The mysterious Aunt Betts (Elizabeth Wolf Fitzpatrick)

Elizabeth Wolf (Aunt Betts) is a bit of a legend among Pauline Rivers' daughters. Mom told quite few stories about her aunt, and we loved them. Beautiful, willful, a feminist before feminism was a term, a self-made millionaire. Though we didn't really know her well -- other than Joyce who lived in California for a time and visited with Betts -- we knew the stories and thought we knew the woman.

What you're about to read is deviation from my usual approach. Generally I take the data I have found about someone, embed it in the culture of the area and the times and build a speculative narrative.  But in Betts's case, I have real conflicts between the myth Betts crafted and the facts. That's a disappointment because I think she probably had a remarkable life; just not the one we were told she had. And it's too late for me to really put it all together. What I have is a good deal of evidence that what she supposedly did wasn't what she actually did. But I don't know why she lied, and some key pieces that would reveal the woman she was are missing, probably never to be found.

The Aunt Betts myth is this. As a young woman, she became furious with her father for leaving his vast holdings to his two living sons, leaving nothing to his daughters on the premise they could marry money. In a huff, Betts left her family and went off in search of her fortune. She found it in California, where she either worked for a stockbroker who taught her how to invest, married a stockbroker who taught her how to invest, or became a stockbroker on the Pacific Exchange. Because of her father, she made certain in her will that only women would inherit her estate. We heard that she never returned to her hometown, Mt. Carmel, Illinois. Of her husband, Dennis Fitzpatrick, we knew almost nothing. End of story. However, keep in mind that this story of a strong, independent woman had quite an impact on those young women who heard it. I, for one, was rather in awe of this tough bird. When I finally met her in 1974, she was elderly, lucid, charming, sophisticated, and generous.

The trouble with the myth is that, other than the business of the will, as far as I can determine, none of it fits the facts. I've spent a lot of time off and on tracking down (or actually NOT tracking down) Betts and I'm feeling a bit bereft. An icon has cracked and just might be turning to dust.


I'm going to preface this with an important caveat. While Mt. Carmel had a variety of newspapers that were thriving in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there don't appear to be many editions in archives, real or digital. So while I can trace the Bushu activities in Mattoon papers (their comings and goings are breathlessly reported and sometimes various Wolfs were included, including Betts for a brief period in 1914-1915), I've yet to find more than a scattering of Mt. Carmel papers, and the Wolfs are not in them. No birth, wedding, or death announcements, no soirees, no travel news, no business brags, no sales, no lawsuits, no scandals. I have a few obituaries, and that's it. It's a massive shame, not just because we've lost all the fascinating social history of our family, but because the vibrancy of journalism of that period was and is worth preserving, and it wasn't.

Back to our story.

Elizabeth was born Jan 20, 1883 to Francis J. Wolf and Eva Hertling Wolf in Mt. Carmel, IL. She was the fourth child and fourth daughter, and my guess is that her dad wasn't exactly thrilled to have yet another girl.  Eva had been producing girl children on a regular basis, starting with Mary in 1876, Til in 1878, and Ida in 1880. Men of that era, especially men who were making something of themselves, as Frank was, wanted sons. In 1885, Eva would finally present Frank with son Henry, and I'm willing to bet that Henry became the center of his father's world. The 1883 baby girl was christened simply Elizabeth — no middle name, an anomaly for the time — on 21 February, 1883 at St. Mary's Catholic Church. Her godparents were Johannes and Elizabeth Schmitt.

An early census tells us that Betts completed the sixth grade (a later one changes that to third year of high school). She probably attended St. Mary's Catholic elementary school (St. Mary's has no records for that period); I don't know where she would have gone to high school, if in fact she did. She appears with her family in the 1900 census (as Lizzie, age 17) and In 1908, at 25, she was one of the witnesses to Ida and Herbert's wedding. But in 1910, when she would have been 27, I can’t find her ANYWHERE. I’ve done the standard searches in the census, and I’ve gone through all the pages of the three Mt. Carmel districts’ censuses, and she isn’t in any of them. Frank G., Pauline, and Ray are with Frank and Eva but there's no mention of Elizabeth. My best guess is that she’s staying with one of her sisters, possibly Ida, who has a new baby, or Mary, who dies at the end of the year of TB, but she doesn't appear with them in the census. Maybe she's bouncing between her sisters and her parents and so is simply missed in the census. In 1914, when she visits her sister Pauline in Mattoon, the newspaper reports her as "of Mt. Carmel." The newspapers were pretty careful to specify where someone made her home, so in the absence of evidence, I'm applying Occam's razor and going with the easiest answer: She's in Mt. Carmel.

(In the interest of making sure what I know doesn't get lost, I shall wander off topic for a second. Francis Joseph Wolf was quite possibly an ambitious lad, one who broke with his Indiana family soon after marriage. The family farmed, and that doesn't seem to have appealed to him. More tellingly though, in my mind, is that his break may not have been cordial.  Only Rosa carries a name that echoes his family. Frank's father was Martin, his grandfather Peter; those names do not appear in his children. I don't know if that means he simply rejected the old world naming conventions, if it was Eva's influence, or if there were more than miles between him and his family.  I mention this because an easy place for an unmarried woman to go would be to her father or mother's family. And I really doubt that's where Elizabeth was in 1910, not only because I think Betts was too ambitious to submit to an agrarian lifestyle, but because I don't think Frank's relations with his family were that cordial. But I'm absolutely speculating here.)

