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The Bauers in Philadelphia, 1854 to 1923

In 1854 the family left for America. The Vaihingen family register says that Jacob Friedrich Bauer, brush maker, “im J. 1854 mit Frau nach Amerika gezogen,” “moved to America with his wife in the year 1854”. Sophia’s birth in Pennsylvania about 1855 shows the family had arrived by then.

On 12 July 1860 the census found them in Philadelphia’s 11th Ward: Frederick Bauer, 42, a brush maker, and Christina, 39, with Fredericke, 16, Frederick, 13, and Caroline, 11. Frederick and Caroline were at school. All five were born in Württemberg, and Sophia, 5, in Pennsylvania. It is the earliest record of Fredericka in Philadelphia. What became of Caroline and Sophia after 1860 is not known. A Sophie Bauer is entered in the Philadelphia city birth index, but the entry is not tied to this Sophia or to Frederick, Jr.’s daughter Sophia.

On 29 July 1866 Fredericka married George Wesemann at St. Michael’s and Zion German Lutheran Church. Among the witnesses was a Fried. Bauer, probably her father, though the entry does not say how he was related to her, and her brother is not ruled out. Her married life, her five children and her widowhood are told in the George and Fredericka's Family, 1860 to 1907 section.

Twenty years after the 1860 census, Frederick and Christina were still in the 11th Ward, on North Third Street. Frederick, 64, was a retail dealer in brushes, and Christina, 59, kept house. Both gave Württemberg as their own birthplace and their parents’. Christina died in Philadelphia on 16 January 1891, aged 70, and Frederick on 5 January 1899, aged 82. Back in Enzweihingen, the clerk added a note to her parents’ page in the family register. It says that “Christine Rau” had died in Philadelphia aged 70, and it cites a newspaper notice of 1891. Fredericka outlived her parents by eight years and died in Philadelphia on 18 June 1907, aged 64.

The family owned a lot in Section C of the German Lutheran Cemetery, Lot 86. Its grave card names Christine Bauer and Fredericka’s infant daughter Mathilda, who was almost certainly buried there in 1873. The lot did not stay in the family. The card shows it passing from the Bauers to Peter Kappes, and it lists eleven later burials under other surnames. Three of them, Peter, Louisa M. and Emma M. Kappes, were probably the household of Peter Kappes and his wife, Louisa, whose children Christian Heinrich (about 1865 to 1868), Emma M. (about 1874 to 20 October 1891) and Peter (about 1876 to 1880) are in the Philadelphia death index. A Wilhelmine Kappes, 86, buried at the German Lutheran ground on 15 July 1865, was possibly Peter’s mother. None of the card’s seven other surnames (Kohler, Kappes, Weitzel, Andres, Boettlen, Jung and Voigt) is tied to the Bauers in the index.

Frederick Bauer, Jr.

Fredericka’s brother Frederick, the only son to grow up, was probably the boy baptized Gottlob (or Gottlieb) Friedrich at Vaihingen, whose birth date and parents his death certificate matches. On 25 December 1871 a Friedrich G. Bauer, 25, married Louise Hildebrand, 21, in Philadelphia; he was probably Frederick.

The census then follows a household that was probably his, since its head’s age, his birth in Württemberg, his year of arrival and his death in 1923 all agree. In 1880 Frederick Bauer, 33, born in Württemberg, was in the milk business. His wife, Louisa, 29, was born in Pennsylvania, and her father in Hesse-Cassel or possibly Hesse-Darmstadt. They had two children, Frederick, 7, and Annie, 3. In 1910, aged 63 and married 37 years, Frederick was an engineer in a department store, renting at 633 [Norris] Street. Louisa, 59, had borne three children, two of them living, and their daughter Sophia, 26, a stenographer, lived with them. In 1920 Frederick, 73, was a widower and a boarder, and the census gives his arrival as 1854.

Frederick died on 5 August 1923 at the American Oncologic Hospital in Philadelphia, aged 76 years, 6 months and 20 days. He was retired and a widower, and he had suffered for a year and a half from cancer of the rectum. His death certificate names his parents as Frederick Bauer and “Mrs. Rau,” both born in Germany. The information came from Frederick W. Bauer of 1409 Morris Building, and Frederick was buried at Mt. Vernon Cemetery on 8 August. The informant was possibly his son Frederick, born about 1873, though a later Frederick W. Bauer is indexed with parents born in Pennsylvania.