Mappy Monday: August Salefski's Move to Wisconsin

August Salefski was my recently found 2nd Great Grand Uncle.  In my post, Finding Minnie Salefski Kurtz's brother, I outlined how I was able to find her brother from just the few words in Minnie's obituary which stated, "and a brother in Wisconsin".

The more genealogy research I do the more I am intrigued about why people move or how they end up where they do.  It is easy to say that our ancestors left the "old country" for a better life in America, but how bad was their life and what did they really expect when they came here?  Most got off the boat in NYC and then went straight to somewhere else.  


Why?

August Salefski and his wife Charlotte Salefski and daughter Augusta disembarked on November 9, 1883 and identified their destination was Connellsville, PA.  

But why Connellsville, PA?

Most likely, August and his family moved to Connellsville upon arrival in the US, because his two sisters (Mary and Minnie) and brother-in-law (August Kurtz) already lived there and communicated back to him the opportunities he could find there.  His brother-in-law, August Kurtz, worked as a coal miner.  Connellsville, PA was a  major coal mining center in the US at that time.  It is likely that August Salefski found employment in the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania.

August and Charlotte Korth Salefski had at least three addition children while living in Connellsville;  Mary (1884), Frederick (1890) and Edward (1892).  However, by 1900 they don't show up on the US Census records for living in Pennsylvania, but they can be found living in Hamburg, Wisconsin.  

But why move from Connellsville, where August was surrounded by family for a move of 800 miles to Wisconsin?

While I haven't been able to find any family stories or documentation on why August moved his family to Wisconsin, I think I have been able to find some clues.

In 1893, the US experienced the greatest depression it had ever experienced up until that time.  It was known as the Panic of 1893 and it resulted in wide spread unemployment and saw large numbers of business close as well as runs on banks across the country.  


This led to civil unrest as workers many workers were striking at their jobs to force employers to provide them wage increases.  In April 1894, the coal miner's union called for a strike that lasted for 8 weeks.  It included 180,000 coal miners from across the country.  In Uniontown, PA (very close to Connellsville), it turned violent as 1,500 striking coal miners fought with guards which resulted in 5 deaths (all striking coal miners).  If August was working as a coal miner at this time, he was probably striking or out of work.  At the very least, he had seen his wages fall making it difficult to support his family.


August Salefski and his family attended the St. John's German Lutheran Church in Connellsville.  In 1893 they received a new pastor, Reverend Philip Lamartine.  He was distressed about how badly the economic conditions were for many of the poor in his congregation and proposed that they gather up all who were willing and go with him to Wisconsin.  An article in the Daily Courier (Connellsville) (St. John's Church Will Observe 55th Birthday Sunday - 7/29/1926) stated that about 1/3 of the congregation went with him.  According to the Philadelphia Biological Seminary Record, pg 123, Rev, Lamartine led a group of 600 people to live in Wisconsin.  

In appears they founded the small Wisconsin town of Hamburg.  

August worked the land as a farmer in his new home.  There is no indication that he ever returned to Connellsville, PA and until I had contacted some of his descendants, it doesn't appear that they knew they had relatives which lived in Pennsylvania.

Mystery Monday - Finding Minnie Salefski Kurtz's Brother

Do you know how many people lived in Wisconsin in 1920?  2.6 million people.

My only lead to find Minnie Kurtz's brother was from her obituary which stated she had "a brother in Wisconsin".  No first name, no town name and at this time, I didn't even have Minnie's maiden name.

Chances of finding her brother....zero.

The other day, I was given a clue by a distant relative that they believed that Minnie Kurtz's maiden name "Salefski".

Ok.  It wasn't much, but it was a start.  

Chance of finding her brother.....greater than zero, but not by much.

I did a search on Ancestry.com to see if I could find any "Salefski's" in Wisconsin.  There appeared to be an army of Salefski's in Illinois, but I only found what appeared to be one family in Wisconsin.

Could this be the one...and if so, how do I prove it?

I found a couple who appeared to be the first of the Wisconsin Salefski's, August and Charlotte Salefski.     I found an existing family tree for the Salefski's.  It appeared that August Salefski was born about 1854 in Germany.  He and Charlotte had three children:  Mary, Frederick and Edward.   According to the family tree each of these children were born in Pennsylvania.  

Ok.  Coincidence?

One thing I love about Ancestry.com is that you can contact other users to ask them about their family trees and share information.
So I did.

I sent an email to the most complete Salefski family tree in Wisconsin I could find and waited.
I was contacted by Bruce Beyerlein that same day.  He was unaware of August Salefski having any sisters....in Pennsylvania or anywhere else.  However, he was able to confirm that August and Charlotte's children were born in Trotter, PA in Fayette County.   Trotter is very close to where Minnie Salefski Kurtz lived in Connellsville, PA.

What was great, was Bruce started some research on his Salefski side of the family to see what he could find.    

August, Charlotte and Augusta Passenger List

Shortly, he was able to find August and Charlotte's arrival at Ellis Island.  They arrived on Nov 9 1883. Their destination once they landed in the US was Connellsville, PA.  The same town his sister was living in.  August and Minnie Kurtz arrived in the US in 1881.  So they were probably on their way to live by his sister.

