of bed, to see if he was large enough to kill, but finding him so small, left him alone. Meantime the father had fled to a neighbor, whom he endeavored to persuade to hasten to Lawrence with the alarm, he himself being too old to undertake the trip; but the neighbor was thoroughly frightened and feared to venture out. The raiders left, carrying with them nothing but a double-barreled shotgun. About daylight Mr. Bromelsick and his hired man ventured back to the house, and it was not until they arrived that the family were sure they had not been killed in the night."
In a book entitled Quantrill and the Border Wars, Connelley discusses the guides taken by Quantrill and his guerrillas that night. Connelley states:
"If a guerrilla found in any guide a resemblance to some one who had left Missouri he shot him down. And when a guide knew the road no longer he was shot."
Connelley also describes the events at the Broemmelsieck farmstead that night:
"A mile west of Captain's creek the bushwhackers came to the house of William Bromelsick (Note: this should read August Bromelsick, not William). Living with him was a Mr. Klingenberg. These Germans were refugees from Missouri, and their lives were forfeit to any guerrilla who might find them. The house was surrounded. The men were ordered to act as guides to Lawrence. They knew their danger. Bromelsick asked permission to tie his shoes, and it was granted. As he stooped for this purpose, he blew out the light in the hands of his wife, and sprang through the door, reaching a cornfield amidst a shower of balls, but uninjured. Klingenberg concealed himself under some rubbish, but was soon found and allowed to dress. A guerrilla took hold of each of his arms and led him into the yard. There, being a man of great size and strength, he shook off his captors and rushed to the friendly cover of the growing corn with no further mishap than several bullets through his clothing."
August retired from farming, and moved his family into Lawrence, in June of 1865, just two months after the end of the War of the Rebellion. August received $3000 for the 160 acres earlier described, plus an additional forty acres he had acquired, thereby doubling his money on the land he had owned less than five years. Two months later, in August of 1865, August's youngest daughter was married. Ann Broemmelsick married Rev. Johann Adam Mueller, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who had served the congregation in Lawrence just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War.
The 1870 census places August and Franziske and their youngest son, William, in the third ward of Lawrence, Kansas. August listed his occupation as that of a laborer, and eighteen-year-old William was employed as a clerk in a Lawrence dry-goods store. August had purchased city lots in Lawrence, and valued his real estate at $1000. He valued his personal property at $100. The following year, August's address in Lawrence was the "East side of New Hampshire between Warren and Berkley" (between what are now Ninth and Tenth Streets). An 1873 Atlas of Douglas County reveals that August owned two adjoining lots on Rhode Island Street, just south of Warren Street, where his home was located. He also owned three lots on New Hampshire Street, just behind and to the south of his home.
The last of the Broemmelsieck children left the nest in March of 1874, when William was married in Trenton, Illinois, to Louisa Eisenmayer. After his marriage, William and his bride made their home in Lawrence. August's eldest daughter, Minnie, now a widow, was remarried about 1877-79. Her second husband, Rev. Daniel Walter, like her first, was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
August Broemmelsieck would live in Lawrence the last forty years of his life, and Franziske the last thirty-five years of her life. We know relatively little about them during their later years. Politically, August was a Republican. He continued to be active in the German Methodist Episcopal Church in Lawrence, where he served as a class-leader.
Franziske Broemmelsieck died on September 12, 1890, while visiting her daughter, Minnie Walter, then living in Warrenton, Missouri. Franziske was eighty-one years old. She was returned to Lawrence, Kansas, where she was buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery.
:fig id=oakhil frame=box depth='6.5i'.
:figcap.August and Franziske Broemmelsieck gravestone
:figdesc.Oak Hill Cemetery, Lawrence, Kansas
:efig.
After his wife's death, August made his home with his daughter and son-in-law, Daniel and Minnie Walter. The Walters were living in Eudora, Kansas, about six miles southeast of Lawrence, and only about three miles from the farm where the Broemmelsiecks first settled in 1860. August died at their Eudora home on December 21, 1895, at ninety-one years of age. He was buried beside his wife in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence.
