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.

Identifying Unmarked Family Photos: Theresa Kommer Schmidt Kneisel

Many years ago, on my annual Wisconsin Christmas visit, my grandmother took me to visit a cousin in Appleton - a woman whose exact relationship to us was always a little fuzzy to me. This cousin, Mary, had a large photo album filled with ancient photos, and we paged through the album slowly and carefully. Some of the photos I recognized - my great-grandparents, Frank and Anna. One of the photos was of my great-great-grandmother, Theresa Kommer.

It was quite astonishing to see a picture of a woman with such a compelling history. It is easy to conjure up visions of the hardship of her life: Theresa grieving for her murdered husband, far from her homeland and family, being forced to remarry out of necessity, and living out the rest of her life in great sadness. I don't recall thinking she looked sad though. I do remember wishing I could stare her picture for hours.

I wanted to make a copy of the photo, but Mary refused. This was in the days before scanners, and I imagine she did not trust a 16-year-old girl to safely return her family treasures. I promptly forgot about the whole thing until a couple of years ago.

Thriller Thursday - Wisconsin Death Trip: Theresa Kommer Schmidt Kneisel

Theresa Kommer has an extraordinary story. She was born 24 June, 1827, according to her gravemarker; in 1858, she and her husband Anton Joseph Schmidt and their first four children emigrated to Wisconsin from Bohemia, according to a passenger list for the Adler that I located on Ancestry.

Anton Joseph Schmidt and wife Theresa came to America from Bohemia aboard the Adler in 1858. They left via the port of Bremen; sadly, the Bremen records were destroyed.

Upon arriving in Wisconsin, the family settled in on a farm in Greenville and had two more children, the youngest of whom, Frank, was my great-grandfather. The new life they came for, however, didn't last long. On January 2, 1863, less than five years after their arrival, Anton Joseph Schmidt was shot and killed by a drunk Stockbridge Indian, Joshua Wilson. The murder caused quite a bit of excitement in the town; the events were all preserved for posterity in highly emotive Victorian prose in the local newspapers.

 From the Appleton Post-Crescent, 1863. 

Wisconsin Death Trip: Gladys Wright, 1907-1923

The death of a child is wrenching, even nearly a hundred years later, and even to those who never knew the children or their parents. There is a always special kind of heartbreak that goes along with a young life lost. Although the obituary of Gladys Wright, age 16, tells a sad story, there is only a hint - easily missed - of the whole story: "She is survived by her parents and one brother." 

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.

The Missing Grave Markers of Frank & Anna Smith

Note: This was originally published on my companion blog, Desperado Penguin, on June 16, 2010.

My amazing maternal grandmother, Agnes (Smith) Herrman, originally sparked my interest in genealogy. I used to visit her over the holidays and we'd spend a lot of time talking - well, I listened and asked questions and then listened some more. Mostly, she talked about family, and when I was in my Someday I'm Going to Marry Prince Andrew* phase, I started asking about family trees, because when you read about royalty, there seem to be lots of them (generally with branches intertwining in a less-than-wholesome fashion).

She knew a lot about our family tree, and could recite it from memory. I have pages and pages of handwritten diagrams from that time, all my notes taken from her extraordinary memory.

When I discovered that my line - her line - traces back up to a revolutionary war patriot, and I was thus eligible to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, I knew I had to. I met with the local chapter registrar, Pat, and walked her through the lineage, and she told me what sorts of additional documentation would be needed for each generation from me back to Lieut. William Woodworth. One of the requests was for pictures of gravemarkers for my great-grandparents, Frank and Anna Smith.

Here's the thing: the grave markers have been removed. I know this because I once asked my grandmother if we could go to her parents' graves, and she told me about how she had gone to the cemetery, and they were no longer there. She became very angry that the markers had been removed not even fifty years after her parents' deaths, and launched into a diatribe about the evils of the Catholic Church that they would do something like that, and she was sure somehow there was a monetary reason for the removal.

Pat suggested I call the cemetery anyway, as "they may still have the cemetery plot card or other records; you'd be amazed what falls out of those files. Call them."

She was very insistent, and once I discovered the letter that fell out of Clara Herman's cemetery file, I thought maybe Pat was on to something, so I called.

A fellow by the name of Dick answered the phone at the Catholic cemetery in Antigo, Wisconsin, and I inquired if he had any records for Frank and Anna Smith. The gravemarkers had been removed, I told him, but might they have other records?

Dick became rather indignant. "We would not have done that."

"Well," I told him, "My grandmother was there maybe 20 years ago and the headstones had been removed."

"No," Dick insisted, "We would not have done that. I'm going to go take a look, I'll call you back in five minutes."

So I waited for Dick to call me and sheepishly admit what the evil Catholic empire had done for fun and profit.

He did call back, within the hour. "I think I know why your grandmother thought what she did."

