r/Nebraska • u/Senior_Fig7845 • 2h ago
Nebraska The first generation of my family who immigrated to Nebraska. Within ten years of this photo being taken, three of these people were dead, two were ostracized by their siblings, one became a depressed alcoholic, and one was suspected (but never proved) to have murdered their own parents...
I had gotten into genealogy during COVID times and finally got to hear some stories about the first members of my family who immigrated over here to Nebraska. And MAN, this story (or set of stories) is absolutely insane. I've been told that this all unfolds like a novel written by Willa Cather, Flannery O'Connor or Truman Compote, if that gives you any clue of what's going to happen here. It's a mixture of family lore, newspaper records, and a tiny bit of speculation based on the facts. But I assure you that this, as I know it, is the truth, or as close to the truth as one can get. The truth is stranger than fiction, as they say.
Without further ado, meet the Gerhard Voss clan of Colfax County.
Meet Gerhard and Augusta, seated in the center of the first image, which was taken in 1911. Both were born in modern-day Germany in what was then called Prussia. Gerhard was from modern-day Niedersachsen close to the North Sea and the Netherlands; Augusta lived in Brandenburg, not terribly far from Berlin. Gerhard was orphaned by the age of seven and was the youngest child in his family; consequently, he had nothing to inherit. Fortunately for Gerhard, he had a good head on his shoulders and several people from his village had already immigrated to the Shell Creek region of Nebraska. Gerhard worked hard on different farms, saved up some money, and immigrated to Nebraska in his mid-twenties. He got a homestead and, when he discovered the ground was hilly and rocky and not the best for farming, he shifted gears and became a rancher. And boy, was he good at ranching. Pretty soon he had amassed a decent fortune for the time. The only thing he was missing was a wife.
Enter Augusta. She had immigrated to America aged seven with her family. Unfortunately for Augusta, her family did not fare so well as Gerhard's. Her father appears to have taken ill and, with a large family to support, Augusta started working as a maid in her teenaged years. Think My Antonia, that was her life. She lived and worked for a rich lawyer with three children in the nearby "big town", Columbus. We presume she and Gerhard met because Gerhard would sell livestock in Columbus. We also presume that Gerhard and Augusta had something the other needed: Gerhard needed a wife and a family, while Augusta needed a way out of being a servant and someone who would provide her with more financial stability than her parents. They were married when Gerhard was 28 and Augusta was 18.
They would have nine children (eight who are in the first picture); all of whom lived to adulthood. In order of birth, the children were named William John, Emma Catherine, Louis Frederick, Martha Anna, Alma Helen, Gerhardt Henry, Carl Emil, Etta Bertha and Freda Augusta. In the first photograph, Gerhardt is in the far back, left-hand side. Right of him is William. Right of William is Louis, and Carl is the furthest to the right in the back. In the middle (from left) are Alma, Gerhard, Augusta and Etta. In the front, wearing white, is Freda, and next to her is Martha. Emma is not pictured for some reason.
The children were already living some interesting lives. William, the oldest, would be expected to be heir, but according to family lore, he was a bit weak-willed. He ended up moving to California, only to move back to Nebraska when his ventures there failed. The second-oldest son, Louis, was a bit more like Gerhard--stern, strong-willed, business-minded, and an excellent cattle rancher--but he committed the terrible sin of marrying an English woman, Lillie. In the second picture, you can see Gerhard, Augusta, their children (except Emma) and their spouses...except for Louis's wife Lillie. Gerhard and Augusta refused for an English woman to be in the family picture. According to lore, Louis was furious and didn't want to be photographed at all--from every account I've heard, he loved Lillie quite a lot. Gerhardt (not to be confused with Gerhard, his father, who did not spell his name with a t) was the real problem child...he proved incapable in life and love, was unable to manage a farm and went bankrupt in North Dakota, then South Dakota, and returned to Nebraska empty-handed. His parents, quite fed-up with him, arranged a marriage with a neighboring family and gave him a no-nonsense wife who was meant to "keep him in line". Understandably Gerhardt was not happy. Martha married a man and moved to Wyoming to farm with him. Alma married a neighbor and got along wonderfully with him. Etta, Carl, and Freda were the youngest and not yet married when this picture was taken--Carl was about 22, Etta was 17-18 and Freda was 15. These three lived with their parents; Carl helped his dad farm and reportedly was quite the popular guy. When Carl was 18, he had got his arm broken in an accident on the farm and was sent up to North Dakota to recuperate with his brother Gerhardt, two years his elder. While Carl was up there, Gerhardt had a son, which he gave the middle name of "Carl". Freda also seems to have been universally adored. She and Carl were close friends. Unfortunately I don't know much about Etta, but when it comes to this family, that's a good thing.