It is interesting to note that the spelling of the Broemmelsieck name changed several times after their arrival in America. The original German spelling was "Brömmelsieck". Soon after their emigration, the spelling changed to "Brömmelsick". By 1880, the umlat was usually dropped, and the name occasionally appeared as "Broemmelsick", but usually appeared as "Brommelsick". The spelling did not change again until about 1920-1930, when an "m" was dropped, thereby completing the change to "Bromelsick".
As a final postscript to the history of the August Broemmelsieck family, it is interesting to note that there was a second Broemmelsieck family, the Johann Friedrich 'Frederick' Broemmelsieck family, whose migration path closely followed that of August's family. While the relationship between August and Frederick Broemmelsieck has not yet been determined, there can be little doubt that they were closely related. They may have been brothers or cousins.
Our first record of the Frederick Broemmelsieck family appears about ten years after August Broemmelsick settled south of Berger, Missouri, when Frederick began purchasing land just south of Beaufort, also in Franklin County. Frederick made several land purchases in the area between 1849 and October of 1859.
Frederick Broemmelsieck was born in Prussia approximately 1820-23. His wife, Katharine Charlotte, was born in Prussia approximately 1816-17. Katharine's maiden name was apparently Landwehr, but we don't yet know whether she was related to our Landwehr family. Frederick and Katharine had a son, Friedrich Wilhelm, who was born in Prussia approximately 1845-46, before their family emigrated to America.
The Frederick Broemmelsieck family were among the first members of the Methodist Episcopal congregation located at the present site of Leslie, Missouri. Frederick's son, Friedrich Wilhelm, was married to Wilhelmina Knehaus on September 10, 1864. They were married in Franklin County by Rev. John Brune, a Minister of the Gospel. The marriage was ill-fated, however, as Friedrich Wilhelm died three months later, on December 23. He was buried in the Methodist Cemetery at Leslie.
On June 12, 1871, Frederick Broemmelsieck's wife died. She was buried near her son in the Methodist Cemetery at Leslie. Frederick was not a widower long, as he married Katharine Knelter of Beaufort only six weeks later, on July 28, 1871. Frederick's new bride was born in Prussia about 1846. Frederick and his bride left Franklin County between 1871 and 1873, and moved to Lawrence, Kansas, where August Broemmelsieck and his family were living. In 1873, Frederick Broemmelsieck and his family lived on Delaware Street, in Lawrence, about one block south and one block east of August and Franziske Broemmelsieck.
The 1880 census of Lawrence, Kansas indicates that 58-year-old Frederick Broemmelsieck, his 34-year-old wife Katharine, and their four young children were living on Pennsylvania treet. Frederick apparently died between 1880 and 1895, as Katharine, listed as a widow, was living with the family of William Broemmelsieck (August's youngest son) at 923 Rhode Island Street in 1895.
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:hp3.Children of Johann August 'August' Broemmelsieck:ehp3.
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:li.Casper Heinrich 'Henry' Broemmelsieck was born at #48 Holzfelde, Prussia on February 27, 1835. He may have been named after Casper Heinrich Rodenbrock, who was his godparent at his March 8 baptism at the Lutheran Evangelical Church in Borgholzhausen. Casper Heinrich Rodenbrock, husband of Marie Ilsabein Voss, was the infant's uncle, and lived in the nearby village of Cleve. Henry Broemmelsieck was probably only four years old when he emigrated with his parents and sister to Franklin County, Missouri in 1839.
Henry grew up on the Broemmelsieck family farm south of Berger. He was married on December 16, 1859, to Hanna Wilhelmina 'Mena' (Heidbreder) Schaefer, widow of John Schaefer. Mena Heidbreder was born on June 1, 1837, in the Prussian village of Elverdissen, which was located only seventeen miles east of Holzfelde, where Henry was born (for the location of Elverdissen, see #7 on :figref refid=minden.). She and John Schaefer had been married twenty-one months earlier, on March 17, 1858, by John C. Hoech, Minister of the Hermann Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Henry Broemmelsieck and Mena were married at her father's home, by Gerhard Timken, Minister of the Hermann Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church (and the same minister who would marry Anna Landwehr and Henry Guese only fifteen days later). Henry was twenty-four years old, and Mena was twenty-two.