And I did look briefly into the possibility she was with her Hertling relations. That is, of course, possible, but I haven't seen any evidence that the Wolf family was tight with Eva's relatives. Her brother Philip moved to Mt. Carmel in 1900 and I think he and his wife MIGHT have been the unidentified couple in a late photo of Frank and Eva. I will investigate that possibility if I ever run out of other stuff to look up. Right now, I've decided Elizabeth's whereabouts in 1910 aren't that central.)

In 1911 or so, Betts moved to Colorado Springs with her sister Ida Wolf Bushu, who relocated there, sometime between June and Nov of 1911, in hopes of defeating tuberculosis. I know Betts was there; she's listed in the 1912 city directory. But I don't know for how long. She and Ida are not listed in the 1913 directory. Ida died of TB in March of 1915, in Mt. Carmel, and Ida's obituary names Elizabeth as one of her sisters living in Mt. Carmel. I’m going to guess that Betts stayed with Ida during her illness after they returned to Mt. Carmel, but I have no evidence of that (you will get tired of me saying that). It would appear that Betts and Ida were close; Ida's death must have hit Betts very hard.

On August 28, 1914, Elizabeth Wolf accompanied her sister Pauline Bushu back to Mattoon. The newspaper doesn't indicate how long she stayed. And two months after Ida's death, from May 14 to at least June 25, Elizabeth spends time in Mattoon with Pauline. I searched the Mattoon newspapers for more mentions of Elizabeth and came up blank.

Betts next appears, perhaps, in the 1920 census in Salt Lake City, working as a shopgirl. I have a photo of her taken in some western location, so it's certainly plausible to think this is she. This Elizabeth Wolf is the only one in the entire US 1920 census who is a reasonable match. The census data are accurate (her birthplace and her parents’ birthplaces) except for her age; the census says this 37 year old woman was 29. We know that census data are often inaccurate so perhaps this is Betts. In 1920, her parents are living in San Diego, for what earthly reason I haven't a clue. Just in case Frank and Eva had gone to San Diego to be near Betts — for whatever reason — I checked the San Diego City Directories from 1919-1921 and found her none of them.

Around 1926, when she was 43, but before April 1927, Betts married Dennis Fitzpatrick, an car service agent for the railroad in San Francisco. And before you ask, I don't know where they met, where she was living when they met, or where and when they married. I do know Dennis was born in Cincinnati August 12, 1868, married Maggie Crowley at 19, and with her produced at least three children (Hattie, Kathleen, and Edward John). I presume he was a widower when he met Betts. Mother told me once that she didn't like Dennis; he'd once made a pass at her. I have no idea how she might have known him; in 1926, Mom was 17. Perhaps she met him at Frank J's funeral in 1927; the obituary makes no mention of Dennis being present (or for that matter, mother, her brother, and her father) but it's reasonable to expect him (and the others) to have been there to pay their last respects. Or perhaps mother met him in Cincinnati. Another puzzle piece that is just floating around the periphery of Betts' life.

In 1927, Frank J. Wolf died, and Betts is named in his obituary as attending the funeral. Frank had turned over his businesses to his two sons prior to his death, so his daughters did not share in that wealth. However, Frank did leave property to his surviving daughters (and his grandchildren), and Elizabeth got a building in Mt. Carmel.

Frank Wolf was a self-made man; he started a soft drink company in 1886 (Wolf Soda) in Mt. Carmel, Illinois that ultimately became a bottler for Coca-Cola (1905-1975). He invested his profits in land and oil leases, and when he died, he left behind a lot of property and successful businesses. His pride in his success is evident in the photos we have the era, formal portraits of his daughters (he would have two more girls after Elizabeth, Rosa and Pauline, and two more sons) posing in fancy settings and dressed in gorgeous gowns and hats. In fact, we have a wonderful photo of prosperous-looking Frank, decorous Eva, and six children, probably taken in 1888 or so. As the family grew, and Frank prospered, they moved into grander houses; Frank must have felt he was living the American dream. Apparently he invested in Mt. Carmel property and that's what he left to his remaining daughters, but the bulk of his wealth went to the boys, and Betts, according to the family myth, was not pleased.

Presumably after her father's funeral, Betts returned to California. She and Dennis are in the 1930 census; he's an invalid. Dennis died Oct. 30, 1930 at 62. He's buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma, California. They'd been married no more than four years.

