JOSEPH DRENDEL FAMILY

Joseph, the oldest child of Xavier and Therese, was born March 25, 1827. He may have been the compelling reason the family emigrated to America because of the fear that he would be conscripted into military service. He almost certainly helped his father select the land the family purchased, and he certainly was involved in clearing timber, building the log cabin, and breaking prairie for the Drendel farm.

As his forefathers before him had done, he deferred the beginning of his personal family while assisting his parents in establishing their farming operation in the New World, for he remained with the family in rural DuPage County ten years before he married. In time, he owned most of the acreage acquired by his father that had not been sold to others, and he spent all of his life farming on the original Drendel farmland on Ogden Avenue between Naperville and Lisle.

Joseph married at age 29 on the same day as did his younger sister, Madeleine. They were married in a double ceremony on June 16, 1856. We may speculate that the double ceremony was intended as a special family event, but it probably occurred because priests were in short supply and came to the small parish in Naperville at irregular times.
Joseph married Therese Hoerterich April 10, 1988.Joseph and Therese moved to the family farm after they were married. At least two houses were located on the farm at that time. The original log house built by Xavier and his sons was a crude, small structure which would have been expanded as soon as possible. It is conceivable that the original house was abandoned after the family built a more modern structure, but this is unlikely because the family was not inclined to build or buy something and not use if fully. Moreover, Joseph’s second child, Joseph II, said years later he was born in a log cabin in 1861.

We know that a second house was built on the Xavier Drendel farm in the first three or four years. We do not know who remained in the old house, but it is more probable that Joseph’s parents would have lived in the newer and better accommodations. WE assume Xavier and Therese, the parents, and perhaps Peter, but certainly the youngest child, Therese, lived together after Joseph married. We also presume that Joseph and Therese lived in a separate house because that was the typical arrangement in the family over the years. Joseph II’s comment that he was born in a log cabin also leads us to believe that Joseph and Therese lived in the original log house after they married.

In 1850, Xavier sold the south 80 acres of his farm to Joseph. In 1864, Xavier sold Joseph an additional 20 acres that adjoined Joseph’s acreage to the north. At that time, Joseph and Xavier, Jr., each owned 100 acres, and Xavier maintained the remaining 116 acres, which he kept until his death in 1872. When Xavier, Jr. bought a farm between Naperville and Aurora, Joseph bought his brother’s acres on November 1, 1869.
Joseph and Therese (who was also described as Theresa) had three sons. Frank Xavier was born in 1858, Joseph II on August 1, 1861, and Alois on October 26, 1863. These young children walked through the woods to the Christie School that was located about a half mile away at the southeast corner of what we now know as the intersection of Naperville-Wheaton Road and Butterfield Road. Joseph II (we’ll call him Joe hereafter) said he spent a year in town with the Frank Rieser family while he attended SS. Peter and Paul School. The children generally finished their formal education at eighth grade and began working on the farm full-time at about age 13.

Tragedy struck the young family when Therese died on December 28, 1868 at the age of 33. We have no information as to the cause of death, as death certificates were not compiled until 1877. No one recalls Joe ever describing his mother’s cause of death. Joseph, with three children and a farm to operate, needed a wife. He remarried shortly after Therese’s death. Joseph married Magdalen Dumoulin, the daughter of a neighbor, who was also an Alsatian immigrant.Magdalen raised the three boys as her own and mothered seven children.

The family lived closer to Wheaton than Naperville. They may have frequently shopped in Wheaton, since travel over dirt roads (or rather mud roads in the Spring or during rains) would have encouraged shopping at the nearest available stores. However, in spite of the proximity of Wheaton to the Drendel farm, the family maintained its primary social and religious connections with Naperville. They remained loyal to the Catholic Parish in Naperville, which Xavier helped found, and attended church there. Frank and Joe were baptized in the original wooded church in Naperville, which was still called St. Raphael’s’ in those days.



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