Friemann
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The Rademacher Family · around 1880
The Journey
to America
Born into a Ruhr mining family, Maria Elisabeth Friemann became the founding figure of a new family branch in the New World.
Departure for America around 1880 · historical reconstructionTwo lives come together
From Friedrichslohra and Essen-Steele
Heinrich August Rademacher was born in Friedrichslohra, in present-day Thuringia, on February 18, 1845. The first child of Wilhelm Rademacher and Catharina Sander, he initially appears in the records as a farmer and, from 1872, as a miner—a change that reflects the transition from rural to industrial work.
Maria Elisabeth Friemann was born in Essen-Steele on September 29, 1850, and baptized at St. Laurentius on October 2. The second of nine children of miner Johann Heinrich Friemann and Christina Elisabeth Wölting, she grew up in a Catholic mining family. In America, Maria was sometimes known as “Mary.”
A moment that changed everything
Across the Atlantic
A few years after their marriage, the couple left Germany with their children and settled in Buffalo around 1880. The city already had a large German-speaking community with churches, schools, and clubs, offering newcomers a familiar network in an unfamiliar country.
The Catholic parish remained an important source of support. Maria Elisabeth’s baptism at St. Laurentius and the later burials at St. Mary’s of Sorrows mark the two geographic poles of her life.
Historical context: Their departure occurred during the great wave of German migration in the late nineteenth century. The surviving information does not explicitly record the couple’s personal reason for emigrating.
The next generation
Five children between two worlds
The children’s birthplaces make the transition visible: four were born in the Essen area, while the youngest son was born in Buffalo.
- 01HeinrichEssen-Katernberg
- 02WilhelmEssen-Steele
- 03ElisabethEssen-Katernberg · later Buffalo
- 04Friedrich Wilhelm HubertEssen-Stoppenberg
- 05John LucianBuffalo, New York
December 4, 1882
Birth and death on the same day
On the day John Lucian Rademacher was born in Buffalo, his father Heinrich August died while working on canal construction. Family tradition holds that he was buried by collapsing earth. He was laid to rest at St. Mary’s of Sorrows two days later.
Maria Elisabeth remained in Buffalo with the children. With no public safety net, she carried responsibility for the family alone and lived in her new homeland for nearly four more decades. She died on March 7, 1922, at age 71.
Source status: The date and burial are preserved in genealogical records; the precise circumstances of the accident are explicitly identified in the chronicle as family tradition.
A new family branch
Rooted in Buffalo
Through Maria Elisabeth, the Friemann family extended beyond the Ruhr region into the New World. Her children and descendants established the Rademacher/Friemann line in Buffalo and Erie County. John Lucian later married Rose Catherine Setter, and their large family carried the American branch into subsequent generations.
Season 3 · Episode 1 · Stories from the Family Branches · German audio
The Rademacher Family—From Essen to Buffalo
The German-language audio story follows Heinrich August Rademacher and Maria Elisabeth Friemann from the documented traces in the Essen area to the new family branch in Buffalo.
Listen to the episode →
Relatives find one another
A message across the Atlantic
A private email correspondence with M. Rademacher in the United States is a central source for this branch.
In late 2022, M. Rademacher contacted us from the United States. At that point it was still unclear whether his family and the Friemanns in Germany were actually related. His research had led him to William Friemann, who emigrated from Essen to the United States, and to William’s siblings. This suggested that Maria Elisabeth Friemann might have married Heinrich August Rademacher.
The information about parents and siblings matched our records. A short, focused search supplied the decisive confirmation: Maria Elisabeth Friemann and Heinrich August Rademacher had married in Essen in 1872. A cautious inquiry had become a documented shared family branch.
The exchange connected two sides of the same story. M. Rademacher found relatives and family roots in Europe; we found descendants of the branch that had made a home in the New World during the nineteenth century. Names and dates became a personal connection across generations and the Atlantic.
Sources: Private email correspondence with M. Rademacher; church and civil records; and the family’s genealogical records.