When the Broemmelsieck family moved to the Kansas Territory the following spring, Henry and Mena Broemmelsieck went with them. But they didn't stay long. The Civil War broke out in 1861, and Henry and Mena returned to Missouri. Henry was back in Franklin County in time to enroll in the 54th Regiment of Enrolled Missouri Militia. Henry enrolled at Berger Station, as a Private in Company E, serving under Captain Silas Hall. Company E was apparently formed about October of 1862. We have not found any record of active service for his Company, but they undoubtedly were called into service when the Confederate army, under the command of General Sterling Price, invaded Franklin County in the fall of 1864.
Everett Brommelsick, a grandson of Henry Broemmelsieck, recalled hearing two stories about Henry's experiences during the turbulent Civil War years. One story related that Henry was a farmer in the Berger bottom during the war. One night Henry heard a horse coming, and figured it was a rebel, so he went out the back door and hid. He had two big vicious dogs, and all at once he heard one of the dogs whine, and heard a shot fired. The next morning one of the dogs was limping. The other story related that when General Price's army went through the area in 1864, they had to be on the lookout, and hide all the horses.
On March 9, 1864, Henry and Mena sold a one-sixth interest in 157 acres of land located one mile north of the current site of the Senate Grove Methodist Church. Mena apparently inherited the interest in the land as a result of her earlier marriage to John Schaefer. Henry and Mena sold their interest to Louis Rohlfing for $250.
Then, on April 3, 1865, Henry bought forty-eight acres of land only about one-half mile east of the land that he and Mena sold only a year earlier, and three miles southeast of the original August Broemmelsieck farm. He purchased the forty-eight acres from Louis and Mary Rohlfing for $350. On the map provided as :figref refid=mmeyer., this farm is identified as the B. Brommelsick farm in Section 25. Henry would live on this farm for the next thirty years.
Perhaps Henry and Mena had given up on starting a family of their own when they decided to adopt two children. When the census was taken in 1870, the Henry Broemmelsieck family consisted of Henry, Mena, and three children. The eldest of the children was Thomas Broemmelsieck, age nine; the second was Augusta Broemmelsieck, age six; and the youngest was Hannah Broemmelsieck, age five months. Henry and Mena had adopted the two older children, whose names were Thomas McJerry and Augusta Lange. While we don't know the circumstances of Thomas' adoption, we know that Augusta was adopted from the Methodist Orphan's Home in 1868, more than eight years after Henry and Mena were married. Hannah was born to Henry and Mena the year following Thomas' adoption, in October of 1869.
:fig id=pbrom frame=box depth='6.2i'.
:figcap.Henry and Louisa (Thiekoetter) Broemmelsieck
:figdesc.Courtesy of Burton Landwehr
:efig.
Mena was only forty years old when she died on January 26, 1878, after eighteen years of marriage to Henry Broemmelsieck. Her death was recorded in the Church Book of the Hermann Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She was probably buried on the Broemmelsieck farm, or in the Meyer's Church cemetery. Mena's obituary indicates that she was survived by her husband and daughter, her father and mother, and three brothers and two sisters.
Following the death of his first wife, Henry married Louisa Thiekoetter eighteen months later on July 24, 1879. Louisa, the daughter of Christopher and Verena (Meir) Thiekoetter, lived east of Shotwell (for further information about the Thiekoetter family, see :hdref refid=thie.). Henry was forty-four years old, and Louisa was twenty-five. We know of no tie between Henry Broemmelsieck, living south of Berger, and Louisa Thiekoetter, living fourteen miles further south, near Shotwell, before they were married in 1879. It is interesting to note, however, that the Methodist minister serving Henry Broemmelsieck's congregation south of Berger in 1879 was Rev. John Wanner, who was married to Louisa Thiekoetter's half-sister, Amelia. Perhaps Rev. John Wanner introduced Henry, his recently-widowed parishoner, to Louisa, his sister-in-law!
