Henry Friedrichsen, like other Calumet German Band members, reflected a German heritage from Schleswig-Holstein, but in his case the connection was only on the paternal side. His father was Wilhelm Friedrichsen (1858-1936, born in Schleswig-Holstein), but his mother, Emma Manson (1856-1937), had been born in Sweden.
There is some confusion in the historical records about Henry’s birth year and birthplace. On four records for which Henry would have been the source of the information, he provided contradictory statements. His marriage record indicates that he was born in Germany. But for the 1920 census, 1930 census, and his World War I draft registration record he stated being born in Iowa. On two additional records for which the data source would have been close family members — the 1900 census and his death certificate — the information indicates that he was born in Germany. There is additional confusion because on a passenger manifest for 23 March 1891, showing the journey from Hamburg to New York of his parents and several children, Henry is missing. Among these children, Henry’s younger brother Herman is reported as being 11 months old, yet every other public record for Herman indicates that he was born one year later in the U.S., not in Germany.(1)
It may not be possible to resolve these discrepancies. What is known, however, is that the family followed a typical pattern of settling first in Tama County, Iowa, where many other German immigrants first set down roots. Subsequently the family moved to northwest Iowa. During their time in Tama County, four more children were born. The seven children (using the most common birth years associated with them in public records) were Louisa F. “Lizzie” (1884-1937), Wilhelm (William) Johannas (1887-1968), Henry (1889-1937), Herman John (1891-1979), John (1893-1987), George (1896-1922), Ella (1899-1905), and Caroline (1900-1936).
The family moved from Tama County to northwest Iowa in 1905, where they settled on a farm just a few miles south of Calumet, in Cedar Township of Cherokee County. Later, in 1911, they moved to a farm north of Sutherland.
Henry had left the family household by the 1910 census, and on 18 November 1914 he married Emma M. Steinbeck (1895-1954), daughter of Diedrich “Dick” Fredrick Steinbeck (1848-1926) and Sophie Jaeger (1859-1921), and a sister of fellow Calumet German Band member Herman F. Steinbeck (1889-1958).
The Friedrichsens first set up on a farm further north in O’Brien County, in Center Township. They then briefly farmed in Clay County, a few miles to the east, before establishing themselves back in O’Brien County, on a farm near the town of Hartley.
Incidentally, during this time, when World War I was raging and there was a wave of anti-German sentiment both in Iowa and nationally, Henry Friedrichsen seems to have run afoul of Iowa Gov. William L. Harding’s “Babel Proclamation,” which forbade the speaking of any language in public other than English. At least one local resident reported to the governor that Friedrichsen had been heard in June 1918 speaking German in the Calumet pool hall. See this site’s more extensive discussion of anti-German feelings in “WWI & Anti-German Sentiment,” a subsection of “The Cultural Milieu.”
Henry Friedrichsen and Emma Steinbeck Friedrichsen had two surviving children, both daughters: Thelma Sophia (1917-1994) and Arlene Mae (1928-1998). Sadly, they lost two sons in infancy: Raymond William, in 1925, and Donald Wayne, in 1931. The household would once have been a full and active one, however; in the 1930 census, Emma’s brothers Dick Steinbeck Jr. (1892-1954) and Henry Dick Steinbeck (1901-1977) were also living with Henry and Emma and their two daughters.
In the spring of 1936, Henry Friedrichsen’s youngest sibling, Caroline, who lived with her husband Julius Heuer (1894-1947) and their two young children (Harry Fritz, 1929-1995; Vernon William, 1934-1963) on a farm near that of Henry and Emma, died under tragic and locally sensational circumstances. She was carried away by a tornado that struck their home on 30 April 1936. Caroline had just given birth to the couple’s third child, a daughter, Mariette (1936-1939),(2) and she was still bedridden when the storm struck. Her husband Julius attempted to carry Caroline out of danger but was not successful.
Henry’s own early and unexpected death — and also coincidentally weather related — took place just a few months after that of his sister. Only six weeks after his 48th birthday, on 24 June 1937, he died as a result of heat prostration (today more typically called hyperthermia or heat stroke). He was working outside in his hay field, where he was stricken, and he died shortly afterward. Weather data for the vicinity(3) show a heat wave for that week; on 23 June, the temperature reached 102 degrees.
Henry’s father, Wilhelm, died in late 1936, a few months after the tragic loss of the parents’ daughter Caroline, and Henry’s mother, Emma, died in late 1937, just a few months after Henry’s own early death. At the time of Emma’s death, four of the couple’s eight children had predeceased her.
In spite of several early and tragic deaths in this family, the two surviving children of Henry and Emma — Thelma Sophia (husband Merritt Fredrik Belz, 1909-1998) and Arlene Mae (husband Norbert Joseph Joyce, 1925-1986), and their families — as well as other brothers of Henry Friedrichsen and their descendants, successfully continued the farming tradition of the family in O’Brien and Cherokee Counties.
Henry Friedrichsen and Emma Steinbeck Friedrichsen are buried in Pleasant View Cemetery, Hartley, Iowa.
Subscribers to Ancestry.com may wish to further explore some family connections of Henry Friedrichsen by accessing an Ancestry profile page (within the context of a “Mugge Family Tree”).
Connection to Other Band Members
The narrative above already makes note of the fact that Henry Friedrichsen and bandmate Herman Steinbeck would become brothers-in-law five years after the Calumet German Band photo. Henry’s wife Emma was the younger sister of Herman.
In addition, Henry Friedrichsen was a first cousin (by marriage) to bandmate Johannes “Nick” Jessen (1890-1938). Henry’s father, Wilhelm Friedrichsen (1858-1936), was a brother of Elise Friedrichsen (1856-1938), who was the mother of Nick Jessen’s spouse Rosa Thoms (1891-1984). The parents of Wilhelm and Elise Friedrichsen were Hermann Christian Friedrichsen (1820-1897) and Elise Christiana Jacobsen (b. about 1828). This relationship can be seen on a schematic, available here.
Henry Friedrichsen would also become related to band member Charles Bandholz (1888-1919) through Charles’s marriage on 18 December 1912 to Dora Maria Margaretha Menke (1891-1956). Dora was the sister of Treugina Wilhelmine “Minnie” Menke (1893-1992), who on 17 February 1915 married Henry’s brother Herman John Friedrichsen (1891-1979).
That Menke-Friedrichsen connection also created a marriage relationship with Henry Friedrichsen’s bandmate Henry W. Mugge (1891-1967), because Minnie and Dora Menke’s brother was Ernest Menke (1887-1969), husband of Henry Mugge’s sister Clara Margaretta Sophie Mugge (1890-1985).
A schematic, available here, is the best way to understand these several relationships.
A nuance of the schematic (not directly related to the issue of the Calumet German Band) is that it also indicates double-cousin relationships that were created between Mugges and Menkes involving two more members of these families: Elmer Henry Mugge (1895-1968), another sibling of Henry and Clara Mugge, and Anna Sophie Menke (1897-1935), another sibling of Minnie, Dora, and Ernest Menke.
Footnotes
(1) The 1900 census, which indicates 1891 as the immigration year for parents Wilhelm and Emma, appears to list 1892 as the immigration year for children who had been shown as traveling with them in 1891. This may be the result of an error by the census enumerator.
(2) In yet another family tragedy, Mariette Heuer died in 1939 at the age of three, of encephalitis.
(3) National Centers for Environmental Information, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web.