Monday, January 5, 2015

Tombstone Tuesday - Henry and Henrieta Boegel

Henrieta Boegel
Henry Boegel

























Henry and Henrieta Boegel are buried in Sacred Heart Cemetery, Cty Rd MM, Chippewa County, Wisconsin.  As you can see the tombstones aren't holding up exceptionally well, but you can make out their names.  You can also see that no additional information was put on their stones.  From census records I know that Henry was born sometime around 1817.  The 1900 census puts his birth at July 1817 in Germany, but we know that doesn't make it so.  It does, however, give me a place to start.

As for Henrieta, the 1880 census (she died prior to the 1900 census) had her 61 years of age so that would put her birth around 1819.  She too was born in Germany.

The Wisconsin Death Index has Henry (with his surname spelled "Baigel") passing on January 7, 1901 and Henrieta (spelled "Henrietta Beagle") passing on January 24th, 1899.  I still need to pull these death certificates and verify that they are indeed the right Boegels.  I'm fairly certain they are, but research must be done! Hopefully I'll find obituaries on them both as well, but I'm less hopeful there considering the time they died.  If they weren't prominent in the community there might be nothing or very little.  Still worth a look.  I'll cross my fingers that I'll hit some gold. It didn't happen during my most recent trip to the land of deep-fried cheese, but hopefully next time!

I wasn't deterred with the misspellings of their surnames in the Wisconsin Death Index either.  I was a German major in college and I sit there and shake my head at how some names were pronounced once they came to America.  I do know from my mother-in-law that Boegel (German would be Bögel) was pronounced "Beagle" in Wisconsin so this actually confirmed rather than frustrated my efforts.

A special thank you to Rachel and Paul Depa for allowing me to use their photos from FindAGrave.com