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Tracing Ownership of the Pape Farm in Concordia

 
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roger.pape
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Joined: 17 Mar 2009
Posts: 414
Location: Liverpool, NY

PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2014 6:02 pm    Post subject: Tracing Ownership of the Pape Farm in Concordia Reply with quote

While I have referred to Jacob Pape’s farm as the Pape Family Farm, ownership of this land was listed under the Pape surname for less than 50 years. One can trace the ownership using various sources. The most obvious way is to research the Lafayette County land records; but not having ready access to them, I had to rely on some on-line sources as shown below.

The land is part of Section 33, Township 49, Range 24. The major part of the farm was initially purchased by Henry Bruns, Sr. in several land grants that he acquired in 1840 directly from the federal government. (See the land grant below.) Note that, although the grant was filed in Washington, D.C. on May 1, 1843, the land was actually purchased in Lexington, MO on May 20, 1840. [As history indicates, one acre of this grant was donated to St. Paul’s Church for its first church and its cemetery. (See the Rodewald, et. al. sesquicentennial history of St. Paul’s Church.)] When Henry Sr. died in 1842, it was passed down to his son “John Henry”. As noted in the Pape Farm Memories file posted earlier, the first home was built on the land by John Henry Bruns, who was killed in the Oct. 10, 1864 bushwhacker massacre. For a while, the home was occupied by Gerhard Ficken, second husband of Anna Dettmar Bruns Ficken, who was John Henry’s second wife. Some time later, the farm passed on to Louis Stuenkel, husband of Sophia Bruns, who was the daughter of John Henry Bruns and his first wife Christine Frerking Bruns. This ownership can be seen from the 1877 plat of that section of land shown below.

The next owner known to me was my grandfather Jacob Pape. He worked for Louis Stuenkel and purchased the land from Louis about 1896 just a year before he married Marie Stuenkel, daughter of Louis. Based on letters between Jacob and his brother Claus in Germany, Jacob said in 1895 that he needed just one more year of work to earn the farm. The purchase was also aided by a small inheritance being held in Germany that Claus forwarded to him at that time. For some unknown reason, the 1897 plat of the area shown below lists the owner of the farm as “Melchior Behg”, a name that could not be found in any other local records. While surname spelling on these types of maps can be notoriously bad, the spelling on this plat was generally quite accurate. At first I thought that the surname might be “Bek” since Rev. Wilhelm Bek was pastor of St. John Church about that time. But no one was familiar with anyone in that family with the given name of Melchior. Later plats, such as that for 1930, show the land belonging to Jacob Pape.

Jacob had intended to hand the farm down to his youngest son Elmer, but Elmer was killed in Italy during WWII. Instead, Jacob later retired to a home in 400 block of Orange St. in Concordia (behind St. Paul’s Elementary School and 1 ½ blocks south of the St. Paul’s College campus). He bought the house from his old friend Bill Hormann. Bill had also emigrated from the Heeslingen, Germany area as a young boy to avoid military service. He had a farm several miles north of the Pape farm in the Flora, MO area. Bill continued to live on the second floor of the house in Concordia for a while until he moved to Marshall, MO to live with his son.

When Jacob retired, the farm was handed down to his oldest daughter Flora and her husband Henry Hensiek, who then lived there and farmed the land. After Henry died on Sep 13 1971, Flora moved to the house on Orange St. and the farm was sold to Wilbert Schlesselmann, who owns the property to this day.



LandPatent.jpg
 Description:
Land patent to Henry Bruns for the land that the Pape Family Farm was part of.
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LandPatent.jpg



1877plat(cropped).jpg
 Description:
1877 plat of Section 33, Township 49, Range 24.
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1877plat(cropped).jpg



1897plat(cropped).jpg
 Description:
1897 plat of Section 33, Township 49, Range 24.
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1897plat(cropped).jpg



1930plat(cropped).jpg
 Description:
1930 plat of Section 33, Township 49, Range 24.
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1930plat(cropped).jpg



Orange St Home.jpg
 Description:
Jacob Pape home on Orange St. in Concordia, MO.
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Orange St Home.jpg




Last edited by roger.pape on Wed Apr 16, 2014 7:47 am; edited 1 time in total
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roger.pape
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Joined: 17 Mar 2009
Posts: 414
Location: Liverpool, NY

PostPosted: Thu Mar 27, 2014 12:27 pm    Post subject: Change in farm size Reply with quote

After looking at the plats for the farm through the years, I noticed that the size of the farm has changed over time. It was originally 125 acres. Because it was pieced together from three adjoining pieces of property, it has a slightly irregular border. The center part was 45 acres rather than the usual 40 acres, causing the bump on the north.

You will notice on the 1897 plat that the mysterious Melchior Behg is shown as the owner of only the western two thirds of the land, i.e. 85 acres. Later, Jacob Pape appears to have acquired 105 acres with the southeastern 20 acres going to his wife's uncle Henry Schumacher.
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