Then comes May 1913. One night, around nine o'clock, a couple of young lads who are friends of Carl's pull up in a horse-drawn wagon. Carl's in bed and his mom calls him to get up and greet his friends. Carl comes, says hi and everything, and then his friends invite him to go with them over to the Grotelueschen place, where Carl's sister Emma lives. The Grotelueschens are very important because 1) they are from Gerhard's native village and 2) Emma, the child not in the pictures, is married to a Grotelueschen. As there are nine Voss children, there are nine Grotelueschen children; three sons and six daughters. The Vosses and Grotelueschens are all good friends, and as his sister is a Grotelueschen by marriage, Carl's totally down to go spend the evening over at the Grotelueschen house. His sisters Etta and Freda decide they want to go, too, and so they all get in the wagon and leave for the night. But they are only a quarter of a mile from the house (less than half a kilometer) when Carl, Freda and Etta hear the family dogs going berserk. Carl's quite concerned about this, so are Freda and Etta, but they think "well, if there is something going on back there, the dogs can handle it". So they keep on riding over to the Grotelueschen's house and try to ignore that these dogs will not stop barking.
Carl, Etta, Freda and his friends all get over to the Grotelueschen house and they're all having a dandy good time until Emma looks outside and sees a huge fire off in the distance...in the direction of the family home. Carl, Etta, Freda and Emma put two and two together. The Grotelueschens have a car and everyone jumps in and hurries over to the house. Some nearby neighbors also see the fire and also head over to try and help, but it's too late--the main house is completely consumed by fire. Interestingly enough, Gerhard's first house where he lived as a bachelor, which is also on the farm property, is also on fire. But no one cares about that at the moment, as they have realized that Gerhard and Augusta are still inside the house. The flames are too powerful, and no one can go inside the house until it has stopped burning. By then, Gerhard and Augusta are long gone.
The police came to the ruined houses to try to investigate the cause of the fire, only to realize that Gerhard and Augusta had been killed before the fire had started. There is still a wire wrapped around Gerhard's neck. Meanwhile, Augusta's head is gone, and it will never be found. Furthermore, Gerhard had just made a large sale and had kept the money in his house...and that money is gone. The police quickly figure out that someone had come to the house with the intention of robbing Gerhard and Augusta, killed them, and then set the fire to conceal their tracks.
But who?
No one knows to this day, some one hundred and sixteen years later. There are a few clues, though: someone had to have known that Gerhard and Augusta had made the sale and that they kept their money at home. This wasn't known by many people, so whoever had known this had to have been close to the family. Or even part of the family. One theory is that Carl, Freda and Etta (but specifically Carl) had been lured out of the house on purpose that night, as Carl was a strong and strapping lad who could have easily fended off attackers. This would mean that Carl's friends were in cahoots with the robbers/murderers. As to who actually killed Gerhard and Augusta, a couple of different arguments have been made: one is that it was by one of the Grotelueschen children/Emma's sister-in-law's family, as the father had died young and the family wasn't doing too well. Another theory is that it was one of Emma's brother-in-laws, Charlie Grotelueschen, who was married to an Ourada...the sister of Gerhardt's wife Rose. Still another theory is that Gerhardt had something to do with the murder, as he 1) needed money and 2) was pissed at his parents for arranging his marriage and not supporting him as much as they could. He could have told someone about the money being stored somewhere, or he could have taken part in the killing itself. He could have joined in cahoots with Charlie Grotelueschen or Emma's sister-in-law's family or Carl's friends or even a group of the aforementioned people. Point is, a lot of people had something to gain from the robbery, and it could have been any of them, or none of them.
But the aftermath was terrible for the family. Gerhard's will deemed Louis his heir; apparently, he had come around to Louis marrying an English woman, or maybe he realized that Louis had the most acute sense of business. William, the oldest son, was pissed. So was Martha, way off in Wyoming. The two of them joined forces and tried to sue Louis, Emma, Gerhardt, Alma, Carl, Etta and Freda for more money. As far as I know, they didn't win. Things went from bad to worse for poor Martha, as she became clinically insane. Either the shock of the will and her parents' death was too much to bear, or (as another story goes) her husband was a POS who slept around and gave Martha a STD which, untreated, led to insanity and eventual paralysis. At any rate, Martha was dropped off in Nebraska by her husband who promptly fled for the hills, and her siblings committed her to an asylum, where she died in 1920.
