My Family Burial and Death Mystery
Back in the late 80’s when I was first starting to do family history, I had a burial mystery that I couldn’t figure out. It began start with my parents, then grandparents. Nothing seemed right with my maternal grandmother’s burial, and I had a mystery around my maternal grandfather’s death, as he seemed to have died young, and I didn’t know how, and nobody talked about it. I found out that he had committed suicide, which was why nobody talked about it, but why had he done it? At the time I didn’t realize how they tied together. This is the story of the death and burial of my maternal grandparents, William and Augusta ‘Gusty’ Westphal.
By early 1932 Augusta had been having health problems for about year and had an operation for gall bladder and appendicitis, but did not to survive the operation. Shortly after, on Saturday, March 26, 1932, she passed away at the age of 51 years, 1 month and 17 days. She would be buried three days later on March 29 at Saint Paul's Lutheran Church Cemetery in Wilbert, Minnesota.
After Augusta's death in 1932, William suffered severe depression over her death. Adding to his depression was a huge tornado, probably the largest to ever hit southern Minnesota, which destroyed property and took several lives. The tornado damaged or destroying most of the farm except for their home, which moved off the foundation a little bit. My mother talked of this storm often.
Adding to William’s depression, a family member told me that at some point Alvin, their oldest son, had taken the horses to town, sold them, and purchased a tractor. William was convinced that they would go broke with that tractor. I suspect in his mind, the horses were reliable, as that was how he had farmed successfully his whole life, and tractors were a new, unknown thing, and maybe not all that reliable.
Wm. Westphal Commits Suicide Saturday Morning At Farm Home in Tenhassen.
Wm. Westphal, 62, well-known farm resident of this section of the county took his own life at his home in Tenhassen, Saturday morning, January 21st, by hanging himself in the garage, the deed being committed between the hours of 9 and 10 o'clock. Mr. Westphal, who has been making his home with his son, Alvin and wife, appeared to be his usual self in the morning and ate his breakfast with the family, leaving the house with Alvin and Martin, another son, following the morning meal. Somewhat later he was seen standing at the garage door by the members of the family. He was found about a half hour after last seen by the family, hanging in the garage by his son Martin, who had been doing some tire repair work and who had gone to the garage to get a tire patch. The son immediately cut down his father's body and summoned help but it was too late as life had fled. In order to accomplish his purpose he had thrown a rope over the rafter, slipped the noose over his neck and stepped from the side of a car on which he had stood. When he was found, his feet missed touching the garage floor by about six inches. The coroner, Homer C. Jones, visited the death site but decided that no inquest was necessary.
Mrs. Westphal had preceded her husband in death some seven years ago and since her death Mr. Westphal has been subjected to spells of melancholy and worried considerably over his affairs, his health not having been the best for several years past. During the tornado of two years ago he lost all his farm buildings in the destructive winds which greatly discouraged him and caused him additional worry.
Last year he turned his farm over to his children and retired from active toil but this inactivity did not appear to do him any good and ever since last fall he had been in ever increasing ill health. There is no doubt that Mr. Westphal's mind was unbalanced or he would not have committed the act if he had been in his usual right mind. His act should not be viewed too harshly by family and friends, and all should remember the words of Holy Writ, "Judge not that ye be not judged."
The rest of this is fact, some speculation, and my own personal experience. His funeral apparently caused quite the stir at the church at the time. One must keep in mind the church and the times. The church is a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church; I was raised in the Missouri Synod, and it's one of the more conservative churches around yet today. At this time, services were in German, and men sat on one side of the church, and the women and children on the other. Suicide was quite taboo, especially then, not that it isn't frowned upon today. But then it was highly criticized, and for the church, an unforgivable sin.
I thought the story of his funeral that I had heard from older family members was likely, given the church and the times, but it was confirmed when I was doing research at the church just a couple of years ago. The pastor there, Reverend Jeff Hagen, who was helping me with research, told me a few weeks earlier that he had mentioned in his church sermon, that he had strolled through the cemetery looking at the stones, and recognized quite a few family names, as he is originally from there. He said a member came up to him after the service and they were talking about the cemetery, when the member told him the story of William's funeral (from 1939!). Reverend Hagen also said that the cemetery records, which I was wanting to look at were with their previous pastor who had retired. He contacted the pastor about the records, and the retired pastor also told him the story of William's funeral. So it must have caused quite the stir in the church!
The story went that the family was planning to have his funeral at Saint Paul's Lutheran Church in Wilbert, where William and Augusta had belonged all of their lives. William’s father was a founding member. But because William commmited suicide, the church was not going to allow his casket to be carried through the front gate of the cemetery, as an act of shame. His casket was going to have to be carried to the back of the cemetery, lifted over the fence ( no longer there); they would put his casket in the grave, then come inside for a short service.
The family must have said to stick it, as they went to Saint Paul's Evangelical and Reformed Church in Ceylon for the funeral, and then had William buried in the Tenhassen Township Cemetery, which is only a few miles from the church in Wilbert, and from their home. Sometime after William's funeral, the family had Augusta exhumed from the cemetery at Wilbert, had her reburied next to William in the Tenhassen Township Cemetery. I have been unable to find out a date when that happened.
As William was still a member of the church, they recorded his death in their records. I'm not sure whether it came from a family member initially thinking they were going to hide the fact that William had committed suicide, or whether a church member heard something, or made an assumption, but his cause of death was initially recorded as "Heart Failure?". If it were a family member trying to hide the suicide, I'm not sure what they were thinking as it would sure come out in the paper what happened. But it appears that someone very angrily made the correction. The correction is in German, but I was told it basically states that he did not (it's the not, that is underlined twice) die of Heart Failure; the person translating wasn't sure of some of it, but it apparently referenced he was in ill health. Below is the church record of his death. Notice on the record that his funeral, or burial was initially scheduled to be at the church on January 24th at 2:00.
Inside the church records I ran across a couple newspaper articles. One was on a church anniversary celebration, the other, William's suicide article. Two things about this, one was the inscription hand written alongside it stating the funeral was not at Wilbert (as it states in an another article below this article), which is a 'correction' by the newspaper stating the funeral will be held at the Ceylon E&R Church, with burial at the Tenhassen Township Cemetery. Apparently, the folks at the
church wanted to make it clear nothing happened with his funeral or burial at
their church!
This story took years to unravel from finding out most of the story in about the first ten years of doing family history, but the part of the church records I didn’t run across until about 30 years after I initially went ‘what the heck is going on here’. At that time, little did I know how everything would eventually tie together. So don’t ever give up on a story.
While for me this story is very sad because my mother’s mother died when she was five years old, her father when she was 12, right during the Depression, then WWII started when she was just 16. I know she was shuffled from older sister to older sister (I have what looks like a big peach crate that she said she put her belongings in when she moved), but I’m not sure how soon that happened as I really don’t see her father looking after for a five year old.
For William, the sadness of losing a wife at such a young age, with eight children left behind; then everything else that happened in William’s life. I certainly don’t condone his actions, but I can say that I do understand his depression.
So don’t ever give up on a story, you never know when or how things will come together to make sense so you go, okay, I get it now!
David H. Miller
The Family History Guy
Thank you, David, for submitting this wonderful story about following through and solving your family mystery.
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