SEGGEBRUCH FAMILY OBSERVES 170TH ANNIVERSARY OF ARRIVAL TO AMERICA FROM GERMANY

On Wednesday November 8^th fourth and fifth generation descendants of the Seggebruch Family will gather to observe the 170^th anniversary of the arrival of their ancestors to America. The family will meet at the Monee Heritage Center at 1 pm to make a donation presentation of family historical artifacts to the Monee Historical Society and to the Crete Area Historical Society. A similar presentation will take place at 5 pm the same day at the 1853 Crete Congregational Church, the future home of the Crete Area Historical Society Museum. Highlights of items to be donated to the Monee Historical Society include a Saxony style spinning wheel dating from the 1850’s and life/death portraits of Gottlieb (1815-1900) and Louisa (1818-1906) Seggebruch, which are handcrafted wood shadow box frames with floral wire sculptures decorated with colored threads and human hair of female family members. Highlights of items to be donated to the Crete Area Historical Society include an antique kitchen clock dating from the 1870’s purchased at the Wehrmann General Store in Goodenow, and wedding photographs and a German wedding certificate from the 1902 double wedding of brothers Johann and Frederich Seggebruch to sisters Wilhelmina and Sophia Nietert in Edwardsville, Illinois. Another donation item is a 1972 letter from the State of Illinois Governor Richard Ogilvie which recognized the Seggebruch homestead farm as an Illinois Centennial Farm, being owned by the same family for over 100 years at that time. The original mortgage and deed documents for the 80 acre Seggebruch homestead farm dated November 8^th, 1853 will be displayed at the presentation as well.

The Seggebruch farm served as the family homestead for five generations of the Seggebruch Family beginning in 1853. Friedrich Gottlieb Seggebruch, his wife Friederike Elisabeth Eleonore (Siegmann) and five children emigrated from the Port of Bremerhaven, Germany in the fall of 1853. The trip consisted of steamship travel across the Atlantic Ocean to New York, then continued on the Hudson River to Albany and the Erie Canal to the Great Lakes to Detroit. The final part of the six week journey included a wagon trip to Chicago, where the family purchased their original 80 acre homestead farm from an attorney and land broker, Francis Hoffmann, whose office was at 55 Clark Street in Chicago. The land was purchased at the cost of $5.00 per acre, a sum of $400 which was secured with a $100 down payment and $300 mortgage. The family then traveled south to Crete Township and their new home, where they erected a settlement house before the winter of 1853-54 set in. The one room house measuring 14 feet by 22 feet housed the seven member family and a cow to provide milk. The oldest child Henry died that first winter, but four more children were born in America and the farm eventually grew to 410 acres. The Friedrich Gottlieb Seggebruch Homestead is listed as a Will County Historic Landmark, as is the Monee Heritage Center at the historic Monee Creamery. The 1853 Crete Congregational Church will also soon be nominated and considered for listing as a historic landmark by the Will County Historic Preservation Commission, who held their annual traveling meeting at the Crete Library in October 2023.