At some point after Dennis' death, per Bill Wolf (son of Frank G. Wolf, Betts' brother), Betts returned to Mt. Carmel to care for her mother. Bill said she came home frequently, and that Frank G. paid for those trips. In 1937, Eva died and shortly thereafter, Betts took two ocean voyages: one to Vera Cruz and one to Ireland. Dennis' parents were from Ireland; perhaps she was seeking his roots or visiting his family? I don’t know; I never heard of these trips. Bill thought she stuck around Mt. Carmel for a while after Eva's death, but he isn't sure of the details. Ultimately, she returned to California. In the 1930 census, she's unemployed, and in 1940, she's a clerical worker in a real estate office

Betts appears to have worked in shops and real estate offices and lived in apartments in San Francisco through the 40s, 50s and early 60s. After that she moved into a retirement center run by nuns in San Rafael, California. In the late 1970s Pauline Rivers and Marietta Suer visited Aunt Betts in San Rafael. By this time, Pauline was mildly impaired with Alzheimer’s, and Marietta, who had had a tough life and was a strange woman herself, was helping Pauline with her ADLs. Something happened on this trip, but no one now alive knows what. Whatever it was, it drove Betts to modify her will and disinherit everyone except the convent caring for her and Marietta.  She died in 1982, age 99. Her death set off a small war among her female descendants. In her original will, Betts had left half of her estate to the convent where she lived and the other half to her living female relatives. But shortly before her death, she wrote five codicils in which she changed her heirs to just the convent and Marietta Bushu Suer. Many of the women who were disinherited sued, and after all was said and done, the convent got its half undiminished, the lawyers took half of the remaining estate and a bundle of heirs divided the rest.

So who the hell was this woman? Family lore suggests she put Mt. Carmel in her rearview mirror and never looked back; facts say she came home to be the dutiful sister and daughter, and in fact, returned multiple times at her relatives' expense. She married late to an invalid 15 years older. If Betts worked for, was married to, or became a stockbroker, (Tom Gutman, Joyce Rivers' ex-husband, claims she was the first woman stockbroker on the Pacific Exchange), there are no data to back that up. But she left a substantial estate. Was it Dennis's? I have doubts. If Dennis Fitzpatrick had money, we have to assume his children would have been his heirs. And given the apartment he and Betts were in in 1930, I don't think he was wealthy. Where did the money come from?

And more importantly,  much more importantly, who was Elizabeth Wolf? Clearly she had a very complicated relationship with her family; Bill Wolf gave me a wonderful photo of her with Bill and his wife Wanda, his mom and dad, and a hunting guide, all of them displaying dead geese, taken maybe in the 60s.  He says she hung around Mt. Carmel for a while after Eva died. I think I can understand that. She wandered about the country working wage jobs, married an invalid much older than she who died within a few years, plunged from being his nurse to caring for her mom, and then burying her. No wonder she took off for Mexico and Ireland.

And all we have of her are a few photos, a big box of documents pertaining to the will and its challenge, and the stories in my head. No one knows where the rainbow of her life is; her photos, journals, memorabilia, old clothes, books, address books, calendars, bills, furniture, collectibles. I think the heirs who fought so hard for her money fought only for her money; no one I've asked knows where her "life" went.

I don't have any answers. I want to believe she fell in love with Dennis, and they had three fabulous years together. But I also wonder at times if she were gay and married Dennis as her beard. Or she was tired of knocking around menial jobs and wanted someone to take care of her.  Or perhaps she had a wealthy lover -- male or female -- that she couldn't acknowledge. Maybe she embezzled, robbed a bank, found a sackful of 100s on the bus, or ran a brothel. But the puzzle arises not from the tale of the money but from the rift between myth and reality.

The point to genealogy is to answer questions, fill in blanks, get a sense of who you are, where you came from, what shaped you. I'm finding it a bit unsettling to discover that someone who was held up to me as a model is so elusive, so complicated, and ... so human. And then to discover that those who would seem to be nothing special (Yes, I'm looking at you, Mame Wolf Walters Miller) turn out to dazzle. Genealogy: the science of confusing the dead, irritating the living, and upending everything you believe.

Jaak Panksepp and genealogy

You know the feeling: You finally, FINALLY, nail down that elusive 17th century ancestor. You've got her cold: name, parents, dates, place, and your data match marriage documents, baptismal records, censuses, cemetery photos. Yes! But wait, you have to RECORD all this, cite your sources, make sure your translation is correct, make sure it's all recorded carefully and fully for the next person. And all the while you're chomping at the bit to grab that next hint -- the godparents' names, the witnesses -- and chase the next, earlier ancestor. Waaah! I don't wanna!!! Waaah!

Sound familiar? So why do we struggle to do our due diligence? Because the thrill is in the hunt, not the kill, that's why.

Welcome to the science of Jaak Panksepp. Before I go on, I shall warn you I am going to butcher Jaak in this summary. Google him, read his research; he's a serious neuroscientist. But first let me tell you how he relates to what follows,

In a nutshell, Panksepp says that humans (and the animals and lizards that came before) are driven to hunt because they are rewarded, via the release of happy-making endorphins, for the HUNT. It's not the kill that satisfies; it's the stalking, the creeping, the sudden pounce, the aha (well, he doesn't say that; he just talks about the reward of seeking). He argues that's the impetus behind my dog who will kill a squirrel and leave it on the deck (because she just ate and isn't hungry, but Oh it's so much fun to chase and catch). I argue that it's the impetus behind shopping. If you are someone who loves to shop but often finds himself staring at something just purchased and then sticking it in a drawer, you know what I mean. The hunt was fabulous; the get? not so much.

