1840 Passenger List for the Bark “Strabo”

On May 7, 1848, in Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio, Charles married his first cousin Catharina Wippel.  Catharina was born in Roxheim in January 1828 to Johann Wippel and Catharina Dietrich. This branch of the Wippel family came to Pomeroy in 1847. My 2x great-grandmother, Kate Wippel, was born in November 1848, six months after Charles and Catharine married. They had a second daughter, Barbara (Barbary) in 1851. I have never been able to identify Charles, Catharine or Kate in the 1850 census. In fact, I have never found Charles Wippel in any census – ever.

It does not seem like this was a happy marriage.  I located a divorce decree for the couple from May 1857.  Catherine charged Charles with being “willfully absent from the said petitioner more than three years.” It further decreed that Catharine Whipple be “restored to her maiden name of Catharine Whipple.” (I thought that was rather amusing).  This wonderful document named the children Catherine and Barbary and admonished that Charles was not to “interfere” with them.  I suppose that was the 1857 version of terminating parental rights.

Meigs County, Ohio, Court Record for May 1857

I am sure that this divorce was a really big deal for a Roman Catholic family in 1857. The newly divorced Catharine married Peter Effler (Oeffler) in a civil service on June 1, 1857. Kate and Barbara grew up with Peter Effler as their step-father.

My cousin Judy B helped me locate the will of  Christoff Wippel, probated in 1877, in which he bequethed $100 to his two grandchildren, daughters of his son, Charles.  There is no other mention of Charles, and so I presume him dead.  I have some evidence, which I won’t detail, that Charles may have died between 1865 and 1868. I find nothing that indicates that Charles served in the Civil War like his brother Thomas.

I cannot tell if Charles was still around Meigs County after the divorce. He isn’t in the Meigs County census in 1860, and he did not vote in Meigs County in 1863. There is no death record for him in the Sacred Heart Catholic Church records of Pomeroy, Ohio.  Charles does not appear in the Meigs County death records, either.

I have eliminated the possibility that he is the Charles Wippel of Alameda County, California; nor is he the one in Kansas. There are many Whipples born in New England states, but not many German ones. I have not ruled out the possibility that Charles had another family, changed his name, or took some other action that is keeping him hidden. Maybe I am just unlucky and there is no record to be found.

Mostly, I wonder about this marriage.  Were these two kissing cousins who had to get married when Catharine learned she was pregnant?  Or, was Charles a convenient husband to prevent poor Catharine from being disgraced?  Charles had just turned 18 at the time of the marriage.  Catharine was two years older, but she had been in the United States less than a year.  One other nagging little detail is a handwritten note that was probably penned by my great-grandaunt, Katherine Miller Patterson.  She wrote out all of the names and birth dates of her siblings and her parents.  For mother, Kate Wippel, she has a birth date of November 25, 1847.  Could Kate have been born BEFORE Charles and Catharine married?  If that were true, then Catharine Wippel arrived in the United States already with child.

For the time being, I have discarded the 1847 birth date for Kate. She is listed as “Catherine Efler” in the 1860 US census for Meigs County and her age is given as 11, matching the 1848 birth year.

I match several Wippel cousins who have been DNA tested.  Unfortunately, this does not seem to be a relationship that will be proved or disproved by DNA.  Since Charles and Catharine shared common ancestors, I would match on both sides of the family.

I wonder if Charles went west.  Maybe he hopped a steamer and followed the Ohio River.  Perhaps, he ended up somewhere in an unmarked grave.  Maybe he found another bride and went on to have a second family, or maybe he already had a second family by the time he divorced.  I have so many questions about Charles that I would love to have answered, including the big one – is he really my 3x great-grandfather?  Maybe some day there will be another clue.