Identifying Unmarked Family Photos: Charles and Anna Schmidt

The photo below is Charles Schmidt (1860-1942) and his wife Anna Mueller (possibly Miller) (1864-1956). It was probably taken on their wedding day, judging by the flowers on his lapel. Charles Schmidt was the brother of my great-grandfather, Frank Schmidt, and the photo was given to me by Frank's daughter, Agnes, who was my grandmother. Charles and Frank were raised in Greenville, Wisconsin, which is not far from New London where, judging by the photographer's mark, the photo was taken.

I know the above photo is Charles and Anna Schmidt because my grandmother, who knew them well, told me; perhaps more importantly, she also wrote it on the back of the photograph. I probably would not have remembered their names when I rediscovered the photo in a box some years later - after Agnes had died.

The photo below did not come to me from immediate family. This was in the album owned by a distant cousin - who did not know anything about her family history, and thus, the names that were written on some of the pictures were meaningless to her, making identifying the photos from her scans and emails very challenging. 

Before trying to identify anything from the album, I took a look at the lineage of the woman who originally owned it - my grandmother's first cousin, Mary. Mary was descended from Charles A. Schmidt, the elder brother of my great-grandfather Frank Smith; both were the sons to Anton Joseph Schmidt and his wife, Theresa Kommer. An album belonging to a descendant of Charles would also likely contain images of Anna's family - the Mullers. Depending on who originally owned the album, it could potentially contain images of other, more distant relations, as well.

The photo below is the first one Mary's daughter sent me, and I realized very quickly it was not the one I was looking for - the children were all wrong. I was looking for, I believed, a family group that included my great-grandfather, Frank - but Frank had two older sisters, which immediately ruled out this photo. There were also not enough children - the blended family of Theresa and Franz Joseph Kneisel was huge.

In looking more closely at the photo, though, I noticed that the order and ages of the children, based on census records, was entirely correct to the Charles and Anna Schmidt. Their children were: Frank (B. 1886), Emma (b. 1888), Edward (b. 1889), John (b. 1892), and Elizabeth (b. 1894). 

I noted also that the photo was taken at a studio in Appleton, not far from where Charles and Anna lived (in New London, according to census records). Holding up the two photos side by side, it certainly appears as though it could be the same couple, aged about ten years - which would be about right, as the wedding photo and family photo are about ten years apart.

I had the good fortune to have yet another photo in my own collection:

This one is also from my grandmother. The woman on the right I know to be her sister, my great-aunt Emma Smith. The photo is is marked on the back "This is Emma Smith and her cousin on her father's side." I had long suspected that the cousin in question was Emma Schmidt - and looking at the woman on the left, and comparing her to the little girl in the family picture, it seems likely it is the same girl. Their fathers were very close, and the girls - both named Emma - were born within a year of each other.

I am confident that the family group is the Charles Schmidt family, based on the source of the album, the comparison to a known photo of the the family, and the census records for the family. It was nice to get confirmation of my suspicion that the cousin in the second photo was who I thought it might be.

Identifying Unmarked Family Photos: Theresa Kommer Schmidt Kneisel

I wrote previously about my frustrations in trying to identify a photo from an old album of unmarked family photographs. I was so disheartened by the experience that I stopped researching that part of the family for nearly two years.

Only on my recent discovery of an error I had made on Theresa Kommer's death date did I decide to revisit that part of the family. I ran across a very old post on the Fox Valley Genealogical Society website that provided me with the clue I needed to finally begin tracing Theresa's line back to Europe. I contacted the woman who had made the post, who was descended from Theresa's daughter Elizabeth - my great-grandfather Frank's older sister. The original poster offered to send me a copy of her research folder, and I requested "any photos she might have of that part of the family." I received a thick sheaf of documents, and an assortment of family photos, including this one:

Theresa Kommer and her second husband, Franz Joseph Kneisel. 

Photo taken about 1890.

She also included photographs of Anna Kneisel, the daughter of the couple above, and Elizabeth Schmidt, from Theresa's first marriage.

Elizabeth Schmidt Melzer Bauer (1854-1931)

Interestingly, when I went back to the photos I had received from the unmarked album, one was a duplicate: A wedding photo of Anna Kneisel was in both sets.

I put the the photo that I knew for sure was Theresa and her second husband, next to the photo I believed might be Theresa and her second husband, to see if I could make a final determination:

Are these the same people, aged ten years? 

(Left: FJ Kneisel and Theresa Kommer; Right: Scan #5.)