So, genealogy. I'm not a shopper of stuff, but I LOVE shopping for ancestors. And, like my squirrel-displaying dog, I like to show off my catches. We all do. We find new and wonderful ways to display the long reach of our ancestry, back 8, 10, 15 generations. And then we show it to our siblings, tape it to walls at reunions, and wait for others to ooh and ahh. And they don't.

Why? Well, perhaps because they didn't experience the high of the seek and what they are looking at is terrifically boring.  Imagine for a moment your second cousin once removed who loves to fish. And he brings to the reunion not just a photo of his August 17, 2013 catch of an 8-pound bass in Lake Whosybutt but a terrific, not-to-be-believed graphic of his catches from 1988, with species, dates, sizes, locations, and bait. That's us, genie friends. Our 20' x 6' banners that stretch to the 15th century with names, dates, places. We tack them up and wonder why they fetch no more than a glance: well, think fish.

So what do those of us who've gone to unbelievable lengths to track down our 16th century relatives do?  Here's one idea. We know a lot, right? And then there's the Internet, Wikipedia, Google Earth. So pick three or four really early ancestors and make a brief graphic, with pictures of places and information about that social world in which they lived. Put them on a poster. Or a two-page handout. You can pick the earliest ones, the ones you have the most information about, the one that is maybe famous or infamous, or the one who breaks your heart.

The stories I like are about the earliest Bourgeois, Jean, who's born in Montfaucon, Switzerland in 1694 and gets married in Mertzen Alsace France just 15 km away but over the Jura Mountains, which are serious mountains.  I have photos of Montfaucon, its church, and a lovely image of his baptismal record. Or about the Bourgeois relative who fought with Napolean and was awarded the Medale Ste Helene. Or maybe the young 18th century woman who bore a child out of wedlock, an infant girl who died the next day, followed seven years later by her mom, still unmarried, still living with her uncle. Or the brothers who were French one day and conscripted by Hitler the next, only to die on the Russian front.

When I recently visited a sister with both stories and a lovely 12 generation chart, it was the stories that got her attention. Oddly, our relatives just assume we've done it right; they don't really necessarily want to see the tidy progression through the centuries. But if you can briefly introduce them to the truly bad German Chancellor who just happens to be a relative, or to the tragedy of the orphaned baby who marries at 17, has eleven children, and dies at 44, you will hold their attention.

Is Anne Marie Moritz of Friesen Meinrad's wife? Maybe

On Sept 9, 2016, I got an email from a man I've corresponded with via my blog, Bryan Bushue. He is seeking Mary Bushue, the first wife of Meinrad Bushue (Bourgeois) and mother of Jonas Bushue, Bryan's ancestor. He knew from my blog that entries from The Barqilla de la Santa Maria suggest her name was something like Mourite or Moretz, but that I have nothing more: no immigration record, no marriage record, no record of Jonas' birth.  The email was a bombshell; he'd found an Anne Marie Moritz born in Friesen in 1811 to Joseph Moritz and Reine Phillippe. He thought it was a long shot that she was his ancestor, but I disagree. I think he may have found his great-great-great grandmother.  

I can never resist an excuse to rummage in the French archives, so that's what I did, late into the night and the following morning.  I logged into my favorite sites and uncovered a lot of information.  Unfortunately, I found nothing that confirms that Anne Marie is Meinrad's first wife, but I think we have enough evidence that it's a strong possibility.

According to her headstone, Mary Ann, consort of Meinrad Burshow, died 21 August 1845. She was 34 years, 4 months, and 10 days old, which places her birth on11 April 1811, according to a website that does that sort of backward calculation. 

The woman Bryan identified, Anne Marie Moritz, was born 1 April 1811 to Joseph Moritz, 49, mayor of Friesen, and Reine (or Regine) Phillippe, 24. Reine was Joseph's second wife. They married 17 July 1808 after the death of Joseph's first wife, Anne Marie Stein, who died in mid-1807. In addition to Anne Marie, they had a son, Jean, born 1 Jan 1809, (which suggests that Joseph's father's name was Jean), and on 28 June, 1813, they had a second daughter, Anne. On 1 March, 1814, Joseph died, leaving his young wife with three children under 6. Reine (Regina in record) remarried, to Jean Hellbruner, on 19 March 1816. 

There are quite a few Moritz's in Friesen and sorting them out, as always, was a chore. But I read all the original indexes (the civil officials in Friesen almost always created a  handwritten index to their records, created at the end of each year, which makes life lots easier for the researcher) for the births, marriages, and deaths in Friesen (marriages to 1847, deaths to 1840) and found no evidence that Anne Marie married or died in those time periods. So we have a woman born at the right time who then disappeared from the French record. Perhaps she reappeared on the other side of the Atlantic? 

So is she Jonas Bushue's mom?  I have no solid evidence that she is, but some good reasons to believe she could be.

