John Diedrich Dettmer

1823-1912 · Braunschweig, Germany → Orange County NY → Wells County IN

Born 1823, Braunschweig

Died 1912

Children include John

John Diedrich Dettmer was born on 15 August 1823. The 1880 census gives his birthplace as Brunswick, the duchy of Braunschweig in northern Germany. He came to America in 1851 by one account and 1853 by another.

His obituary tells how he married: "In 1855 he was married to the girl who had been his sweetheart in Germany, who came to America in 1852." She was Maria Barbara Engelhardt, born on 24 September 1831 at Dinkelsbühl in Bavaria, by her gravestone. His funeral notice gives the marriage as 1852, but their first child, Anna Sophia, was born at Blooming Grove in Orange County, New York, on 12 January 1856, which favours 1855. A son, John E., followed on 4 August 1859.

The family farmed at Blooming Grove through the 1860s; the 1865 New York state census has them there. In 1867 they moved to Wells County, Indiana, into the German Lutheran settlement of Jefferson township near Ossian. Their daughter Maggie was born in Indiana in 1871. The 1880 household holds John, 57, Mary B., 48, John E., Juliana D. and Maggie L. By 1900 they were at Tocsin, in Lancaster township.

Maria died at Ossian on 30 August 1904, of cancer of the stomach, and John was the informant on her death certificate. In his last year he lived with his daughter Maggie, Mrs Andrew Springer, a mile and a quarter north of Ossian, and he died there on the afternoon of 18 November 1912, at eighty-nine. The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette called him "one of the best known and most universally liked men in the German settlement, a prominent citizen and well-to-do farmer". The funeral was held at St. Mark's Lutheran church, "of which the deceased long had been a member".

His will was probated at Bluffton within the week. He left two hundred dollars to a grandson, Harmon Dettmer, and the rest to his children Anna, Mary, Maggie and John E., and to the six children of his dead daughter Clara Witte: John, Charles, Henry, Otto, Ernst and Lydia.

His tall granite monument at St. Mark's reads "JOHN D. DETTMER / AUG. 15. 1823 / NOV. 18. 1912 / AGED 89Y. 3M. & 3D." Maria's, of the same design, is lettered in German.

Children

John Engelhardt Dettmer (1859-1938)

Sources

Edward Chester Dunbar, died 2 October 1930 at West Point, Hancock, Illinois; born 27 April 1885 at "Spillwell, Ill."; buried 5 October 1930 at Augusta. Parents James Dunbar and Mary L. Printess. Wife Georgia Dunbar.

Find A Grave Index for the birth date and the burial; Indiana Death Index 1882-1920; the 1865 New York state census for Blooming Grove; the federal censuses of 1880 for Jefferson Township and 1900 for Lancaster Township, Wells County, Indiana; and the Indiana marriage returns of his grandchildren, which is where the line's junction with the SCHRENKS is written down

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Cite: Heirology, "John Diedrich Dettmer (1823-1912)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-diedrich-dettmer-1823-1912-cdbfde.