Asking For Help In German

 

In my genealogy pursuits, nothing has been more difficult to track down than my 3rd great grandmother Mary Meyer's parents. It is my shortest branch of my family tree and it would tickle me to no end to someday be able to extend it at least a notch or two further.

Briefly, Mary Meyer married my 3rd great grandfather John Kuck and died at age 42 in a diphtheria pandemic along with five of her seven children. Because of her short life span and the frequent moves this family did during their 19 years of marriage, there are few records and none of them help me in identifying her parents.

So casting a net, I have looked over the course of years for other Meyers who were born in Switzerland that were in and around the Galena, Illinois/Dubuque, Iowa area around 1860 who are of the right age to have been her parents. Mary may have immigrated alone as she was between 18 and 23 at the time of her marriage depending on which source I use for that fact, but I find this fairly rare and I have searched for immigration records until I am blue in the finger tips without any luck. All I know for sure is that she was born in Switzerland and married John on 30 June 1860 in Galena, Illinois.

Over the years, I have tracked down dozens of Meyers families and either ruled them out or failed to track them through the veil of time. One family though has always haunted me because it is just about perfect in everyway except I can find no record that they had a child named Mary. 

Frederick and Susan Meyer were Swiss immigrants that came into the country sometime before 1850 and settled in St. Louis, Missouri for a few years before continuing their journey up the Mississippi river and settling in the Dubuque/Galena area for the remainder of their lives. Along that journey, I have a couple records of a daughter named Caroline who is near or about the same age as my Mary. Coincidently, the last record I have for Caroline is the 1856 Iowa State Census when she disappears from records at age 18, marrying age. Are they one in the same? Are their more siblings? I don't know the answers to either of the questions. 

Frederick eventually died in 1876 (three years before my Mary) and the event was recorded in the local newspapers. Intriguingly, the newspaper article says, "he leaves behind a large family of children." Other than Caroline, I have never been able to identify any others. Recently, I focused my efforts on trying to locate where he is buried, hoping perhaps he is in a family plot that might shed light on this. I was able to track down a church burial record, the one above, from a St. John Lutheran church in Galena but it is in German.

I don't speak German but I can understand it enough to match the death date and age exactly to the Frederick Meyer that I'm looking for. But the last part of it has me stumped and I'm hoping somebody out there might enlighten me.

Above is a closeup of the heading. Judging from what I can fathom of others listed alongside Frederick, I'm guessing it is listing where they were buried. But I can read the letters enough to type it into Google Translate to get a meaning of the words. 

Above is an enlargement of what it says behind Frederick's name under the same column. Again, I am having a hard time determining the letters to even try and get a translation. If anyone has a guess or even better a translation, please leave a comment.

Frederick lived for a time in both Galena and Dubuque and they are only 10 miles apart or so across the river. I do know he practiced medicine in Dubuque at least until 1870 according to city directories. The newspaper article says he died "in this city" but the same article was published in both towns so it is unclear. The record at the top of this post is from St. John's Lutheran church from Galena and there was a church by that name and two cemeteries by that name in Galena along with a church and a cemetery by that name also in Dubuque. None of those cemeteries have a listing for Meyer/Meier with the first name of Frederick and so my trail went cold. I'm hoping perhaps the translation of the words above will give me a sense of which church/cemetery or other where he was buried to do a more thorough search to see if I can locate any more of those "large family of children" he left behind and perhaps connect the dots to my Mary Meyer Kuck.