The Counts of Charrette Township

by Bob Brail

In the year 1860 in Charrette Township lived two men who farmed their land with the help of two German laborers. These men, the father, who had been born in Germany, and the son, who was Missouri born, worked their land and tended to their livestock just as all their neighbors did. However, there was something different about these two farmers that separated them from their neighbors. These men, William F. Bentinck and William G. F. Bentinck, were German aristocrats who by their births held the title and rank of count.

William F. Bentinck was born in Varel, Oldenburg, Germany, on July 9, 1801. He was the son of Count Anton II von Aldenburg, a member of the German aristocracy, and related to several European nobility, among them Prince William III of Orange, who became King William III of England.

When Bentinck took his final oath of naturalization in October, 1837, he stated he had been in America for five years. This would place his arrival in the United States two years before the members of the Giessen Emigration Society, led by Paul Follenius and Friedrich Muench, arrived in America in 1834. Bentinck married Wilhelmine Gerdis in Ohio in 1833 (the marriage record describes him as a count). Their son, William F. G. Bentinck, was born in Warren County on January 8, 1836, so the parents must have arrived in Warren County no later than 1835.

Because his arrival in Warren County more or less coincided with the members of the Giessen Emigration Society, Bentinck “was closely associated with the 'Latin Farmer' settlement in east-central Missouri.” Many Germans, men like Follenius and Muench, who came to settle in the area of Dutzow and Marthasville were educated men who knew Greek and Latin, hence the name 'Latin Farmer.' Bentinck lived near Marthasville, where he farmed and may have operated a grain mill.

Bentinck's son, William G. F. Bentinck, was born a count, even though he began his life in rather humble surroundings in rural Warren County. In his early adult years, William G. F. was employed as a photographer in Louisville, Kentucky, but by 1860 he was back in Charrette Township farming with his father. At some point during the Civil War, William G. F. went to Germany to study at the University of Heidelberg. He returned to the United States by 1867, for on September 3^rd of that year he married Augusta F. Grabs of Marthasville. She was ten years his junior. Two weeks after this marriage, William F. Bentinck died at the age of sixty-six in St. Louis, where he had moved, perhaps to be cared for by his son. William G. F. and Augusta's first son died at birth in July, 1868. A second son, Anton Otto, also a count, was born on September 9, 1870, at the Bentinck home at 1712 North 10^th Street in St. Louis. As an adult, Anton Otto would practice medicine in Warren County.

Around the time of his marriage, William G. F. Bentinck started a drug business in St. Louis. “Bentinck and Company” was located at 1001 Washington Street, at the corner of Washington and 10^th Streets. His business partner for the first few years was Fred Kaufmann, but by 1870 Bentinck was on his own. An invoice from his store states that Bentinck sold paints, oils, dye-stuffs, window-glass, glassware, American and foreign perfumery, toilet articles, fancy soaps, fancy goods, “patent medicines of all descriptions,” surgical instruments, and English, German and American chemicals. His probate file reflects this varied inventory, but the scores of drugs listed in the file suggests his main business was in pharmaceutics.

William G. F. Bentinck died suddenly on April 5, 1871, leaving a young widow and an eight month old son. Since he was a young man and his death was not expected, there was no will. Apparently his death was not suspicious because there is no record of a coroner's inquest. William G. F. Bentinck was buried next to his father in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.

At least for a few decades, rural Marthasville was home to an aristocratic family which included Count William F. Bentinck and his son Count William G. F. Bentinck. In America, the land of opportunity to which they came, these men made lives, however, not as aristocrats, but as a farmer and a businessman.

Sources: Daily Missouri Republican (shsmo.newspapers.com); Familysearch.org; Federal Censuses; Findagrave.com; Missouri, United States, Wills and Probate Records, 1766-1988 (ancestrylibrary.com); “The German Presence in the Ozarks” by Russel Gerlach (thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/ozarkswatch); Newspaperarchive.com; Ohio, United States, County Marriage Records 1774-1993 (ancestrylibrary.com); Portrait and Biographical Record of Warreny County, Missouri; Chapman Publishing, 1895 (Reprint at Boone-Duden Historical Society); St. Louis City Directories (digital.wustl.edu); Coroner's Records (St. Louis Geneological Society).