Two hundred years ago the Scharmers lived in Holstein, around the little town of Elmshorn. This is how one of them, a boy called Jochim, became Joseph Sharmer of Sidney, Nebraska, and how his son wrote his way across America to the woman he would marry.
Chapter one · 1829
Elmshorn
Jochim Scharmer was born on 25 May 1829 in Elmshorn, in the Duchy of Holstein, then ruled by the King of Denmark. He was baptized at St. Nikolai six days later. His father, Johann Scharmer, came from the Scharmers of Glindesmoor in Hohenfelde; his mother, Anna Peters, from an Elmshorn family that can very probably be traced back to a night watchman who died in 1777.
Jochim was the eldest of four children; by 1847 the family was living on the Sandberg, an old street near the river. Read Joseph I’s story, with the church records →
Chapter two · 1847
The sea
In 1847 an Elmshorn ship sank in a storm on the Watt, the great sand and mud flats at the mouth of the Elbe. The parish burial register names the ship’s hand Joh. Scharmer of the Sandberg, “who leaves a widow and several children living.” He was very likely Jochim’s father. Jochim was eighteen.
That same year Jochim went to sea. His obituary says he followed the sea for several years as a ship’s carpenter, “sailing to many ports in different parts of the world,” and he came ashore in California in 1853. Over the generations the loss of his father and his own going to sea became one family story.
Chapter three · 1853–1874
Gold and cattle
Joseph, as he was now known, reached the gold country in 1853, in the last years of the Gold Rush. For sixteen years he was in mining, stock raising “and other business” in California, then raised stock in Nevada from 1869 and at Brookville, Kansas, a cattle town on the Kansas Pacific Railway, from 1871.
In 1874 he brought his cattle to Sidney, Nebraska, on the Union Pacific, and started a ranch.
Chapter four · 1874–1907
Sidney
In Sidney Joseph became a banker as well as a rancher, opening the Sidney Exchange Bank with James Sutherland in 1881. On 10 November 1884 he married Katie Conner, born in Quincy, Massachusetts, on 20 November 1863, whose mother had died before Katie was a year old. Katie’s half-sister Lizzie and Joseph’s best friend, Jacob Heintz, were the witnesses.
Four children followed: Laura in December 1885, Kathryn on 26 September 1887, Josephine “Dodie” on 22 November 1889, and Joseph on 10 November 1897. Joseph I died in Sidney on 14 June 1898, when his son was seven months old. Katie died on 11 April 1907, and the children were left “without father or mother.” Read Katie’s story →
Chapter five · 1907–1937
Denver and Reedley
After Katie’s death the children were scattered among relatives. By 1910 Joe, twelve, was living in Denver with his eldest sister Laura, “Aunt Larry,” and her husband, Myron Sager. He grew up in Reedley, California, and went into the canning and fruit-processing business, the trade that sent him east in the winter of 1937.
Chapter six · 1937–1954
Joe, Ruby and Planada
Ruby E. Wilson was born in California on 1 February 1909. She graduated from Cal in 1930, taught high school in Tombstone, Arizona, and came home to Planada to take over the post office from her father. Joe met her at the counter when he came in to mail a package.
In December 1937 Joe rode the Overland Limited east on a sales trip and wrote to Ruby from the train and from Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington and New York, and met his aunt Lizzie in Chicago. Those letters are the heart of this site. They married in Kingman, Arizona, on 5 July 1938. Their first child, a daughter, was stillborn in 1939; Joseph III was born on 30 April 1941, followed by Jay and Laurel.
Joe became a fig grower and served as Merced County Supervisor for District Two from 1949 to 1952. He died in Santa Cruz on 26 February 1954 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Colma. Ruby died on 18 May 1981 and is buried in Merced Cemetery. More about Joe and Ruby →
Chapter seven · today
The family today
Joe and Ruby’s eldest son, Joseph Sharmer III, was born in Fresno on 30 April 1941. He married Hannelore Ahrens, born in Delmenhorst, Germany, the daughter of Henrich and Alma Ahrens; their son is Joseph Sharmer IV, who keeps this site. Joseph III later made his home in Nevada and died in Dayton on 30 November 2017.
Jay Myron Sharmer was born in Fresno on 7 July 1943. He and Nancy Karr were married for 45 years, and his sons are Jay Myron Sharmer Jr. and John Randall “Randy” Sharmer. Jay died on 13 November 2006.
Laurel, the youngest, kept the family’s home movies and memories, and her recollections run all through this site. Joseph IV’s daughters, Katie, Rosie and Christa, are the newest generation. Meet the family →
