52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (2026-01)
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a series of weekly prompts to get you to think about an ancestor and share something about them. The weekly prompt is provided by www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. The prompt for the first week of 2026 is "An Ancestor I Admire" so let me introduce you to my 3X great-uncle Johann Phillip Kräher III (1829–1911).When I think about ancestors I admire, I’m not always looking for someone in my direct line. Sometimes admiration comes from recognizing a person whose life reflects the values, sacrifices, and choices that shaped an entire family — including the branch that eventually led to me.
One such person is Johann Phillip Kräher III, my 3x great-uncle.
Johann Phillip was born in 1829 in Grünstadt, Germany. In 1852, he immigrated to the United States as part of a broader wave of German emigration in the mid-19th century. Like others in the Kräher family, he relied on a skilled trade — he was a shoemaker — to establish himself in his new home, eventually settling in Mount Vernon, New York. Within a few years, he became a naturalized American citizen, putting down firm roots in the country he had chosen.
Johann Phillip’s decision to leave Germany did not happen in isolation. The early 1850s were a time of economic uncertainty and political repression in the German states following the failed Revolutions of 1848. Opportunities for skilled tradesmen were shrinking, and the future was increasingly constrained. In the Kräher family, the response was collective. Johann Phillip’s brother Jacob immigrated around 1850, and their sister Gertrude followed in 1856. All three surviving siblings chose to leave the same homeland within a span of just a few years, suggesting a shared recognition that their prospects lay elsewhere.
What sets Johann Phillip apart, and why I admire him, is what he chose to do next.
In August 1862, during the Civil War, Johann Phillip enlisted in Company D of the 6th New York Heavy Artillery. He was not a young man without responsibilities. He was an immigrant who had already worked to build a life for himself and his family. At the Battle of Cold Harbor, one of the war’s most brutal engagements, he was wounded in the leg. His injury required months of hospitalization, and he was not discharged until March 1865.
He survived the war — and then he went back to living.
Johann Phillip returned to civilian life, continued working, remarried after the death of his first wife, and raised his family. His story is one of endurance rather than drama, persistence rather than notoriety. He lived long enough to see the Kräher family firmly established in the country he had chosen, and his life became part of the foundation upon which later generations stood.
Although no photographs of Johann Phillip Kräher III are in our family, this 1921 U.S. passport application brings him vividly to life. At age 64, the longtime Bronx brewer applied for a passport to travel abroad—likely back to his native Germany—nearly 40 years after arriving in America as a young man.
In his own handwriting, Johann records his birth in Greiz, Thuringia, on 18 June 1857, his arrival in New York aboard the steamship Hermann in 1882, and his naturalization in 1892. The application even includes a detailed physical description: 5 feet 6 inches tall, prominent forehead, light brown hair mixed with gray, blue eyes, fair complexion, and a long face.
Signed just two years after the end of World War I, the document also contains Johann’s solemn Oath of Allegiance, a poignant reminder of the challenges German-Americans faced during that era. It’s one of the most personal records we have of my great-great-great-uncle.
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U.S. Passport Application for Johann Phillip Kräher, 19 January 1921 (No. 84775). |
I descend from Johann Phillip’s brother Jacob Kräher and Jacob’s wife Mary Schmoker, through their daughter Mary Madelina “Lena” Kräher, who married Frederick Gillen. Their son Edward Louis Gillen is my great-grandfather. Johann Phillip’s story runs alongside my direct line — close enough to illuminate the world my ancestors inhabited, the risks they understood, and the values they shared.
I admire Johann Phillip Kräher III because his life reminds me that families are shaped not only by parents and grandparents, but by siblings, aunts, uncles, and shared experience. His willingness to leave home, to serve his adopted country, to endure hardship, and to return to family life afterward reflects a kind of strength that quietly influences generations.
Later this year, on Citizenship Day, I’ll return to the Kräher family story by looking more closely at Jacob Kräher, the first of the siblings to arrive in the United States around 1850, and what becoming an American meant for the family that followed. For now, I admire Johann Phillip Kräher III simply for the life he lived — and for the example he set within a family finding its way in a new land.