John A. Baumgartner, Chattanooga, Ohio, Mausoleum.
This is the burial chamber of John A. Baumgartner, located in the Chattanooga Mausoleum, east of Chatt on the edge of Zion Lutheran Cemetery, Liberty Township, Mercer County, Ohio. The chamber is inscribed:
John A. Baumgartner
1864-1917
John A. Baumgartner was born in Adams County, Indiana, 20 April 1864, the son of John Baumgartner and [?] Amstutz. [1] [2]
John Baumgartner, age 41, married Christina Kable (1837-1939) in Mercer County on 25 August 1905. Christina was the daughter of Frederick (1817-1886) and Catharine (Koch) (1837-1911) Kable. According to their marriage license, John Baumgartner had been married once before and was living in Fort Recovery when he married Christina. [1]
John Baumgartner, 52, died in Van Wert on 30 October 1917. He was a salesman and according to his death certificate he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. John Baumgartner’s brother-in-law John Kable provided the information for Baumgartner’s death certificate. [3]
Notice of John’s death appeared in the Decatur Daily Democrat, reprinted from the Van Wert Bulletin:
HAS RELATIVES HERE
The remains of J.A. Baumgartner of near Rockford, who dropped dead due to heart failure in this city, Tuesday afternoon, have been removed to his home. The deceased was sitting in the Herman Miller shoe shop on East Main Street, engaged in conversation, when he unexpectedly fell from his chair and died in a few moments. Mr. Baumgartner had been engaged in selling oil burners for furnaces in this city during the past month. A wife and one daughter survive him. He was about fifty years of age.-Van Wert Bulletin. The deceased was a brother of Mrs. Frank Boyer of this city. [4]
John Baumgartner’s sister, mentioned above as Mrs. Frank Boyer, was Sarah (Baumgartner) Girod Boyer. [5] Sarah married Charles Dibble in 1920. Sarah (1866-1939) was born and died in Indiana.
In 1920 John Baumgartner’s widow, Christina (Kable) Baumgartner, lived with her widowed brother John H. Kable and his children. John H. Kable’s wife, Viola (Baumgartner) had died in 1918.
Unfortunately, that is about all the information I have been able to find and confirm about John A. Baumgartner.
Many questions about John remain unanswered: Were John and Fannie his parents? Who was his first wife? Who was his daughter and was she born from his first marriage? Where was he living all these years, since he appears to be absent or nearly impossible to locate in census enumerations? Was John related to John H. Kable’s wife Viola Baumgartner?
[1] “Ohio, County Marriages, 1789-2016,” Mercer, Vol. 9, p.152, John Baumgartner & Christena Kable, 25 Aug 1905; digital image, FamilySearch.org.
[2] John’s parents may have been John Baumgartner and Fannie Amstutz, who married 11 November 1856 in Allen County, Ohio, per Ohio, U.S., Compiled Marriage Index, 1803-1900, Allen County, John Bumgardner [sic] & Fanny Amstutz, 11 Nov 1856; Ancestry.com.
[3] “Ohio Deaths, 1840-2001,” Van Wert County, Jno A. Baumgartner, 30 Oct 1917; FamilySearch.org.
[4] Decatur Daily Democrat, Decatur, Indiana, 2 Nov 1917, J.A. Baumgartner; NewspaperArchive.com.
[5] Decatur Daily Democrat, p.1, Frank Boyer obituary, 28 Oct 1918; NewspaperArchive.com.
