N is for Nels P Nelson

N is for Nels P Nelson (1851-1831)

Today's brick wall is brought to you by Nels Petr Nelson.

Nels Nelson was my mother's grandfather. She was only able to tell me a bit about him since he died when she was only 10 years old. She knew his name and occupation  He was the first Swedish policeman on the Duluth, Minnesota police department. Prior to that he had worked as a hostler for the street railroad and later as a conductor before joining the police.

Now, according to his police department employment record and his death certificate, Nels was born September 23, 1851 in Sweden. No parish, no county, just Sweden. His parents are listed as unknown. He's going to be a bit of a problem.

But this is nothing new. I am convinced that Nels has been putting up roadblocks to my search from the beginning. Strange things would happen whenever I would research him. My computer would freeze, the power would go out or the internet would slow to a crawl. A website I wanted to search would go down. I finally told him to stop fooling around as I would find him.

So he did. Things went smoothly for a while. The Northeast Minnesota Historical Center was able to provide me with his police employment record. I found newspaper clipping with his photograph and I started to think about Swedish research.

First stop was the naturalization papers and the passenger list. No new information. I checked the index of Swedish church books on MyHeritage. The only 2 possibilities I found both died in Sweden. Roadblocks everywhere.

I think it's time for another talk with Nels. He should know by now that resistance is futile.

M is for The Mais Family

M is for the Mais family

When I first caught the genealogy bug I asked my mother-in-law about her family. She had a few vague memories but she always came back to "Willie Mace." She remembered visiting him in Scranton, Pennsylvania when she was a child. But she didn't know who he was. Years later, I sat down with an old address book that had been in her house. I know, rule # 1, start with what you have. And look who jumped off the page. Mr John Mais, 632 Willow St, Scranton, PA. Mais not Mace.

Address book of Margaretha Bender Benert

I had them. John Mais, his wife Elizabeth, daughter Emma and son William. Willie Mace, finally. After that it was easy enough to fill in the blanks.

John was a stationery engineer and worked for several breweries in the city of Scranton. This drawing of John appeared in the Scranton Republican newspaper, Jan 27, 1891.

John Mais

Elisabeth was a sister of Margaretha Bender, the wife of John Benert #2. And I found this in Margaretha's photo album. This is a a photo postcard that Elisabeth had sent to Margaret in 1911.

Elisabeth Bender Mais

John and Elisabeth had five children, John, Emma, Louisa, Minnie, and William. Only two lived to adulthood, Emma who married Jacob Barke and William. William was an accomplished violinist and music teacher in Scranton.  As far as I can tell, he never married. John died in 1943 and Elisabeth in 1944. Both are buried in Pittston Avenue Cemetery in Scranton. You can see a photo of the plot here on Find A Grave.

L is for Lumery

L is for Lumery

One of my brick walls.  Like this one, an outer wall of an Irish barn I photographed years ago. 

I first learned about the Lumery family from notes my father, Ernie Wilkowski, made when he was studying the travel diary of a distant cousin. Here is the most tantalizing excerpt. The entire transcript can be found here.

 "Called at Presentation Convent. Met Sister Savior and Sister Bernard who were both Misses Supple of Ballyheigue, cousins of father. Sister Bernard, the younger of the two, resembles my sister very much. Father always said she looked like Nell Supple, Grandmother's mother. Her husband, George Lumery came to Ireland from England who with his father manufactured silk in England. George came to Ireland on account of his failing health and met Nell Supple and married her, remaining in Ireland. They had 2 children, Grandmother Mary Lumery and William Lumery who married Catherine Dalton, called Nana. They had 3 children, John, George, and Mary Lumery, Mary marrying mother's brother Patrick Dorgan. The other child (of George and Nell), Mary Lumery, my grandmother, married Thomas Dugan. They had 3 children, John, Martain and Michael, my father. Great Grandfather, George Lumery, joined the Catholic Church and was baptized on his death bed"

Good stuff, right? This one little passage has been the seed that really grew my Irish tree. From the rest of the diary Dad plotted a family tree that so far has been proven 100% accurate. There are still some loose ends and I am determined.

Family tree constructed by Ernie Wilkowski sometime in the 1980s

But then there is English George. Nothing so far, zip, zero, zilch. I've found 5 or 6 ways to spell the name and not much else. I have a time frame based on the births of the children of the late 1700s. But because it's so early, I don't find any church records. And Supple is a very common County Kerry name.

I find it very touching that to the family the most significant part of his life was his deathbed conversion. I'm going to try and channel some of that faith as I search for George.

K is for Friedrich "Fred" Kuehl (1837-1928)

I love old German church records. They are difficult to read and I usually can't read them entirely but what I find is sometimes golden. For example the entry for the death of Friedrich Kuehl.

Fred Kuehl was the second husband of my second great grandmother Louisa Doering. She married Fred after the death of her first husband, Gottlieb Wilkowski. When Louisa died, he went to live with their daughter Emma Kuehl and her husband William Boettcher. William was a tinsmith and Fred worked in the tin shop with him. They probably made household items like coffeepots, baking pans or milk pails. That is what I know from the census. 

The death entry, from what I can make out tells me more. He was born 6 Aug 1837. Okay, didn't know that. He immigrated to the United States in 1863. That's good to know too with such a common name. He was married twice. Hello, hold the phone. Who? Where? I haven't a clue. 