One other benefit from Bruce's research was that he found a previously unknown child of August and Charlotte Salefski.  Their daughter Augusta who was born in Germany, who came with them to the US.  As it turns out she moved to Wisconsin and married Ferdinand Koehler about 1900.  

August Salefski died in Hamburg, Wisconsin on August 1, 1934.

Not much question, August Salefski is Minnie's brother.  

Never one to leave any stone unturned, I have requested some early church records that should provide some additional detail about August and Charlotte and their children while they lived in Fayette County.

Very Thankful the help that Bruce has given me.  I have said it before and I will say it again.  I continue to be impressed by the assistance fellow researchers so freely give me in my family odyssey.

Should be some updates coming....

Mystery Monday - Finding Mary Kurtz

How do you find someone when the only clue you have is incorrect?

Of course, you don't know the clue is incorrect until you have exhausted multiple avenues of research and come up with nothing.  You keep looking, because that is all you have to go on, but you start to review clues which are close, because you start to suspect there is an error.

This situation happened to me while I was researching my great grand aunt, Mary Kurtz.  She was one of August and Minnie Kurtz's 11 living children in 1900.  August and Minnie had two children who were born in Germany and made the trip with them to the US and 9 more born in Fayette County, PA.

Minnie's obit listed Mary as Mrs Mary Biber.  Only problem.  No mention of any Biber family or wedding in Fayette County that I could find.  Another clue from Minnie's obituary was that Mary and her husband lived in Pittsburgh.  I had assumed that Mary Kurtz had met Mr. Biber near home and they had married in her home town, which is usually the traditional scenario.  Months of on again off again searching with no results.

In my searches of ancestry.com and familysearch.org, I found dozens of Mary Kurtz's in Pennsylvania. None of them appeared to be the one I was looking for.  I had searched for Mary Kurtz and for Mary Biber.  Finally, found a family in Pittsburgh named Biber, but they seemed to be from France.  It didn't look like a fit.

Beaver - Kurtz Wedding

I am not sure when, but recently familysearch.org has added some new marriage documents from Pennsylvania counties.  I found a marriage record from Mary Kurtz and Adam Beaver.  Not really close, but it was worth 30 seconds of my time to check out.  In addition, I had been wondered if "Biber" would have been pronounced with a long "i" sound like tiger or with an long "e" sound like a bee.

The official county record was interesting.  It showed that Mary Kurtz was from Connelsville, PA (where my Mary Kurtz would have lived) and Adam Beaver of Pittsburgh, PA.  I decided to try entering "Adam Beaver" as Mary Kurtz's husband in my Ancestry.com record and do a search and see if anything came up.  As it turns out "Beaver" must get confused for "Bieber" from the German, because Ancestry.com caught it as a potential mispronunciation.  It brought up a Pittsburgh church record which showed the same wedding, but gave Adam's name as "Beiber" instead of "Beaver".  I could easily see how "Biber" and "Bieber" could have gotten mixed up on the obituary.  

The evidence seemed to be adding up, but I wasn't 100% convinced.  

Adam Bieber Naturalization

I was able to find a naturalization record for Adam Bieber.  Adam's naturalization record detailed the name of his wife and where she was born.  I had uncovered in my research of Mary's brother, Julius Henry Kurtz, where he was born.  I outline my research in the post "Julius Henry Kurtz, The Key to My German Ancestry".  So if Mary was born in the same place....I could feel pretty confident that I had, indeed, found August and Minnie's "missing" daughter, Mary Kurtz.

Julius Henry was born in Essen, Germany and, you guessed it, so was Mary Kurtz Bieber.

Now you may be asking, now that I have found that Mary married Adam Bieber....am I distantly related to the newly famous young teenage heartthrob, Justin Bieber.  

The answer.....I have no idea :-)

Wisdom Wednesday - Julius Henry Kurtz, The Key To My German Ancestry

My great great grandparents, August & Minnie Kurtz came from Germany, but I had no idea where they originated in Germany.  They arrived in the US in 1882.


After talking to my oldest surviving relatives, I had run into nothing but dead ends of their origins.   However, I am a optimist, I knew there had to be a way to find this information....it just may take a while, so I just kept looking and sleuthing for leads.


Sometime those leads are right in front of and you don't realize it.


My breakthrough began with the discovery of an article about the untimely death of my great great grandfather, August Kurtz.  It mentioned that he met with a lifelong friend, Peter Russenberg, at the time of his death.  Maybe this was the clue I was looking for.  Find out where, Peter Russenberg was from and I would know where August Kurtz was from.  There was only one problem.  I couldn't find any record of Peter Russenberg.  


Another frustrating dead end.


The key clue ended up being something that was more subtle.  In the article it mentions that August Kurtz was going to meet his oldest son arriving by train from Pittsburgh.  It also mentioned that he had eleven children and several of them were grown up.  It had always baffled me that August and Minnie were married about 1875, but hadn't had any children until after they arrived in 1882.  A seven year gap between getting married and having your first child would have been very unusual at that time.  The only source I had for their children's names and year of birth was the 1900 US Census, which showed 9 children.  Based on those census records, I conducted research on each of their children and looked up copies of their obituaries, but none had mentioned that they were born in Germany or the German origins of their parents.  


