98 Years of Marriage and a 7:30 Evening Wedding

In a few days my great-grandparents will have been married 98 years. 

Friederich J. Ufkes and Trientje Maria Janssen were married at the Immanuel Lutheran Church near Basco, Illinois, on 7 March 1916. The entry in the church register indicates that he was a farmer living in Bear Creek Township where he was also born. There were no real surprises in the church record fo their marriage.

part of pages 228 and 229 from church register of Immanuel Lutheran Church (left hand side), Basco, Hancock County, Illinois; marriage entries from 1915-1917; digital image, Archives.com

The entry for my great-grandparents is not the only Ufkes entry on the page. There are entries for two of his siblings as well. His brother Gerd married in 1915 (entry 62 which has been underlined in green) and his sister Lina married in 1917 (entry 66 which has been underlined in red).  Great-grandma Trientje was also born in Bear Creek Township to Jans Janssen and Friedericka M. Sartorius. Her family was not as large as her husbands or she probably would have had siblings with marriage entries on the same page as well.

part of pages 228 and 229 from church register of Immanuel Lutheran Church (right hand side), Basco, Hancock County, Illinois; marriage entries from 1915-1917; digital image, Archives.com

The church register makes no mention of the time of the marriage, but an entry in the Quincy Daily Journal from 10 March 1916 mentions the ceremony as having taken place at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday. I never really gave much thought to the time of day the ceremony took place although spring marriages during this time period were fairly common.

The newspaper account indicates the couple were "favorably known" and would take up housekeeping on the William Schuster farm, two miles east of Basco. That would not have been far from where Ufkes grew up which was also east of Basco. A plat map hopefully will confirm the location.

In fact, Fred grew up in the shadow of the Immanuel Lutheran Church as indicated in this picture of him taken on his parents farm some time before his marriage.

I've mentioned the picture before, but if one looks closely an outline of a church can be seen in the background on the left hand side "above" the fence. That's the Immanuel Lutheran Church.

 Fred and Tena later moved back to the farm where he grew up sometime after their marriage and sometime before 1924 when his father John H. Ufkes died. After 1924 they stopped attending the nearby church and started attending Trinity Lutheran Church in Carthage.

But that's another story.

Aerial Photographs of Churches and Cemeteries from 1955 in Illinois.

I've been playing the 1955 American Aerial County History Series from Hancock County, Illinois,  Mocavo.com. There's not just farm pictures in this publication, rural churches appear as well. 

Of personal interest was the Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church as shown below. By 1955, my own family had stopped attending this church, although my grandparents lived on a farm close enough to the church that the church could easily be seen from the front yard.

page 265 of original text

There even was a photograph of the Immanuel Cemetery in the book as well. The cemetery's growth between 1955 and today is evident (at least to me) from this picture.

page 243 of original text

Of course, no stones are readable.

Having been to the cemetery numerous times, I am somewhat familiar with it. The rectangular region on the left is virtually full and the trees that line the "back" of the cemetery (on the left, which would be the east side) are now gone. The trees on the north (in the back) are still there.

I'm reasonably certain that I've located the stone of my great-great-grandparents on the image below. My great-grandparents were not deceased in 1955, but they are buried pretty close to where the "S" appears in "Stone" below.

These images were located on Mocavo.com's digital version of this publication by searching for Immanuel as a keyword. That's why "Immanuel" is in yellow in the screen shots above.

I know these books were published for other Illinois counties, but I'm not certain which ones Mocavo.com has. But those with an interest in this time period might want to give a look on Mocavo.com and see for themselves.

Neat stuff.

[note: The black and white portions of these images were downloaded from the Mocavo.com site. The title of the database and the image numbers were retained in order to facilitate the relocation of these images. The red annotations were made by Michael John Neill on 20 February 2014--the same date as the viewing date of the images]