I'm still not sure. It is especially difficult to compare the two as neither of the pictures is an especially good quality scan. There is nothing super-obvious to link the two pairs, no matching jewelry, clothing, photo studio, etc.

I asked my cousin Linda her opinion, and she compared both photos and said she wasn't sure, either. She did, however, make another side-by-side comparison:

The resemblance is striking, is it not? I see two possibilities: First, that the photo on the left is of a much older Elizabeth Schmidt; or, that the photo is, as I think, Elizabeth Schmidt's mother Theresa Kommer. The unidentified photo was taken in Appleton, and both women lived there.

The problem with the idea of the photo on the left being Elizabeth Schmidt and one of her husbands is this: She wasn't very lucky in her marriages. Her first husband (Bernard Melzer) died not long after they married; and she divorced her second husband (Anton Bauer) after a brief marriage - the 1905 census shows them living in separate households. She did not marry a third time, so it is unlikely there is a photo of her in her old age with a husband.

It seems very likely to me that The Unidentified Couple of "Scan #5" really is Franz Joseph Kneisel and Theresa Kommer. What do you think?

Brick Wall Breakthroughs: Theresa Kommer Schmidt Kneisel

For a long time, my storied ancestor Theresa Kommer Schmidt Kneisel has represented a brick wall in my research: No death certificate or obituary that I could locate, no indication on the ship's manifest as to her town of origin, and the added problem of having a husband named "Schmidt" - hardly an unusual name. But recently, I noticed that I had her death date incorrect in my records. I had a date of 1900, but noticed she was listed in a town directory as late as 1908, and a biography of her son Charles published in a town history gave a death date of 1908. I realized that if I had made an error with such a simple fact, I had not even begun to do my work on Theresa, and decided to go back and start pulling together more facts about Theresa.

I decided to start with the most interesting place: The trial of Joshua Wilson, the Stockbridge Indian who murdered Theresa's husband Joseph, my great-great-grandfather, in 1863. I contacted the Cofrin Library Area Research Center, which I have worked with in the past to retrieve old wills and divorce records. The Archivist told me that yes, there were still court records from that era, but asked if I could pin down the trial date more precisely as those early records were not indexed.

The Family Business: Electric Motor Service Co., Appleton, WI.

I have submitted this post for inclusion in the Carnival of Genealogy, sponsored by The Creative Gene. All contributors' posts can be seen by August 4. The topic for this edition is Business and Commerce.

That handsome fellow in the photo is my grandfather, Howard Herrman (1901-1978), and the business behind him is the one he owned and ran: the Electric Motor Service Co., in Appleton, Wisconsin. I was only in his shop once, in the mid-1970's, when it was being cleared out and shut down. I asked my mother for her recollections:

Dad's business was located at 116 N. Superior St., between College Ave. and Lawrence St. near the entrance to Jones Park. His main business was repairing electric motors, but he also sold new and used motors and parts.

It was a rather greasy place, since all motors require oiling, greasing, etc., so Dad always warned us to be careful where we moved, and what we touched, because Mom would yell at him (and at us) if we came home with grease on our clothes. Nevertheless, we all loved the place. It was calm and quiet and the only place to have a private conversation with Dad, since at home Mother always listened in. If one of Dad's friends happened to be there, we also could hear more adult conversations about politics, local issues, business problems, etc. -- topics that were rarely discussed at home.

(My three sisters and I)  learned to type as we entered high school, and Dad "hired" us to work in the shop once a week or so, preparing invoices and typing business letters. It was good experience, preparing us for jobs in offices when we finished school and helping to prepare me for college.

We frequently dropped in at the shop when we were downtown shopping or running errands and needed a ride home. No matter how busy he was, Dad always seemed happy to see us and would chat as he worked.

Dad rented the little building his shop occupied for many years -- before he met and married our mother, until I was away at the university. Apparently the elderly owner of the property died, and the new owner wanted to raise the rent beyond what Dad wanted to pay, so he then moved to South Superior St., the store now occupied by a bicycle shop.

The photo above must have been the original shop, because I found an ad for the second location in a 1958 Appleton newspaper through NewspaperArchive.com:

That appears to be the address on the picture below, which was from my grandfather's collection. He was an avid amateur photographer and kept a darkroom in the basement at the house.

It was interesting to hear my mother describe her father's business as the place where she could have a private conversation with him, and I know the reason why: Howard's younger brother told me that Howard did not allow his wife to set foot in his shop. He considered it his domain, and "no wife of his was going to interfere" there. Apparently, that rule did not apply to his four daughters.