More dead ends.


But when August Kurtz died in 1903, the census records indicated that his oldest son, Edward Kurtz, would have only been 19.  I didn't consider the age of 19 being "grown up", which seemed to indicate their were potentially two Kurtz children that I hadn't accounted for.  


I went back to Minnie Kurtz's obituary, who died in 1917, to see if I had missed anyone.  I have to admit, I had looked at all the Kurtz's obituaries for clues to their origins, not for missing children.  Minnie's obit mentioned two people I hadn't accounted for:  Henry Kurtz of Trotter and Mrs. Mary Biber of Pittsburgh.  These had to be the older children who were born in Germany!!


I reviewed several of the other Kurtz children's obituaries and found Henry Kurtz mentioned several times.  How had I missed him before?!  There was no further mention of Mary Biber.  I focused my efforts on Henry.  From when he was mentioned in his siblings obituaries he must have died between 1944 and 1953.  I did some newspaper searches of the Daily Courier of Connellsville, PA and I tracked down the obituary of a "Julius Henry Kurtz".  Initially, I was unclear if this was the Henry Kurtz I was looking for, but the obituary mentioned 3 of his brothers.  No question that this was the RIGHT Henry Kurtz!


But the obituary didn't say anything about where he was born in Germany.  


Was this another dead end?  I kept digging.   

I am very grateful to the US government for requiring 62 year old men to register for the draft in WWII! While a little too old to probably be fighting in WWII, it is a great source of ancestral information.  On Ancestry.com I found a copy of Julius Henry Kurtz draft registration which showed his answer for "Place of Birth" as ESSEN, Germany!  


YAY!!!!! There it was, what I had been searching for for months and months!

Essen, Germany is an industrial center of Germany and was the coal and steel center of the country.  Essen was part of Prussia, but is now part of the region of Germany known as North Rhine - Westphalia.  The coal industry grew rapidly in Essen throughout the 1800's and it went from a medium sized city to almost 100,000 residents by the time August and Minnie left.  It is possible that this influx of people was a contributing factor to why they decided to emigrate to the US, to find new and better opportunities.  This would be consistent with family stories that my mother told me about the family being coal miners in Germany and they came to Western Pennsylvania because it was the center of coal mining.  


I am not content to let my search end by knowing that my ancestors came from Essen, I would like to see if I can uncover vital records from Germany pertaining to August and Minnie's birth's and marriage.  Can't wait to see what more I can find out from my research in Germany.


Just goes to show that sometimes the clues are right in front of you!  Keep digging and you will find what you are looking for.

Sunday's Obituary - Minnie Kurtz Ratofsky/Retkofsky

Minnie and August Kurtz are the first members of the Kurtz family to come to the US from Germany.  They were married in Germany in approx 1874.  It isn't clear if they made the trip across the Atlantic together of if August came first and Minnie came a year or two later.  According to naturalization records, August Kurtz arrived in 1882.


Minnie and August had 10 children born in the US***updated****According to the 1910 Census, Minnie gave birth to 15 children, only 10 of which were living in 1910.  It is surprising that the first 8 years of their marriage didn't result in any children.  It is possible they did have a child or several when living in Germany, but for some reason the children either didn't come to the US or they fell victim to some diseases.  ***updated***August and Minnie did have two children born in Germany prior to their arrival to the US that survived and accompanied them to Pennsylvania - Mary and Julius Henry Kurtz.   This may have been a contributing factor to why Minnie and August deciding to leave Germany.


Minnie and August's life together in the US was fairly short.  August died in some sort of accident while working on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in ***updated***April 1903.  August was only 55 when he died.


You can imagine the situation that Minnie found herself.  10 or more children, no husband and no visible way to support herself.  It is no wonder that she remarried.  She married Carl Ratofsky/Retkofsky in 1905.  Carl had recently become a widower himself when his wife died in 1902.  Carl had 6 kids of his own.


Carl Ratofsky/Retkofsky and his wife Elenore were married in Germany.  There is some family history that suggests that Elenore and Minnie may have been sisters and that the families knew each other in Germany.  There have been no documents that support this and I haven't been able to track the Kurtz family back to where in Germany that they lived.


Here is Minnie's obituary from her death March 3, 1917.

If you have any information on the Kurtz family from western Pennsylvania or have any suggestion on how to track down their German origins, please feel free to share any information or ideas you might have.***updated**** I have uncovered the German origins of August and Minnie Kurtz.  She this post for how I uncovered their origins.

Some interesting leads which I haven't been able to find any additional information are relating to Minnie's sister, Mrs. Mary Combs of Phillips (a coal patch town in Fayette County, PA) and her unnamed brother living in Wisconsin.  ***Updated*** I have not seen the records, but I have been told that the Lutheran Church in Connellsville, PA show that Minnie's maiden name was Salefski.