1. Friesen is 5 km. from Mertzen, the Bourgeois home. The Bourgeois men and women often married men and women from surrounding communities, so it's easy to see the families being acquainted.
2. This is especially true since both Joseph Moritz and several of the Bourgeois men were civic officials. So it isn't just that they would have known one another; the families would have been peers.
3. In addition, various witnesses in the Moritz marriage and birth documents include the Flurys, a family that has strong relationships within the Bourgeois family. And various Moritzs marry into families that appear in the Bourgeois records. I didn't check all the names but I think that would be valuable. 
4. Then there's what's missing: a marriage. As the daughter of a prominent man, Anne Marie would have been a hot prospect, and I can't find a marriage record. Just to be sure, I checked for a marriage in Largitzen as well, a town often paired with Friesen. Nothing. If she married, it wasn't in the area around her home, and that would be very unusual.
5. And while nobody should put too much weight on dates, there's the eerie confluence of the information on Mary Ann Burshow's headstone that says she was 34 years, 4 months, and 10 days old when she died 21 Aug 1845. April 11, 1811 is damn close to 1 Apr 1811. 
6. I should note that the transposition of her name when anglicized, from Anne Marie to Mary Ann, bothers me not a whit. My assumption is that she was known as Marie (after all she has a younger sister Anne). 

If Mary Ann IS Anne Marie, when and how did she get here? In 1827 she was 16, unlikely to travel alone, so who was she with? I checked the 1830 census in Perry County for Hellbruner (and variations), the name of Anne Marie’s stepfather; nothing even close. Jonas was born in Sept of 1829 so, assuming no gun-jumping, Meinrad and Mary Ann married around the end of 1828, meaning Mary Ann was here by then. Of course, we don't know when Meinrad arrived so it's still possible that they traveled together. The CRHF has no record of an Anne Marie Moritz emigration. 

The Bourgeois family is listed, with lots of creative names and ages, on a compilation of passenger lists from ships entering Baltimore between April 1, 1827 and Sept 30, 1827. I read the entire list; no Moritz (or anything close) to be found. The Bourgeois register of names lists, in addition to the parents, three young males and two females. The assumption is that Meinrad is the missing male but that's not certain; it could be Michael. One of the females could be Anne Marie Moritz, but then one of the family's young daughters is missing, not unheard of but . . . the immigration record is too messy to help. (See “The Bourgeois Immigration Tangle” for more than you could possibly want to know.)

Passenger records weren't mandatory in 1827 so it's possible that IF Anne Marie emigrated to the US, we won't find a record. And finding that an Anne Marie Moritz emigrated from France to the US in 1827 is not proof she is Meinrad's wife (though it would certainly increase the probability). But I think it would be worthwhile to obtain the original emigration record for Meinrad and family listed at CRHF; perhaps there are details about just who was traveling.

I'd also write Friesen for information. A prominent genealogist, whose name I don't recall, suggests writing to these small communities and asking for the name of the person who is the "town's memory." Every town has such a person, someone who listened to the old stories and remembers them. So I'd write Friesen, ask if they have official information about emigrations, and ask for the name of the story keeper. 

And I would also spread a wider net in the search for Meinrad and Mary Ann's marriage. Somerset and its environs were served by itinerant priests in the 1820s and their records can end up in odd places: I found Johannes Muller and Anna Hierholzer's marriage record in Chilicothe, Ohio. Of course, those old records don't always provide more than the names of those who are marrying, but one can hope.

One final note: Gerard Marck has his ancestry posted at geneanet.org. I've seen his trees before (we share ancestors), and he's pretty reliable. He has Joseph Moritz's ancestry back three generations, to the mid 1600s. Interestingly, he has both of Joseph's marriages but he has only one of his children by Reine Phillip: Jean.

In the process of sorting out names, I looked at a lot of records. Here are a few of the Moritz records checked. These records helped me eliminate possible Anne Maries and Josephs.

1. Jean Moritz, Joseph's older brother, married Marguerite Kohler (another Mertzen name associated with the Bourgeois). They had Marie Margarite in 1806 and Anne Marie 18 July 1813. 
2. Anne Marie Moritz, 33, died 4 May 1821,
3. Anne Moritz, 68, died in 1840
4. Anne Marie Moritz, 27, married Jean Frettig 20 Apr 1841
5. Anne Marie Moritz, 22, m. Jean Colombe 13 Jan 1841.
6. Anne Marie Moritz m. Pierre Pflager 21 Apr 1847. Page is missing in Haut Rhin records. But in 1847, Anne Marie would have been 36, pretty old for a first marriage (though not impossible). I checked the surrounding pages; it wasn’t out of order, the page was missed during scanning.
7. Joseph Moritz, 24, died 5 Feb 1819.
8. Joseph Moritz, 3, died 11 Jan, 1820. 

The mystery of Meinrad Bushue's wife Mary

Who was Myrod Bushue's first wife?

It would appear from some of the comments on this blog that there are a few folks out there who would like more information about Mary Ann Bushue, first wife of Myrod (Meinrad in French records) Bourgeois 1803. When Lester Bushue (Myrod and Mary are his direct ancestors) did his research on the family, he was unable to learn anything more about Mary, so recently he asked me to see what I could learn. While people may want to do their own searches, for those who may not want to go over old ground, here is a summary of what I did and learned.

