Johann Anton Goehr was an Architect, Contractor and Master Carpenter who resided in Minster, Ohio and left a legacy of his skills through the churches he worked on, designed and/or built during the middle to latter part of the nineteenth century.
Johann Anton Goehr (son of Johann Casper Gohr and Anna Maria Elizabeth Lehmkukl) was born April 25, 1823 in Ostbevern, by Munster, Westphilia, Germany. Johann Anton was but ten years old when the Gohr family immigrated to the United States in 1833 from Ostbevern, Germany. The trip, lasting several months, went through Baltimore and Cincinnati to Stallostown, now called Minster, Ohio.
In Minster, Johann Anton learned the carpentry trade from his father. He probably helped in the building of the first two area churches at St. John (Marie Stein) and North Park. Following the death of his father in 1838, Johann Anton continued in the trade and expanded to include design and contracting. He was the architect and builder of the first St. John brick church, completed in 1850. It was a 40' x 60' structure with a 55 foot wood steeple. He designed and built the twin towers of St. Augustine church in 1874. He along with his sons, built St. Joseph Cathedral in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. His last project was the building of St. Michael church in Ft. Loramie. He was master carpenter for St. Theresia School for Girls in 1867.
The book, "Pilgrims All", by Louis, Rita and David Hoying, lists the following churches built in part or full by Johann Anton.
St. John - Marie Stein. 1835-37, Log Church and 1850, First Brick Church
St. Remy - Russia. 1852 and 1868
Precious Blood - Chickasaw. (Demolished)
St. Henry - St. Henry. (Old Church) 1842
St. Louis - North Star. 1836
Mary Help of Christians - Ft. Recovery
St. Nicholas - Osgood
St. Denis - Versailles. 1864
Sacred Heart - St. Paris
St. Peter and Paul - Ottawa
St. Patrick - Bellfontaine. 1853
St. Boniface (1864-65) and St. Marys (1843) - Piqua
Holy Angels - Sidney. 1845 and 1862
St. Patrick - Troy. 1858-62
St. Augustine - Napoleon
Immaculate Conception - Celina. First Church, 1864
Sacred Heart - McCartyville. 1881
Immaculate Conception - Botkins. 1866
St. Joseph - Wapakoneta. (Steeples only)
St. John the Evangelist - Delphos
St. John the Evangelist - Defiance
St. Augustine - Minster. 1874. (Twin Towers)
St. Aloysius - Carthegena. 1877
St. Joseph - Egypt. 1852 and 1878. (Original frame building moved to Minster and used as workshop).
St. Michael - Ft. Loramie. (Last church worked on) 1881
Two additional churches worked on that were not listed in the book were St. Joseph Cathedral in Ft. Wayne, Indiana and the 1854 frame and 1867 Our Lady of the Holy Rosary churches in St. Marys. In a 1950 letter to niece Elizabeth Finn, Joseph Goehr (one of Johann Anton's sons) remembered working on the churches in Napoleon and Ottawa. He Wrote: "Those churches father built - I don't know much about them. I was too young them days. Your father knew more about them because he worked on some of the jobs. On the Piqua Church, he built the towers that you can see. They look like the Minster Church steeples.
I don't know who built the Minster Church, but I do know he built the two steeples and remodeled the church in 1874. I remember when my sister, Lizzie, gilded the two crosses when they were lying in front of the church. Your father helped put them back on the steeple and he stood on top of the cross: of course there were scaffolds all around....."
"I remember when they built a small church in Egypt, three miles from Minster, and they moved the old frame church to Minster and made a carpenter shop out of it so they could do all kinds of work in there in the winter months. The bad part about it, three months after father died, this building burned down, and we lost so many things, all the plans. My father made his own plans, painted them with water color, just how the buildings would look.
Father built the church in St. Marys, his name is in the steeple. I think in Wapakoneta, he built the church steeple, but I'm not quite sure. InFort Wayne, he built both steeples on the Cathedral. In Defiance, Ohio they did some work, but I don't know what. In Napoleon, Ohio he built the whole church. I was in it and saw the church, so did Tony and Albert. In Ft. Loramie, he built the whole church, I remember this well. I sat on a horse and hoister stone on the building. I was about ten years old then. Father lost a lot of money on that job, but it is a pretty church. Right behind the church is the grave yard, and there is a Henry Goehr buried there, but we never could find out where he came from, they have no record of him in the church rectory."
Another son, Anthony, told his daughter Elizabeth he remembers his father building St. Michaels in Ft. Loramie, St. Joseph (1839), Wapakoneta; Marie Stein; Holy Angels, (1862), Sidney; St. Denis in Versailles; Our Lady of the Rosary, St. Marys, (1867); Piqua; Precious Blood, Chickasaw.
In 1842 at age 21, Johann Anton joined the Ohio Militia unit in Minster. It was the Light Infantry Company, Second Brigade, Twelfth Division. In 1848, he married Anna Marie Rathweg on May 28 in Minster, Ohio. They had two children, John Bernard and Bernardine. The cholera plague that hit Minster during the summer of 1849 took Anna Marie and the two children. It also claimed Johann Anton's mother and his younger brother, Bernard. The cholera deaths were occurring so rapidly in Minster during July and August that bodies were being collected twice a day and buried in four tiers in two trenches each seven feet wide on the west portion of St. Augustine cemetery.
Johann Anton married a second time, to Marie Elizabeth Tumbroegel sometime between 1849 - 1850 in Minster, Ohio. She had immigrated with her family from Braegel, Oldenburg, Germany. Their family, all born and raised in Minster, included six sons and four daughters. Five of the sons followed their father in the carpentry/building trades. Johann passed away in Minster in 1885 at age 62 and is buried in St. Augustine Cemetery, Minster, Ohio, Marie Elizabeth was 84 when she died in 1914 in Minster, Ohio.