When he died he was living with Meta Buending Krebs, granddaughter of wife Louisa. That makes sense. He had outlived his immediate family. Now I know who stepped up to care for him. I think that the granddaughter, Mrs Wm. Krebs and Mrs Otilie Buending are listed because they are next of kin. So, no mention of the step-sons. or maybe they were caring for him. I need a better translation.

Here is the death entry, recorded at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Watertown, Wisconsin. I think I have done most of the translation correctly.

233. Friedrich Kuehl, geboren on 6 Aug. 1837 in Deutschland. Came to America 1863. He was twice married. (?) in Horicon, Fort Atkinson and last at Wm Krebs, Lebanon, Mrs Ottilie Buending and (?) Mrs Wm Krebs.... He died on 26 Feb 1928, age 90 years, 6 months, 20 days. Burial on 29 Feb 1928, "Oak Hill" Watertown, Wisconsin.

 He was buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery on 29 Feb, 1928 in the Fred C Wilkowski plot next to his wife, Louisa. The cemetery records list myocarditis as a cause of death.

J is for Johan August Jansson (1843-1915)

Swedish household examination books are a little goldmine for searching your Swedish ancestors. They contain birth, marriage, and sometimes death information and the comings and goings of the people. All you need to know is the parish where your ancestor lived. Not so easy, I know.

But I got lucky while searching for my grandfather, Carl Albanus Ahlborg. I knew when he arrived in the United States and I knew his last residence from the passenger list. From there it was just a matter of tracing him back in the church books. And these confirmed what we had suspected. He was illegitimate. And my great-grandmother, Johanna Juliana Lundström, named Johan August Jansson as the father. As my father used to say, hot diggity dog.

The church books tell an interesting story for Johan. He was born in Husaby in 1843 and by 1863 lived in Biskopstomten. In 1869 he left for Amerika. I have no idea why he left Sweden or where he lived in the United States. By 1873 he was back home, possibly because his father Johann Petter Jansson had died the previous year. He is mysteriously missing from the church books in April of 1876 but reappears in May. Carl was born in September of that year in Skara.

He never married Johanna but in 1886, he married Anna Elizabet Roman who worked on the same farm. They had four children, Sophia Stina, Sven Johan, Anna Elizabet and Erik Mattheus. 

Now if I could just learn to read a bit more of the old handwriting I might stand a chance of finding a few more answers. And my apologies for any spelling errors I have made.

Household exam book from Skara-landsförsamling-AI-11-1863-1866-Image-8-page-1c

I is for Ida Benert (1863-?)

There's a lot in a name.

Ida Bennett

Ida Benert was the daughter of John Benert #1 and Barbara Horn and it seems, a very practical person. When she was a teenager she changed her name from Benert to Bennett. She told the family that no one ever got her name right, always calling her Bennett, so she might as well be a Bennett. Thanks a lot, Ida. Benert is such a unique name. Bennett; not so much.

After her mother's second marriage, Ida lived with one Horn relative after another in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and New York. She never married and supported herself by working as a seamstress or as she reported in the 1920 census, a modiste. 

I don't know when she was born. The 1880 census says she was 17 (born about 1863), the 1900 census reports she was 31 (born about 1869) and by 1920 she had lost another 5 years and claimed she was 46 (born about 1874). She must have been getting a bit forgetful because in 1930 she said she was born about 1870 and was 60 years old.

All of those censuses give her name as Bennett. But she is listed as Ida Benert in 1897 when she was witness to a cousin's marriage.

And that's all I know. I can't find her in the newspapers or in the city directories. No obituaries, no cemetery information, not even a date of death. 

I do know she was very much loved by her nephew John Benert #3. He named his daughter, Grace Ida.

It was Grace Ida who left me this lovely pitcher and bowl that Ida used for washing.

H is for Horn vs Horn

Proving that newspapers are a great resource, or not.

Today we look at a branch of the Horn family, specifically the wife and children of John Horn and Andrew Horn. Their sister Barbara was married to John Benert # 1.

John Horn married Louisa Kircher sometime around 1855. They had 6 children. When John died, Louisa married his brother Andrew.. They had one child, named Louise.

I seems that Louisa and Louise did not get along. Louise was accused of running around and keeping bad company. Still, Andrew had a soft spot in his heart for her and didn't believe the stories. After all, she was his only child. He told his various relatives that he had made a new will leaving everything to Louise and nothing to his wife and his step-children.

No other will was found and when Andrew died, the fight was on. The estate was substantial. The newspapers estimated the total value at $100,000, almost $3 million today. Andrew had been a very successful saloon keeper and property investor.

The reason I bring this up is to illustrate two things.

First, the newspapers are a gold mine. From the newspapers I learned a lot about the Horn family. I learned the names of brothers and sisters, step-children and children and Andrew's wife. I learned about his occupation, where he lived and when he died.

Secondly, I subsequently learned that the newspapers had the relationships completely wrong. The names of Andrew's sisters were wrong. Louisa was described as the wicked step-mother that threw poor Louise out of the house for "drinking and driving around with men" instead of her mother. About the only thing they had correct was Louise's age. Why that was important, I don't know.

Louise lost her lawsuit and had to settle for an equal share. I was able to sort all this out when I located a copy of both Andrew's will and Louisa's will. But those newspapers had me going for a while.