My searches

I searched the records indexed in The Barquilla  for St. Joseph and Holy Trinity churches and found no record of a marriage between Myrod and Mary nor the baptism of their only son Jonas, born ~1829.

However, Mary's birth name is in 2 baptisms for which she is a sponsor:

     24 Mar 1834 Mary Anna of Wendelin Tol (?) and Mary Anna Stuter; sponsors, Mynrad Boujour and Mary Mourite.

     5 Jan 1840 Conditionally John Henry, son of M. Burcheau and Mary A. Miller. Spons Minerad Burcheau and Mary Burcheau (nee Moretz).

So we have a name. The variety of spellings I've seen that resemble Moretz/Mourite suggests to me that Mary Ann was either an immigrant herself or that her parents were. I also surmise she was German-speaking, simply because German-speaking immigrant marrying German-speaking immigrant is far more likely than anything else. But obviously, the unlikely is always possible. I just didn't pursue that line of inquiry; instead I limited myself to finding a recent immigrant.

Tim Fisher's Perry County site does not have a marriage for Myrod and Mary Ann, nor Jonas' birth. It does list two Morrises, George and Jessee, but no Moritz, Moretz, etc. Mary Ann could be a sister or daughter of one of them, but I doubt it. I don't see too many priests or officials mispelling Morris as Moretz; the reverse is more llikely.

Because the Bourgeois family's immigration record is confusing (see my Bourgeois immigration post for more details), I considered that Myrod may have married Mary in France. So I checked the Mertzen and Strueth marriages from 1824-1827. (It would be highly unlikely that Myrod would have married any younger than 18 and the family was gone by mid 1827.) No marriage.

I also considered that Mary Ann may have been from one of the little communities surrounding Mertzen and Strueth and that she emigrated with her own family. In this scenario, she could have known Myrod before he left or met him in Somerset. This search was more complex.

In the hours and hours I've spent ruining my eyesight reading the French records of Mertzen and Strueth, I've never seen a name similar to Moretz. So I tackled the question from two other angles. First, I checked for the name, using lots of wildcard characters, at the CRHF, a private, non-profit French (mainly Haut Rhin) record depository. Nothing.

Then I checked at geneanet.net, a site that hosts lots of French family trees. I limited the search to the area 20 km around Strueth. Again, using lots of spellings and wildcards, nothing came up.

I have not done an exhaustive search of immigration records. Too many possible arrival dates, name spellings, ports.

My final effort was to write a genealogist, Sue Saylor, who works at the Perry County chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society. Her report follows.

From Sue Saylor, reseacher, Perry County genie society
July 12, 2016

Well, I tried.......... but I'm afraid I couldn't find any definite answers to what Mary's maiden name might have been.  I checked as many sources that I have available to me for Moreitz, Morris, & Mautz, etc.
Some of the things I checked are:
Ohio Marriages Jan. 1, 1821 - 31 Dec. 1830
Fairfield Co. early marriages
Index to Wills and Estates of Fairfield Co. 1803-1900 (There was an Alvah S. Bushee, but no Morris / Mautz, Moreitz that matched)
Perry County Wills and other court cases
Family Histories and our genealogy collection in general

In 2003 our Chapter published the Pioneers of Perry County by 1830 with the 1820 census. I did not find any biographies pertaining to your families or the Morris, etc. Nor did the census for this county list any Morris. (Of course this was one person's interpretation of our census for 1820.)
Some other surnames that appear in her abstraction of the Reading Twp. area are:
Moirs, John
Montz, Jacob and John
Muntz, Jacob
Means, George, Jacob and Patrick
Moultz, Leonard
Meek, Frederick, George and John

I found two early Wills in our Probate. One for Huldah Morris in 1852 and Conrad Mautz in 1847. I found Huldah's Will on familysearch, but it didn't mention family other than her husband, Jesse? If you want to view the Conrad Mautz Will, go to familysearch--Ohio --Probate Records - Wills for the time appropriate time. Unfortunately, these Wills are not indexed, and the page numbering isn't ideal, but it's doable. Just look for his name in the index.
The first 3500 (actual) Probate cases here have been moved to the archives, and it almost takes an act of Congress to get someone to make copies or even get access. :-(

Sorry, I couldn't help this time. If anything else comes to mind, I'd be happy to check it out if possible.
Thanks
Sue

My own musings at this point

I don't think her name was Morris. The two spellings we have of her name suggest it was one that made scribes guess about the spelling (maybe because a German accent was involved). Names from The Barq that seem reasonable include Moretz, Moritz, Mautz, Mourite, and Moutz.

Saylor didn't look at land records, but I don't see how those would help unless there's a land sale in which Mary gives up her dower rights.

Where to go from here
If I were asked, I'd suggest that her descendants keep searching Ancestry and FamilySearch; as more records get indexed and added online, her marriage or the birth of her son may appear. Those records could have been recorded far from Somerset; I found Johannes Muller-Anna Hierholzer's marriage in Chillicothe, Ohio. They weren't married there; it's just where the itinerant priest's records ended up.

