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Johann Klaers: the First Generation

FAMILY OF JOHANN KLAERS

Family of Johann Klaers and Leopoldina Hoffman

1. Johann Klaers was born on Aug. 27, 1817 in Burg Reuland, Belgium. He was the son of Johann Klaers and Anna Barbara Arens. Johann married Leopoldina Theresia Hoffman on Aug. 16, 1853 in Burg Reuland. Leo-poldina was born in Burg Reuland on Oct. 4, 1824. She was the daughter of Wilhelm Hoffman and Anna Maria Peiffer. She was known by her mid-dle name, Theresia, in her German-speaking home in Belgium, and Theresa in the United States.

Johann and Leopoldina left their home in Burg Reuland in the spring of 1857. They traveled as part of an extended family of two dozen that also included the families of three of Johann’s siblings. After a harrowing cross-ing of the Atlantic, the group arrived in New York City on the S.S. Zeeland on June 3 of that year.7

Not long after their arrival, the group split up. Joseph Klaers’ family, including his Goergen in-laws, and the Klaers’ second cousins Lorenz and Franz Arens, headed off to farm in western Hennepin County, where they are listed in the territorial census of 1857. The families of Johann Klaers, his sister Catherina (married to Servatius Theodore Hoffman), and Anna Margaretha Klaers (married to Johann Schlecter), stayed in the part of mod-ern-day Minneapolis that was then called St. Anthony,8 living just a few

7 For more information about their trip, including a roster of the travelers and documen-

tation of the voyage, see From Germany to Minnesota, second edition, pages 55-63. 8 The Village of St. Anthony, located on the east side of the Mississippi in what is now the

neighborhood of northeast Minneapolis, was incorporated in 1854. The Village of Min-neapolis, incorporated a year before Johann’s family arrived, started out exclusively on

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doors apart. After the Hoffmans also moved to western Hennepin County and the Schlechters moved to Waconia, only Johann’s family remained in Minneapolis. When the census enumerators came to his home, Johann identified his occupation as blacksmith, the trade of his father and father’s father. However, numerous city directories from those years clarify that he was employed as a laborer.

Johann died in Minneapolis on May 8, 1891 and was buried at St. An-thony Cemetery in Minneapolis. Leopoldina Theresia died in Minneapolis on Feb. 3, 1907 and was also buried at St. Anthony Cemetery.

Children of Johann Klaers and Leopoldina Theresia Hoffman: f i. THERESIA KLAERS was born in Burg Reuland on Jan. 3,

1855 and died in Burg Reuland on Feb. 19, 1856. m ii. JOHANN KLAERS was born in Burg Reuland on April 2,

1856. As a year-old baby, he came to the United States with his parents in the spring of 1857. In the United States, he was always known by John, the English-lan-guage equivalent of Johann. He married his first cousin Margaretha Hoffman9 on May 19, 1885 in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Margaretha was born in Burg Reu-land, on July 9, 1860. She was the daughter of Johann Peter Hoffman and Magdalina Stein. Margaretha came to the United States with her parents in 1883 when a second group of Burg Reuland emigrants arrived, including Jo-seph Klaers’ sister Maria. 10

the west side of the Mississippi. That village quickly grew to be a major city which merged with St. Anthony in 1872.

9 Margaretha’s father, Johann Peter Hoffman, (1831-1902) was a younger brother of Leo-poldina Theresia Hoffman. Her family settled in northeast Minneapolis shortly after arriving from Burg Reuland, just a few blocks from the Johann Klaers home.

10 For more information about this second group of Burg Reuland emigrants see From Ger-many to Minnesota, second edition, pages 64-67. For more information on the many intersections between the Hoffman and Klaers family trees, see From Germany to Minnesota, pages 425-431.

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Johann lived near his parents’ home in northeast Minneapolis as long as they were alive. He was a ware-house worker for the nearby Minneapolis Brewing Com-pany, which later changed its name to its most famous product, Grain Belt Brewery, after a merger with several other local breweries. After his widowed mother died, Jo-hann moved to north Minneapolis on the west side of the Mississippi River, near his sister’s home.

Johann died in Minneapolis on Aug. 12, 1920 and was buried at St. Anthony Cemetery in Minneapolis on Aug. 16, 1920. Margaretha died in Minneapolis on Oct. 15, 1928 and was buried at St. Anthony Cemetery on Oct. 17, 1928.

m iii. THEODORE S. KLAERS was born in Minneapolis on Dec. 26, 1858. A lifelong bachelor, he was a career firefighter for the City of Minneapolis, rising to the rank of captain and running the city’s second fire company. Throughout his adult life he lived in northeast Minneapolis, near his parents. He died in Minneapolis on Jan. 26, 1921 and was buried at St. Anthony Cemetery in Minneapolis on Jan. 29, 1921.

+ 2 f iv. MARIA KATHERINA KLAERS was born in Minneapolis on Aug. 6, 1861.

m v. NICOLAUS KLAERS was born in Minneapolis in 1864 and died in Minneapolis on May 20, 1938. Like his older brother Theodore, he was a lifetime bachelor who worked as a line operator and later as a mechanic for a brewery–most likely the Minneapolis Brewing Company (later the Grain Belt Brewery), his older brother Johann’s employer, located just a few blocks from his home in northeast Min-neapolis. At the end of his working years, he was held a similar job with the Golden Grain Juice Company.

+ 3 m vi. JOSEPH KLAERS was born in Minneapolis on Feb. 2, 1868.

