More than once I have experienced obtaining a family history document that provoked more questions than it answered. Last week was the topper! In a nutshell, here’s what we have:
My mother’s grandfather was Edward Gustav Adolph Wenz. He was born Gustav Adolph Wenz, but when he fell in love with a beautiful French Catholic girl named Grace Eugenie Vautrinot, he converted to Catholicism to marry her, took on Edward as his given name and became known to everyone as Edward G.A. He was born in what his daughter, my Great-Aunt Marie, referred to as New York’s “Lower East Side” on February 12, 1869, which is documented in his Social Security record.
Edward’s father was Philip Henry Wenz, a German immigrant who is currently my longest-standing brick wall. I have not been able to nail down even a firm birth year or parents names, much less a birthplace. In German research, you must have a town or city of birth to make any headway with your research. His wife was Theresa Rose Theissen (spelling variations occur on both given and surnames).
Edward’s sister was Matilda “Tillie” Eleanor (Wenz) Maitland. Edward’s daughter, Marie Rose (Wenz) McLaughlin was my Great-Aunt Marie. She was very interested in history, and apparently wrote to Tillie around 1956 and asked her about the family. One particular sentence in reference to Theresa, Philip’s wife, is key here: “why her father changed the name to Richards I don’t know, when he came to New York and married again.”
Well, that was tantalizing! In most records that give Theresa’s maiden name, it’s a variation of Thiessen. But in two documents, it is Richards. In the first, her own Massachusetts death record, the name of father is recorded as Joseph Richards. Her son F. Wenz (presumably Frederick) was the informant on this record. In the second, the sister of Fred and Tillie, Henrietta “Hattie” Wenz’s birth record from New Jersey in 1878, the mother’s name is recorded as “Theresa Rosa Richards” (see my transcript of her birth and other documents below).
Well, that’s where things have stood for decades. Then Family Search offered me the following hint:
The birth record of Gustav Richards, born 12 February 1869 in Manhattan, son of Henry Richards and Theresa Theison. WHAT?!? I got to see an image of the original document last week and the only new information it gave me was the address “3rd Ave,” the parents’ birth places of “Prussia” and the father’s occupation is “Cook.” In the vast majority of documents that give Philip Henry Wenz’s occupation, it’s usually baker or confectioner, so cook fits, as well as his presumed place of origin typically recorded as being Prussia.
So - is my great-grandfather Edward G.A. Wenz or Gustav Richards? Is Philip Henry Wenz Henry Richards? I thought it was Theresa’s father that changed his name to Richards? I’ve never seen a document of Philip’s with any other surname than Wenz. And what are the odds that two babies would be born on the exact same date in NYC with the same mother’s name? And why would Wenz be Richards? I’m flummoxed. The supporting documents follow.
As a post-script,when the 1920 census first came out, I learned that Theresa’s birthplace was recorded as Aix-la-Chappelle, which is today’s German city of Aachen. But in the field for Philip’s birthplace? Three little letters, marked through, which when scanned at a high dpi and blown up to a full-sized sheet of paper read: unk.
Wait til I meet him on the other side…