The US didn't require passenger records until after 1829, and given we don't know precisely what the name was nor her origin, that doesn't seem promising to me. But it wouldn't hurt to run some searches at eastern ports (Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia) between the years 1820 and 1829 on variations of her name.

And someone with some time on her hands could log onto newspapers.com (a paid site, but they offer one week trials for free) and see if she has an obituary in 1846. That's a long shot.

Finally, I'd keep returning to The Barquilla de Santa Maria (coldios.org). The current editor, Don Schlegel covers more than records in each newsletter, publishing journals, brief histories, news tidbits. Who knows what might show up?

I hope someone keeps looking. We may not know much about Mary, but we do know this: She married young, bore one son when she was 18, and 16 years after his birth she died, Aug 21, 1845, at age 34. Five months after her death, Myrod married again (Feb 3, 1846) and in July of 1846, Myrod's second wife, Rachel Musselman (who already had a daughter, Jane, father unnamed, born in 1842) gave birth to Mary Ann. It's easy to imagine that Jane's unnamed father was Myrod Bushue and probable that Rachel was pregnant with Mary Ann when she married. I have no clue what was in the hearts and minds of any of the involved parties, but it could well be that Mary Ann's life was not a happy one.

Bourgeois Immigration Tangle

When I first started looking for the Bushu immigrant ancestors, I went to the local library and searched all the volumes (20+) of PILI, Tepper's Passenger and Immigrant Lists Index. I found exactly one family that bore any resemblance to the family I knew had settled in Somerset Ohio in late 1827. There were, and are, multitudinous problems with the record.

First, the name is spelled Boursioe. That doesn't seem improbable now, given our knowledge of the correct name, but at the time I was looking, none of the 40+ spelling variations in the various US records included anything like this. Lester was adamant it wasn't our family. He was the expert and while I argued, I had to admit he knew lots more than I did. Still, the names and ages of the family members had enough similarity to ours that I didn't let go. And ultimately we determined that, imperfect as the record was, it was our family.

But Oh! those imperfections! They leave too many questions unanswered.

• Tepper's PILI is an index to passenger lists. In this case, however, the list's origin is a transcription of a passenger list, not from the original, which appears to be gone. 
• This list of passengers, available now on FamilySearch, was built from cards, one per passenger. Those cards are also on FamilySearch. But neither the list nor the cards provide information about departure port, or ship name. The cards are dated Sep 1, 1827, but I don't know if that's the arrival date or the date the card was completed. The list itself covers July 1 to Sept 30, 1827 and the Bourgeois family is on the 10th page of about 30 pages. If the list was compiled in order of arrival, the family arrived in late July, early August.
• The names and ages of the family members are garbled.

          Michael, 44, farmer and Anna M., 46 are fine.
          But Michael, 20, is wrong. Michael was 24 in 1827.
          Mary, 18, is also wrong. She was born in 1813, baptized Anne, and was 14 in 1827.
          Noma, 13 is probably Morand who in 1827 was 17.
          Anna M. 10, was born Marie Anne in 1819 so was 8 in 1827.
           Joseph, 9, was actually 12.

• These errors create some problems for us because one child is missing and it isn't clear who. The logical absent one is Meinrod (Myrod) who doesn't appear to be named here and who actually applied to emigrate with his family in France. That application doesn't give a departure date. 
• We assume that one of the sons left early and found land to buy; hence the extremely rapid trip from Baltimore to Somerset. (Michael Bourgeois bought land in Somerset Oct. 31, 1827.)
• In general, the oldest son would be the one to leave, in this case, Michael. Later family records suggest that Michael was challenged in some way, and if he suffered from something from childhood, departing on his own for the US would have been a bad idea. But we don't know what was wrong or when it started; we only know that he never married and needed some looking after. Given the inaccuracies of names and ages, perhaps Michael of the list was really Meinrad who was 21. [There is a Bourgeois male, 18,  who arrives in New Orleans on The Cecilia in 1822. Is this Michael, who then makes his way north, finds Somerset congenial, and sends for the family?] 
• I thought perhaps there was some advantage to mis-reporting ages, but there is no pattern to the age discrepencies: Joseph, Michael, and Morand's ages are too low while the girls are too high. It is the reported age for Mary that led Lester and I to consider that she was Meinrad's wife (in which case we'd be missing a little girl as well as an adult son). This is, of course, a possibility, although I'm reluctant to accept that somehow a little girl got missed. 
• There are 427 pages of images in this FamilySearch file. I would have to search all 427 to determine if one or two children from the family were listed elsewhere (or to determine if there were others from the Mertzen-Strueth area on board or to determine of Meinrad's wife -- future or otherwise -- was on the same ship).  I have searched from 273 to 317, covering April to September. I think it's unlikely anyone in the family came later, but earlier is a possibility. 

What I can say is that Meinrad Bourgeois applied to leave France with his family in 1827, destination "Sommerselle, near New York." I don't know why he applied rather than his father, but it does suggest he didn't leave before 1827. I can also say that seven of the eight (or nine, if you include a possible wife of Meinrad's) family members arrived in Baltimore, Maryland in the second half of 1827. Beyond that, it's all conjecture.

