She wasn’t famous. She didn’t do anything that would make historians sit up and take notice. But there is a story attached to Wilhemina Ostermann.
She was born on Dec. 5, 1833, somewhere in Germany. We know who her parents were – Johann Ostermann and Lucie Hoffman Ostermann – but that’s about all we know. We can presume, but it’s only a presumption, that she had siblings. In the 1850s, Wilhelmina (and likely her parents) came to the United States, part of the second great wave of German immigrants to America in the 19th century. German immigrants had come to Louisiana since the 1720s (New Orleans was founded in 1718), many settling in what was called the “German Coast,” a few miles west of the city. Today, the small town of Des Allemands testifies to that early German presence – the name is French for “The Germans.”
The Ostermann’s settled in New Orleans, which had a large German immigrant population. In fact, before the Civil War, it’s estimated that 12 percent of the New Orleans population was immigrants from Germany. It was a lively, thriving culture, with beer halls and breweries, literary societies, and German-language newspapers.
In 1858, 24-year-old Wilhelmina married Peter Dietrich Bosch in New Orleans, where they made their home. He was 15 years her senior, and all we know about his was that he was born in Germany and likely came to New Orleans in the first wave of 19th century German immigrations, which lasted form the 1820s and 1840s. (The third and final wave was in the 1880s to 1890s.)
Wilhelmina and Peter had six children, born between 1861 and 1879, three of whom survived until adulthood. One of those who survived was a daughter, named Wilhelmina after her mother. She was born Oct. 7, 1861, some six months into the Civil War and six months before Union Admiral David Farragut sailed up the Mississippi River and captured the city in April, 1862.
It’s not known which side Wilhelmina and Peter supported in the Civil War. They were citizens of Louisiana and so of the Confederacy. But German immigrants largely opposed slavery and supported the Union; in St. Louis, for example, which another large population of German immigrants like New Orleans, it was the “German vote” that supported Lincoln in both St. Louis County in the election of 1860, one of only two counties in the entire state that voted Republican.
The Bosch family remained in New Orleans under Union occupation. After Wilhelmina’s birth in 1861, the other two surviving children were August (1865-1945) and Julia (1875-1907). Their daughter Wilhelmina married Henry Wetzel in 1884; he was also of German immigrant extraction. They had three daughters – Edrienna, Lillian, and Beatrice – before Wilhelmina’s death in 1893, the same year her father Peter Bosch died. I think about those three girls, ages 8, 6, and 3, respectively, losing their mother and grandfather a few months apart. And I think about Wilhelmina Bosch, losing her husband and her oldest daughter in the same year.
Henry Wetzel remarried six years later, when his daughters were 14, 12, and 9. In the interim, I suspect that Wilhelmina helped raise her granddaughters. The middle girl, Lillian, married in 1904; her husband died in 1908. Two years later, she married again, this time to Edwin Jacob, 12 years her senior and himself with two sons (his first wife had died). Edwin and Lillian had six children, the fourth of which was my mother.
My mother didn’t know her great-grandmother Wilhelmina Bosch (she died in 1923, four months after my mother was born), but she said her mother always spoke of her with great affection.
My mother somehow ended up with the photograph of Wilhelmina Bosch at the top. This was a woman who emigrated to the United States as a teenager, had a child during a civil war, endured that war and occupation, helped raise three young girls when her daughter and their mother died, and lived to almost 90. The photograph would have been taken about the time of the Civil War or shortly before.
Martha J Orlando says
Such fascinating family history, Glynn! I think it’s amazing that you have a photograph that old and still know its origin.
Blessings!
Glynn says
Martha, I think it’s a photo of a photo. Part of it was torn. My mother kept it in a double frame with the identification on the other side.
Jamie Bosch says
I can not believe I just came across this story. This is my Great, Great, Great Grandmother. Occasionally I look into my ancestry but I was stuck once I got to Wilhemina O. Bosch and Peter D. Bosch because they came from Germany. I deceided to try again to find my Great x3 Grandmother’s birth records since I knew when she was born and the city in Germany where she lived….I Googled her name and had chills. I TRIPLE CHECKED AND THIS IS MY GRANDMOTHER. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS STORY !!!
Jamie Bosch
Glynn Young says
What a wonderful note! The woman featured in the post, Wilhelmina Ostermann Bosch, was the wife of Peter D. Bosch. She would have had a toddler and a baby at the time New Orleans was occupied by Union forces. That baby was a girl, also called Wilhelmina, and there is a four-year gap between her and the next sibling, which may have had something to do with the war and occupation. She married Henry Wetzel in New Orleans in 1884 and had three children, including my grandmother, Lillian Wetzel. Wilhelmina’s parents, Peter and Wilhelmina, were married in 1858 in New Orleans and had nine children. And there the Peter Bosch backward record stops, although the listing in Family Search says he was born in Germany. Wilhelmina Ostermann was also born in Germany, the only (listed) child of Johann and Lucie Ostermann. And that’s as far as that record goes, although it says Lucie’s maiden name was Hoffman. More than likely, the Bosches and the Ostermanns had emigrated to America in the great German emigration of the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s. They settled in places like New Orleans, where I was born, and the Missouri River Valley in Missouri and St. Louis, where I currently live. There is still a section of St. Louis known as “Dutchtown,” which people think mistakenly comes from “Dutch” as in Holland. It’s actually a shortened form of “Deutsch” and was the center of German life in St. Louis. All the big breweries like Anheuser-Busch and Falstaff (the Griesedick family) were located nearby.
I think of what it would have been like for a young mother, a first-generation American, managing a toddler and a baby during the occupation of New Orleans by Union troops and sailors. In general, German emigrants were anti-slavery and pro-Union; here is Missouri, they played an important role in the state remaining in the Union. I don’t know where the Bosches and the Ostermanns would have been politically.
Susan Croce kelly says
Glenn- what a treasure to have that much knowledge about your family. And what an amazing life your great-great grandmother had!
Glynn Young says
Susan, thanks for reading. You come across stories like these, and suddenly those names in the family Bible records or listed in an online genealogy site become real people. It’s humbling.