On a personal note, this project represents an exercise in deferred gratification. As a youth, growing up on a farm near Calumet, Iowa, I saw a photo in The Des Moines Register, part of a recurring feature called “Old Iowa Album” and carrying the headline, “They Tooted for Calumet.” Had the caption not identified the band members by name, the clipping would have been only a transient amusement.
But . . . there were those names. Then, recognition: “Wow. That’s Grandpa Mugge.” Then, surprise: “Wait. Grandpa Mugge played the horn?”
Other names also stoked curiosity, because the world of Calumet was a small one, then and now, and many of these men’s families were still in the area. And they were family names I’d seen in Liberty Cemetery, just southwest of town. There were many questions: Who were these guys? What were their lives like? What kinds of connections did they have? And what’s the deal with the band, anyway?
Only in retirement was there time to seek answers. Genealogists, whether professional or avocational, recognize the lure of the hunt. An adage holds that “Genealogy is like playing hide-and-seek with dead people. They hide, we seek.” Genealogy also begins to satisfy our innate curiosity about history, people’s lives, and the mystery of time. We come to realize that we each represent the tiny midpoint in an hourglass. There’s the V-shaped upstream volume of ancestors, expanding above us in a geometric progression and somewhat miraculously producing the singular “I” of the present moment. And there’s an equivalent upside-down V-shape of descendants, leading downstream into the distant future.
Many of us have an urge to interrogate that “V,” and this project briefly investigates the “V” for 22 Calumet German Band members — that is, it tells something of their genealogy, based on historical records. When information is available, it also recounts the immediate downstream story of their descendants. But with increasing generational distance, it grows more difficult to trace all of those who follow. If you have a connection with a Calumet German Band member, I would love to hear from you. And comments are welcome in any case. Please contact me using this site’s Contact form.
John H. Mugge
Chicago, May 2023
Last site update: 26 July 2024