Great-great grandfather

My great-great-grandfather, Franz Anton Bieke, came to America when he was about 17 in 1857. He came with his older brothers Augustin and Johann. He was born in Oedingen, Westfalia, Germany. We don't know what became of Augustin, but Franz and Johann both settled in Detroit and attended St. Joseph's Catholic Church. St. Joseph's is at the corner of Jay and Orleans Streets in Detroit, just off of Gratiot, near the Eastern Market and I-75 and Ford Field. Franz reported for the Army at Fort Wayne in Detroit on May 31, 1861, and served in the 1st Michigan Light Artillery, Battery A during the Civil War. He came home from the war with an injured shoulder. He married Sophia Mette, who was also born in Germany, at St. Joseph's in 1866. [Knowing that he married a German girl from Westphalia suggests there might have been some degree of "clustering" of immigrants over here based upon what part of Germany they came from? Perhaps she came over here just to marry him?]. The couple went on to have 10 children. Johann married a German girl as well, and had 6 children. Both Franz and Johann are buried in adjacent lots in Mt. Elliott Cemetery in Detroit. Franz was actually born in 1840 and died in 1892; we suspect the current gravestone is a replacement for the original gravestone, if he had a gravestone to begin with. He died on December 27 and wasn't buried until January 31, So we suspect whoever made the gravestone looked in the cemetery records, rather than church records, and knowing he was 52 years old when he died subtracted back to find his birth year.

Franz was the youngest of 7 children. His father died in 1842 when Franz was an infant, and his mother died in 1853. I believe his father was a brewer.

There are a lot of reasons given for why so many German people from the Sauerland (Westfalia) emigrated to America. There was the draft into the Prussian Army, lack of jobs, and inheritance customs which tended to give the family farm to the first-born but not much else for later children. There is a good website which discusses this topic in more depth: http://www.westphalia-emigration.de/index.html We don't know exactly why the Bieke brothers in particular came to America though. Perhaps they knew someone over here? Maybe they were just looking for jobs in the booming city of Detroit?

Why is all this important? To start laying the intellectual foundation for the kind of place St. Joseph's Church and neighborhood was like in the mid-late 1800's, and to have some idea of the people who lived there.

I visited Franz's grave yesterday. I drove down Mt. Elliott from Gratiot, and was, as always, awestruck by some of the old houses and buildings in that part of town. They sure knew how to add the little embellishments that gave a building character back then! I stopped by the Hiedelberg project for the first time, that was interesting as well.

I got to the cemetery and stopped and talked with the security guard there for a little while. He has worked for the city for 6 years. I asked him about the rumor that even the dead white people were leaving Detroit: that relatives would dig up bodies out of Mt. Elliott and move the bodies to cemeteries in the suburbs. That way the relatives wouldn't have to go into the city anymore to visit the graves. He assured me there was no truth to that rumor at all, that the only time they dig up graves is when they have a court order to do so (to investigate a crime). I asked him if there are still any plots left, and he says the cemetery has room for another 1,000 people, and if they tear up the roads, an additional 1,000 more.

I suggest going to Mt. Elliott sometime, and looking at all the 1918 grave stones. That was the year of the Spanish Flu. Seeing all those 1918 graves should give you good incentive to live it up, because once the Bird Flu hits here, one out of ten of us are going to be goners. There were so many deaths that year the cemetery even has an unmarked mass grave section of flu victims.