Henry and Louisa expanded their 48-acre farm on May 6, 1881, when they bought an additional thirty-two acres immediately west of their farm from Senator F. W. Pehle for $180. While a county road ran through the tract of land that Henry purchased, it gave him two adjacent forty-acre parcels.
Henry and Louisa lived on the Broemmelsieck farm south of Berger for the first sixteen years of their marriage. Their home consisted of a two-story, five-room farmhouse, with a good spring located only fifty feet from the front door. Nine children were born to Henry and Louisa in this home. The family was affiliated with the Immanuel congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and attended services in the same building that is now known as the Senate Grove Methodist Church. The church was located slightly more than a mile south of the Broemmelsieck farm. There was a mill on Berger Creek, only one-half mile northwest of their home. The family traded at the Rohlfing Store, located about two miles south of Senate Grove. Everett Bromelsick recalls that his father, a son of Henry Broemmelsieck, would carry a big box of eggs to the Rohlfing Store, and return home with a big box of groceries. The house where the Henry Broemmelsieck family lived remained standing until 1976, when it was finally burned by the present owner of the property.
In 1896, Henry and Louisa decided to move. On August 10, 1896, they sold their eighty-acre farm to George M. Miller for $2150. And four days later, they bought a 116-acre farm just south of the "Iron Bridge" over the Bourbeuse River in the Champion City community. The farm is identified as the H. Brummelsick farm in Section 8 on the map provided by :figref refid=mcc98.. Henry purchased the farm from the Gehlauf family for $2175. John and George Giebler had a saw mill at the Elbert place near Champion City, and they helped Henry saw the wood he needed to build a house on his new farm.
Except for sixteen and one-half acres that they sold to Edward Landwehr in 1913, Henry and Louisa spent the rest of their lives on the Champion City farm they purchased in 1896. Henry and his family were pillars of the Methodist Church in Champion City. Henry's grandchildren remember Henry in his later years as a quiet, and extremely kind, little man with a full black beard.
Henry Bromelsick died at his farm home near Champion City on September 27, 1920. He had been ill with heart trouble for several months. After a funeral at the Champion City Methodist Church, he was buried in the church cemetery.
Henry's widow, Louisa, moved to St. Louis about 1923, where she made her home with her daughters, Frances and Amanda. Louisa died in St. Louis on May 24, 1926, and was returned to Champion City for her funeral, and buried beside her husband at the Champion City Methodist Church.
:li.Catharine Wilhelmine Henriette 'Minnie' Broemmelsieck was born at #48 Holzfelde, Prussia on June 29, 1837. She was baptized in the Lutheran Evangelical Church at Borgholzhausen on July 9. She was probably named after her godparent, Catharine Wilhelmine Voss, who was undoubtedly a relative on her mother's side of the family.
Minnie emigrated to America with her parents and older brother when she was about two years old, and grew up on the Broemmelsieck farm south of Berger. Minnie was apparently married on May 17, 1855, when the marriage records of Franklin County, Missouri, indicate that "Wilhelmina Brommelsieck" married "Heinrich Brune". The couple was married by Rev. William Kleinschmidt, Minister of the Hermann Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
We have no further information about this marriage. However, we note that there is a badly-weathered gravestone immediately adjacent to the gravestone of August and Franziske Broemmelsieck in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence, Kansas. The name on the stone appears to be "Rev. J. H. Brune", and the date of death may be "October 6, 1862". We know that Minnie was later married to Rev. Daniel L. Walter. When Rev. Walter died in 1907, his obituary stated that he had married "Minnie Bruns, widow of Rev. H. Bruns". There was a minister named Heinrich Bruns, who was a contemporary of Daniel Walter, and this reference to "Minnie Bruns" was probably a mistaken reference to "Minnie Brune". We suspect, therefore, that Minnie married Rev. J. Heinrich Brune in Franklin County, Missouri, and that he died in the Lawrence, Kansas area in 1862.
