52 Ancestors: Beginnings

The beginning of a new year and such a fitting prompt.  BEGINNINGS

I often think about how and why this genealogy journey started more than 10 years ago.  My mother, who is not descended from the Gunzendorfers, made the statement that there were no more Gunzendorfers in the United States.  And when I began my blog just shy of 10 years ago, my first post talked more specifically about my beginnings.  You can read it HERE.  

The short story is that my mother may just have been right as I still haven't found any living Gunzendorfers in the United States.  My grandmother married and changed her name, thus having no Gunzendorfer descendants, and her brother married but never had children.  So check them off the list.  

There were four Gunzendorfer brothers, one of which was my grandmother's father, Abraham Gunzendorfer.  And of his three brothers (Gustave, Adolph and Jacob), only one, Jacob, had children.  Unfortunately, Jacob's only son never had children and the girls married, thus changing their last name.  So check them off the list.

I have found a group of Gunzendorfers in New York and I am almost certain that they are related to my clan.  The patriarch of that group was Adolph, father of Bernard (b. 1829) who had a son, Adolph, in 1867.  My Abraham's father was Ferdinand, (b. 1838) who also had a son named Adolph in 1866.  I suspect that NY Adolph and my Ferdinand were brothers and this year I hope to confirm that.

NY Adolph had a daughter named Lenore who was born in 1896.  My grandmother, Loraine, was also born in 1896.  And as she wrote letters to my grandfather in 1918 during their engagement, a paragraph stood out to me:

Quite a coincident [sic], sweetheart.  Dad has a cousin in N.Y. who has a daughter my age and whose name is similar to mine, Lenore.  They were at Del Monte nine years ago when I met her.  We later corresponded for some time but the last few years lost track of each other.  Yesterday we received a letter telling of her engagement.  Funny, isn’t it?  Now I’ll have to write to her to inform her of mine.

If Lenore's father, Adolph, and Loraine's father, Abraham, were cousins then their fathers were brothers, right?  Which makes NY Bernard (father of Adolph and Ludwig) and my Ferdinand (father of Gustave, Adolph, Abraham, and Jacob), brothers.  Not definitive proof but as close as I've come so far.

Coincidentally, there was a Ferdinand Gunzendorfer hanging out in California who was born in 1864 and died in Stockton in 1946.  However, his tombstone shows he was born in 1874 and died in 1956.  But either way, about the right time frame that he could have been, and probably was, a NY Gunzendorfer descendant.  Did NY Adolph name a son Ferdinand while his brother, my Ferdinand, named a son Adolph?

This goes to show that I still have a lot of work to do on my beginnings.  I will focus some time again on this branch of my tree and see if I can find things I've missed and confirm (or not) some of these facts.  

In other beginnings news, I learned of a fun tidbit recently.  Jacob Gunzendorfer's great granddaughter and I connected several years ago - you can read about it HERE - and recently have spent some time sharing information.  My cousin, J, has been reading a journal that her mother wrote and shared this with me.

In one section her mother wrote about how her parents Irene (Lolly) and Albert (Bump) met.  Irene was the daughter of Jacob Gunzendorfer and was my grandmother's first cousin.  I remember Grandma talking about her cousin, Irene, but I'm not sure if I ever met her.  Anyway, J's mother wrote:

Lolly and Bump met in 1915 at the fair at the Palace of Fine Arts.  Lolly and her cousin, Loraine, and girlfriends, sisters Dorothy and Hortence, were browsing a display of portable housing shown by a handsome young redhead.  "Red" eyed Lolly and it was "love at first sight".

So now we know how Irene met her husband - and my grandmother was there to witness it!

I've not been very motivated to research lately so maybe this is my new beginning and I can get started up again.  

52 Ancestors: Brick Wall

We all have them, right?  You know, brick wall ancestors who don't want to be found.  I have more than a few but the ancestor who haunts me the most is my paternal great grandfather, Herman Levy.  I've connected with some Levy cousins and I'm hoping we can figure it out but for now, he's a mystery.  It could be that he was known as Herman Levi before coming to America but for now, he's staying hidden.

I have so many brick wall ancestors who are staring me in the face but I have no idea who they are or even if they are MY ancestors.  Why, why, why did my grandmother not label these beautiful photos?  Even one might have led to a new discovery but no, nothing.  So I scan them and file them in my "unidentified" folder.

What makes it even more challenging is that my great grandfather, Abraham Gunzendorfer, was a photographer so I can't even be sure that these people were anything more than a subject for Abe.  And while I believe those who are related to me are either Gunzendorfer, Schwartz, or Steen ancestors because they were in the same box as some identified by those names, it's a crap shoot.

So here I'll post some of these unidentified characters in the hope that maybe, just maybe, someone can help me out.

I love seeing photos of children - there is so much promise in their eyes and I can just imagine the lives they had ahead of them.  But who are they?

I think these two might be Gunzendorfer boys since the photographer was J.B. Johnson in Gilroy, California.  The four boys were Gustave (b. 1864), Adolph (b. 1866), Abraham (b. 1869) and Jacob (b. 1871) and the family lived in Gilroy in 1870.  Clearly taken on the same day but who are they?

