Adolph (Adam) Wachenheim

Here as a young man. He was born August 8, 1857 in Germany. His parents were from Ringsheim, in the region of Baden. He emigrated as a child with his parents (Ambrose and Rosa). There is a family tale that his father (Ambrose) was about to be arrested for killing a deer on the local baron's estate; having been turned in to the authorities by the parish priest (Ambrose's brother) they were forced to flee. Whether that story was true or not, the subsequent generation was Lutheran, not Catholic.

Given that his children were born starting in 1881, he was probably in his 20s when he married. Given the letter quoted in the prior entry (for Lawrence Wachenheim) he would have been in Chicago in the 1890s (in his 30s).

At the time that he emigrated from Germany, there was a large migration of Germans - including Southwest (Baden) Germans - to the United States. It was a period of industrialization, and the region had a surplus of workers without jobs. In the period from the 1840's to 1880's, about 4 million Germans migrated to the US. The region was in political transition - the Grand Duchy "joined" the German Empire in 1871, although it had traditionally long been a factor in Prussian, then German geopolitics, culture, and ambitions. In addition to political issues, the region was involved in struggles with the heirarchy of the Catholic Church, and had instituted civil marriage during the reight of the hereditary monarch at the time, Grand Duke Frederick I . Apparently, defining marriage was an issue of the time, unlike current US politics (!)

I plan to add more information in later entries, with some photos of him in his butcher shop, which still stands in a German neighborhood in Quincy.