John William Frederick Föh was born 25 Oct 1860 in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany (or Prussia). The town may have been Schleswig, as that is listed as his previous residence on the ship manifest. He left the port of Hamburg on the ship Herder, arriving at Castle Garden (not Ellis Island) in New York on 23 May 1882, having stopped in Le Havre (France) along the way. The accommodation is listed as Zwischendeck, which translated means “between deck”, that is, the deck below the main deck and above the cargo deck. In English, the Zwischendeck is the steerage deck, or third class. His occupation is listed as fisherman.

I do not know anything more about John Föh’s origins. Sigh. Anyway, because we don’t have the accented letters, when you see the German umlaut (the two dots above a vowel) you can change it to the American spelling by adding an e. So Föh became Foeh.

John Foeh married Wilhelmine Christine Dorothea Muesebeck in 1884 in South Chicago, IL. They had 8 children, 3 of whom died young. Sadly, both Frieda Foeh and Emil Foeh died of diptheria in 1892, Frieda on 16 Aug at age 7, and Emil on 11 Sep at age 3. This was no doubt a trying time for poor Wilhelmine Muesebeck Foeh, because in August and September 1892 three people died: her mother (Christine Daebel Muesebeck), her oldest child (Frieda), and her youngest child (Emil); then her father (Peter Christian Muesebeck) died only a few months later in January 1893.

John Foeh became a citizen on 14 Jan 1890 in Superior Court of Cook county, IL. The family lived in Chicago or South Chicago at least through 1896, when daughter Wilhelmina Margareta Foeh was born on 22 Apr. On the 1900 census, the family is living in Valparaiso, IN, but by 1903 the family was in Joliet, IL, where they remained.

In 1902, John Foeh returned to Germany for a visit, and had this photograph taken. It is the last photo I have for John Foeh, and it does not list who the woman is. At first I thought it was his mother, as she is obviously older and he is 41 at the time. But then I thought it was strange that he would sign it with his full name if it was his mother; wouldn’t he more likely sign it “your son John” or something like that? So maybe it is his wife’s mother? Or his aunt? Grandmother? Who knows? Whoever you are reading these words, go right now to your photo albums and write down the names of all the people in every photo in those albums. I repeat, do it right now. Believe me, your descendants will thank you for it. By the way, the inscription translates to “In memory of my visit to Germany, July 1902, John W. Foeh”. It is interesting that he wrote the inscription in German, but the date is English, and he put the Americanized spelling of his name (Foeh rather than Föh).

Wilhelmine Muesebeck Foeh died in 1926, and John Foeh married Anna Crisman Speckman a few years later (she was a widow). When John Foeh died in 1937, the informant on the death certificate is Harry Speckman (Anna’s son from her first marriage), who apparently didn’t know much about his stepfather John Foeh because in the fields for the deceased’s father and mother it lists “unknown” and “don’t know”. The informant was not very informative, but back then I suspect women were not often asked to be an informant on a death certificate, even if they did know more than a man would about the deceased. And all John Foeh’s obituary says is that he was born in Germany; no mention of any more specific place than that, and no mention of parents or siblings. So I’ve run into a brick wall on this line, until I can figure out a way to determine where his birth record might be. And then figure out how to get a look at it.

John and Wilhelmine Foeh had 5 children who lived to adulthood: Anna (born 1886), Rose (born 1888), Charlotte (born 1894), Wilhelmine (born 1896), and Helen (born 1902). The image to the right is the baptism certificate of Charlotte, isn’t it beautiful? Her full name is Charlotte Auguste Alma, and her godparents are Charlotte Daszkiewisz, Auguste Gutzmer, and Albert Meier. The Evangelical Lutheran church they attended in South Chicago apparently was attended by German-speaking parishoners, hence the German text (here is the translation).

And for a little fun, here is a page with two recipes, one from Charlotte Foeh Chapman and one from her daughter Marguerite Chapman Lucenta. The recipe for plum pudding is an old English recipe, so was handed down through the Chapman family.