Mayfly

Mayfly


On January 15, 1787, in Fulleren, Haut Rhin, Alsace (near Mertzen), just before the French Revolution started, when bread cost a bazillion dollars, when everyone in France who wasn't clergy or Royal was suffering immeasurably, Joseph Hoff* and Anne Marie Koegler had a baby girl. It was eighteenth century France; having babies in the face of doom was what people did. Joseph and Anne Marie had married about 1782 and promptly proceeded to reproduce. Marie Eve was their second child and second daughter; as far as I can tell, they had no sons, which for a farming family in rural France was a shame.

Two years later France blew up, and ugly, ugly stuff happened. It's likely that the area around Fulleren didn't feel the full effects of the war, but the Reign of Terror was real; people gathered at markets to shop and gossip, and they would not have been immune to the stories of blood, greed, tragedy. They would have heard about the community of Hirsingue, where protesters cut down the Tree of Liberty and, in punishment, EVERY SINGLE PRIEST AND RABBI in the community was executed, the temple and church looted and destroyed. Sons would have been conscripted to serve in Napolean's disastrous effort to conquer the world, priests would have been watching over their shoulders, waiting to be betrayed, and everyone would have been hoarding food. During this frightening time, Marie Eve was growing up.

The family survived the war. But on May 26, 1805, Marie Eve, who was living with her uncle's family, had her own baby girl. Delivered by a midwife, Anne Marie Wallier,  Anne Marie Hoff arrived without benefit of a named, legal father. Four days later, she died. Since she was illegitimate, she was probably not given a Catholic funeral or burial.

Hers was not the only death in Fulleren that year; she was one of 25 deaths, in a town that generally lost 10-15 people a year. And tiny, doomed Anne Marie was one of nine small children to die that year. A scant nine years later, 3 days before her 27th birthday, still single and quite possibly marked for life, Marie Eve died.


You may be asking, why do I know this? Well, I was doing due diligence, trying to trace yet another woman who bore a child and vanished. I had decided I'd see if, by some chance, the woman was from the Bourgeois part of France. Examining the Fulleren records for Mary Moritz's name, I came upon Anne Marie Hoff in the 1805 index and got curious. The rest is what you see here.

Marie Eve has no descendants seeking her out, no one for whom her brief existence has any meaning. But she was a daughter, someone's lover, briefly, a mom, perhaps a pariah. So tonight I'm having a glass of wine in her honor. Yet another leaf on my family tree I hope to meet wherever we go after this.

* Joseph Hoff was the brother of my great-great-great grandfather, Jean Hoff 1755.

Dirty old man

You don't really want to think about Trump, or Brexit, or the stock market, do you? Instead, wrap your brain around this.

There's this guy, born about 1620, almost 400 years ago!!!, named Jean Hoff. Okay, currently we have 9 Jean Hoffs in our tree, if we count Joannis (and I do). But THIS Jean. He's something worth talking about.

With his first wife, Jacqueline Kempf, Jean sired Christophe Hoff who graciously contributed his genes to me and my sisters. Jacqueline #1 died in January of 1668, and Jean wasted no time finding a replacement. With his second wife, Jacqueline Soldermann, 27, whom he married in June of 1668, Jean doubled up on my genetic material via his son Jean Hoff (1673). And then, after Jacqueline #2 died in 1675, the man married AGAIN! This time it was his new wife, Agnes Raeber, whose genes were added to the pot pourri that is my genetic footprint, courtesy of her first husband Claude Gaetschene.

Before I chat more about this stud, let me emphasize that incest isn't an issue. There are 4 generations that intervene before Jean's descendants combine to produce Jean Adam Hoff, 1725, my great-great-great-great grandfather. It was the first thing I checked. Whew!

However, there are two things here that fascinate me, besides the implication that Jean was extremely desirable in some way, shape, or form. First, I keep returning to the notion that I am here and typing on my keyboard because every single one of my ancestors lived long enough to reproduce. That idea blows me away. And Jean clearly was on a mission to ensure the reproduction of his genes through time. Jean died when he was about 84, in 1704; I haven't counted all his children, but clearly the guy was a tough old randy bird, and I'm rather pleased someone this enduring is part of my heritage.

Second, nothing quite speaks to the intimacy of life in 17th century Alsace as the discovery that the same guy shows up in your family tree three times. Mortality rates were high, and connecting with desirable partners, for either sex, was a competitive industry. In small communities, men of means, as the Hoffs were, would choose women who could reproduce. And women who had attributes suggesting fecundity would be hot tickets. I realize there are folks out there who find it cool that they have links to Cleopatra. I find it really cool that there's this guy in my history who was pretty much a rock star, reproduction-wise. Sorry, I'm shallow that way.

And I know I said two things, but I have to get a little crazy here. Can you imagine the complexity of negotiating life in the 17th century? Think about it; it's a tiny town and a significant number of the kids roaming the streets are your step-sibs. And your father is step-dad to another batch of kids. Figuring out who you can marry without commiting incest would be a complex process. And who's doing what with whom has got to be a hot topic at the market. It had to better than reality TV. Really.