Droge is an unusual German name literally meaning DRUG.  Most genealogists have many common surnames in their ancestry, and the uncommon names make the task of researching much easier.  According to Herman Droge's Civil War Pension application, he was born in "Hartfort" in the state of Westphalia, Prussia.   The writer was immediately puzzled by Hartfort, as it definitely did not sound like a German town name.  However, assistance from the local German Immigrant Genealogy Society yielded the suggestion that perhaps Hartfort was an Americanization of Herford, a city in the state of Westphalia in present-day Germany.  Additionally, the German Society had telephone books for Germany, and several Droges were found to be living in Herford.

Thus began a correspondence between the writer and distant cousins in Germany that has continued for 19 years.   Through this correspondence and continuing research via the mail to German archives, came the ancestry of Herman Droge, who appeared reluctant to talk about family history during his lifetime.

Herman's father, Johann Heinrich Droge,  was born in Werther, a small village near Herford on 15 March 1802, and he married Anna Maria Ilsabein Budde, born in 1816.  They were married on 30 June 1834.  The marriage records list the parents of both the bride and groom.  The writer has requested copies of these records recently from the Evangelische Landeskirche von Westfalen.

Coincidentally, shortly after the correspondence began between the writer and the Droges in Germany, there was a notice in the Herford, Germany newspaper indicating that in the cellar of the district town hall a list of emigrants to the United States was discovered.  The Droge cousins obtained a certified copy of this "List of Emigrants, District Herford, 1851.  It stated that Johann Heinrich Droge, age 49 years, "intends to emigrate with his wife and his five children to the USA."  His children were listed as Herman, born 14 August 1835; Anne Ilsabein, born 15 February 1839; Anne Catherine Marie, born 4 August 1841; Anna  Wilhelmina, born 12 July 1846; and Ernst Heinrich, born 4 July 1850.  Johann Droge applied for the release of citizenship and indicated his plans to emigrate with the family of Heinrich Strattman to New Orleans, USA.   Unfortunately, the Droge and Strattman families have not yet been located on ship's passenger lists.

There remains an unsolved mystery regarding what happened to Johann Droge, his wife, youngest son who was only a baby when the family set sail for the United States, and Anne Ilsabein, born in 1839.  In the 1860 census of Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa, we find Herman, age 26, Mary, age 19 and Ann, age 15-all living with the family of Andrew Ripke.  Herman was a laborer and his sister Mary was a domestic, and the 15-year-old probably helped with domestic duties also.

On his 27th birthday in 1862, Herman volunteered to serve as an Army soldier in "The War of the Rebellion" for a period of three years.  The Volunteer Enlistment describes him as having brown hair and eyes, a dark complexion and being 5'5½ " tall.  He served in Company D of the 27th Regiment of the Iowa Infantry.

The internet is an incredible resource, and the writer was able to locate a website for the 27th Regiment of the Iowa Volunteer Infantry which yielded a day-by-day account of the activities of the Regiment from the date organized, 2 July 1862, until the Regiment mustered out of service of the U.S. at Clinton, Iowa on 8 August 1865.  The 27th Iowa marched over 3,000 miles and traveled by steamboat and railroad over 10,000 miles.

However, Herman traveled slightly less than the 10,000 miles in the service of his adopted country, as he was "severely wounded in the abdomen" in the Battle of Nashville on 16 December 1864.   He was immediately hospitalized in Nashville, Tennessee and was then moved to a hospital in Evansville, Indiana where he remained until for five months until 26 May 1865 when he was discharged from the hospital and sent home to Garnavillo, Iowa.

In one of those amazing quirks of fate, the writer later learned that 75 years before the marriage of her parents, an ancestor of her father's fought against her mother's grandfather (Herman Droge) in the two-day Battle of Nashville!

Imagine the writer's astonishment at receiving the Civil War papers of Seaborn Reeves who served in the Confederate 7th Regiment Cavalry Alabama, and finding that he was captured by the Union Army on 15 December 1864 in the Battle of Nashville.  Unfortunately, Seaborn succumbed to pneumonia while a Prisoner of War at Camp Douglas, Illinois and died on 6 March 1865 of pneumonia.

