The 1853 marriage record for August Wittkopf and Eleanora Helwig

This two line record can be found in a copy of a list for the first quarter of 1853 submitted to the Wayne County, Michigan, Clerk’s office by Charles Haass, pastor of St. John’s German Lutheran Church in Detroit.  It appears on p. 536 of Records of Marriages, Wayne County, Michigan, Liber C, 1848-1853.¹

[Record no.] 5054, [1853] [Jan.] 23, August Wittkopf & Eleanora Herwig(?) of Detroit

Wit[nesse]s George Altikopf & M Fabel

Click here to see an image of the list

The ‘r’ in “Herwig” does not look like the clerk’s usual ‘r’, so we think it’s just a sloppy ‘l.’  The pastor’s name appears at the bottom of the page:

Detroit Mich Apl 1^st 1853

Charles Haass pastor of the German

(logh Wot)? Church of St John

Note that the name “Wilhelm Hellwig” appears as a witness in record no. 5061.  We don’t know what to make of that just yet.

Other records in this book are more wordy, most occupying a paragraph, but those do not appear to contain more information than this two line record.

St. John’s German Evangelical (Lutheran) Church is mentioned in Farmer’s History of Detroit:²  Rev. C. Haass arrived as pastor on 19 Aug. 1852, when the church at the northeast corner of Monroe Avenue and Farrar Street was a 35 by 50 feet wooden building, erected in 1837.  This structure was quickly sold, moved, and turned into a dwelling, and a new 56 by 75 feet brick church was erected in its place.  The new church, which seated 850, was dedicated 9 Jan. 1853, two weeks prior to the marriage of August and Eleanora, which could have been the first marriage celebrated there.  The insides of the church were almost entirely destroyed by fire on 6 Aug. 1854.  Rev. Haass left the month after that.

References

1.  Record of Marriages, Liber C, 1848-1853, Wayne County, Michigan, p. 536, available online at FamilySearch (3rd record from the top of the page).  (Also available on LDS FHL microfilm roll 1377620.)

2. The History of Detroit and Michigan, or The Metropolis Illustrated, ..., by Silas Farmer (Detroit: 1884), p. 617.  (online at Google books, or Internet Archive)