KFWW - Superintendent Adolf Friedrich Fuchs

Adolf Friedrich Fuchs was born in Neuenkirchen in Mecklenburg-Strelitz on December 24, 1753. He was the son of Pastor Johann Conrad Fuchs (1715-1792), and Katharine Dorothea Ockel (1728-1811), whose father Samual Christoph Ockel was a pastor at Warlin. He became a teacher in Prenzlau in 1779 and the headmaster of the cathedral school in Ratzeburg in 1781. In 1789 he became the headmaster of the cathedral school at Güstrow and was granted the title of Professor by a decree from Duke Friedrich Franz of Mecklenburg in 1792. He served as Superintendent (equivalent of a bishop) of the Güstrow Church District from 1811 until his death in 1828.

Superintendent Fuchs experienced a number of personal tragedies in his life. In all, was the father of nine children. He was happily married but lost each of his three wives. His first wife had a son and a daughter. Ernst Johann Conrad Fuchs, the son, was a pastor in the village of Kittendorf. Conrad's older son Heinrich Fuchs accompanied Pastor Adolf's family to Texas on board the Gerhard Hermann in 1845.

His second wife, Marie Elisabeth Giesenhagen, also had a son and a daughter. This son, Adolf Friedrich "Fritz" Fuchs,eventually brought his family to Texas. He was the grandfather of my grandmother Gini Fuchs.

Superintendent Fuchs' third wife, Margaretha Dorothea Schröder, was the mother of four girls and a son, Carl Adolf Fuchs. She died when the boy was only five years old, during the same month that her husband Adolf Friedrich Fuchs became Superintendent of Güstrow.