Apparently the markers, which were originally placed in the 1930s, were of the flat variety: they lie flush to the ground. These markers had sunk over time, and Frank's in particular was barely visible. It is entirely possible that the day my grandmother went to her parents' graves, they were overgrown, and she thought that since she could not see them, they were no longer there (and from there, obviously, it's a short leap to a vast Catholic headstone-removal-for-profit conspiracy**).

Dick offered to mail some photos of markers, so I could see what had happened, and so he did, about a week later. He also included cemetery records that showed four of my grandmother's brothers buried in the same plot, two of whom died as infants and had no markers.

In his letter, Dick offered to dig up, raise, and restore the gravemarkers, and quoted a price I thought was reasonable, so I mailed off a check and requested he begin the work. When he dug up Frank's marker, the cement "collar" was broken into several pieces, so he mailed me photos of that and suggested replacing it.

And earlier this week, I received photos of the completed work:

This is Frank and Anna on their wedding day in 1886:

Is it weird to go around replacing gravemarkers of people who died even before my mother was born? Probably. But if you look closely at the wedding photo, you can see Anna is wearing a pin at her collar. That pin was given to my grandmother Agnes (the ninth of Anna's eleven children), who later gave it to me - the youngest of her four grandchildren. A gift from Anna, passing through time. The least I can do, I think, is return the favor.


*This was, obviously, long before he married that interesting red-headed lady.
**For the record (in all seriousness), I have nothing against the Catholic church.

When Genealogy Meets Reality TV: The Blackest Sheep, Part 2

Note: This post was originally published in my companion blog, Desperado Penguin, on May 24, 2010.

After discovering where my great-grandfather Wenzel Herman was definitely not buried, I made it my business to find out first, why he inspired so much animosity among those who knew him, and second, when and where he died and was buried.

Since I had exhausted cemeteries to look in, Wisconsin death records and indexed obituaries, and the post-1930 censuses are not yet available, I decided to poke around my local library for some clues. It's hard for me to leave my house to spend extended periods at the library, but the King County Library System has very kindly put several genealogy databases online for my at-home, oddball-hour researching pleasure.

I thought for sure there must be an obituary somewhere for Wenzel, so I started with the Newspaper Archive Database, and simply entered Wenzel Herman into the search box.

Several hits immediately came up, all from the Oshkosh NorthWestern newspaper. From the newspaper I was able to construct the following series of events, all in 1939:

March 22: Death of Emily Frank, daughter of Wenzel's second wife, Clara Herman, by her first marriage. As far as I can work out from the obituary and census records, this was Clara's only child.
April 11: Wenzel Herman pleads guilty to one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor girl and is sentenced to six months in prison.
July 5: Clara Herman dies "after a long illness."
July 6: Wenzel Herman is granted early release from County Jail to attend his wife Clara's funeral, apparently having been well-behaved whilst in prison.

From the Oshkosh Northwestern, 1939.

If there is a Blacker Sheep than Wenzel on my family tree, I don't want to know. Still, I was curious if court records might reveal anything further, possibly earlier brushes with the law or something that might give me a bit more insight into why my great-grandmother Hulda divorced him years before Clara had the misfortune of marrying him.

Also, I don't have a single photo of the man, and I'm kind of curious to know what he looks like. Might there be a mug shot, I wondered?

I contacted someone on Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness and inquired if she could check the courthouse for me. I was very upfront about what records I was looking for and what Wenzel was arrested for, figuring it might make someone uncomfortable and they should have the right to decline - it's a favor for a stranger after all.

The woman who replied was happy to assist and even eager to learn something new. Unfortunately, when she checked with the courthouse, she was told that the trial records prior to 1959 had been destroyed by the county as they were "of limited genealogical value."

Yes, well, maybe in other families, but for mine? It's kind of a bummer, Winnebago County.

She did offer a very helpful suggestion, though - she directed me to the Green Bay Area Research Center, which houses, among other things, divorce decrees from about the time Hulda would have divorced Wenzel. For $5.00 and a self-addressed, stamped envelope, I got my answer: Hulda was granted a divorce on the grounds of non-support and since she "did not know Wenzel's whereabouts."

The date of the divorce was just a few days before she remarried in a Catholic church, listing Wenzel as "deceased."* So, after all that, where did Wenzel go? His wife was gone and his son wanted nothing to do with him. But I could not turn up a Wisconsin death record or an obituary anywhere for him.

I reflected back on what my grandmother had originally told me, that Wenzel had gone to Illinois because his wife had family there. I had discarded that as incorrect, since Clara's family was clearly in the Neenah, Wisconsin area, where she was. But, since I was out of other ideas, I ran a quick Google search for an Illinois death record database, and found what I was looking for almost immediately: An index entry for Wenzel Herman, 1946.

I mailed in the paperwork and $8 check, and two weeks later, I had a death certificate for Wenzel Herman, including his correct parents' names and birthdate (the year was off but the month and day were correct). 

