Johann was the oldest son of an Austrian farming couple. His family farm at Ebensee, Austria was sixty miles straight east of the German border and the city of Salzburg. (A Nazi death camp arose at Ebensee in 1943).

His parents, Antonius Jaeger (Jäger) 1794-1870, and Anna Magdalina Muhlegger 1803-1880's, immigrated to America after age fifty with their single adult sons Franz & Jacob and their 15-year-old daughter Rosalia Jaeger. They settled in southwest Wisconsin, in Lafayette County.

Johann arrived alone to North America at the Port of New Orleans from Bremen, Germany, December 14, 1855. He sailed aboard the ship Heinrich Von Gagern. Traveling north from Louisiana, perhaps aboard a Mississippi river boat as far as southwest Wisconsin, he united with his family in Lafayette County.

Records indicate Johann and brother Franz "Francis" Jaeger, 1827-1887, together, registered for the Civil War draft at Moscow, Wisconsin in June 1863, a year before his marriage.

In 1864, after almost ten years in America, he married Wisconsin farm widow and mother Crescentia Gully. At age thirty-nine years old, it was Johann's first marriage.

Johann's union with widow Mrs. Gully is at first glance puzzling. Taking up marriage duty to a woman with six small children seems a daunting proposition, however, from a financial perspective, Mrs. Gully did own a farm. And perhaps additionally, if he had interest in avoiding service in the ongoing war, his prospects of actually serving in the army might be lessened if he had several dependents. He was almost forty. So although Johann was officially mustered on the 28th of September 1864 into Company U, 37th Wisconsin Infantry, it is not certain he ever left for war. Crescentia was already pregnant with their first child and within six months or so of his muster date, by springtime or early summer of 1865, the whole family, all nine of them, were sold-out, packed-up and gone from the area. The Civil War had ended. With the US-Dakota War in Minnesota also passed, the family relocated safely to central Minnesota and homesteaded.

Family oral history remembered Johann traded the quarter section Gully farm for a good team of oxen and wagon and the family traveled northwest over the old Red River Trail to Stearns County, Minnesota. The family included Johann age 40, Crescentia (known as Crescens) age 32, Mary Gully age 12, Josephine Gully age 10, Jacob Gully age 8, Joseph Gully age 7, Michael Gully age 5, Richard Gully age 3, and new-born Elizabeth Jaeger age 6 months. A discovered county probate record declares the Gully farm sold to a woman buyer for $475 (the appraised value of the farm two years previous was over $600). It appears the farm was sold for cash and the oxen and wagon needed for the trip were bought separately, included in the sale or acquired trading family livestock, equipment and some housewares.

After a rather slow, long journey, 380 miles, the family settled in Zion Township, later census enumerations correctly claim the farm in Lake Henry Township, along the Sauk River, west of St. Cloud, Minnesota, in a rolling prairie area predominately populated with German arrivals. The children and those that followed grew up immersed in German culture and language. It's possible the family traveled from WI to MN in tandem with the Casper Buettner family who left Fayette Township, WI at the very same time and homesteaded nearly adjacent to the Jaeger's claim WSW of St. Martin, MN.

Johann and Crescentia birthed eight more children on their Minnesota farm, the last in 1876, before she died from consumption at age 44 years old and he four years later from a heart attack leaving their children orphans to fend for themselves.

In the months after Johann's death, four Jaeger children led by Elizabeth Jaeger, age 16, relocated north sixty miles to Rich Prairie (Pierz), Minnesota where Uncle Francis Jaeger, was raising his large family. Also in the Pierz area was their dad's sister Josepha Jaeger Preimesberger, 1830-1910, and perhaps their aged Jaeger grandmother was there still alive. Uncle Jacob Jaeger, 1838-1879, had stayed behind in Fayette, Wisconsin but had already died a few years earlier at age 40. Aunt Rosalia Jaeger Marr, 1840-1909, was raising her large family in Howard County, Iowa.

After Johann's abrupt death at age 56 years old, according to oral history, step sons Michael and Richard Gully, ages 21 and 19 years old, buried him in the churchyard cemetery at St. Martin, Minnesota, seven miles east of the Jaeger farm. Oldest Jaeger son, John, was twelve years old. He and his three remaining younger siblings stayed in the local area raised in separate homes; he with the Winter family at Spring Hill; Anna, age 11, was taken in by her married sister Josephine Finneman; Tony Jaeger, age 9, located with his godfather and farming neighbor Mike Lieser and family; and the youngest, Matthew age four years old, found a home with an older farming couple, the Nett's, north of town.

No marker was set at Johann's grave for thirty-eight years following his death. Michael Gully still farmed in the area and during a surprise visit from Canadian brother Leonard Jaeger in 1919 or 1920, he was prompted to buy and erect a monument at Johann's burial spot in the Catholic cemetery. The dates on the marker are partly inaccurate (his daughter Anna Fleischhacker mentioned to this author Michael guessed at the dates) but Johann's death month and year are true and his name JOHN JAEGER is legible. His marble marker is still there today.

No photographs of him have ever been found. There does exist a Civil War photograph of his brother Francis Jaeger (Franz Jäger). See attached photos of Francis Jaeger and their sister Rosalia Jaeger Marr. written by Gregory Dorr