The Vogelgesang Family

My great-great Grandparents, John and Anna Volgelgesang were married in the California mining town of Mokelumne Hill in 1857. Their story is the story of California. Their union came at the tail end of one of the greatest migration waves in American history. Between 1848 and 1855 well over 300,000 people swelled the population of the state. They came to find their fortune in the gold fields of the Mother Lode. But as was so often the case, most of them found their success in other places. Popular fiction would describe many of these early immigrants as rouges and scoundrels but amongst them were also the forebears of what would become one of the most forward thinking progressive populations in the nation’s history. Those who stayed on after the great rush would help to build a state that would become the envy of the world. Our family was a part of that great endeavor.

In the late 1940s my great aunt Dorothy took it upon herself to collect  the stories of our family and to present us all with what she called our "Family Tree.” It was a labor of love which she undertook for her parents and her siblings. The accomplishments of the children (10) of John and Anna were nothing short of remarkable and it is with some degree of both pride and humility that we share that story here. You can read Aunt Dorothy’s Family Tree at this link and you can see the video that was made for the 2010 Calaveras Big Trees Reunion at this link.

One note about the Vogelgesang/Vogelsang name contraction. According to great Aunt Dorothy this originates with Alexander Theodore the third son of John Henry and Anna Vogelgesang when he was serving as a clerk in the state legislature. So many of the representatives had difficulty pronouncing his name that he changed it to the shortened version. Some families adopted the change while others chose to continue the original spelling.

Over time I hope to see this website grow as images and documents are collected, scanned, and added.

-Chuck Dresel, Napa, CA.