So, Minnie lost her first husband (possibly in 1862), and later married Reverend Daniel L. Walter, an early Minister of the German Methodist Episcopal Church. Born in Lohningen, Kanton Schaffhausen, Switzerland on November 11, 1833, Daniel Walter emigrated to America as a 15-year-old youth following the death of his mother. He first settled in Chicago, and in 1852 was converted to the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was associated with the church in Chicago for twenty years. Then, in 1874, he was sent to the Omaha Mission.
Daniel spent three and one-half years with the Omaha Mission, and built two churches and a dwelling place. His first wife died at Omaha, leaving him with four small children. In 1877, he went to Lawrence, Kansas, where he served as pastor for two years. It was probably during his two years at Lawrence that he met and married Minnie (Broemmelsieck) Brune. If her first husband died in 1862, she had been a widow for fifteen years. Rev. Walter then served in Eudora, Kansas, until 1881, during which time he helped build a church. After an illness, Daniel took a two-year leave with pension.
Daniel and Minnie went to Lake Creek, Missouri where Daniel served from 1883 to 1886, to Junction City, Kansas from 1886 to 1887, and then to Central Wesleyan College, in Warrenton, Missouri, where Daniel served as Treasurer from 1887 to 1892.
The campus of Central Wesleyan College was later to include a three-story brick building, called Eisenmayer Hall, which provided rooms for seventy-five men. The building was named Andrew Eisenmayer Hall in memory of a man who had given generously to the college. About 1900, with increased enrollment, funds were badly needed for a men's dormitory. Andrew Eisenmayer of Trenton, Illinois gave $1000. After his sudden death, his family gave considerably more in his memory. Andrew Eisenmayer was probably the father of Minnie Walter's sister-in-law, Louisa P. (Eisenmayer) Broemmelsieck, wife of William Broemmelsieck. Thus, it seems likely that Daniel and Minnie Walter played a role in soliciting the donation that eventually resulted in the construction of Eisenmayer Hall.
Daniel retired in 1894, and he and Minnie apparently spent their early retirement years in the Eudora, Kansas community. An 1895 Kansas census, recorded just months before August Broemmelsieck's death, lists the Daniel Walter family as residents of Eudora. Daniel and Minnie were living on a 47-acre farm, and August, now a widower, was living with them.
The census described their small farming operation. They valued their farm at $3000, indicated that they had eighteen acres in corn, cut five tons of tame hay in the previous year, and sold 750 pounds of butter. They had one horse, three milk cows, two other cattle, six peach trees, six plum trees, ten cherry trees, five pear trees, and one dog!
Daniel died at his home in Eudora on March 13, 1907. He was survived by Minnie, and by Daniel's two sons, who were living at Leavenworth, Kansas. Daniel was buried in the Eudora Cemetery.
:li.Charlotte Catharine 'Lotte' Broemmelsieck was the first of our Broemmelsieck family born in America. She was probably born on the Broemmelsieck farm south of Berger in either 1839 or 1840.
Charlotte was married in Franklin County, on November 29, 1859, to Friedrich Femmer, whose residence at the time of their marriage was Wyandotte, in the Kansas Territory. They were married by Gerhard Timken, Minister of the Hermann Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
There were other Femmers in the Berger area, and it would seem likely that Charlotte's husband had previously lived in the vicinity of the Broemmelsieck farm. He may have gone to Kansas, established a home, and then returned to Franklin County to marry Charlotte.
Charlotte died at Eudora, only a few miles from the spot where the Broemmelsieck family first settled in Kansas. We have no information regarding the date of her death, but suspect it may have been within twelve months after August Broemmelsieck moved to Kansas in the spring of 1860.
"li.Anna 'Ann' Broemmelsieck was probably born on the Broemmelsieck farm in northwest Franklin County on June 8, 1845. She undoubtedly moved to Kansas with her parents in 1860. Ann was probably only fifteen or sixteen years old when she first met Rev. Johann Adam Mueller.
