The Tuscarawas County community was stunned when a father and civil war veteran from one of the county’s oldest families turned his gun on one of his own children.
The Bremer family were one of the earliest settlers of Salem Township, Tuscarawas County, having arrived in the county from Pennsylvania before 1811. That early settler, Conrad Bremer (1749-1830) along with his wife Barbara (1774-1828), settled around Port Washington, Ohio with their large family and became successful millers in the community. The couple had many children, including a son named Jonas Bremer (1813-1882) who led a curious life and whose own son would become an infamous member of the family.
Jonas was born in 1813, after the family’s arrival in Ohio, though little has been documented about his early life. One thing that is known is that, in 1841, a woman gave birth to a son of his named John Wesley Bremer (1841-1889). As a child John was sent to live with his uncle Conrad Bremer (1800-1882), first in Indiana and then in California. Jonas meanwhile, unmarried and alone, continued to live in Salem Township, Tuscarawas County and work in the family’s Port Washington mill. John W. Bremer returned to Tuscarawas County in August of 1860 in order to marry a young woman named Olive E. Simmers (1836-1919).
The elder Conrad Bremer’s death noted in “Ohio Annals : Historic events in the Tuscarawas and Muskingum Valleys, and in other portions of the state of Ohio…”, 1875. (Source: archive.org) 
The Bremer family’s land holdings in, and around, Port Washington, Tuscarawas County, Ohio shown in the 1875 Atlas of Tuscarawas County. (Source: ancestry.com) 
John W. Bremer recorded in his uncle’s household in Indiana on the 1850 Census. (Source: familysearch.org) 
John W. Bremer’s marriage to Olive E. Simmers recorded in the Tuscarawas County marriage records, August 1860. (Source: familysearch.org)
A year after his marriage to Olive, John enlisted in the 51st Ohio Volunteer Infantry and served three months and, while he was away, his wife gave birth to their first child named Jonas J. Bremer (1861-1884). John reenlisted in 1864, and again in 1865, before mustering out of service in the fall of 1865. John returned home and farmed as he and his wife welcomed five more children by 1871. John brought something darker back with him after his service, a propensity for drunkenness and violence.
John’s father, Jonas Bremer, died in 1882 and left John with two thousand dollars that he would be permitted to collect the interest on. Two years later, on the evening of February 20, 1884, John and Jonas returned to the family home west of Port Washington after a trip to Newcomerstown. John, drunk, assaulted his wife Olive and in a rage destroyed dishes and furniture in the family kitchen. John then put a butcher knife to Olive’s throat and threatened to kill her before Jonas interceded and threatened his father with an axe. John grabbed his gun and powder bag off the wall and left the house.
The murder of Jonas Bremer by his father John W. Bremer reported in a New Philadelphia, Ohio newspaper, February 1884. (Source: newspaperarchive.com) 
The verdict in the trial of John W. Bremer found in the Tuscarawas County Criminal Records, June 1884. (Source: familysearch.org) 
New Philadelphia, Ohio newspaper headline announcing the trial and verdict in the John W. Bremer case, June 1884. (Source: newspaperarchive.org)
Jonas sat down on a chair near his mother when his father reentered the house and accused Jonas of trying to kill him with an axe. John then put the muzzle of the gun to Jonas’s chest and pulled the trigger, stating “I fixed you!”. Twenty-two year old Jonas Bremer lived only a few minutes before dying on his parent’s bed. John turned himself in and, in June 1884, stood trial for the second degree murder of his eldest son. The jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Ohio State Penitentiary.
John W. Bremer lived only five years in prison, and died from tuberculosis on October 1, 1889. When he died, John was given a veterans’ funeral by members of the Grand Army of the Republic and was buried in the Gnadenhutten-Clay Union Cemetery in Gnadenhutten, Ohio. Olive Bremer was able to collect on a widow’s pension after John Bremer’s death and lived the rest of her life with her sons in Port Washington, Ohio. Olive died at the age of 83 in August 1919 and was buried in Union Cemetery in Port Washington. It is not clear where young Jonas Bremer, murdered by his father, rests.
John W. Bremer’s death recorded in a New Philadelphia, Ohio newspaper, October 1889. (Source: newspaperarchive.com) 
Olive Bremer recorded as a widow receiving pension money on the 1890 pensioner records. (Source: familysearch.org) 
Olive Bremer recorded on the 1900 census living with two of her adult sons in Port Washington, Ohio. (Source: familysearch.org)
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© Noel B. Poirier, 2024.
Tuscarawas County Stories 