At the beginning of our research, the little we knew of Mike was solely from family lore, with little documentation, and some "key facts" now found to be completely wrong.

Jacob went first in 1840, emigrating to New York USA and soon settling in Pennsylvania.   Margareta Barbara married WALZ  in 1841 and moved to nearby Oberaltenbernheim.  Frederick & Leonhart emigrated together in 1844, but then split,  Frederick settling in New Jersey and Leonhart going on to Wisconsin alone.  In December 1844, Maria Barbara married LEUPOLD and probably moved to nearby Esbach where her husband was born.

By 1846 the widowed Mother Anna Margaretha had sold the farm.  She and (grown) children George, Anna Margaretha with husband SCHERER & her 2 illegitimate children, Christina Eva, Eva Maria, and two young women probably named BENZ who married George & Leonhart as BENSIN, all joined Leonhart in Wisconsin, where the double-marriage of Leonhart & George to the BENZ women took place on 1 September 1846.

That first Wisconsin winter of 1846/47 was bitter cold, and a cholera plague took the lives of the mother Anna Margaretha nee:Hofmann, Eva Maria Zellhoefer and the BENZ bride of George Leonhard Zellhoefer.  Probably also succumbing to the plague were  the SCHERER family and the BENZ bride of Johann Leonhart Zellhoefer.  Anna Margaretha (Scherer) may have survived the plague, however, as there is later found a land patent to a Margaretha Zellhofferin. 

 George & Leonhart had a terrible quarrel over who should administer Mother's estate (remember she had the proceeds from the sale of the farm back in Brachbach.)  Leonhart won out, and following what seems a rather lengthy probate, the distribution was made between only those heirs who had crossed to the USA.  Each received about enough money to purchase/patent 40 acres at $1.25 per acre, and it appears that most or all of the surviving heirs did then finally acquire land.

Mike, then age 20, was refused permission to leave until he had performed his 6-year military duty.  Thus Mike arrived in New York on 13 June 1853.  Mike may have visited brothers Frederick in New Jersey and/or Jacob in Pennsylvania while on his journey, and is known to have arrived in Wisconsin before 13 May 1854, when court records show that he petitioned the probate court for the estate shares of himself and the two sisters who had married and remained in Germany.

Thus did the family members in Wisconsin buy their virgin homestead lands, which they proceeded to clear, build homes, and farm their parcels just south of Rome during the pioneer settlement days in Wisconsin, even before Wisconsin became a state on 29 May 1848.  The mailbox on the parcel of Johann "Veit" Debereiner and wife Christina Eva Zellhoefer still carried the Debereiner name in 2001.

In the several of Mike's military records in America, John Michael was born 17  May 1825.  A record in the LDS IGI indicates Joseph & Anna youngest child was named John Konrad, born 4 August 1825.  There's more -- in records found by cousin Mani Hertlein in Bavaria, Mike's name was stricken from the 1846 migration record, and then find that "Michael Zellhoefer", then single, finally migrated to America in March of 1853.  To add a little more grief, Mike's obituary says he was from Bergbach, almost certainly an error in that document.  Thus we have this strange conflict in his name and birthdate, but as the entire family matches up very well, there is little doubt that Joseph and Anna are the real parents. 

 The Zellhoefer's were avidly Evangelische, quite active and involved in the spread of their religion.  Brother George became a circuit-rider, his author/son George G and several other sons also became preachers.  Mike was an active elder in the Evangelist church there in Rome.  Mike's rather short life was filled with trials & tribulations, as you will soon see, which Mike apparently took in stride and in good humor. 

Mike's first wife was "Anna", known only from her obituary in Der Christliche Botschafter  as from Urphershofen. Bavaria.  Urphershofen may have been misspelled, being located bei Steinsfeld in kreis Ansbach, Mittelfranken, perhaps 20 km from Brachbach, which appears to be a mispelling of Urphertshofen bei Obernzenn, less than 4 miles from Brachbach.  Between Urphertshofen and Brachbach was the larger town with Obernzenn, where all were of the Evangelische church.  There we might visualize Mike and Anna meeting there every Sunday from childhood. 

