I have been busy researching, organizing, and updating my ancestors’ cemetery records. Hopefully, I will soon have an updated link where you can access these burial records directly on this page. Recently, a large collection of records was transferred to me from previous managers, and I have spent countless hours reading and translating these documents. It always amazes me how much information you can obtain about a person and their family from a single burial record.One thing that particularly stood out to me was the frequency of births within these families. Some women had a baby every year; while some of these infants survived, others were stillborn or died shortly after birth. In fact, many of these children did not live past the age of five.
This was true for Mary Voigt Ritter, the sister of my 3x great-grandmother, Elisabeth Voigt Keller. Mary had a baby every year of her marriage, starting with her first child born ten months after her wedding to Henry Ritter. Tragically, just two weeks after giving birth to her sixth child, Mary died of “childbed fever.” Seven weeks after her death, the infant also passed away from “malnutrition.”
Mary was Henry’s third wife, and he already had several children before their marriage. Shortly after Mary’s death, Henry took a fourth wife and fathered three more children. Today, Henry and Mary Ritter are buried at the Bethany German Lutheran Cemetery in Manayunk.
Mary and her sister Elisabeth were also sisters to Henry C. Voigt, who was killed at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Unlike his sisters, Henry is buried at the battlefield site in Montana.