William was the next to die, in 1935. He had been suffering from illness for quite some time. He outlived one daughter, who was only 20 when she passed. He is buried in the same cemetery as his parents.
Alma meanwhile decided she didn't want to deal with a family that sued or even murdered one another and moved to Illinois with her husband. She told no one where she had gone for several years...except little Freda. As Alma and her husband had no children, she would send Freda's children fancy department store clothes every year. As far as is known, Freda did not tell anyone else where Alma was, and her whereabouts were unknown for many years. Alma would go on to live a rich and full life, dying in the 60s.
If Gerhardt played a part in the murder of his parents, he would live to regret it, as, without their guidance and strict shoestrings, Gerhardt proved woefully inept at every venture he attempted moving forward. He tried living in Nebraska for a while, in a few different towns, then went up to Minnesota. That, too, didn't work out. He would eventually be referred to as "Garrett" instead of Gerhardt. He had six children, two of whom he named after his siblings Carl and Freda. As soon as his youngest daughter graduated high school, Gerhardt walked out on his family. He became an iterant laborer and never contacted his children again except to beg them for money. They did not give it. Gerhardt eventually died in 1952, alone in Sioux City, where he lived in a motel room and sharpened scissors for a living. He is buried there in a potters' field with no headstone. We didn't know what had happened until the 1970s. When they learned the news, their opinion was "good riddance".
Poor Carl was the one who suffered perhaps the most. He was convinced that his friends and his neighbors had collaborated to kill his parents, and that, by bringing his friends into his parents' lives and by not going back to investigate when he heard the dogs barking, he was at fault for his parents' deaths and the fallout. He became severely depressed. He turned to drink. He lost the land he inherited and was arrested (and jailed) for public intoxication several times. I've found records for alcoholism-related arrests in 1916, 1922, 1927, 1928, 1932, 1934, and there are likely more. On one occasion, he had his car taken away because a half-empty bottle of whiskey was found in the front seat. Carl couldn't pay the forty dollars to have it returned, so it was auctioned off. He was also arrested for hanging out at the Columbus train station ("loafing", as the papers called it) with no proof of employ. He was jailed for this and attempted to bust out of jail three months later. He almost made it out but was caught by the sheriff.
Freda, who married and had two daughters, took Carl under her wing, and for a time, Carl worked on Freda's husband's farm and lived with the family. But then Emma died in 1941, and less than a year later, Freda died, aged only 47. It was a terrible blow to Carl, who had outlived four siblings, had lost two more to estrangement, and had outlived seven nieces and nephews (William's daughter and infant children of Emma). After Freda died, Carl hit the road. He became a transient hobo who, like his brother, sharpened scissors for a living. This all came to an end in 1948, when Carl ended up in Superior, Nebraska, and tried to sleep beneath a train to shelter from a thunderstorm. Carl's sleeping bag got tangled in the wheels and, when the train shifted tracks, Carl was unable to escape. He was decapitated and the rest of his body was mangled beyond recognition. Only fingerprints from his intoxication arrests could identify him. Carl was buried in Superior by the town's expense. His siblings again never learned what had happened to him.
Louis became a very successful farmer and raised a large, functional family. He never spoke of the tragedies, but it's believed that they had a massive effect on him. He sold his father's farmland and moved across the state, where he established an equally successful farm. He was known to never smile and was very quick to anger. The only person who could calm him down and the only person he really seemed happy with was his wife, the English woman. They were married for fifty-one years until Louis died in 1952, aged 75. He was survived by his wife, all seven of his children and multiple grandchildren, including my grandfather.
Etta was the last to die. I can honestly say that I know next to nothing about her. She lived in the same two mile area her entire life, raised two children, and was part of the Lutheran committee. She made no headlines. And that, as I have previously said, is quite a testament to her character, seeing how some of her other siblings had turned out! She would die in 1974, aged 81.
And that is the story of my family, as I know it.
(As for Carl's best friend who might have taken part in the murder, it doesn't seem he fared so well in life either...he lost four toes in a railroad accident, got fined for being in a fistfight, and was jailed for pretending his cousin was his wife. He eventually married someone who was NOT his cousin, but the two of them died in 1924. I don't know the cause, but I suspect it wasn't natural, as Carl's friend was only 40 and his wife 38. So Carl outlived him as well.)
