A New Conundrum!

 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…

Aunt Tille and the Wenz Family

Every family has at least one brickwall, and as many methods of climbing over them. One of my strategies was to write a family history of one of our lines that ended at that ancestor’s immigration into the United States.

What an undertaking it became! But it forced me to re-examine thirty years of evidence and helped me to find some clues I’d overlooked.

Twenty-six pages later, my data had congealed into a reasonably decent narrative that I felt I could share with family members, known and unknown. Now, how to distribute it? Since I’m currently out of work, it had to be very budget-friendly. Well, I had plenty of stamps and envelopes and access to online people searches – so I went looking for distant cousins. I started with just one line – the Maitlands. I had been in contact with one of the cousins years ago, and was dismayed to learn that he had since passed away. But his obituary listed the names and towns of his siblings and children, so I wrote six letters. Well, one of them hit paydirt! I heard from the granddaughter of Aunt Tillie, my great-grandfather’s older sister. Tillie had lived with them for a time after her husband passed away.

The cousin shared a few stories with me that contained some important clues, and I’ll share a few of them here:

“During the second WW, my Mom worked several hours a day in a cemetery greenhouse.  My Mom had the greenest thumb you could find.  So....Grandma Maitland took care of us kids, or vice versa many times.  She was funny, because she wanted the neighbors to think that she was earning her keep - she would stand in one place on the sidewalk with a broom in her hand and sweep periodically. That was long before senior residences.  Altho, when she lived with Uncle Bill in Delaware, she told me that to keep busy there, she would take the bus to the Nursing Home to visit the "girls".  She was 10 years older that most of them were, but they were her friends.  I remember visiting at her home when Grandpa was still living.  They had an old pump organ, which my kid brother and I loved.  We could not reach the peddles and the keys at the same time, so we took turns.  He would play while I pumped the peddle and then we would change places.  Didn't bother Grandma doing it that way. Grandma Maitland (Wenz) lived with us about 6 months of the year after Grandpa died.  She had two sons, William and Robert Laurie Maitland, Jr. (my dad).  They took turns caring for her until she died.  She told me, since I was the youngest and would listen, stories about growing up in her family.  She said that they never spoke anything but German until they went to school.  She taught me one little verse in German that they always insisted she learn and it still is with me a lot, and she told me about her brother and his understanding of American idioms.  He was chopping wood and seemed to struggle with it.  They told him he needed more "elbow grease".  The next thing they saw was her brother in the yard greasing his elbows.  I always assumed it was Uncle Ed, who may be your grandfather figure.  I remember him well, because he came once in a while to visit with Matilda.  He was a beautiful person - very large- and very gracious, especially with us a little kids.  He had the biggest hands I ever remember, but he was a farmer in the Boston area and I assumed that was his largest."

What a great peek inside my family history – the real people, not just the names and dates on a page! So, reach out to distant cousins – you’ll never know what you’ll find!

And the book? Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B47bUrlyCkJhRndzeGx3NlQ4eFk