Johann Adam Mueller was born "in Walsheim in Landau" (probably southwestern Germany) on May 24, 1836. He emigrated to Quincy, Illinois in 1855, where he joined the German Methodist Episcopal Church in 1856. In 1860, he went to the new Lawrence, Kansas, Mission as a missionary, where he probably met young Ann Broemmelsieck. He transferred to Manhatten, Kansas in April of 1861, the month the Civil War began. A year later he joined the Union Army, and served until the war ended in 1865.
After the war, he apparently returned to Lawrence, Kansas, where he married Ann Broemmelsieck on August 2, 1865, just two months after the Broemmelsieck family moved to Lawrence from their farmstead. Ann and Johann were married by Rev. John H. Brune. For the next 27 years, Johann served Methodist congregations in Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas. Then, in 1892, he retired. Upon his retirement, Johann and Ann first returned to Lawrence, Kansas, then lived in St. Joseph, Missouri, and finally moved to Los Angeles, California in 1905.
Ann died in Los Angeles on June 1, 1910, and Johann died in Los Angeles on November 12, 1911. They are both buried in the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery in Hollywood, California.
:li.William F. 'Will' Broemmelsieck was born on the Broemmelsieck farm in northwest Franklin County on April 18, 1852. William was only eight years old when his family moved to the Kansas Territory. He was educated in the grammar school of Eudora, Kansas, and the high school of Lawrence. After clerking in a dry-goods store in Lawrence for seven years, he entered the firm of H. A. Kendall & Co., dealers in "gents' furnishing goods", who operated out of a small store in Lawrence.
William was married to Miss Louisa Eisenmayer in Trenton, Illinois, on March 20, 1874. Louisa Eisenmayer was born in Mascoutah, Illinois in 1852 or 1853. Louisa's parents were emigrants from Bavaria. Her father had been an early settler of Illinois, and was the president of the Eisenmayer Milling Company. Louisa had received a good education, and was a graduate of the Illinois Female College at Jacksonville, Illinois.
In 1877, William bought out his business partner, making him the sole owner of his own business, "Wm. Bromelsick Hatters and gents furnishings". In 1880, we know that William and his family lived on Tennessee Street in Lawrence. By 1896, the Lawrence City Directory listed the Bromelsick residence as 923 Rhode Island Street, the house that would serve as the Bromelsick family home for the next fifty-four years. In 1893, William bought a building at 807 Massachusetts Street, from which he began operating his business. William's biography, published in the Portrait and Biographical Record of Leavenworth, Douglas, and Franklin Counties, Kansas in 1899, described William's business:
"His store is as complete in details and perfect in arrangement as any of the kind in Kansas. Two floors are utilized for the stock, the most of which is sold at retail, although some jobbing is done. His stock of hats is the largest in the city, and in style and price the utmost satisfaction is given."
The biography continued with a description of William's other interests:
"In addition to the business here he is a director of the Atlas Building and Loan Association of Lawrence, which he assisted in incorporating. In politics he is a Republican. For two years he was a councilman from the third ward. He is a member of Lawrence Lodge No. 6, A. F. & A. M., and Lawrence Chapter No. 4, R. A. M."
When The Peoples State Bank of Lawrence was organized, and opened for business on January 1, 1906, William Bromelsick was its president. He continued to be active as both a merchant, and the president of the Peoples State Bank, until his death. After completing a full day's work at the bank, William died at his home at 923 Rhode Island Street on the evening of February 16, 1929. He was interred in a mausoleum at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence.
William left an estate of $75,000. The estate consisted of his home and property on Rhode Island Street ($7300), his business on Massachusettes Street ($32,500), and his stock in the bank ($35,700). William bequeathed $1000 to Anna Mueller (a niece), $500 to Ida Steinel (a niece), and $500 to George C. Brune (no known relationship). Louisa inherited the balance of the estate.
After William's death, Louisa and her two sons continued to live at the family residence on Rhode Island Street. Louisa died on July 23, 1946, and was interred beside her husband in the mausoleum at Oak Hill Cemetery.