Cholera, Stormy Seas, and Survival: A Family Story

Louis and dorothea sophia wellendorf

A guest post by David Brook

David Brook is retired from the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources where he was director of the Division of Historical Resources. He has also written two books on the history of historic preservation in North Carolina.

Before modern vaccines and antibiotics, generations of Americans were routinely plagued by contagions including yellow fever, typhus, measles, and diphtheria. Cholera, however, topped them all in sheer terror. Caused by a bacterium not identified until 1884, cholera is a horrible intestinal disease, spread through contaminated food and water. With a short incubation period, cholera kills through severe dehydration. Untreated victims can die within hours of onset. In the 19^th century, crowded immigrant communities were especially hard hit.

The coronavirus pandemic brings to mind the impact of cholera on the life of my great-great grandfather, Ludwig “Louis” Wellendorf (1831-1899). Louis was from Bresewitz, a small town on the Baltic Sea near Rostock, in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Germany. According to family lore, he had participated in the failed Revolution of 1848, and fled to Denmark to hide for a time.

Seeing little future in Mecklenburg, where an almost feudal aristocracy held all the land, power, and opportunity, Louis immigrated in the early 1850s to America with his wife, Louisa, and two small children. They made their way to Cleveland, Ohio, to live with Louisa’s sister and family. Not finding work in Cleveland, Louis left his family there while he searched elsewhere, finding work in the first steel mill in Youngstown, Ohio, seventy miles way.

A cholera epidemic then hit Cleveland, and Louis received word that Louisa and their children had contracted the disease. Accompanied by a male cousin, he immediately started walking day and night to Cleveland to find that his wife and children were dead and already buried—a common practice to stem epidemics. He could not find exactly where his family members were buried because they had been placed in a mass grave of nearly 70 victims.

In 1857, the young widower returned to Bresewitz, where he courted and married his late wife’s friend Dorothea Sophia Niemann (also spelled Neumann), my great-great grandmother. Louis, with his new wife and baby, took a sailing ship to New York. On the way, storms blew their vessel far off course into the tropics, causing weeks of delay. Because the passengers carried their own food, they faced starvation. The ship’s captain rationed three crackers a day to each passenger, while, by necessity, the rest of the vessel’s provisions went to the crew.

Finally reaching New York, the Wellendorfs and the other passengers were carried off the ship on stretchers. According to family legend, Sophie cradled their baby, who had just died, in her arms. She pretended that the child was alive, because she could not bear to have it buried at sea.

Back in Ohio, the enterprising Louis owned and operated a canal boat and then a dry goods store. By 1880, he had become the farm manager for the family of the late David Tod, Civil War governor of Ohio. Louis and Dorothea eventually purchased their own farm, which included a stone quarry.

In the 1890s a son-in-law, Carl Breetz (1849-1930), husband of the Wellendorfs’ daughter Caroline (1860-1949), also served as farm manager for the Tods. A veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, Carl was a native of the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany, and immigrated in 1872. Carl and Caroline Breetz eventually established their own dairy farm. They are my maternal great grandparents.

Finally, a great-great granddaughter of Carl and Caroline returned to Germany in 2019 for her work on a Ph.D. in German from Princeton University. Her topic is how family life is reflected in 19^th century German literature after 1848.

Carl and Caroline Wellendorf Breetz

The older couple in the photos are Louis and Dorothea Sophia Wellendorf. The younger couple are Carl and Caroline Wellendorf Breetz. She is pictured wearing a necklace given to her by Maria Smith Tod, widow of Ohio Governor David Tod.