Emma Margurite (Lahman) Tegtmeyer, 1874–1964

Emma Margurite Lahman was born to George Herman Lahman and Susanna Caroline (Sutter) Lahman on 27 September 1874 in St. Louis, Missouri, and baptized at Holy Ghost Evangelical Protestant Church on 18 October 1874. She was the second oldest of five girls. By the time she was five, Emma and her family were living in Columbia, Boone County, Missouri, and at the age of fourteen, she was living in Carrollton, Carroll County, Missouri, where her father was a cigar maker.

When Emma was twenty-one, she had a brief affair with James Jarboe, a harness maker in a shop next-door to George Lahman’s cigar shop. She found herself pregnant and came to St. Louis where she had the support of her aunts and uncles. Emma gave birth to her daughter Faith Hope on 18 January 1897. James Jarboe was engaged to someone else, so he did not marry Emma, but he did foster a lifetime relationship with Faith, his only child.

Emma, a single mother at the age of twenty-two, made the decision to entrust Faith’s care to friends, William A. Marshall and his wife, Elizabeth Cook, who had been living in St. Louis, but by the 1900 census were living in Chicago, Illinois. They adopted Faith when she was six years old. It’s not clear how Emma knew the Marshalls, but Faith kept in touch with them and their growing family throughout her life.

Emma met William George Tegtmeyer, a store clerk, whom she married in St. Louis on 27 September 1898. This marriage did not produce children. When Emma’s daughter, Faith, turned eighteen in 1915, she came home to live with her mother and stepfather. On 9 June 1917, Faith gave birth to a daughter out of wedlock. The baby, named Emma Margaret Miller, came to live with her young mother, her grandmother, and step-grandfather on North Grand Avenue in St. Louis. Her father, a man named George Miller, was never in her life.

On 25 April 1919, William Tegtmeyer and Emma (Lahman) Tegtmeyer divorced, and, just a week later, on 3 May 1919, William married Emma’s daughter, Faith. The 1920 federal census shows William, Faith, Emma (Faith’s mother), and little Emma (Faith’s daughter) all living together. Apparently, this was an amiable situation, as this family continued living together for many years. Emma’s daughter, Faith, and her husband, William Tegtmeyer, went on to have six children, whom Emma helped to raise and care for, and, in time, she became a great-grandmother as well.

Emma (Lahman) Tegtmeyer continued to have a close relationship with William, her ex-husband, and Faith, her daughter, for the rest of her life. She outlived both William and Faith, dying 5 May 1964 in St. Louis, with burial in Walnut Grove Cemetery, Boonville, Cooper County, Missouri. where other members of her Lahman family are buried.

Written by Karen (Tegtmeyer) Goode
July 2022

© 2022 St. Louis Genealogical Society