I don't know - the top could be Gustave and the bottom could be Adolph but for all I know, they don't even belong to me.

And until today I thought this gentleman might be my 2x great grandfather, Louis Schwartz, but now I've noticed that it was also taken by J.B. Johnson in Gilroy - and to my knowledge, Louis never lived in Gilroy.  So maybe it was the father of the two boys.  And maybe, just maybe, it was their father, Ferdinand Gunzendorfer.

It sort of looks like Ferdinand as an older man but maybe it's just because I want it to be him that I think that.

Ferdinand Gunzendorfer

And then there's this cutie.  Since the photographer was in Santa Cruz and my Steen and Schwartz ancestors lived there, it could be one of them.  Joseph Schwartz?  Milton Schwartz?  Colman Schwartz?  All brothers of my great grandmother, Bertha Schwartz.  They were born in 1867, 1878, and 1884 so maybe?

And what about this family?  Who are they?

Taken in San Francisco - that's no help since just about every one of my ancestors lived or worked in San Francisco at some point in their life.  

And these dapper young men could be Milton Harry Schwartz, younger brother of my great grandmother, Bertha Schwartz.  He was born in 1878 and lived in Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and San Francisco so it could be him.  Or not.

Could this also be the same boy?  It's the same Santa Cruz photographer.

I have a photo that I know is him - same guy?

Milton Harry Schwartz

Since it's the same photography studio I vote yes.  But I could be wrong.

And how about this lady?  Who is she?

Or this lady?  Oh boy, she looks stern!

And another stern lady in San Francisco.  Who are you?

I could go on and on and on.  I know so many people would just love to have the photos I have inherited but geez, it boggles my mind to not know who these people are.  Please, will one of you come forward and tell me who you are?

52 Ancestors: Color

This week’s blog prompt definitely had me scratching my head.  Did I have a colorful ancestor in my tree?  Hmmm, not that I could think of.  How about an ancestor who came from a colorful area?  Orange, California qualifies but nope, none of my ancestors ever lived there.  Redwood, California also qualified but nope, none of my ancestors ever lived there.  So….. how about a “color” name?  I checked my ancestors and found a few that might fit the bill and finally settled on Charlotte WHITE, wife of my great grand uncle, Adolph Gunzendorfer.  I guess you could say that Gunzendorfer is a pretty colorful name so maybe that was the sign I needed to move forward.

I didn’t know much about Charlotte White and after an afternoon of researching her, I don’t really know much more than I did before.  I think Charlotte was born in about 1873-1874 in California to Lowell Clark White and his wife, who may have been named Jennie.  I think in 1880 the family was living at 1516 California Street in San Francisco but there is a little, bitty shred of doubt that maybe I have the wrong family.

Based on Charlotte’s obituary, she had a brother named Marshall Winship White but since he was born in 1883, he wouldn’t have shown up on the 1880 census making positive identification of the family nearly impossible.  But I’ll continue with this theory because as I trace back the parents of Lowell Clark White, I found that his father was Marshall White and his mother was Marsylvia Winship.  So those two clues seem pretty solid.

Of course without the 1890 census, the next place I looked was the 1900 census.  I haven’t found any of them yet but I’ll keep looking.

1910 found Charlotte with Adolph Gunzendorfer on 1637 Sacramento in San Francisco.  Charlotte and Adolph stated that they had been married for 9 years so I searched for any sort of marriage records from about 1901.  Nothing.  Marshall W. White was living with them, along with a boarder, Ralph Knowlton.  I don’t know what caught my eye but I noticed that Ralph listed his occupation as “Repairer, Typewriters”.  Now that was an interesting tidbit since Adolph’s younger brother, Jacob, was the proprietor of Typewritorium in San Francisco.  Perhaps Ralph worked for Jacob?

In 1916, Adolph and Charlotte were living at 1516 Larkin and by 1918 they had moved to 645 Bush.  The 1920 census shows them on Bush Street, enumerated as Lodgers with about 90 others.  It looks like that address is currently a 5 story apartment building, built in 1911, with 52 units.  So that makes sense.

And that’s about all I know until Charlotte died on 10 Feb 1922 in San Francisco. 

California, City of San Francisco, Halsted & Co. register of deaths 

Halsted & Co. funeral records, register of deaths, book 3, A-N, Apr. 1913-Sept. 1930

Could the date to the left, 1-3-1873, be her date of birth?  The column heading is just “No.” and most of the column is blank.  Maybe they used it for the date of birth if they knew that at the time of death?  But after searching for a birth record for Charlotte with that date and father Lowell Clark White, no luck.

I have no idea how she died or any details.  But the death notice in the paper was what led me down the path of her brother, Marshall White.

San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, 1922

And after a few hours following that path, I’m really no further than I was before.  I have no idea where she is buried or even where Adolph is buried.  Maybe I should request death certificates for both Charlotte and Adolph.  But as disorganized as I am, I can’t guarantee I don’t already have them.

Sigh.