After Herman Droge recuperated from his severe wound and was sent home to Garnavillo, Iowa, he met and courted Wilhelmina Schaffer.  Wilhelmina had just arrived in Iowa from Prussia at the end of the Civil War.   Schaffer is a common surname, and the writer has been unable to trace the exact area where Wilhelmina immigrated from, but older family members recalled hearing that the newlyweds had lived 20 miles apart in Prussia and had not known each other.   Herman and Wilhelmina or Mina, as she was called, married on 8 June, 1866 in Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa.

The couple remained in Garnavillo for the birth of their first two daughters, who were named for Herman's two surviving sisters,  Mary (born 10 February 1867) and Anna (born 18 April 1868).  Sometime shortly before 1870, the Droge family moved to the outskirts of Nebraska City, Nebraska, located on the Missouri River.  The 1870 census of Otoe County, Nebraska indicates that they owned a farm valued at $3,000.  Herman was eligible to vote, so probably he became a naturalized citizen in Nebraska City.

Before 1874, the Droges relocated again for the last time.  They crossed the Missouri River again and went to Council Bluffs, Iowa.  There six more daughters and two sons were born as follows:  Wilhelmina in 1871, Henry Frank on 24 September 1874, William C. on 5 November 1876, Louisa on 13 March, 1878, Rose on 25 August 1880, Lillian on 22 January 1883, Marion on 10 November 1886 and Katherine on 8 February 1889.

The 1880 census of Council Bluffs shows Herman Droge living in town with his wife and the six youngest children.  He was no longer engaged in farming but was listed as a teamster.  As the year 1900 approached, money was scarce, and the older girls were sent out to work as servants, often living in the households where they worked.  One daughter at age 19 was a dressmaker.

One of Herman and Wilhelmina's granddaughters, Ellen Mitchell, who was a teacher in Council Bluffs for many years, is alive today at age 100.  She related her personal memories of her grandfather to the writer.  She recalled the large house where the Droge family lived on Woodbury Avenue and related that Herman liked to help in the kitchen.  She said that he raised a big garden and usually a pig or two.  In the late fall he would butcher the pig and make two or three kinds of sausage.  She could still recall how delicious the sausages were many, many years later.

With the exception of Wilhelmina who died as a young child and Rose who died of peritonitis at age 20, the remaining eight children all married.  All but two of the eight remained in the Council Bluffs area for their lifetimes. The two sons lived with their parents at least until 1910 when they were 30 and 34 years of age.   William married in 1916 at age 40 and Henry married in 1923 at age 48.  They were both handsome men who worked to build up the Droge Elevator business in Council Bluffs.  The business began in 1894 when they began buying hay and built a warehouse where they dealt in hay and grain.  A coal department was added in 1908.  The brothers later established an ice business and a seed corn plant.  The Droge Elevator, located at 1000 Ninth Avenue and Council Bluffs Seed Company were operated by Henry Droge until his death in 1944, although he had a partner after his brother's death in 1922.

Herman died on 16 December 1916 at age 81 and his wife, Wilhelmina died on 31 August 1931 at age 86.  The unusual Droge name has been kept alive through the only grandson, Douglas Droge and his descendants.  However, today there are hundreds of descendants who owe their very  being in part to Herman's Droge's luck and stamina in surviving a "severe stomach wound" during the Civil War at a time when medicine was primitive at best.
 

Bibliography: (1) Church records of Evangelische Landeskirche von Westfalen in Bielefeld, Germany; (2) Certified copy of List of Emigrants, District Herford, 1851; (3) Marriage Record of Herman Droge and Wilhelmina Schaffer, Clayton Co, IA; (4) CENSUS RECORDS:  1856, Clayton Co, IA, 1870 Otoe Co, NE, Pottawattamie Co, IA census of 1880, 1885, 1995, 1900, 1905, 1910, 1920' (5) Civil War and Pension Records of Herman Droge (Also Seaborn Reeves); (6) Death Certificates for Herman & Wilhelmina Droge and all of their children.