The Census records, collected every 10 years, provide a wonderful window into the lives of our ancestors. My last post took a peek at the Rademacher family in 1880, shortly after they arrived in America. Unfortunately for all of us, the 1890 Census was destroyed by a fire in a Commerce Building in Washington, DC in 1921. So our next peek into the Rademacher family is twenty years later, in June of 1900.
By now, the three older children have left and Frank Joseph (Dale’s great-grandfather, later known as “Joe”) is the oldest child still living at home. He and his younger brother Henry are helping on the farm while the five younger siblings are still attending school. The census also adds a couple of interesting facts: Joseph has become a naturalized citizen, and the family is living on a farm that they own! I will need to take a trip to the Saline County Courthouse to gather more details, but clearly the family has continued to grow and prosper in their new homeland. A random newspaper clipping on a Saline County genealogy website mentions a land transaction from 1891 in which Joseph and Josepha Rademacher sold a little piece of land in Section 16, Township 8 North, Range 4 East. If that’s where their farm was, it would be north and a little west of the current town of Crete:
Unfortunately, the agriculture census data for 1900 and later years has not been preserved.
I don’t have any family photos from this era. However, the Catholic Church in Crete has a history book with group photos of various church members from about this time. Here are photos of Joseph and Josepha Rademacher:
