The Joseph Rademacher family arrived in New York on February 4, 1878 and likely traveled by train to Nebraska, where Joseph’s younger brother Frank had settled ten years prior.
A little more than two years later, the 1880 Census shows the family living in the Pleasant Hill precinct. Pleasant Hill was a mostly rural area located to the south and west of the town of Crete. Here is the census record for the family:
The record shows Joseph “Radamacher” with occupation as Farmer. Also listed are his wife Josepha, daughters Mary and Anna and sons Peter and Frank J. I should note here that the German custom during this era was that your first name was a saint’s name and your middle name was the name you actually went by. So Joseph Rademacher’s actual name was Peter Joseph Rademacher, and his wife was Maria Josepha Rademacher.
Their youngest son, “Frank J.”, eight months old at the time of this census, was actually Frank Joseph Rademacher – this is Dale’s great-grandfather Joe Rademacher who later married Annie Burkey and moved to Colorado.
The census also shows a “Mary Kipp” living with them – this is Josepha’s mother.
A cool thing about the 1880 Census is that they also did a census of the farm and not just the people living there. Here is an itemized list of what appears on the ag census for this family:
Ownership: Rented for share of production
67 acres tilled
13 acres unimproved
Value of farm land and improvements: $1000
Value of implements and machinery: $80
Value of livestock: $400
Value of all farm production: $500
Hay acreage: 20
Horses: 4
Milk cows: 2
Other cows: 5
Calves dropped: 3
Butter produced: 200 lbs.
Swine: 60
Poultry: 25
Eggs produced: 40 dozen
Crops:
2 acres barley, 27 bushels
12 acres corn, 500 bushels
8 acres oats, 310 bushels
26 acres wheat, 260 bushels
1 acre potatoes, 100 bushels
This looks like a pretty good start for a newly-arrived immigrant family. They’re not making much money but they’re certainly not going hungry! It also looks like a lot of work for Joseph and Josepha. Their young children can probably only help with the easiest of the chores.
A Rademacher family history written in 1974 says that the family lived on this farm for only two years and later moved to another farm to the north and west of Crete. I will do some more research and find out whether they were renters or owners of the second farm.
Remember, you can sign up for an email subscription to this blog to be notified of updates.
