Their American parentage records and Wilhelmina’s parents, Jacob Widmer and Elisa Reber. Source spellings and identification limits remain unchanged.
Joseph Henry Bange’s 1956 Missouri death certificate reports his parents as Henry Bange and Angeline Brueggen, his wife as Minnie Widmer Bange, and his birth as June 21, 1864 in Edwardsville, Illinois. These details strongly corroborate the family record identifying his parents as Henry Bange and Helen Angela Brueggen. Angeline and Helen Angela remain the distinct forms used by those sources. The certificate’s birth and parentage information was reported retrospectively.
Wilhelmina Widmer’s family
Wilhelmina Widmer’s original 1870 baptism at St. Paul, Highland names her parents as Jacob Widmer and Elisa, née Reber, and gives her birth as May 13, 1870. The same parish records Jacob and Elisa Reber’s marriage on April 22, 1869. The baptism month is overwritten: October is favored by the surrounding entries, while the index reads September. That uncertainty does not affect the stated birth date.
The Highland Evangelical death register records Elisabeth Widmer, née Reber, born in 1848, dying on June 1, 1870 at age 22. It describes her as from “Wattenweil, Ct. Bern” and married for one year to Jakob Widmer, whose municipality is provisionally read as “Rhein, Ct. Luzern.” This is origin wording, not an explicit birthplace statement. A separate family record for Joseph Henry and Wilhelmina Bange names Wilhelmina’s parents as Jacob Widmer and Elizabeth Rueber. That retrospective record, whose compiler and sources are unknown, strengthens the comparison between Elisa Reber in the Catholic records and Elisabeth Reber in the Evangelical register. The names, marriage chronology and family record provide strong combined support, while the source-specific spellings and the Elisa-to-Elisabeth identification remain qualified; the death entry itself names no child.