The person who provided the information was his third wife, Bessie. It listed a cemetery in Chicago, so I once again got on the phone, but this woman was not as helpful as the woman at Oak Hill, simply confirmed that Wenzel was indeed buried there but providing no further information.

I went to FindAGrave and created an entry for Wenzel, then posted a request for a picture of his headstone. It took only a day or two for a very nice gentleman to get to the cemetery, locate the grave and discover that Wenzel was buried there, but even though his third wife outlived him by 13 years, in all that time, no one put a marker on his grave - and she was buried not with Wenzel but with her first husband.

The man that helped me with this turned out to be a Chicago police officer*, and he also took a picture of the grave of Bessie Herman. I set up a findagrave entry for her as well and he added the picture of her grave marker (unlike Wenzel, Bessie has a very nice one).

I feel kind of strange and awful being the person who "owns" her online memorial, given the facts of how we are connected. I want to somehow apologize to her, and to Clara's family, all of them,from Wenzel's family, all of us. I want to tell them that Wenzel's only son was a truly decent man, and his children and grandchildren are also truly decent people - quirky, yes, but decent.

I also feel sort of guilty: now I know why my grandfather wouldn't talk about his father, and why he turned Wenzel away when he came to the house. I'm sure my grandfather didn't want me dredging all this up, after he hid it away from us all so well, and for so long. But on the other hand, having the knowledge gave me a much deeper understanding of my grandfather, and a much greater pride in him (as though that were possible) for having been such a warm and loving man after having experienced such loss and shame.

*Wishful thinking?
**Wenzel, if you can read this, they're still keeping an eye on you.

When Genealogy Meets Reality TV: The Blackest Sheep

Note: This post was originally published in my companion blog, Desperado Penguin, on May 23, 2010.

Since my husband and I are both genealogy geeks, we frequently discuss our latest discoveries or roadblocks at the dinner table.

In case you are wondering: Nine-year-old girls do not find genealogy interesting, even their own.

So I decided to liven things up for her with a contest, something along the lines of what would happen if Who Do You Think You Are? runs out of actual celebrities and goes the reality-tv route. Whose tree has The Blackest Sheep?

Not to spoil the ending, but I won, and it's probably the one time any of his descendants was ever proud to be connected to The Blackest Sheep, Wenzel Herman. I'll take life's little victories where I can get them, I'm not proud - how could I be?

 
Wenzel was my maternal grandfather's father, and my mother and her sisters never knew much about him. As a child, I asked my grandmother about Wenzel, and was told: Wenzel and my great-grandmother divorced, Wenzel remarried, and eventually he moved to Illinois because his wife had family there. She related a story about how Wenzel once showed up at the door, wanting to see my grandfather (his only child), and my grandfather sent him away. Wenzel left, looking sad, and was never seen again.

This tale sounds rather hard-hearted and isn't in keeping with my grandfather's character: He was a very loving man. So I always wondered about it, and then I started to research.

The first item I found was a census record, using an on-line search: in 1930, Wenzel lived in Neenah, Wisconsin, with his second wife, Clara. Since 1930 is the last available census, I could go no further with census records.

I searched the area libraries and although there was no obituary for Wenzel in the Oshkosh library's on-line index, or in the nearby Appleton library, there was an entry for Mrs Wenzel Herman, who died in 1939. I ordered a copy of her obituary through the library service and discovered that Wenzel was listed as one of her survivors, and she was buried at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Neenah.

The Oak Hill cemetery also has an online index, and I found Clara buried there, but again, no listing for Wenzel.

I called the cemetery thinking perhaps Wenzel might have been buried with Clara but for some reason he was not included in the index. The woman who answered the phone was friendly as could be when I explained what I was looking for, and went to pull Clara's card from the file.

"Was your great-grandfather's name Wenzel, by any chance?" she asked when she returned.

"Yes! Is he buried there?" I asked.Oh Yes! She shoots, she scores!

"No," she replied, "He's not here - someone made sure of that."

*lengthy pause*

"I've never seen anything like this, actually."

Attached to the Clara's card was a notarized letter from her brother, Alfred Klein, which read: "I, Alfred Klein, lawful owner of cemetery block xyz at Neenah Cemetery, Winnebago County, Wisconsin, hereby order S.E. Kurtz, caretaker of said cemetery, not to bury Wenzel Herman, husband of my deceased sister Clara, on said cemetery lot." The letter was signed and dated less than three weeks after Clara's death.

She kindly offered to send me a copy of the letter, which I received a week later and added to my Wenzel file. So now I know a few things:

• Wenzel had two marriages that ended badly (first to my great-grandmother, and then to Clara Klein).
• He was still living in 1939.
• He was not buried with either of his wives (as I have been to my great-grandmother's grave).
• My grandfather was not the only man who didn't like Wenzel. A picture has formed, and it isn't a pretty one.

My next research will focus on trying to answer two questions:

Where is Wenzel buried?

What on earth did he do to that prompted Mr. Klein to send that letter? Here is what I found.