Engelbrecht
Heinrich (Henry) W.F. Engelbrecht is buried at Black Walnut Cemetery. His birth date is 29 Dec 1858 and his death date is 6 May 1880. Justin Watkins located and photographed a footstone marked H.F.W.E. back in 2012. Mary Johnson McElhiney noted a gravestone with his name, birth and death date in her survey of cemeteries in the 1930s and published in 1970, but that was not located during the cemetery restoration 2020-2021.
Janet Hallemeier provided the following information: “A list of Karolina [Engelbrecht]’s brothers and sisters reveal a Heinrich having been born in Germany on 29 Dec 1858. He drowned in a boating accident on the Mississippi River on 6 May 1880 and is buried in Graveyard Slough Cemetery in Black Walnut, MO. He was not married.”
In our research we found that the Engelbrecht family is related to the Kluesner, Steinkamp and Wagemann families who still live in Missouri.
We were able to uncover a newspaper article on his death on May 6, 1880. The Alton Evening Telegraph reported on May 8th that Henry and 3 friends (Fritz Koch, Ferdinand Gebhardt who was an extended family member of the Kempf family, and Christoph Steinkamp who is buried next to Henry) left Portage on a skiff to go fishing and evidently had an unfortunate mishap which cost them all their lives. Christoph’s body was recovered in Alton and as reported in the May 13, 1880 Alton Telegraph, an inquest was held on May 11th. We did not find an article about Henry or the other two bodies being recovered.
Foot stone photo by Jerry Prouhet 2021
Newspaper article about accident and deaths.