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This remarkable photograph of Johann Klaers’ family from about 1866, which remains in the possession of Hoffman descendants of Johann’s daughter-in-law, is the earliest known photograph of the Klaers family, From left to right: Maria Katherina Klaers, Leopoldina Theresia Hoffman Klaers, Nicolaus Klaers, Theodore S. Klaers, Johann Klaers (the father), and his son Johann Klaers.

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The well-preserved civil registration records from the Johann’s home village of Burg Reuland, Bel-gium (part of the Kingdom of Prussia in the first half of the nineteenth century) include this record of Johann’s birth on Aug. 27, 1817. Franz Jacoby, the village mayor, or Burgermeister, who made the entries in this register, was a distant relative.

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Burg Reuland birth record for Leopoldina (Theresia) Hoffman, born Oct. 4, 1824

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First page of the Burg Reuland record of the Aug. 16, 1853 marriage between Johann Klaers and Leopoldina Hoffman. Johann’s younger brother Joseph was married the same day.

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In the 1860 Minneapolis federal census, Johann Klaers is listed as John Glass (line 7, with his wife and two oldest surviving children on lines 8-10). There is no doubt that this record belongs to Johann. His brother Joseph is similarly listed as Joseph Glass in the census as well. Apparently, the brothers began using Americanized alternates for their German names, a common practice among immigrants, often recommended by earlier immigrants who helped them select names that Americans could pronounce and that helped them blend in. The 1860 census records are the only example of this preference; both brothers resumed use of their original last name sometime in the 1860s. The first names and ages align perfectly with Johann’s family. The same census page also lists two related families, part of the extended family that left Burg Reuland in 1857: Johann’s sister Catharina and her husband Servatius Theodore Hoffman appear as neighbors on lines 22-25, with the family of Johann’s brother-in-law Johann Schlechter listed on lines 11-15 (he had been married to Johann’s sister Anna Margaretha, who died earlier that year). Finally, the iden-tification of his profession as blacksmith further clarifies that the John Glass in this record is the Johann Klaers who learned blacksmithing in his native Burg Reuland from his father, also a blacksmith who learned the trade from his father.

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Johann Klaers (son of Johann Klaers)

Margaretha Hoffman

The members of Minneapolis Fire Company 2 pose for this photo, including Captain Theodore S. Klaers (last uniformed person on the right)

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Postscript: who was Jacob Klaers?

In 1857, a dozen residents of St. Anthony met with a German Jesuit priest to organize the launch of a new church, the second to serve the growing German Catholic population of Minneapolis and St. Anthony. The new Church of St. Boniface, named after the patron saint of Germany, was completed a year later. The parish register lists a baptism for Jacob Klaers on Nov. 22, 1862.

Entry in the register of the Church of St. Boniface for Nov. 22, 1862. The Latin text reads as follows: “on the twenty-second day of the month of December 1862, the infant child of Jacob Klaers and Catharina Schneider, a married couple, was baptized and given the name of Jacob. The godparents were Jacob Feien and Magdalena Feldchen.”

While it is possible that the existence of this record is just a coincidence–that is, the possibility that this family is unrelated to Johann Klaers and his sib-ling–seems unlikely for several reasons. First of all, the Klaers name is extremely uncommon, both in the United States and in the region of Europe from which the family originates. We have yet to find anyone named Klaers that we cannot connect to Johann’s family. Second, the identity of the child’s mother, whose name at birth was Catharina Schneider, may resolve another mystery that has eluded us. We have been able to identify each of the two dozen emigrants who left Burg Reuland in 1857 with one exception. The ship’s register includes a sev-enteen-year-old Catharina Schneider who traveled with the Klaers extended family. We have learned nothing about her except to establish that she was not born in Burg Reuland.11 Perhaps this scrap of evidence answers the mystery: she came to the United States to marry Jacob Klaers. Finally, the godmother’s name, listed in this register as Magdalena Feldchen, could easily be Magdalena Feltes,

11 For more information about the mystery of Catharina Schneider’s identity, see From Ger-

many to Minnesota, second edition, pages 68-69.

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born Magdalena Goergen and married to Bernard Feltes in the early 1860s. At this time long before spelling of names is standardized, when German names are rapidly giving way to English-language variants, it is not hard to assume that Bernard Feltes’ German name was either Feldchen, or something close to that spelling.

Unfortunately, a diligent search has not provided any other information about any members of the Jacob Klaers family. This is not entirely surprising, as public and civil records did not exist at that time, and many people alive in the 1860s cannot be traced. However, the absence of any Jacob or Catharina Klaers in census records is more troubling. Perhaps Jacob Klaers died in the 1860s, leaving a widow with a young child who would likely have remarried quickly, with both mother and child taking on the new husband’s last name.

Finally, if this Jacob Klaers was related to Johann, they might have been first cousins. Our thorough review of Burg Reuland records rules out the possi-bility that they were brothers. Unfortunately, a record gap in the church register of Habscheid, Germany, the town in which Johann’s father Johann Klaers was born in the early 1780s, leaves us without information about the elder Johann’s brothers. It is certainly possible that the elder Johann had a brother, also born in Habscheid, who had a son named Jacob who made his way to America before 1857. Had this happened, it may explain why the 1857 emigrants headed for Minneapolis so soon after their arrival. Finally, it is possible that Catharina Schneider was also from Habscheid, which explains why no information about her can be found in the Burg Reuland records.

Like so many riddles in genealogy, this theory is neither provable nor un-provable. While the pieces fit together neatly, it is still just conjecture. Perhaps one day other evidence will surface that will help us prove it. For now, it’s just an intriguing possibility.