More puzzles remain about Mike and wife Anna, mother of "our" twins.  Mike was "single" when when he received Permission to Leave in March 1853, and wasted little time, as he arrived in New York in June 1853.  We find NO match for any Anna sailing with Mike on the ship in 1853, but census record shows (their apparent) first child (Fredrick) born 1853/1854 in Wisconsin.   From this one must probably conclude that Mike and Anna were "rediscovered" and married somewhere on the path from New York to Wisconsin, perhaps in Newark NJ where Mike's brother Frederick had settled, or in Crawford County PA where brother Jacob had settled.

Four children - Fredrick, Annie and the twins George & Sophie - were born there in Rome, but Anne was died in childbirth of our Twins on 9 Sep 1858.   We also searched for a death certificate of record for Anna, but again, none seems to exist!  Thus several events in Mike's life remain undocumented, and the search continues!  We believe that Mike bought, cleared and farmed land there in Jefferson County, but as of June 2004 that has not been searched, except that no purchase was found in land patent records.

Well, Mike didn't waste much time finding a new mother for his children!  On 12 March 1859 he remarried, this time  to Elnora nee:Haverland, widow of Miller/Mueller, who had an infant daughter, Augustina.  Mike may have adopted Augustina, who usually carried the Zellhoefer surname thereafter, but again no record is found.  By 1964 three more daughters - Margaret, Charlotte & Laura - were born to this marriage.

The Civil War was raging at that time, and it seems a $100 enlistment bonus was being paid in the efforts of the various Townships to meet their recruitment quotas.  I would think times were hard for many in those days, and surmise that the bonus ($100 was SERIOUS money in those days!)  probably induced Mike to join the ranks of the military on 30 Aug 1864.  I have always had a difficult time understanding how Mike could have left his wife, 8 small children, and his farm, but it's documented fact that he did so.  His enlistment was credited to JEFFERSON township (NOT Sullivan!?).  In HEBRON township, the problem person John Michael Wellhoefer/Wellhafer owned two 40 acre parcels, clearly to be the man listed in 1850 and 1860 censuses in Jefferson Township, so maybe the census enumerator was a little lost!  But we have no clue why Mike's enlistment would have been credited to Jefferson Township, and will probably leave this to later researchers. 

Mike's military career lasted only until 6 Jan1865, when he met his death from chronic diarrhea.  He had been hospitalized for a couple of weeks, but an old note says he "died in a foundry" and says he was in Lexington.  Considering his eventually fatal illness, both "Lexington" and "foundry" seem strange indeed, and I rather suspect Myron's Altzheimer's was controlling things that day!  So John Michael Zellhoefer was buried with many others in the military section of Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky - he would have never come home to Wisconsin.

So now we're back to Elnora, widowed again at 43, burdened with 8 little children under 12 years of age, and half of those not of her own loins.  She presumably had Mike's farm to tend, and was now probably responsible for probating both Mike's estate, and for "disposing" of Mike's four children from his previous marriage to Anna.  

Appearances are that was promptly begun with a belated recording of the marriage certificate the following month.  It's curioius in a way that the marriage had been performed and the certificate rendered by Rev John Miller.  Was he possibly kin to Elnora's earlier husband?

There appear to be no probate papers for Mike, which might be SO helpful in all this.  We do know that, come the 1870 census, Elnora's household contained only her blood children - ALL FOUR OF MIKE/ANNA'S CHILDREN WERE NOT IN THAT HOME!  It's quite certain that George and Sophie went to the Klotz's of Sauk County, but don't know who took Fredrick and Annie.  It seems that Mike's siblings could easily enough added all four of these children to their families, but any shred of evidence is unfound.  Perhaps one day we will learn why?

Our family lore claimed that George & Sophie were adopted by the Klotz's variously in 1861-1863.  There's no real reason to believe those years -- Mike had found them a new mother, and more children continued to come to that new marriage.  It makes no sense to me that their adoption would have occurred until after his death in 1865.  We have searched to exhaustion for adoption records in both Jefferson and Sauk County, but they do not exist.   It seems that adoption may have been a very informal process back in 1865, perhaps not even troubled with.   There are also no death records for the adopted twin son George, nor probate records to document transfer of the Honey Creek farm from Melchoir Klotz.

Relevant documents for download:
For more detail of the research into Mike's life, wife's and  families, see
sourcedocs/JMZinSullivanTwp.rtf
For the initial treasure which enabled finding Mike's roots, see
sourcedocs/GGZautobiography.rtf